Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [119]
They couldn’t wait to land and explore it.
The searchlight picked up a lantern moving to and fro at the entrance to a wide cavernous opening in one side of the crystal. It looked just large enough to accommodate the Ariel, and Hardenberg directed Trom toward it.
“You do not think it’s dangerous?” Brentford asked Hardenberg.
“I am just too curious to care,” answered Hardenberg, and that was exactly the answer Brentford wanted to hear.
Trom positioned the ship in front of the cave, following the indications of the tall man in a white tunic who held the lantern at the edge of the opening.
“They do not seem to be cold here,” remarked Gabriel.
“The thermometer says 34°F” said Brentford.
“Oh.” Gabriel felt frozen just at the thought of leaving the relatively warm Ariel.
But he forgot about it as soon the searchlight dispelled the dense shadows of the cave. Sloping down a little from the entrance, it was as deep and high as a cathedral, its vault held up by pillars of crystal. Its sides, rough as they were, exploded into myriads of dazzling ornaments as the light passed over their prisms.
Trom gently took the Ariel down to a few inches above the ground and stopped the motors. The crew jumped out to stabilize the ship, mooring it to the crystal pillars.
“After you,” said Hardenberg, indicating the door to his guests.
The floor itself was made of crystal, so smooth one could see one’s own amazed reflection in it. A light appeared at the base of one of the walls, widening to reveal an opening door. A dozen tall men in white tunics and black breeches advanced toward the visitors, carrying torches. They were very fair, with ruddy complexions, high cheekbones, and slightly slanted eyes. Besides a language that only Hardenberg seemed to grasp, they also spoke a little English. Their manner was easy enough, too, but things went even better as soon as the pack of sled dogs was released from the Ariel. Running toward the men, they jumped at their legs with yelps of joy. Tuluk was right. They were home. And so were Gabriel and Brentford, in a way, if they spooled back the ball of unravelled thread that had brought them here.
“So, this is where the ghost of Isabella wanted us to be, then,” reflected Gabriel, looking all around him in awe, his bandaged hands crossed under his armpits. “I wonder what this place has to do with her. Or us.”
“I was supposed to go to the North Pole, if I may remind you,” said Brentford, though the memory of the mess he had made of it still stung a bit.
“Through Isabella herself, may I remind you. And it’s still her dogs that brought us to you as you were, well, on your way is a big word, but you get my drift,” Gabriel smirked. “And they followed the Polar Kangaroo, who apparently led us here.”
“So He would be linked with Isabella as well.”
“Ah, what wouldn’t He be linked with? He is the link, after all.”
Meanwhile, the landing party had been invited into the castle itself. Its topography, as might be supposed from the outside, was exceedingly complicated, full of twists and turns, but also full of wonders at every one of them. If the Inughuit expressed their awe more vocally than the others, who did their qallunaq best to look blasé, all shared the sense of wonder. Well, thought Brentford, when it comes to sharing, you have to start somewhere, and that was as good a place as any other.
The mauve light of mock moons shone softly through numberless openings, disclosing, with the help of the torches, adjacent halls whose furniture and decorations were entirely sculpted out of the same local crystal with all the minuteness of frostwork. Some, maybe, were less detailed than others, as if this sculpting were a work in progress that had been going on for centuries. Women in long white