When she was a little girl her father told her that there used to be water — canals, dozens of them — running through the city where now there were streets. “The old city used to be delimited on all four sides by water,” he explained.
“So where is the water now?” Isabel asked, wide-eyed and baffled.
“They paved it over,” he told her, “and now there are all these streets for us to walk on.”
A city of water beneath her feet! It had seemed wondrous, incredible. Isabel imagined a whole other world, a parallel city below her. She could see a wide, blue channel of water, with rolling waves and turquoise fish and silver dolphins and delicate seahorses and beautiful mermaids, all busy and bustling, swimming and diving,