The Cave with Excellent Feng Shui

The thing about caves, as far as Chimi had always understood, was that they were supposed to be dark, damp, cramped, and ultimately disappointing.

If you were lucky, they ended in a colony of bats.

If you were unlucky, they ended after five minutes of climbing and left you wondering why you had bothered in the first place.

This cave offered neither experience.

Instead, it offered... architecture.

Chimi blinked.

The rough stone beneath her boots had gradually become something entirely different.

It wasn't a cave floor anymore.

It was simply... a floor.

Smooth.

Perfectly level.

Pale as polished moonstone and faintly warm beneath her feet, as though hidden sunlight had settled inside the stone itself. She crouched and cautiously pressed her fingertips against it.

Warm.

Not hot.

Not cold.

Just pleasantly warm.

"Well," she muttered, "that's not suspicious at all."

She tapped it with her stick.

The sound rang softly through the passage.

Definitely stone.

Very expensive-looking stone.

She continued forward, each careful step echoing farther than seemed possible.

The passage refused to behave like any respectable cave.

Instead of narrowing, it widened.

Instead of descending, it rose almost imperceptibly.

The walls gradually spread farther apart until they seemed less like walls and more like the sides of an enormous hallway carved by someone with limitless patience and an alarming amount of free time.

Then she noticed something even stranger.

There were no shadows.

The cave wasn't dark.

Neither was it bright.

A soft, silvery glow filled every corner equally, without torches, lanterns, windows, or any visible source.

The light simply....was.

It illuminated everything with such perfect fairness that it became mildly irritating.

"Now you're just showing off," Chimi said to the cave.

The cave, displaying excellent manners, said nothing.

Silence settled around her.

Not ordinary silence.

This one had weight.

It felt as though the entire mountain had taken a slow breath and forgotten to exhale.

The tiny sounds of her own movement suddenly seemed enormous.

The scrape of her boots.

The rustle of her clothes.

Her breathing.

Even the steady beating of her own heart.

She rubbed her arms.

"Right," she announced, mostly because hearing a human voice felt reassuring.

"This is either a very elaborate temple nobody told me about..."

Her words echoed away into impossible distance.

"...or I'm about to become a cautionary tale that grandmothers tell children who wander into forests."

She continued walking.

Because turning around now somehow felt more frightening than moving forward.

The warm breeze carried the scent of cardamom.

Then pine resin.

Fresh rain striking hot stone.

Wildflowers she couldn't name.

Something green and sweet that reminded her of fruit except not any fruit that existed in Bhutan, or anywhere else she knew.

It smelled...

Impossible.

Like memories from someone else's childhood.

She frowned.

"I don't like mysterious smells."

The mysterious smells declined to comment.

The corridor stretched onward until Chimi began wondering whether mountains secretly contained much more space than anyone admitted.

Finally, the passage opened.

Calling it a chamber would have been like calling the Himalayas a hill.

The world simply...

Ended.

She took one more step.

Stopped.

Forgot how breathing worked.

There was a sky.

Not painted.

Not carved.

Not cleverly reflected by polished stone.

A real sky.

It stretched endlessly overhead in shades of lavender and silver-grey, deeper and stranger than any evening she had ever seen.

Clouds drifted lazily across it.

Birds circled somewhere impossibly high above.

And hanging within that unfamiliar heaven were two moons.

Not beside one another.

Around one another.

Slowly.

Gracefully.

The larger moon circled with stately confidence while the smaller one danced around it in delicate loops, as though the pair had invented entirely new rules for astronomy.

"Well..."

She looked away.

Then immediately looked back.

"They're definitely doing that."

No one had ever mentioned that moons could orbit each other.

If temple scholars knew this, they would have been keeping remarkably quiet about it.

Below the impossible sky stretched an equally impossible valley.

White stone terraces cascaded downward like giant stairways built for gods.

Ancient forests spread between them, their leaves shimmering in shades of emerald and silver.

Instead of rivers, glowing streams of pale blue light wound gracefully through the landscape, flowing silently toward the valley's center.

Everything possessed an odd clarity.

The air sparkled faintly.

The colors seemed richer.

Even though the wind carried music so soft she couldn't decide whether she was hearing it or remembering it.

Then she saw the tree.

Everything else vanished from her attention.

It stood at the heart of the valley like the axis around which the entire world had been built.

Its trunk was broader than castles.

Its branches disappeared into the strange sky, carrying leaves that shimmered with every color dawn had ever invented.

Even from this tremendous distance, Chimi understood something was wrong.

She couldn't explain how.

Nobody had taught her to recognize magical trees.

She wasn't a scholar.

She wasn't a monk.

She certainly wasn't chosen by destiny.

Yet the knowledge settled quietly inside her.

The tree was alive.

The tree was ancient.

And the tree was dying.

Not quickly.

Not dramatically.

But steadily.

Like an old grandmother pretending not to cough because she didn't wish to worry about anyone.

Without thinking, Chimi whispered,

"You're sick."

The words had barely left her mouth when a calm voice spoke directly behind her.

"That," it said pleasantly, "is exactly the reaction we were hoping for."

Every muscle in Chimi's body froze.

Her heart attempted to leap out through her throat.

She hadn't heard footsteps.

She hadn't heard breathing.

She hadn't heard anyone approach.

For one spectacularly embarrassing moment, she considered whether ghosts had become considerably more polite than stories suggested.

Then instinct won.

She spun around so quickly that the sturdy branch in her hands became, in her imagination at least, a perfectly respectable sword.

It was still an excellent stick.

Comfortingly solid.

Almost certainly useless.

But excellent.

Before her stood nearly forty people dressed in robes of extraordinary craftsmanship.

Silks shimmered with threads that caught the strange light like flowing water. Their collars were embroidered with symbols she had never seen, and many wore ornaments of jade, silver, crystal, and polished wood.

Every single one of them was looking at her.

Not with fear.

Not with suspicion.

With hope.

The sort of focused, desperate hope a village reserved for the first bus after waiting three days in the rain.

The comparison was so absurd that, despite every instinct screaming at her to run, a tiny laugh almost escaped.

Either I'm in terrible danger...or someone has mistaken me for somebody much more important.

Then she looked more carefully.

One elder had skin the color of smooth river stone.

Another possessed elegant golden antlers rising from silver hair.

Near the back stood a gentleman whose body was perfectly human.

His head, however, belonged entirely to an owl.