The first time she found her way into Tieke City was completely by accident, and there wasn’t really any surprise in that. The cliffs and surrounding hills were riddled with tunnels, the vast majority of whch had been forgotted by time and fallible mortal memory in the centuries upon centuries since the city had been settled and dug out. She’d been finding them back in the forest since she was old enough to be let out to explore on her own – dark cave mouths overgrown with vines and small trees so that only someone with a sharp eye or a sixth sense could have hoped to uncover it.
Most of those tunnels were dead-ends, but no less exciting. She’d follow their twists until she found where they’d caved in on themselves or filled so full of tree roots that there was no squeezing past without cutting through first – a practice her mother would never allow – and the she’d turn around and go back home to record the whole thing on scraps of bark paper stitched together to make a madman’s map of landmarks that only she could accurately read.
And then, once, she’d found one that hadn’t been doomed by physics and falling rock, but merely abandoned. It still stood strong, and it wound further and deeper into the earth and then the stone than any she had ever seen before.
Her first clue that what she’d found was more than a warren for some burrowing critter was that the exit (or entrance – all a matter of perspective) in the trees had once been decorated. Flat stones were still in place at the mouth of the cave, covered by years of dirt and dry leaves. She found them with her toes and eagerly swept them off, uncovering expertly laid tile, smoothly worn at the center, pressed into polish by thousands of long gone feet, a trail leading off into the darkness ahead.
What else could she do but follow?
Her father had warned her to always tell them where she was going before she did. The tunnels were fascinating, but not everything was as sturdy as it seemed. He worried about cave-ins, and even more about one happening where he’d never know about it.
She’d only given a general direction on that occasion, however, and for a moment, it gave her hesitation. She turned, slowly, looking around the mouth of the cave, studying the trees, looking for something, anything that she could use to make a signal for her parents should they come looking. Anything.
There was nothing. Vines, saplings, stones, flowers, but not a thing that felt like a signature she could leave, sure that they’d see it and follow.
There was only one thing for it. She turned around, pulling off her cloak as she did, and whirled it into the branches of a tree beside the entrance. She dashed past it then, until she stood at a distance from it, and she studied her handiwork. Her mother had dyed the fabric herself, bright red and obvious, and it shone in the light.
A good, solid beacon. She nodded to herself, satisfied. It might take them a while, but they would find her if she was lost. They could and they would.
With that certainty, she turned her attention back to the tunnel and the long depths within. She traced the smooth steps of all those who came before her and vanished into the darkness underneath the forest floor.