01_-_The_Alchemyst

steps brought them to an open doorway spilling out light. Dozens of tiny
waterfalls spouted from the walls and splashed down onto the floor far
below, where the water gathered in a huge circular pool that took up most of
the foyer. The interior walls were smooth and unadorned, except for the
twists and knots of vines that broke through the surface. Josh thought they
looked like veins.
And it was completely deserted.
No one moved within the tree, nothing—human or inhuman—climbed
the countless stairs, no winged creature flew in the moist air.
“Welcome to the Yggdrasill,” Nicholas Flamel said, stepping back and
allowing them to enter. “Welcome to the World Tree.”
Josh held up his phone. The screen was blank. “And have you noticed,”
he asked, “there are no power sockets?”
“There have to be,” Sophie said decisively. She walked over to the bed
and dropped to her knees. “There are always sockets beside the beds….”
There were none.
The twins stood in the center of Josh’s room and looked around. His
room was a mirror image of his sister’s. Everything around them was
composed of a honey-colored blond wood, from the highly polished floors to
the smooth walls. There was no glass in the windows, and the door was a
wafer-thin rectangle of wood that looked and felt like the papery bark of a
tree. The only item of furniture in the room was the bed, a low wooden futon
covered with heavy fur throws. A thick fur rug lay on the floor beside the
bed. It was dappled with an intricate pattern of spots that resembled no
animal either of the twins had ever seen.
There was also a tree growing out of the center of the floor.
Tall, thin and elegant, the red-barked tree rose straight out of the
wooden floor. No limbs protruded from the trunk until it came close to the
ceiling, and then the branches burst out into a canopy that covered the roof.
The leaves were a deep, luxuriant green on one side, ash white on the other.