We buried them beneath the world and took the sky from their eyes, so they could never again take it from ours. But stone does not last forever, and hate does not die in the dark. One day the ground will open, and what we sealed away will come looking for the sun.
– From the account of Chatoo
Declan Riley was sixteen years old when he stood at the edge of a hole in the ground and looked down at something that shouldn’t exist. He would spend the next two years trying to understand what he’d seen.
Chapter one continues
It started with an earthquake, and that should have been the first sign that something was wrong. Houston wasn’t supposed to get earthquakes. Declan had sat through tornado drills every spring of his life. Nobody had ever taught him what to do when the ground itself moved, hard enough to bring trees down across the whole suburb.
A day after it hit, he and his brother Donovan headed out to look at the damage, climbing over a branch that had come down across someone’s driveway. Donovan was two years older than Declan and stood a head taller. He was broad in the shoulders, a stark contrast from Declan’s younger frame. Declan was all elbows and knees with blue eyes and a mop of shaggy brown hair he was forever shoving out of his face.
“I looked it up last night,” Donovan said as he hurdled a branch. “Houston gets little tremors all the time. We just never feel ’em.”
“Mom said the news mentioned the fault lines changing. That they might be getting stronger now.”
They walked past the trees and found the asphalt trail behind their house. They were headed for their friend Patrick’s place in the adjacent neighborhood when they cut toward a thick section of trees they had passed a hundred times.
“Let’s just cut through,” Declan said. “You can’t still be scared to go through this.”
“I was never scared…it’s just thick and who knows what lives in there.”
The Riley brothers had spent half their lives roaming this neighborhood, climbing fences and crossing the wide gully and poking into places they had no business being, but this was uncharted ground.
The shade was a relief from the heat, but the woods closed in fast, thicker than they’d looked from the road. Thorny vines hung strung between the trunks, and the underbrush dragged at their legs with every step. “You first,” Donovan said, but Declan was already ducking under a branch.
The trees continued in a long way, farther than either of them expected. The houses behind them went quiet and then gone, until it stopped feeling like the neighborhood at all, just trees and more trees and the heat sitting heavy under them. Declan had nearly turned back when he stopped instead. Something ahead of them sat wrong among the trunks, low gray shapes half swallowed in the green. Donovan came up beside him.
“Are those…” Donovan hesitated.
“Yep…headstones,” Declan finished.
He had almost walked right past them. Years of growth had taken the place over, vines roped across the tops of the stones, brush grown high between them, moss filling in every cut and letter until the graveyard had all but vanished into the woods. It was a strange place for one, tucked between two neighborhoods and buried in the trees, like someone had wanted it forgotten and the forest had gone along with it. The stones he could make out were worn almost smooth, the etchings half gone, old, older than the neighborhood, maybe older than the city. Declan waded in among them and pulled a handful of vines off one of the faces, brushing the dirt back with his palm, and stopped cold.
“Donovan. Come look.”
Donovan stumbled over, reluctant, and read the name out loud. “Absolum Riley.”
“That could be us,” Declan said. “That’s our name.”
They found more, fifteen stones in all, several of them Rileys. No footprints, no flowers, nothing to say anyone had set foot here in years. Then Donovan stopped. He stared, examining the largest stone, where a symbol had been carved dead center, worn but deliberate: a circle, a single line beneath it, an upside-down V under the line, and three small circles below that. “What is that?”
Declan crouched in front of it. “That symbol…I swear I’ve seen that before.”
Then he caught movement in the grass by Donovan’s foot.
“Don’t move,” Declan said, slow and low. “Stand up and take a slow step back.”
“What? Why…” Donovan started.
“There’s a copperhead by your foot.”
Donovan looked down. The snake was coiled tight, already drawing back. A sound escaped him and he threw himself sideways, cracking his foot against the headstone and going down hard in the leaves. Declan had already grabbed a rock and in one swift motion brought it down on the snake’s head.
He looked at his brother sprawled in the dirt. “I can’t believe you screamed.”
“I yelled,” Donovan shot back. “When I tripped.”
“That was one hundred percent a scream,” Declan grinned. “And it happened before you fell.”
Declan crouched again at the base of the largest headstone. “The ground’s different here,” he said. The dirt in front of the stone had lifted, fresh, a crack running along it maybe two feet long. They dug their fingers in and pulled, but it wouldn’t give. Every branch they tried to lever it with snapped.
“Maybe the stone does it,” Donovan said. “I kicked it when I fell.”
Declan put both hands on the headstone and pushed. “It’s moving!” Donovan exclaimed.
Somewhere under them something began to click, slow and even, like a big gear turning over. “Keep going,” Donovan said, leaning in beside him, and they pushed until it stopped.
The ground opened. Dust rolled up out of a hole, and at the bottom of it sat a metal chest, rusted and dented like it had come a long way to get there. The same symbol ran across its lid. It was no bigger than a small suitcase, with two old keyhole locks on the front. Declan grabbed his rock and went at them. Nothing.
“Hey, guys!”
Declan and Donovan spun around.
“Good gosh!” Declan exclaimed. “Maybe a warning next time?”
Patrick Pierce stood at the treeline, grinning, a stocky kid with freckles and a thick head of curly brown hair. They had met him at a church camp when they were kids, and between his rough home and the Rileys’ open door, he was at their place more than his own. He had called Mrs. Riley “Mom” by accident more than once.
“Saw y’all cut into the trees,” he said. “Then I heard a scream, so I ran.”
“I almost died,” Donovan said. “Snake was fixin’ to bite me.”
Declan dropped the rock. “We found a chest. Locks won’t break.”
“Hold on.” Patrick pointed past them. “Y’all…took that out of a grave?”
“It’s not a real grave. Nobody’s buried in it,” Donovan said. “At least, we haven’t found the body yet, I guess.”
“Still creepy,” Patrick said, and for once nobody argued.
Declan and Donovan hauled the chest up between them and started home, stepping over branches the earthquake had left in the street. They were still guessing at what was inside, Patrick sure it was gold, when a voice cut across the quiet.
“What are you boys carrying?”
Mrs. Dantry, the widow two doors down, at her front window, gray bun pulled tight over a permanent scowl.
“Nothing, Mrs. Dantry,” Declan tried.
“It’s obviously something. Don’t you tell me it’s nothing, young man.”
Donovan smiled and didn’t miss a beat. “Well, we found our dad’s old chest in the garage and we had the idea to fill it with snakes from the gully and let ’em loose in your yard.”
Mrs. Dantry shrieked. “You wouldn’t dare! I’ll be calling your mother, you little heathens!”
The boys were already moving, laughing under their breath. Donovan always knew exactly which buttons to push.
Back home, they set the chest down in the driveway and crouched around it. Their dad’s crowbar didn’t work on the locks. Neither did a hammer or screwdriver. Donovan disappeared into the garage and came back grinning, holding their dad’s blowtorch, something he had watched his father use plenty and never been allowed to touch. “This’ll do it.” He had the flame lit in seconds and ran it along the hinges until the lid lifted free.
They leaned in, expecting treasure. “It’s a…book.” Donovan said disappointingly.
He and Patrick groaned. Declan didn’t. He lifted it out and ran his thumb over the cracked leather, surprised at how well it had held up when everything around it had rotted. He opened the cover. A name was inked inside in faded black letters: William Riley.
Patrick leaned in. “William Riley.” He looked up at Declan. “Riley. That’s your last name.”
“I know.” Declan turned a page, careful with it. The handwriting was cramped and old-fashioned. “Somebody buried it like it mattered. And he wrote it himself. In English.”
The three of them took the journal into the dining room and started on the first page.
Since our arrival in the islands we have traveled northwest to a larger body of land and followed the shore until I felt an overwhelming pull to anchor. On this day, the twelfth of October, 1490, we have encountered a new civilization. They are not like the natives we first met. They are pale, like myself, and they rule this land. We fled and hid ourselves to learn their intentions. They have made slaves of the native people, working them in the fields and the mining tunnels, torturing them, giving them almost no water. I will not write the worst of what I have seen. It is inhumane.
Declan’s eyes went back to the date. “Guys, this says 1490.”
“So?” Patrick said.
“So, Columbus didn’t sail until 1492.” Declan looked up, the name inside the cover suddenly loud in his head. “A Riley beat him here by two years.”
Patrick’s mouth opened, then closed again.
Chapter one keeps going.
So does the rest of it. A City Beneath arrives January 19, 2027.
Pre-order the bookA City Beneath, Book One of The Cerythian Chronicles, by Jared P. Woods.
Young adult fantasy. No profanity, no sexual content.
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