A Romantic Walk Through A Graveyard

The far side of midnight, and Angelica Blaze guided Lois Lane past the lich gate of the Metropolis' Old Cemetery. The stone walls that circled the graveyard cut down on the light from the surrounding buildings, deepened the shadows, and the reporter found herself glad for Angelica's hand at her elbow.

"Once this had been open fields...and later, the growing boneyard swallowed nearby farms," Blaze said as she led Lois to a gravel path that weaved between the rows of old stones, some broken and teetering, though many of the larger old monuments and mausoleums remained intact. Stone angels seemed to stare accusingly at Lois, and carven skulls seemed to leer.

"But then the city enclosed it...the last graves were filled...now, few come here. The graves are too old, even the family plots overflowing. This place is the scar of a growing city, the dead interred now further out...and so here we are. All alone..."

The dickgirl's arms slid around the reporter's waist, and settled on her hip. Cool as the night was, Lois chose to leave it there. The reporter took a deep breath and smelled the greenery. The city seemed so distant out here. Lois could let her imagination play as they walked deeper and deeper into the graveyard, the dates on the gravestones now older and older.

Near the center of the cemetery was a grove of trees, old and twisted, and Lois shook as she imagined what terrible nourishment they have taken over the decades...centuries...back to when the first European colonists came to this land. Almost as if Angelica read her thoughts, and she spoke:

"Those first colonists used a Native American burial ground. The mounds are all gone now, but the oldest part of this cemetery is replete with graves unmarked by any Christian stone..."

The gravel path gave out to grass, but Angelica seemed to know the way. She guided Lois to duck and walk half-stooped through a little gap between close-set trees...and for a moment Lois could see nothing but darkness around her, and they had to go single-file. Angelica held her hand out behind her and half-pulled Lois behind her...yet curiosity made Lois keep on. She wanted to see what was at the other-side of this rabbit-hole.

Then they straightened up in a little clearing. The moon shone down, bright and clean and clear, and Lois saw that they stood at what had to be the back of one of the great mausoleums that had belonged to one of the oldest and richest families of Metropolis. So old that the stones were not fully dressed blocks, but were random rocks cemented into place.

"Look!" Blaze said, her voice full of triumph.

Lois looked...and gasped.

There, at the base of the wall, was a great stone, at least four feet tall and five wide at the base. Some boulder dropped by a retreating glacier. Yet where the other stones were plain and unadorned, this stone was carved all over with strange pictoglyphs...centermost of which was an unmistakable pregnant figure, great swirls representing swollen breasts and gravid belly. A figure of potent yet mysterious fertility.

"They couldn't move it," Angelica told her. "So when they came to build their houses of the dead over the native graves, they incorporated it. Hid it, with planted trees and bushes. The lost, pagan heart of Metropolis. The first and most terrible of its mysteries."

Lois Lane heard her...but she was drawn to the stone. Her eyes were fixed on that gravid figure. The reporter stretched out her arm, to touch the stone...