Page 75 of Never Tear Us Apart
The path tilts downwards at a shallow angle, but it’s still steep enough for me to be acutely aware that we are descending deeper into the earth. Everything that seems so unlikely and unreal on the surface feels entirely possible down here.
At last, we walk out into a slightly larger space, where the ceilings are just high enough for me to be able to stand up straight. Looking around and holding my lantern up high, so that it casts a light around as much of the room as possible, I gasp, awestruck by the red-painted spirals turning andtwisting into infinity, the bowed pillars carved to make the room appear much larger and grander than it is.
‘Astounding,’ Sal says, pausing for a moment to gaze at the decoration. ‘To think that thousands of years ago, our ancestors stood here and made these marks with intention and purpose. It feels as if they are standing very near, doesn’t it?’
‘I think they are,’ I whisper. ‘I think they’re just a hair’s breadth away. One glimpse out of sight.’
We go on, the lanterns casting a tight circle of light around us. Perfect dark precedes and follows us at close quarters. There’s no fear here, though, just the sense of profound peace left in a place that was created for perpetual dreamers.
When I enter the oracle chamber, I’m sure I feel a slight sense of resistance in the air, as if it has coagulated. My soft footsteps disturb the intense quiet as I find my way to the echoing niche. I recognise it from Kathryn’s description, a miracle of ancient engineering.
‘If you speak into this niche,’ I tell Sal, ‘at exactly the right pitch, then it can be heard throughout the complex and beyond. Even in 2025, archaeologists aren’t sure how they created this effect. It resonates at one hundred and eleven hertz exactly.’ I turn to look at him. ‘The frequency of the universe.’
‘So you will speak into the niche?’ he asks.
I shrug and turn to it. ‘I am Maia Borg,’ I say. ‘You know who I am – you brought me here. You know why I am here and where I need to go. Take me there.’
Sure enough, my voice flows through the stone structures of the temple, amplified into every crevice and corner. Gasping, I turn around and listen to my own voice echo and repeat until, at last, the words fade into silence.
I’m not sure what I expected to happen, but nothing does. Sal and I stand in the dim glow of the lanterns, waiting, and the temple turns her back on us.
‘There should be something more,’ Sal says. ‘An offering.’
‘I am the offering,’ I say, ‘and nobody asked me first.’
‘That’s it,’ Sal says. ‘You are angry; you are making a demand. But instead, you must harmonise with the temple itself. Sing at the same frequency as the temple, as the whole of space and time.’
‘I have no idea how to do that,’ I tell him. ‘I have no idea what one hundred and eleven hertz even sounds like.’
‘But the temple does. The temple knows exactly. Sing – sing to her until you discover her song.’
‘Blow the lanterns out,’ I say.
‘But . . .’ Sal looks perplexed.
‘I’m not going to sing if you can see me!’
Sal blows out the lights, and darkness envelops us, soft and quiet. To break the velvet dark with my voice feels like sacrilege, but I can’t think of any better ideas, so I close my eyes and sing, tentatively at first, and then I let it build.
As I sing, I picture everything I love, everything I need to do, projecting my heart and mind onto the fabric of the underworld. The way Sal takes his battered glasses off his nose and cleans them with a hanky. The way Christina’s smile and energy radiate around her like a beacon. Stella’s laser-focus frown, her stride that breaks for no one and nothing. David, holding his sister in his arms with the kind of small strength that can shoulder the world. And Danny: the way his elegant hands hold a pencil as he draws; how he looks at the clear sky and sees the wind unfurl like tracks on a map; the touch of the very tips of his fingers meeting mine. It’s the slightest thread that attaches him to me, nothing more thana hopeful promise, a delicate wish that I’m ready to build an empire of dreams on.
There are no words to my song – none that are recognisable in any language, anyway. At first, it’s awkward and halting. Then, very slowly, I forget where I am – I forget my body altogether – and every note that pours out of me is made purely from the contents of my soul. My pitch takes flight, falls and steadies like the flight of an aircraft, and then I find the slipstream, the perfect place to glide.
As I sing, it feels like a thousand, thousand other voices join with mine, echoing and repeating my every note. I’m not sure if it’s real or an illusion, but the temple seems to light up, a faint glow coming from within the stones. The oracle chamber awakes, and I think I see the red spirals dance and spin above me, the walls flex and widen like a throat in full voice.
We sing together, all of us, all of me, and the temple teaches me the song of creation: of all time and space. If nothing else, if at any second my song is broken and I remain exactly where I am, then at least I will always have this rarest of experiences, a sense of total unity with everything and everyone that has ever been or ever will be. Whether we know it or not, we each stand shoulder to shoulder, never alone, not in life or death.
Then I see it. At the end of one of the dark tunnels leading off the chamber, a pinprick of light glows, growing larger in rhythmic pulses.
Fear of the unknown takes hold, fear that I won’t find what I’m looking for – and fear that I will. Still, there is no other choice.
I don’t know where Sal is. I can’t see him, and I daren’t risk breaking the song to call for him. He will understand, I’m sure. I hope he understands, and that he has borne witness. Ihope he will be able to tell me what happened here one day, not so very far from now when we are safe and at ease.
As I step into the tunnel, my song continues to reverberate throughout the temple, winding its way through and back on itself, like the spirals painted in ochre on the ceilings.
The light grows stronger as the song slowly fades in slight increments, until my song fades away and all I can hear is the sound of my own breathing. The light ahead is now strong enough to slice into the tunnel.
‘That’s sunlight,’ I whisper aloud, stopping short about three metres from the exit. ‘Warm sunlight. I came in here after midnight.’
