After she had eaten her fill, she hobbled over to the General and looked up at him.
‘I’m ready to move now,’ she announced.
‘Excellent. I feel like you are warming to us already! This is a good sign, and I think you will be pleasantly surprised by what you are going to discover in these coming days and weeks. Here, let me help you back up with my trunk.’
***
With the sun levitating low over the tops of the distant mountains, plunging the last of its golden lances through the dense foliage of the jungle, Margaret awoke from another uneasy slumber on the great elephant’s back. She was still in a state of semi-shock, but as more time had passed she had started to find herself feeling more at ease atop the animal, and sleep had come quickly enough to her after she had partaken of a particularly filling afternoon meal, after many hours of trekking through the jungle. Below her the General raised his trunk and trumpeted; four distinctive blasts that crashed through the jungle, sending flocks of brightly coloured birds fluttering skywards in a kaleidoscope of rainbow hues.
The General’s trumpeting was answered by shouts from the bush, and from all directions heavily armed soldiers in ghillie suits began to emerge from the dense undergrowth. Margaret gasped in surprise; her eyes had been scanning the very section of bush from whence some of the troops had just materialised, and she had not spotted a single one before they had revealed themselves. The youths – for all the troops looked to be teenagers, she noticed – cheered and raised their weapons to the sky as the General and his train passed them. A strange cocktail of emotions bubbled inside Margaret as she rode by; the dominant feeling remained one of simmering fear, yet intruding into this state were flurries of excitement, and even some sort of pride; despite the underlying knowledge that she remained a prisoner, an undeniable sense of importance pulsated subtly in the back of her mind, as if she was, perhaps, some sort of celebrity.
Before she could lose herself in contemplation, however, something else entirely abruptly took her breath away: beneath her the General rounded a corner of the trail that passed a gigantic, house-sized boulder, and in doing revealed a vista that could only be described as something dreamed up by the imagination of a master artist. The jungle before her fell away into a gargantuan, lush valley, and at its centre was an ancient city, constructed in a style she had never seen. A number of crystalline streams ran down the steep sides of the valley, and waterfalls plummeted here and there from jutting cliff-rocks. All of the waters converged on the valley floor, flowing into a jewel-sparkling river that ran through the centre of the city. Enormous trees, which must have been hundreds or even thousands of years old, towered over the buildings, which were made of stones and rocks of various vivid hues.
‘What … what is this place?’ she gasped.
‘This is an ancient city called T’Kalanjathu,’ the General answered, his voice resounding in her mind. ‘It was the capital of a civilisation that vanished from this earth long before the days of Jesus. They reached the height of their power while the Roman Empire was still in its infancy, and the Buddha walked the earth in the form of a man. They were called the K’Nganwa, but sadly you will not find their names in any history books of any living culture. For centuries, though, this capital was a centre of learning and enlightenment … yet it was also a hub of greed, cruelty and insatiable excess. Does this sound familiar to you, considering where you come from? The K’Nganwa destroyed themselves, in the end; they declared war on Nature, and as is always the case in such conflicts, while man is able to inflict massive and horrific carnage upon her, Nature is able to weather the course, no matter the extent of the destruction wrought upon her … and in the end She is able to ultimately survive and regenerate. Man, in his short-sighted arrogance, is not.’
‘How do you know all of this, if it isn’t in history books?’ Margaret asked.
The General paused for a few moments before delivering a cryptic answer.
‘All will be revealed in time.’
As they began to navigate their way down a steep path, his voice went silent in her head, and thereafter he spoke no more. Melodic and shrill bird and animal calls rang out all around them as they journeyed down the complex networks of steps and paths into the heart of the jungle valley, and Margaret observed processions of wild animals coming down some other trails as dusk fell. Their passages down from the heights mirrored the streams and tributaries that emptied their issue into the tumbling river that sluiced along the valley floor.
When the other animal trains got onto the main road, Margaret saw that they all carried enormous saddlebags, bursting with fresh fruit and vegetables. On this wide road, paved with black river rocks polished glossy and smooth by centuries of traffic, the various trains of animals all joined a singular, crowded procession that was heading in calm order towards the towering city gates, which were constructed of bright yellow stone and wrapped tight with immense, python-coiled tree roots. While many of the trees had long since grown through many buildings, smashing out walls and roofs in a centuries-slow melee of silent anarchy, Margaret noticed that the city walls, along with their pillars and turrets, as well as a number of other buildings, had been patched around and bonded to the trees, so that Nature herself formed living pillars of support, working in conjunction with the architecture of man.
‘Did you restore these ruins?’ she asked the General.
‘I did, yes. It has taken me decades, and is still very much an ongoing process. But look around you; it has been worth all
