Golden City

Beneath the Golden Tree, Dago blinked and could not help asking, "What happened next? How did the story end?"

"Just like every fairy tale ends."

Melville slowly swallowed the last mouthful of fruit and shrugged.

The gesture was casual and effortless, as though what he had just swallowed was not fruit, but the rise and fall of a dynasty.

He told Dago, "The evil, foolish king met a miserable end, along with his evil army."

"The wise wizard deceived him?"

Dago frowned.

"No."

Melville shook his head. "Quite the opposite. Every word of the method of achieving immortality that the wise man taught the king was true."

"In terms of truth, he was absolutely honest."

"Gold is the most inert metal. Undying, incorruptible, unchanging."

"Unfortunately, before the wise wizard arrived in the Golden City, the aged king died of old age upon his throne."

"But the wise man did not break his promise. He did indeed grant the king immortality."

"He activated that enormous alchemical matrix covering the entire city. He took the dead king's corpse and his entire army."

"Together with the terror, greed, and despair frozen on their faces in the moments before their deaths."

"And turned them all into immortal golden statues."

"They were buried beneath the earth forever, along with the Golden City..."

They became a sealed fragment of time.

"Oh."

Dago nodded, his expression saying, "I knew how it would end as soon as I heard the beginning."

But beneath that expression lay a deep shudder of fear.

Then he rose from beneath the Golden Tree and looked at the golden desert under his feet.

Every grain of sand might once have been powdered bone from some living creature.

He asked, "Was it beneath this desert we're standing on?"

Melville smiled and shook his head.