The guard sat on a stone platform at the edge of a field, just beyond the boundary of the swamp.  He clutched a pair of binoculars in his copper gauntlet.  Kaitlyn deposited Doria at the base of a vine-throttled tree nearby and moved silently toward the platform.

            “He’ll see you!” Doria hissed, eyeing the guard nervously.  They had passed a few other sentries on their journey through the swamp, and each time, Kaitlyn had ducked behind a vine or pulled Doria down into the mud.  Now, she casually sauntered as if this guard wasn’t there at all.  Kaitlyn grinned at Doria.  She flashed a quick thumbs up, then hopped onto the platform.

            “Come back!” Doria whispered again.  There was no way Kaitlyn could hear her, but she couldn’t speak louder without drawing attention.

            Kaitlyn crawled across the platform until she knelt right behind the guard.  Through some miracle, he hadn’t noticed her.  She stood up and broke into a weird little dance, all popping hips and wobbling elbows.  Her fingers flopped like dead fish as she rolled her shoulders back and forth.

            Doria held her breath.

            Kaitlyn bent forward and gave the guard a gentle pat on the top of his helmet.

            Doria gasped.

            Kaitlyn giggled.  With a quick yank, she pulled the guard’s helmet off entirely.

            There was nothing underneath except a headless uniform. 

            Kaitlyn plopped the helmet onto her own head.  She flashed Doria a peace sign, then scooped up the uniform and dashed back across the platform.

            “Decoy,” she said as she climbed down.  “I set this up a while ago.  I call it my ‘scare-Cade.’”

            Doria whistled, impressed.  “It fooled me,” she said.  “It works on the Cades too?”

            Kaitlyn shrugged.  “So far, so good.  It’s not like there’s much they want in this area.  The vines already killed the trees; the Cades have stripped the vines; and the city’s still a long way off.  There’s nothing here but mud and dirt.”

            Doria kicked a clump of grass.  “So, why are we here?”

             “Because there’s one thing left that the Cades don’t know about.  This platform is built on mud, dirt… and sand.”

            On the far side of the platform, a narrow opening disrupted the otherwise uniform stonework.  The crevice was difficult to see unless you stood right by it, and low enough that the girls had to duck to pass through.   Kaitlyn and Doria crawled inside.

            On the inside, the platform was hollow, forming the ceiling of a square, shaft-like chamber that dropped hundreds of feet into the ground.  Gaps between the platform’s stone tiles allowed a small amount of natural light to enter from above, dimly illuminating the space.

            The girls stepped onto a steel catwalk that hugged the chamber’s inner wall.  It ran level for a few short feet, then ramped steeply downward into the darkness.  Doria held her breath and gripped the railing tightly.  Through the grill pattern on the catwalk’s floor, she could faintly make out another loop of metal walkway far beneath her.  She closed her eyes.

            Kaitlyn stepped past her and descended the ramp at a trot.  “Hey, Blob, are you coming?”

            Doria gulped and began to edge forward.

            The light grew dimmer as the girls descended.  The catwalk hugged the carved stone wall for three spiraling loops before the wall disappeared entirely, giving way to dark emptiness.  Below the bottom of the wall, the girls passed into an even larger, wider space, like they'd moved from the bottom of a funnel into a bucket.  Doria froze on the catwalk, terrified.

            “Hang on a second,” Kaitlyn said.  “I know I put a switch around here somewhere.”  She fumbled along the railing for several seconds, then found a control box.  “Here we go!”  She toggled a breaker, and the world lit up around them as industrial floodlights roared into action.  Doria flinched from the sudden glare, almost losing her balance.

            Only a few dozen feet separated them from the ground now.  The catwalk curled for another two loops before leveling off on the floor.  Once there, it cut a pathway through a field of glittering sand dunes.

            “Why is there a beach here?” Doria asked.

            Kaitlyn laughed.  “It’s hardly a beach.  There’s no water, for one thing.”

            “Okay, so why is there a desert here?”

            “The sand has always been here.”  Kaitlyn smiled.  “But I built the rest of it.  This is my home.”

            Doria looked around, impressed.  “You built all this?  That must have taken forever!”

            “Nah,” Kaitlyn said.  “A few hours maybe?  This place isn’t that big.  I mean, it’s nothing compared to the city, and the Cades built that in about the same time.  I’ve only got space for twenty or thirty rooms down here.  But I needed a place to hide people – the non-Cades from the other trees above – somewhere the Cades couldn’t get them.”

            “I don’t understand,” Doria said.  “There’s no people here.”

            “Of course there are!  They're just up ahead.  Come on, I’ll show you.”  The older girl hoisted her poles and set off across the dunes.

            Two minutes later, Doria found herself in an ice cream parlor, of all places.

***

“So, before the Cades built their city, the world above us had two main parts,” Kaitlyn lectured through a mouthful of almond sorbet.  “There was a big, swampy forest, where all the people came from –”

            “The Man-Groves,” Doria said, poking reluctantly at the bowl in front of her.  She still couldn’t figure out what an ice cream shop was doing here, deep underground.  She also didn’t understand why Kaitlyn had ordered her a scoop of “ginger root,” a weird-sounding flavor she’d never even heard of.  Her ice cream left a slug-like trail as she pushed it across her bowl.

            “The Man-Groves, right.  It circled the outside, in a ring.  And then there was a big, sandy desert in the middle.  That’s where everything else came from.”

            Doria frowned.  “Yeah, that’s the part I don’t get.”

            Kaitlyn’s had removed her goggles and scarf and placed them on the table next to her, allowing Doria to get a better look at her face.  Her wide eyes sparked with excitement, framed by lengths of unruly chestnut hair.  Beneath the pointed nose Doria had noticed earlier, her full, animated lips sent flecks of cream flying across the table as she exclaimed, “I’ll show you!  Watch this!”  Kaitlyn raised her hand and gestured to the shop manager.

            “Hey there, Kaitlyn,” the woman beamed as she walked over.  She was small and energetic, with a warm smile and a neat coif of jet-black hair pinned under a cap.  An embroidered nametag on her uniform shirt read, ‘Naiwen’s Scoop Shack.’  “How’s that sorbet working out?  Is there anything else I can get you?’

            Kaitlyn grinned.  “The sorbet is out of this world, as always, Naiwen.  If it’s not too much trouble, could we get two glasses of milk?  And a bucket of sand?”

            Doria’s eyebrows arched, but Naiwen just nodded.  “Coming right up!”  She stepped away, then returned with two frosty glasses and a large beach pail.

            Kaitlyn shoved her hand into the pail and stared at Doria intently.  “Okay, what do you want?” she asked.

             “What do I want?” Doria repeated dumbly.

            “From the bucket!  Think of an object – anything that’s small enough to fit inside here.  Tell me, and I’ll make it.”

            “I, uh, well…” Doria stammered.

            “Come on!” Kaitlyn said.  “The first thing to pop into your head.  Just spit it out.”

            “Okay, uh, a rhinoceros horn!”

            Kaitlyn nodded.  She furrowed her brow and shoved her hand deeper into the bucket.  A moment later, she plopped a long, curved, cone-shaped object onto the table with a thud.  “Anything else?”

            Doria stared at the object.  It was, indeed, a rhinoceros horn, exactly like the ones she’d seen at the zoo.  But maybe that was just a fluke.  She thought of an even more improbable object.  “Um, how about a purple kazoo?”

            “You got it!”  Kaitlyn pulled a plastic instrument from the bucket.  The ice cream parlor filled with wheezing, off-key music as Doria blew into it.  Customers groaned from the booths around them.

            “Cut that out, you two!” Naiwen shouted from the counter.

            Kaitlyn shot Doria a reproachful look and snatched the kazoo back.  “Sorry, Naiwen,” she called.

            Doria scratched her head.  “Okay, that’s pretty cool.  But what’s the point of a magic sand bucket?”

            “It’s not just the bucket,” Kaitlyn said.  “Before the Cades, the central area had miles of this stuff.  People fell off the trees in the swamps, then found their ways to the center, to build.”

            Elmer's words back in the showroom popped into Doria’s mind.  “A modeling area in the middle,” she said, repeating him.  It was a literal sandbox.

            “Exactly.”  Kaitlyn smiled.

            “So, what do they build?” Doria asked.  “I mean, besides kazoos and rhino horns?  Wait a minute – did  the Ace of Cades build that helicopter and motorcycle out of sand, too?”

            Kaitlyn frowned, and her face darkened.  “Yeah.  He seized control of a sandbox much bigger than mine.  It’s kept him going, despite his idiocy.  But the sand isn’t all guns and helicopters.  People build lots of things.”  She gestured around her.  “Like ice cream parlors, for example.  Naiwen told me she owns a place like this in the middle of the city.  She runs it with her daughter.”

            Doria swept her eyes around the shop.  “You mean this is all fake?”

            “It’s real to her.  Finish your ice cream, and I’ll show more.”

            Doria poked her spoon into her half-melted ginger root ice cream and took a tiny nibble.  Her brain told her she must be eating sand, but the ice cream was surprisingly good – thick and creamy, but with a kick.  She spooned the rest into her mouth in two large, delicious globs.

            Kaitlyn placed a bill and a few coins onto the tabletop, then stood to leave.  “Thanks a ton, Naiwen!  You seriously make the best ice cream in the whole city.”

            Naiwen beamed.  “Come back any time, Kaitlyn.  And be careful out in that swamp!  Those boys are not messing around!”

            Doria and Kaitlyn stepped out of the parlor door and onto an underground metal catwalk.  Naiwen still waved through the glass storefront, but the sides and top of her shop were submerged in a pile of sand.

            “That’s Naiwen’s world,” Kaitlyn said.  “She feels the most like herself when she’s chatting with her customers.”  She tugged on Doria’s hand.  “Come on.  The next one’s just over here.  If you thought the ice cream parlor was crazy, you haven’t seen anything!”

            Kaitlyn led Doria to the next dune, a short distance away.  This one had a wooden door, set incongruously in its side.  She pushed the door open, and Doria stepped onto a sunlit wooden deck terrace overlooking a sloping green hill.  A tanned man with white hair stood at the terrace railing, flicking playing cards out into open space.  Three laughing children ran back and forth below, racing to catch the cards before they landed.

            “That’s Mr. Irivani,” Kaitlyn told Doria.  “He feels the most like himself when he’s playing with his grandchildren.”  She turned to the old man.  “Evening, Mr. Irivani!”

             “Evening, Katie,” he called back.  He grinned as he tossed a three of diamonds over the balcony.  “What’s got you loving life these days?”

            After a brief chat with Mr. Irivani, the girls stepped back into the sand dunes.  The catwalk wound a meandering loop past a dozen more miniature worlds, each designed to by, and for, a different creator.  They met a middle-aged man walking his dog in a city park, then moved to a hospital cafeteria, where a nurse wolfed down a pastrami sandwich on rye before returning to his shift.  Doria wished she could spend more time with Mrs. Pak, a sweet-looking woman with a giant freshwater aquarium.  They even met another Mr. Irivani, though this one had only one grandchild zipping around below.

            “This version of Mr. Irivani is not on speaking terms with his son,” Kaitlyn confided.