She was being dragged across dry riverbeds on a boat made of sticks. Bedouin cocooned and covered her in oil moist leaves to protect her burned skin from the sun. She was brought into the cool of a cave she heard the Bedouin call, The Cave of Memory. Night came. A fire warmed against the desert rime. A story was told as flames glimmered on the cave walls of an earlier time. The eldest of the tribe anointed her eyes and skin with more ointments. They knew well of healing, these desert people. But what great realm had summoned them to save her?

“It was as if you were placed there by God,” Dominique said. She saw Julian and Ja’far looking at her, as her experience traveled from the cave then, to now.

“Are you all right?” Julian asked.

“She’s remembering what happened here a thousand years ago,” Ja’far answered.

Dominique saw that Julian was frightened and doubting. But he was here.

Ja’far led Dominique and Julian through a maze of catacombs. They’d been walking for hours and stopped to rest. Dominique asked how much farther they needed to go. Ja’far told her that while the entrance point was the burial ground they’d come from, it wasn’t the location of the tablet. The catacombs would take them to under the abandoned warehouse many miles away from where they started. So, if they were followed, no one would be able to find the entrance through the rock they’d entered.

“And if by some chance they were able to find it?” Julian asked.

“They wouldn’t survive in the catacombs.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re very deep under the ground.”

“What about the air? How will we breathe when we get there?” Dominique asked.

“We’re breathing now, and we’re already hundreds of feet under the desert.”

“What are you talking about? How is that possible?” Julian demanded.

“How is any of what’s happened to you possible?”

Dominique saw that Julian was having a hard time buying this.

“We’ve got to come to the surface at some point. Or are you planning to keep us here?”

“When we’ve done what we came to do, we will go back to the surface.”

“I’m fucking glad you’re that confident.”