It had been six days on the unforgiving salt flats, the stallion’s flanks whipped and striped by the wind-hefted mineral. The page Helene had torn from the atlas frayed from the wind and her sweat, but she and the local guide she’d hired could still piece together the path.

Unconfirmed settlements believed below ground, it said of the mine. And she had heard rumors floating around peripheral desert towns. Salt people. Fanatics. Immortals. Murmurs turned to superstitions turned to shrugged-off legends. The locals were smarter than to risk drying out on the flats in pursuit of a fairy tale. Helene felt no hesitation.

The guide left her at the edge of the cavern.

“From here, the journey is your own,” he said. Helene didn’t protest—far better for her to take this last step to gain credit alone. He tugged the cloth back over his face, nudged his horse around. Riding toward the sizzling horizon, he shook his head at Helene and pocketed his money.

In front of her, the earth’s maw opened—a fringe of rocks outlined the cave, sloping unseen below the surface. The promise she had made her family flashed on the wind, echoes of their voices and hers mingling in the whistle. This will be the last stop on my travels, she’d written. Just one more journey to feel the rush, collect the story, sell it off. Tales from sea-drenched harbors, mountain peaks, frost-bitten villages already coiled up like dormant snakes in her memory. But this could be a tale all her own, if she could catch it. 

She stepped into the cave. The whine of the salt-laden wind dimmed instantly, as though she had slipped underwater.

“We so rarely have visitors,” said the woman. She stood as if expecting Helene, her face a slab of shadow. Pillars of salt, frothed and feathered, loomed along the slope between them, aglow in the splintered sunlight that Helene could still feel on her back. The way down stretched far ahead.

“Come,” said the woman.

Helene stepped over the threshold into the darkness.        

They walked silently down the tunnel, footsteps echoing until the cavern yawned open, revealing an open space beyond the entranceway. Vaulted ceilings, many stories high, domed overhead. Upside-down pyramids chiseled from translucent gray stone hung low, crossed by zig-zagging steps and a menagerie of carved faces, animals, and geometric patterns. Around and within these structures bustled the population of an entire city. Some threaded themselves on pulleys, tapping with chisels into the rock face. Women leaned out of windows, beating strips of linen against the salt and calling out to friends. Children raced around blue cave pools, leaping with practiced ease over stalagmites. And everywhere, light glittered, shining through statues and walls and flowing like water down the ragged face of the salt.

Everyone Helene could see was coated in a thin layer of the mineral, whorled across their bodies in intricate patterns. Two girls sat nearby, chatting and drawing thin sticks across each other’s arms. Their hair was crystallized like ropes left in saltwater, the stiff locks piled on their heads in masses resembling the formations of the cave.

“Forgive my lack of reserve, but I must know. Are the whisperings true? Does this place truly extend one’s days?” Helene asked her guide.

The woman smiled, cracking the salt around her mouth. A bit of it dribbled to the floor.

“We have been granted many blessings. Embalming living flesh to slow its decay is an art we have mastered, but we find this incomparable to the embalmment of the spirit. We care for each other here. We are one, for all the long lives that we live together.”

“Incredible.”

“Would you like to participate in the embalming process? It is customary for guests.”

Helene followed the woman deeper into the mine.        

She was brought to a pool, and knelt. A crowd had gathered. Dozens of crystalline bodies wrapped in linen strips pressed forward, regarded her with ageless faces. An elder made low noises and sprinkled Helene’s head with salt, then dipped her into the water. She could feel the mineral congealing on her skin, small, sharp fragments sinking their barbs down into soft flesh. She felt lighter, untethered to the ground.

“Come,” said the elder as she was raised up. “There is one more step.”

“We are very blessed here,” said the elder at the mine’s entrance, and the crowd murmured in agreement. “Blessed to live peacefully beyond the span of the world above. In thanks for that blessing, we turn our backs to the sins of the outside. You found our sanctuary, and we now offer a test.” The elder gripped Helene’s hand in her crusted fingers.

“There is no leaving this place. Step forward, and you will become one of us. Turn back, and you will be struck down by our god, like those behind you.”

Those behind her. Helene remembered the path down into the mine. The pillars of salt. Hadn’t they looked strange? Like limbs outstretched, reaching up toward the sky in desperation. Fronds of salt-like wind-blown hair.

“The outside world means nothing, child. Everything fades away. Even stories, legacies. Here, you can live in one forever.”

The elder was right—as Helene reached for her memories, they felt dulled. Empty trophies she had gathered, shimmering and fragile. What a waste, she thought, and regret began to pull her body down toward the crowd. But something else stirred within her as well. Before she could move, Helene saw a flash of sunlight dappling through trees. The laughs of her sisters ringing across grass and rich carpets. The open window, voices streaming into damp summer air. The warmth of her mother’s arm across her back. She had not been home in so long.

Perhaps she would not be forgiven. Perhaps death was the price. But what was eternity compared to one last glance toward the sun-soaked cradle of her birth?

She smiled, and turned to look back.