As he swam to the middle of the Roog, Zed thought of all the nightmares he had over the years, and how the sacred lake had played a part—his parents’ grave—in many of them. Did they ever actually swim in this lake, he wondered? Floating on his back, he stared up at the domed ceiling, eighty feet above, where stalactites hung down over the water like harpoons waiting for an unwary leviathan.
The torches in the cavern burned brightly, their reflections making the surface of the lake seem like a golden mirror. Indeed, it appeared as if a person could walk on the water, it looked that flat, still, and solid. Zed’s emotions soared. They flew around the nooks and crannies of the ceiling like eagles—powerful and confident.
A drip from one of the stalactites landed with a resounding plunk, sending a concentric ripple out from the point of impact across the mirror-like surface of the lake. Zed watched it approach. It tickled his skin as it passed, and he laughed in delight at the ceiling, just as his mother had done in his dream. The laughter echoed back and forth and in and around the nooks and crannies of the cavern, then bounced back down to the water, only to collide with more laughter from Zed and scatter to every remote part of the cave before bouncing back one last time. For a few moments, it sounded like all the world’s orphans were laughing.
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