The Train Station Chapter Six

 The silence was hollow.  It had a faint ringing echo to it that was indicative of a very enormous space indeed.  There was no way to know how big; since it was so dark; and that only made the place seem bigger and the action of stepping out of the iron carriage more daunting than ever.  They had known of the carriage’s existence for less than a day, and it was still a great mystery and wonder, but somehow, now it seemed like the only familiar thing they had; and the space outside altogether too strange and uncertain and unknown.  The carriage seemed safe in comparison; something solid and real amid a blank dark expanse of nothing.  None of them wanted to think about stepping out of the carriage into that horrible dark.
The silence went on for a very long time – nobody knew exactly how long – before Gary’s voice spoke, trying to sound casual and failing badly. “Now what?”
“I don’t know – I guess we have to get back,” said Beach’s voice rather shakily.
Jingle got her own voice to work. “If only we could see something.” Her voice sounded higher and squeakier than usual, but nobody noticed.
“I have a candle-end in my pocket,” said Beach; “No way to light it though,” she added sadly.
It was very inconvenient.  If there had been any decent-sized rocks handy they would have attempted to knock them together and start the candle anyway, but there were none inside and stepping outside was a most horrible prospect.  Who knows how long they would have sat in the carriage, too scared to stir, had not a sudden, soft, crystalline sort of sound broke the silence and echoed through the Great Mysterious Outside: and at the same time a soft pale globe of light blossomed outside above them, creating a pool of light through which thousands of dust particles were drifting slowly.  This gave them all a shock of fear at first (they had all been thinking about the dragon) but as the echoes of the sound died away and the silence settled back down, nothing more seemed to happen.  Jingle blinked at realized that she was seeing the other’s faces for the first time in a long while.  The momentary panic subsided in a surge of relief.
“What is that?” she asked in a hushed voice.
Beach and Gary only stared at the light, faces pale with awe and wonder.  It wasn’t like any light they had ever seen; lantern-like in size and brightness, but still as sunlight, without a flicker, and dim, pale with a strange and blueish pallor.  Slowly, they looked from the light to each other and reached a sort of unspoken agreement.  They rose and looked out the carriage window at the gaping darkness beyond the pale light.
But it was no longer nothing but blackness.  Another burst of crystalline sound shattered in the stillness, and another and another, each sound fainter than the last.  It was as though their arrival had set off a chain reaction of lights.  Echoes drifted after the sounds as lamp after lamp came on in the dark and hung there like a silvery moon.  This went on for a while, but with each new wave of sound the echoes grew fainter and farther away and finally died. . . leaving a vast and cavernous space on all sides that seemed even bigger now that they could see it. 
The ceiling and walls were still lost to shadow but the illuminated space was still so enormous that for all they knew they had been transported from their familiar world of sky and trees and grass to a whole other world entirely.  For a very long time they could do nothing but stand and look and look, feeling so much awe and unknowing that it was hard to bear.
The carriage was standing on a slight uprising of rock, giving them a fine view of what must have been the strangest and most terrifyingly unfamiliar city they had ever dreamed of, now laid out below the ghostly light of the lanterns.  The town of Sandburg (the largest place Jingle had thought possible to exist) would have fit nicely into a corner of this massive structure.  Buildings were honeycombed into every possible space, carved into the rock and built up on the rock and on each other, their countless doors and windows filled with shadow.  Narrow streets passed crookedly between them like veins.  Short, steep bridges spanned courtyards and passages and alleys clogged with broken stone.  Farther back on the edge of their vision, massive blocks of stone formed even larger structures like the keep of some enormous castle. 
The buildings were all made of crumbling stone and there were thousands of them, mingling together into a massive stony landscape.  There was no symmetry to it; yet it was obvious that whoever had designed it had designed it with efficiency in mind, as though with the intention of crowding as many chambers as possible into this city, connecting them only by narrow bridges and crooked stairways.
As for who built this place and who lived here, Beach and Gary and Jingle all had the funny sensation that they would likely never know.  They saw the crumbling courtyard walls and passages filled with fallen stone, and saw the empty and hollow way in which the shadowed doorways gaped up at them, and the dismal and forlorn sort of way that the buildings leaned on one another; and they knew that this place, whatever it had once been ages afore, was now a ruin.  
What had happened to all those people?  Had they left?  Where had they gone?  Why would they leave?  Had they all died?  Jingle wondered but knew better than to ask aloud.  Beach and Gary would be wondering the same unanswerable things.  

Eventually they had looked enough to believe it was real and turned back to each other inside the carriage, which now seemed so small.  Beach voiced the general thought.

"We should just have to follow the path this thingy took to get us down here.  I say let's start back, quick."  

It was indeed the sort of place that none of them were keen on staying in any longer than was necessary.  One look out the back window, however, discouraged the hope that they would not have to set foot inside that stony ruinous city.  The path along which the carriage ran passed down and into the maze of broken passages and empty buildings with their shadowy doorways, and disappeared from sight around a corner.  The children gave each other despairing looks.   

"Oh bother we shall have to go into it," said Jingle.

"How perfectly horrid--" said Beach.

Gary agreed that it was a fearful prospect.  

"But Ma'll be worrying about us by now probably," said Beach.  She was the first to step down from the carriage.

Slowly, the others followed; out of the safety of the carriage and into another world.