Olivia by R. Lee Smith

empty tunnel.  The floor was not as even here as it was in his personal chambers, and she stumbled several times, catching at his arm until he finally took her hand and held on to her.
    “It won’t always be this difficult,” he said. 
    He wasn’t very convincing, but she let it go without argument because all at once she realized that she could see again, that beyond the beam of her flashlight was more light, illuminating a bend in the tunnel ahead with the promise of sunlight, perhaps an actual opening, perhaps sky !  Olivia began to walk faster. 
    His hand tightened on hers.  “Take care.”
    “I am,” she said, and promptly tripped over a slight rut in the floor and pitched forward.  Her captor’s quick reflexes and powerful grip prevented any serious injury but she still gave one knee a good crack on the wet rock. 
    Very wet.  Maybe it was raining outside.  Fresh rain, falling out of the open sky.  Olivia righted herself, rubbing her knee and waiting for another patient, parental rebuke.
    “Are you hurt?”  He was very good about keeping the laugh out of his voice.
    “I want to see the light.”
    He nodded and motioned for her to continue on.  “Do not run and watch carefully where you go.   We are near to the depths.”
    Olivia picked up her flashlight and limped onward, making sure that she went very carefully and with great dignity.  They came to the bend in the tunnel, turned, and there, brilliant rays of pure sunlight transformed the dank cavern that opened at the end of it into a chapel of magnificent rock formations.  She couldn’t stop the happy cry that flew out of her, any more than she could stop her feet from running forward into the light, those beautiful, beautiful beams of—
    She stopped short.
    “What are those?” Olivia asked, her chest tight with confusion that was still trying to be wonder.
    He said a word, sounding pleased and proud, and the word didn’t really matter because she knew what they were.  All along the walls, high up where the cavern ceiling flowed down like racks of bacon into the walls, ledges had been cut for wide, curved metal plates, polished to a high shine.  Mirrors, bringing light down from other mirrors, out of sight, through God alone knew how many cramped shafts and corners.  When she put out her hand to catch the light, her skin stayed cold and sunless.
    Her captor was watching her, frowning. 
    “I thought it would be real,” she said, and let her hand drop.  “Where are we?”
    “The Deep Drop,” he replied, and led her across the cavern.  The name was unnecessary.  The whole of this wide room was nothing but a ledge at the top of a vast chasm, with stalactites dripping down like teeth into the gaping throat at their feet.  Apart from some intermittent dripping, she could hear nothing, and not even the mirrors could show her the bottom.
    “Is it safe?” she asked.
    He didn’t answer right away.  When she gave him a startled sort of stare, he shifted his wings and said, “When I was very small, the older boys said the depths were full of hungry spirits.”
    She looked down into the blackness and a cold wind breathed gently back at her.  “Are they?”
    “No.”  He shifted again, rubbing at the base of his horns.  “But if any place was, it would be here.”
    She stared at him again.
    He shrugged, somewhat self-consciously.  “Bad things happened down there once, but all it is now is the place where the baths are.”
    “The baths are down there ?”  Olivia stepped back from the ledge even as she craned her neck to peer into the depths.  “How are we supposed to get all the way—oh.”  She looked at his wings and her stomach seemed to shiver.  “I don’t think I’m going to like this part.”
    He gave her another of his small smiles, touched her cheek with a kind of sympathy, then scooped her up into his arms.
    And jumped.
    She didn’t mean to scream.  She knew she was perfectly safe in his grip and that