The Legend of the Rift

by Peter Lerangis

  “Which would you go to?” she asked. “Did Wenders give any indication?”

  I shook my head. “His information came from ancient records left before the destruction of Atlantis. Massarym had not taken and hidden the Loculi yet.”

  “That presents a problem, doesn’t it?” Reaching into her tunic pocket, Aliyah pulled out a silver coin and flipped it high in the air. “Heads for Alexandria, tails for Ephesus.”

  “Heads!” Eloise screamed.

  Aliyah caught the coin and slapped it down on the back of her wrist. “Tails.”

  Eloise plopped onto the floor, arms folded. “Figures.”

  “Now all of you try to sleep,” Aliyah said. “Wheels up at seven.”

  The Dream begins again.

  I try to force it away. There’s not enough time. The sun is about to rise. Please.

  But like a powerful magnet, sleep drags me down . . . down . . .

  Until I am in a grassy field and the dark clouds are scudding overhead, while the Song of the Heptakiklos screeches like a siren on the hot wind. I hear the cackling of frightened animals. Townspeople are outside the gate, demanding to be seen. They are shouting the name Uhla’ar . . . Uhla’ar . . .

  I keep my distance. I am . . .

  Who?

  I can usually tell if I’m Karai or Massarym in these dreams; it’s always one or the other. But this time I don’t know. I still feel like myself.

  For a moment that gives me hope. Maybe I am still close enough to being conscious. Maybe I will jolt awake, adjust, and have a nice, pleasant dream about chocolate ice cream or Hoosier basketball or World of Warcraft.

  Maybe if I smack myself in the face, hard . . . harder . . . HARDER . . .

  “Jack, what are you doing?”

  I turn. It’s Aly, running across the field to me. She has the Loculus of Strength in her hand and King Uhla’ar is chasing her. Only somehow he’s still a statue and so his steps are stiff and pieces of his marble skin are popping into the air. He’s screaming, “I’ll get you, Batman!” but it’s not funny or weird, it’s the scariest thing I ever heard, because he’s gaining on Aly and she looks desperate.

  “Jack, CATCH!” she screams, and she tosses the Loculus high into the air.

  I jump, soaring into the air like a helicopter. But Uhla’ar leaves the ground, too. We are both reaching for the Loculus, and just as my fingers touch it, he transforms into a massive green beast with a mouth that’s a gaping ring of fire.

  As I feel myself being sucked into the flames, I scream as loud as I can. . . .

  “She’s not here,” Cass muttered.

  “Whaaaaa—?” I sat up so fast my back wrenched.

  I was on the floor of the Massa hospital. Cass and Marco were sprawled out next to me, and beyond them were the rebels and the Massa.

  “The Dream again?” Cass said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean, no. Not the Dream. It was different. I was in it. Me, Jack. And so was Aly . . .”

  Cass wasn’t really listening. He sat up, glancing out the window.

  I looked at my watch—6:15. Outside I could hear the tromping of footsteps. Scores of Massa were now marching across the quadrangle toward the hospital. Nearly the whole compound had run to the beach the day before when the earthquake happened. Some of them had been killed by the Atlantean beasts. Others had brought Wenders’s chest back last night. These were the rest. The survivors. They must have spent the night at the beach for safety.

  They also must have gotten wind of the new alliance, because the brown-robed monks were talking with the raggedy Karai rebels. It wasn’t exactly a yuk-fest, but no one was trying to kill anyone else. I had to blink my eyes a few times to convince myself this wasn’t a dream.

  “Awwwww . . .” said Marco, shuffling over from his sleeping spot. “Maybe we can have a picnic around a campfire.”

  I jabbed him in the ribs. But my eyes were fixed on a tall woman emerging from the woods.

  Mom.

  I wanted so badly to scream out to her. I guess when you’ve been told at age six that your mom died, and the report was wrong, a part of you remains six forever. She spotted my face in the window immediately. I could detect the slightest nod, and then she looked away.

  “Now that we’re all friends,” Cass whispered, “are you going to tell Aliyah about your mom?”

  “Maybe,” I said. Behind us, the lobby sleepers were awakening and running outside. “But not now. Come on. Let’s join them. Act welcoming. Mingle.”

  “Mingle?” Cass whispered, as if I just asked him to dance naked on a tree stump.

  I barged outside with the crowd. Most of the rebels looked relieved, but people on both sides seemed wary and guarded. A few stragglers by the edge of the jungle didn’t seem to want to move any farther, as if preparing for some kind of ambush. But now Aliyah herself was striding toward them, flanked by her goons and smiling grandly. “My fellow Karai and Massa loyalists, come, come! Nothing to fear and everything to gain. The improbable news you have just heard is true. . . .”

  As she continued, making her grand pronouncements, both camps gathered around her to listen. I hung out at the edge of the crowd, and in minutes, Mom was standing beside me. We both took a couple of steps backward, without looking at each other.

  “Did I just step through the looking glass?” Mom whispered. “Or is all this true?”

  I spoke soft and fast. I told her everything—about Marco’s episode, the reconstruction of the Loculus of Healing, the truce between the Massa and the Karai, the new Loculus, and our discoveries from Wenders’s journal. “We’re going to find the Loculi of Teleportation and Time Travel, starting today.”

  Mom didn’t reply at all.

  “Did you get all that?” I said out of the side of my mouth.

  “Yes. I—I’m just flabbergasted. About the truce. It’s been so many years. . . .” She gave my hand a quick squeeze. It felt good. So good I wanted to jump up and down.

  “Maybe we’ll be able to go home,” I said, “and be a family again.”

  Mom paused a few seconds, then said, “Yes.”

  “You—you don’t sound happy,” I said.

  “I am deliriously happy, Jack,” she replied. “I—I just fear it will all fall apart.”

  “We’re going to find them, Mom—”

  She shushed me. “Promise me, Jack, you will not call me that name, and you will keep our secret.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because they will not be happy to know there has been an impostor in their midst all along,” she replied. “And it isn’t only the Massa we need to fear. Do not forget why I came to the Massa in the first place.”

  I could practically feel my heart thudding against my toes.

  Mom had staged her own death in a crevasse in Antarctica. At the time she’d been working for the Karai, trying to find a cure for G7W. She figured the research would go much faster if the two rivals groups would join forces. But when she contacted the Massa to open talks, the head of the Karai assumed she was betraying secrets. He ordered a contract on her life. The only way she could keep from being killed was to fake her own death. When the coast was clear she went to work for the Massa under a false name, to continue research.

  “This is exactly what you wanted—the uniting of the two groups,” I said. “Maybe the Omphalos will forgive you. . . .”

  “The Massa have starved, oppressed, and killed the rebels,” Mom said. “I have no proof that the Omphalos approves of this union. But whether or not he does, if he finds that I have been living in disguise all these years . . . and if Aliyah discovers I’ve been lying . . .”

  “What will happen to you?” I squeaked.

  Mom sighed. Again she took a long time to answer, and when she did, her voice was barely audible. “I don’t know. I’m not expecting kindness and understanding.”

  “You’ll have to go into hiding again, won’t you? I can’t lose you and see you again—and then lose you forever. I can’t!”
<
br />   “No,” Mom said. “Nor can I.”

  “I promise I will find those Loculi,” I said, my voice quavering in my throat. “I promise we’ll be cured and I will go home again. But I’ll only do it if you promise me you’ll be safe.”

  “If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s take care of myself,” Mom whispered. “On my life, I will be there to celebrate your fourteenth birthday, Jack.”

  I thought I felt a kiss on the back of my neck, but I couldn’t have.

  Mom’s promise had left me strangely calm. And superdetermined. When I turned, she was gone, lost in the crowd.

  I caught a glimpse of Brother Dimitrios’s eyes, pinning me like lasers. Had he heard? He couldn’t have. Frankly, though, at that moment I couldn’t care less. I turned toward Aliyah and pretended to listen to her speech.

  But I was hearing nothing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AMAZON CAFÉ

  I DIDN’T REALIZE how much I missed Slippy the stealth jet until I saw her on the runway.

  For a hunk of metal she was gorgeous, her gunmetal gray sides radiating swirls of heat in the morning sun. Unlike the rest of the compound, she had been completely cleaned, repaired, and shined over the last few weeks. She was shipshape and ready to take us to Turkey.

  Unless Torquin and Brother Dimitrios killed each other first.

  “My dear fellow,” Dimitrios was saying as we walked toward the jet, “I served in the Greek military during my youth as a pilot, and have kept up my aviation license all my life.”

  “Pah,” Torquin said.

  “Oh, dear.” Dimitrios threw up his arms in exasperation. “It is hard to argue with ‘pah,’ isn’t it?”

  “Good,” Torquin said. “Then don’t argue. Torquin fly.”

  Marco, Cass, Eloise, and I lagged a few steps behind the two squabblers. “Maybe we should take a referee with us,” Marco murmured.

  “Or just sneak away to Turkey on the Loculus of Flight,” Cass said.

  “I wish,” I said.

  “I call the copilot’s seat!” Eloise blurted out.

  “Your feet don’t even reach the floor,” Cass said. “Be glad you’re even coming. You’re nine.”

  “And you’re asinine,” Eloise shot back.

  “Yes!” Marco bellowed. “Eloise for the win!”

  I think we were all a little stressed from the lack of sleep. And worried. My head was spinning. We had hammered out our plan after Aliyah’s coin flip, and she had made us repeat it aloud several times on the way to the airfield:

  The expedition team would be Torquin, Brother Dimitrios, Marco, Cass, Eloise, and me.

  We’d leave the Loculi here for safekeeping, except for the Loculus of Language. We’d need that. Torquin and Dimitrios both knew Greek, but neither of them spoke Turkish.

  We would try to find both missing Loculi before returning.

  Torquin and Dimitrios would each have smartphones.

  At least it made sense when we planned it. But now, for the thousandth time, I wondered if we were doing the right thing.

  “Hey, down there!” Nirvana was at the top of a ladder near Slippy’s nose. She began climbing down, a paintbrush and bucket in hand. “I just finished my masterpiece—what do you think?”

  Still drying on the side of the jet was a perfect image of Fiddle’s face, smiling down at us.

  I had to swallow back a lump in my throat. She had really captured him in his ponytailed glory, the way he was before the jungle sickness had made him so thin. “Pretty good likeness, huh?” she said. “Slippy was his baby. He was so proud of her, the old nerd. And he’d be very proud of you, too.”

  I smiled.

  Fiddle was watching over us, Mom was thinking about my next birthday, and Nirvana was standing in front of me with her arms wide open.

  Marco, Cass, Eloise, Nirvana, and I all shared a group hug. “Ready?” I said to my friends.

  “No,” Cass said. “But that never stopped us before.”

  “Cowabunga, we are back in business!” Marco shouted, taking the ladder two rungs at a time.

  I raced up after him. We took the two seats directly behind the pilot and copilot. Cass and Eloise climbed into the seats behind us. “No fair . . .” Eloise grumbled.

  “Wait—are you nine, or five?” Cass asked.

  As the two squabbled, Brother Dimitrios planted himself in the cockpit, donned his headset, and started to take taken control of the jet. Torquin was the last to climb in. With a yawn, he sat sideways on Dimitrios’s lap. “Yeeooooww!” Dimitrios screamed, squirming to get free.

  As the monk slid to the copilot seat, Torquin grabbed his headset. “No Loculus of Healing. Be careful.”

  He pulled on the door. It slammed shut so hard I thought the jet would topple over. And in a moment the jet was spinning down the runway. The only sound louder than the engine was Dimitrios howling in pain.

  And Cass and Eloise arguing in the back.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” I said.

  “Okay, so the first Temple of Artemis was destroyed—floosh—by a flood,” Cass said. As Slippy soared over the Mediterranean, he read from a tablet screen built into the seat’s armrest. “And the second one? They spend ten whole years building it—and everyone’s like ‘Wow, this is the etamitlu in emosewa!’”

  “I beg your pardon?” Brother Dimitrios asked.

  “Ultimate in awesome,” Torquin grunted. “Duh.”

  “And then, wham, one day some crazy pyro burns it to the ground,” Cass continued. “But do the Greeks give up? No! They spent twenty years building the third temple, and this one is totally off the charts. Like, gnilggob-dnim!”

  “Will somebody pull his plug?” Brother Dimitrios moaned, rubbing his forehead. “I am a bit of a scholar of antiquities myself, and if it’s information you need, I’d be pleased to give it to you, regarding the site, the architecture, and the history, in coherent English, not from some fly-by-night Interweb site.”

  “Yeah, but Cass isn’t boring,” Marco said.

  “I beg your—” Dimitrios said.

  Torquin yanked the steering wheel of the plane downward, and Brother Dimitrios grabbed for a barf bag. I was tempted myself. Torquin was the worst pilot in the history of aviation, but I have to admit, it did feel good to see Dimitrios so uncomfortable.

  “So, there’s this guy named Antipater,” Cass barreled on, reading from the screen. “He’s like, hey, I’ve seen the Statue of Zeus, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Pyramids, and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, but . . . okay, here it is. . . . ‘But when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, “Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.”’ Wouldn’t it be cool if we found it?” Cass looked up, a huge smile on his face.

  “I’m hungry,” Eloise said.

  “Blurg,” barfed Dimitrios.

  “What does aught mean?” Marco asked.

  The plane dropped so fast I thought I would lose my lunch. “Coming in for a landing!” Torquin grunted.

  I closed my eyes and prayed.

  I think Torquin felt guilty about taking control of the flight from Dimitrios, because he let the monk drive our rented car. Which would have been okay idea if Dimitrios weren’t ghost white and on the verge of falling asleep. The ride from Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport to the temple’s site near a town called Selçuk took a little more than an hour, but it felt like two days.

  Torquin sat in the front passenger seat. “There!” he said, pounding Dimitrios on the shoulder and gesturing to a road off to the right. A sign pointed to the Temple of Artemis site, but Dimitrios steered the car farther up the road, to a boxy-looking building with a sign that said AMAZON CAFÉ.

  “Please,” Dimitrios said. “I must use the restroom.”

  “Pah,” Torquin said.

  Eloise looked longingly out the window. People were eating from heaping plates of fried food in an outdoor seating a
rea, while soft music was being piped in through speakers. “I’m hungry.”

  “Amen, sister,” Marco said.

  The monk pulled into a spot, and the rest of us bolted out of the car and took seats at a free table. I made sure to hook my backpack tightly over the back of a wooden chair. I knew we needed to visit the temple, but my mouth was watering, and first things first.

  As a waiter began pouring water, Eloise asked, “What’s calamari?”

  “Squid,” Torquin replied. “Very good fried appetizer. Waiter! We take eight orders calamari.”

  Cass looked up from his menu. “But there’s only six of us.”

  “Five for me, the rest for you,” Torquin said.

  I felt something brush against my ankle, and I jumped so quickly that I nearly knocked over the water glasses. As I scraped my chair back, the people in the nearby tables all stared.

  A scrawny black cat slunk away along the tiled floor. As it looked back at me, its eyes flashed bright orange and it hissed, baring its teeth.

  “Out of here, devil cat!” the waiter said, giving the feline a swift kick. “I’m sorry. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Did you see that cat’s eyes?” I whispered said to Marco. “They were—”

  “I’ll have a chocolate shake with extra ice cream,” Marco announced to the waiter.

  As we went around the table ordering, I couldn’t help but notice the cat had circled us and was now sitting just outside the café railing, staring at me. Its mouth seemed to be moving, as if it were speaking.

  “Jack?” Marco said. “Earth to Jack?”

  “Uh, juice,” I said. “Orange juice. Marco, does that cat look strange to you?”

  “Looks hungry,” Marco said with a shrug. “If I find a mouse in my food, I’ll share.”

  Brother Dimitrios was coming out of the restroom now, and I realized I had to use it, too. I excused myself and went to the back of the café. I felt light-headed inside the restroom and made sure to wash my face. Something was odd about this café. I couldn’t wait to leave.

  Maybe it was because we were so close to a Wonder. And that always meant some kind of danger.

  As I finished up and pushed the door back open, it thumped against someone. I held tight against the frame and looked out, but there was no one on the other side. And I realized I hadn’t hit someone at all, but something.