Fearless by Sarah Tarkoff

Author:Sarah Tarkoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

The answer turned out to be . . . once again, pretty much nothing. Once we passed through customs in Istanbul, we picked up Jude’s car that he’d left at the airport. Jude had his own car on another continent—it felt so surreal. We drove deep into central Turkey, speeding through the wild, rocky countryside. Before today, I’d never been outside the United States, and barely outside of Virginia. Heck, even New York City had seemed exotic just a few weeks earlier.

This continent was completely foreign to me, in every sense of the word. As we stopped to grab gas and food, I curiously tried to eavesdrop on the chatter around us . . . before remembering I did not speak Turkish. Though I’d felt so isolated at home, keeping all those secrets, I already felt more isolated here. At least my father and Macy and Zack could speak my language. Here, I discovered, I couldn’t talk to most people even if I wanted to.

Adrenaline and excitement to be with Jude had gotten me this far into our journey, but exhaustion was setting in, and before I knew it, the car was parked and Jude was shaking me—I’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat. “We’re here,” he said.

I looked out the window and thought we’d somehow ended up on another planet. Rocks growing tall like giant mushrooms with windows carved into them. The hillside dotted with abandoned cave formations. This was Cappadocia, Jude said, and it was the strangest, most beautiful place I’d ever seen. A tourist town, but we walked far beyond where I could see any people. For a moment, all my fears subsided, and I allowed myself to feel the awe of the majestic expanse all around me. It was an odd gift—that despite everything I’d been through recently, Great Spirit had brought me somewhere so amazing, somewhere I never would have gotten to see otherwise.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as our steps sent birds flying out of the tall grass tickling my ankles.

“Base camp,” Jude said, and moments later, he moved some brush aside to reveal a hole in the ground. Stairs made of stone leading beneath the earth. When Dawn had said she wanted to send me underground, she wasn’t kidding. Jude stepped in ahead of me and held out a hand to help me inside.

We descended deeper and deeper into a cave with ceilings so low Jude had to duck. The space was lit only by ornate, colorful lamps lining the walls, and I had to tamp down the claustrophobic panic I felt as we descended. All my instincts said to find fresh air aboveground, to find a way to leave. I tried to distract myself, examining the walls, which were etched with the alphabet of an ancient language. “Written by the people who built this place, centuries ago,” Jude explained.

Soon the rock walls began to widen, and I gasped as we stepped out of the passage to discover we were in a massive meeting hall—just the entryway into an expansive underground city.

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