That dreamlike day they were all alone except once, when he let excited schoolchildren pass in their jackets and hats, and he said to her, “Noisy like a swarm of bats.” And she laughed and said she was having fun with him, and she grabbed his arm and pressed against him, and he felt the softness of her against him. Through silence, only the sound of water dripping. He took her through the Tunnel of Snakes beneath chandeliers of stone. Past translucent curtains of stone into the Corridor of the Desert.

“If you left me here, I would never find my way out,” she said.

“Why would I leave you? I’m your guide. In the desert, you can’t survive without a guide unless you know your way.”

And the sandstorm rose up in a mighty wall, and he rubbed his eyes, trying not to see it in his mind that day.

“How do you know the way? You must come here often,” she said, and then he left the sandstorm and was back in the cave, and she was so beautiful, pale and well defined, as if carved of quartz, but sad because her lover had left her for another woman.

“What makes you so special you can know a place like this?” she said to Will. “Three kilometers deep into the earth and an endless maze of wet stone. How horrible to be lost in here. I wonder if anyone’s ever gotten lost in here. After hours, when they turn out the lights, it must be pitch-black and cold as a cellar in here.”

He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. All he saw was bright red as they were sandblasted until he thought he would have no skin left.

“Will! Oh, God! Help me, Will!” Roger’s screams became the screams of the schoolchildren a corridor away, and the roar of the storm stopped.

Water dripped and their footsteps sounded wet. “Why do you keep rubbing your eyes?” she asked.

“I could find my way even in the dark. I can see very well in the dark and came here often when I was a child. I’m your guide.” He was very kind, very gentle with her because he understood her loss was more than she could bear. “See how the stone’s translucent with light? It’s flat and strong like tendons and sinews, and crystals are the waxy yellow of bone. And through this narrow corridor is the Dome of Milano, gray, damp, and cool like the tissue and vessels of a very old body.”

“My shoes and the cuffs of my pants are spattered with wet limestone, like whitewash. You’ve ruined my clothes.”

Her complaints irritated him. He showed her a natural pond scattered with green coins on the bottom, and wondered aloud if anyone’s wishes had come true, and she tossed a coin in and it plashed and sank to the bottom.