Immortal

by T Nisbet

Chp. 8

  If you’ve been to the beach and been hit by a wave and tumbled mercilessly through the pounding surf, you have an inkling of what it felt like. We called it “getting the May-Tag” when we went bodysurfing at Huntington Beach. You just had to close your eyes, hold your breath, and ride it out, hoping you would eventually come to the surface. That’s what I did.

  Currents pulled and whipped me around like a rag-doll. The backpack strapped on my shoulders and waist twisted and jerked, but it didn’t come off. I pulled my arms into my body, my stomach queasy. I risked opening my eyes and saw the long narrow light filled tube I was falling through. The shining, throbbing cylinder twisted left and right, up and down like some bizarre, otherworldly water slide. Suddenly, there was unbelievably bright flash of light, and I was deposited out of the tube, onto a rough stone slab.

  I took a deep breath as Coach McNally helped me off the flat stone and onto my feet. I had difficulty seeing and blinked furiously, my eyes watering as I fought to make out images.

  “Going to puke kid?” he laughed, standing away from me.

  Out of shear will to defy the bastard, I held back the contents of my stomach. Ivy ran up and gave me a warm hug. I held onto her tightly, catching my breath, willing my sight back. Was I imagining it, or was her skin glowing lightly? Maybe it was just an afterimage caused by the blinding flash. As my eyes adjusted, and I could see clearly again, I realized it was no afterimage. Ivy was glowing a soft shade of purple.

  “Held your breath eh?” laughed McNutty, walking away from us, down a little hill to an enormous tree trunk, where Brianna sat with her head between her knees.

  “You okay, Jake?” whispered Ivy not letting go of me either.

  “Okay as I can be after…whatever that was.”

  Slowly, we separated, but Ivy held onto my hand. As I looked down at her, she smiled up at me with that impish grin of hers which recently had taken on a whole new meaning to me. Why was she glowing!

  “You’re, you’re glowing!” I stammered, the words pouring out before I could think of a better way to say them.

  “So are you,” she said, smiling even more brightly. God what a smile! What? I was glowing?

  I looked down at my right hand. I was glowing! My whole arm had a light blue aura to it. I looked down at where our hands joined, a visible white light leaked out between our fingers.

  “Holy crap!” I breathed. What the hell was going on?

  “Mom said it would be like this.”

  “What? She told you I’d freak out?” This was just too weird.

  “No silly! That we’d be able to see the magic here.”

  “What magic? I just seeing us glowing, and where our hands are... where we’re holding...” I spluttered.

  “It’s white right?” Ivy interjected.

  “Yeah, it’s white… soft white! Why?” I asked.

  Ivy smiled mischievously, and promptly ignored my question, leading me down the hill away from the large slab of granite, towards where McNally crouched beside Brianna. Brianna looked up, saw us coming, and tried to smile. McNally wiped her brow. She looked miserable.

  I looked around in disbelief as we walked towards them. We were in a glade surrounded by impossibly huge trees of a type I’d never seen before. It was as if I’d been reduced to the size of an ant. I’d been to Sequoia National Park and seen the world’s tallest trees, they were saplings compared to the trees towering up into the sky around me now. The trunk of the tree that Brianna huddled against was easily seventy-five feet across, and from what I could tell; it was one of the smaller trees edging the clearing. The bark of the tree was a rich, dappled brown and so smooth it would have been impossible to climb. I could smell the richness of the tree’s bark, feel its strength as we drew nearer.

  It was then, that I noticed that I felt lighter. Somehow the pack wasn’t nearly as heavy. How could the pack have become so light? Did this place, wherever it was, have less gravity? It was all too weird.

  We stopped in front of Brianna and McNally, and Ivy let go of my hand kneeling down beside Brianna and putting an arm around her. I stood there staring. Ivy’s beauty out-shown even one of the best looking girls in school, true, she was glowing, and Brianna was obviously sick from the trip through the wormhole, or whatever it was… still. How could I have been so blind?

  McNally stood up, leaving Brianna to Ivy’s care and stepped over to me. “He’s sending people every hour or so by my reckoning.”

  I looked at my watch.

  Coach laughed, “Your watch don’t work here, Gunn. Technology is useless in this world.”

  “How’s that possible? It’s mechanical, how does that stop working? Do levers and pulleys not work here either?”

  “Only simple mechanics. The more complex they get, the more the magic of this realm repels them from each other,” he grunted.

  “Really...” I breathed.

  What he suggested wasn’t possible? Magic cancelled out the laws of mechanical physics? It was absurd, but so was his reference to time being different.

  We hadn’t sat on the bench more than fifteen seconds apart, yet an hour had gone by here? I tried to wrap my brain around it the best I could. Obviously something had happened on the way here, wherever here was.

  “Where are we coach?” I asked. “I’ve never seen trees like these before.”

  McNally laughed, the sound was like a combination of gargling and an asthmatic wheezing. “This is the other side of the looking glass, Alice! This place has got a lot of names. Call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter.”

  I shook my head, ignoring his ‘Alice’ remark, trying to keep my sanity intact.

  “Put your game face on, Gunn, and toughen up! It’s not going to be easy getting to the estate, and I’m not going to pamper your sorry ass the whole way!”

  God I hated him challenging me. He always made remarks implying that everyone around him was a loser. I’d had enough of his bullshit!

  “Worry about yourself!” I growled. “I’m not the one trying to becoming a vampire.”

  Coach’s eyebrows went up at my words. I’d never really talked back to him before. No one talked back to Coach.

  “No, you’re the supposedly immortal, teen douche bag that’s been sent here to fight a demon.”

  He saw me wince, and looked me up and down once.

  “Maybe when the others arrive I can arrange a pity party for you, Gunn. You best stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your shit straight,” he said, then turned his back on me, and marched back up the hill to the granite table.

  God I hated him, it bore repeating.

  I was sitting with Ivy and Brianna when I heard Coach’s insane cackling on top of the hill. A moment later, he came down leading Carla, who was pale and a bit dazed. She sat next to us on the loamy soil and leaned against the soft, smooth bark of the massive tree.

  “That sucked!” was all she could say.

  “I puked all over!” offered Brianna by way of consolation.

  Ivy pulled something out of her daypack, and told Carla to chew it. She must have done the same with Brianna when I was talking to coach, because Brianna was chewing something as well, and looked much better.

  When Carla had recovered a bit she looked at Ivy more closely.

  “Ivy, you’re… you’re glowing!” she breathed, “Why are you glowing purple?”

  Then she looked at me. “Frickin A, Jake, you’re glowing too! Kind of blue.”

  I shrugged, and then listened as Ivy gave Carla the same brief explanation she’d given me. I looked down at my hands. Somewhere behind the colossal trees on the other side of the clearing, the sun was going down. The soft blue radiance attached to my skin seemed even more apparent as it got darker. I turned my hands over, reminded of the blue aura that had enveloped the knight before he vanished. Was I going to glow when I returned too? My parents were going to have a fit! Forget about ever going to see a movie again. Why didn’t Carla, Brianna or Coach glow? I had
too many questions. I picked one that would change the subject of auras and glowing magic.

  “Ivy what is this place really called? You called that fairy ring a gateway to the other side last night, and Coach hinted that it was called other things. What is it really? Is it earth?”

  Ivy looked up from beside Carla and shrugged. “It is earth, and not earth. It’s hard to explain. I don’t really understand it all either. Mother says there are a number of other realms that are connected and coexist with ours, but Coach McNally is right, this realm is called a lot of different things. Mother calls it Athenas,” she said with a far away look on her face. “What I do know is that this is the land the Fae escaped to when mankind grew too strong on earth.”

  “What are the Fae? You mean fairies like in the Scottish and Irish legends? The Sidhe?” Carla asked her head still between her knees.

  “The Fae is just a term meaning creatures of magic Carla,” said Ivy. “Using the Scottish or Irish word for it really isn’t correct. Sorry.”

  “So we aren’t going to find leprechauns guarding pots of gold at the end of rainbows?” Carla snickered.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Leave it to Carla or Toby to find a reason to laugh.

  “I really doubt it, though most legends from around the world have some truth to them,” said Ivy joining in our laughter. “I don’t think we’ll be finding pots of gold, or leprechauns.”

  Toby arrived after a bit, and trudged down the hill with Coach. I was relieved that he was here, wherever here was.

  “I’m hungry,” he announced as Carla got slowly to her feet and greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Figures!” snorted Carla snuggling up against him.

  “Damn!” Coach cursed stomping his booted foot. “It’s going to be dark soon, and we have a long ways to go. Get a sweater or jacket on and lets get moving!”

  Brianna took her duffle bag from Toby. How he managed to hold onto it through that maelstrom I had no clue. She pulled three hooded sweatshirts out of it. Toby and I looked at one another and shrugged, we didn’t have sweaters or jackets. Even though it had been cold and wet, both of us had gone to Ivy’s house wearing only tee shirts and jeans.

  Coach grumbled something under his breath, and rummaged through the pack on Toby’s back. He pulled out a couple of grey woolen sweaters and handed them to us. From a side pocket on the pack, he retrieved a small crystal, then held it out to Ivy, who had slipped a cardinal red USC sweatshirt over her head.

  “Do your thing mage,” he ordered as Toby and I took off our packs and donned the itchy wool.

  I watched as Ivy tentatively reached out and touched the crystal. A tiny dot of white light appeared in the center of the crystal and grew brighter. I stared, slack jawed in amazement, sweater half way on, as her touch called forth the light. After a moment, Ivy drew back her hand. Coach grunted in satisfaction and tied the crystal to a long walking stick leaning nearby against the tree trunk. Ordering us to follow, he started off into the trees, the light from the crystal shining out around us like a lantern. Shaking my head, as if that would wake me up from this bizarre dream, I hurriedly finished pulling on the sweater and shouldered my pack once more.

  Toby and I fell in behind the girls, with Coach McNally leading the way. We marched along a lightly worn animal path, as night settled in around us. After the quiet of the clearing, I was shocked by the sounds of the woods. Birds called to one another high above us in the branches, unseen creatures scurried for cover just out of the range of the light. Toby and I exchanged several nervous looks as we walked, but didn’t speak. No one spoke. The sound of our passage through the dark woods seemed extraordinarily loud, as it was. Leaves and small branches crackled and snapped under our feet.

  Large drops of dew fell from the darkness far above, moistening the loamy forest floor. Soil and leaves clung tenaciously to my high top Addidas as we continued along the barely discernable path. Beyond the circle of light given off by the crystal, shadows danced around the massive trunks of the trees we passed. The trail dodged about and under fallen branches so large they would have taken a crane to move, and around huge boulders, covered in phosphorescent red and gold lichen. After hiking for what felt like several hours through the wondrous forest, Coach halted at a clearing near a small, gurgling brook.

  “Stow your packs boys, find the canteens, then fill them in that creek,” he ordered gruffly, pointing at depression that ran through the far side of the clearing.

  I squirmed out of the backpack and set it on the rich, leaf covered loam of the forest floor against a small, lichen-covered boulder. The girls sat down ungracefully, clearly tired and thankful for a rest. I opened my pack and found two canteens on top of several canvas wrapped bundles. Toby had recovered another from his pack. Leaving our backpacks with the group, we walked over to the babbling rivulet just inside our circle of light, and began filling the canteens in the icy cold water.

  “Jake,” Toby whispered. “I hate to tell you this dude, but you’re glowing. Is your pregnancy causing any weird cravings yet, bud? Ivy is glowing too. You want to tell me anything?”

  I looked over at my huge friend who was grinning broadly, his cheeks flushed from the hike. Leave it to Toby to imply something sexual even under circumstances such as these. Bastard.

  I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “Of course not!” I whispered back, too irritated to blush. I scooped up a handful of water and sipped it. It was clean and totally refreshing. I didn’t realize I was so thirsty. I drank some more then splashed some on my face and neck.

  “Well, its kind of strange that you two are the only ones,” he continued undaunted. “I wonder if Carla and I would glow if we…”

  “Can it you two!” interrupted Coach, “Voices carry in these woods, and we don’t want to draw any more attention than we already have!”

  I swallowed. Was Coach implying that we were being watched? Great! Just great!

  Toby and I looked around as we finished filling the canteens. I couldn’t see anything past ten yards or so beyond the light. We hurried back to the girls and coach.

  “Everyone drink, but not too much,” Coach McNally commanded roughly, taking one of the canteens I held and handing it to Brianna. “We may have to run at some point people, and I don’t want anyone unable to keep up because of a side ache.”

  “You can run, Coach?” snickered Toby.

  “It may be too late to run.” Ivy said standing up and looking around.

  I followed her gaze out to the fringes of the light given off by the crystal on coach’s walking stick. A dozen or more lightly glowing, hooded figures stood between the trees in a circle around us. I cursed lightly, and moved to stand nearer to Ivy and the other girls.