Last Sunday, I was watching TV, and suddenly, I heard people shouting outside. I went out and saw the mayor ordering people to evacuate. I recalled the day I moved into this small town.
A few years ago, I, Athena, was around 10 when I moved into this town with my grandmother after my parents died in a car accident. The sky was gloomy, but a ray of sunshine peered through the black clouds forming a blanket around it, giving me some hope.
My friend Olive came and shouted, “Athena!” “Be quick; we’ve got to go!” I told her to go ahead and that I had some things to take care of. I ran towards the mayor and asked what all this was about. He snapped at me, saying, “Stop poking your nasty nose into others’ business.” “Now run along!”
I thought that the mayor was hiding something. I evacuated and secretly came back into town before the sunset. I followed the mayor around but hid. Just before I thought he might be crazy, I saw him entering a gutter. I followed him down the drain to see many tunnels leading to places I didn’t know of. I crept and hid inside a niche in the wall and remembered the story of the underground city that belonged to my family. Weirdly enough, I saw many inscriptions on the walls written in Hawaiian. I could make out a few words, but the rest remained a mystery.
I overheard the mayor say, “This place can be sold to smugglers for a handsome price!” Oh god! “How thankful I am to the builders of this place!”
Little did he know I had recorded all of this on my phone. I smirked and swiftly left the place. I ran outside the town and played the voice note for my grandmother. A teardrop slowly escaped from her right eye. She then smiled because she knew that the underground city lay somewhere here, that my parents didn’t die in an accident, and that the accident was framed. However, she didn’t know the exact location from which one could enter the underground city. Grandma and I went towards Olive’s family and told them everything. Her parents soon called the police. I showed them where the mayor was, and they arrested him and his entire team.
A few weeks later, the court announced they would have five years of jail time. When the government asked us if we would like to hand over the city to them as a heritage site for research, my grandma happily said, “Do no harm to that place; that is all I want to say. The rest is totally up to you!” I could feel my parents looking at me from their heavenly abode and smiling. Well, at least now, I believe what my grandmother used to say about curiosity: “Curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
August, 2024
