Sensing that the immediate danger had passed, Amber moved closer to the group. Her glow had become steady once more. Being the first time Jack and Natasha had encountered Amber, they looked at her curiously with their heads cocked to the side.
For the first time since the chaos had begun, Katie turned her attention fully on the still body before her. “Mike?” she said with alarm as she noticed his chest was no longer rising and falling. “Mike?” she questioned again as panic began to set in. She leaned over his unmoving body and placed her ear in front of his mouth, trying to hear any sounds of respiration. She glanced over her shoulder at Edward with an agonized look, tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Edward asked.
“He’s not breathing,” Katie replied, choking back a sob.
“Are you sure? He could be breathing so shallowly that we can’t see it.”
“I didn’t even hear so much as a wheeze when I put my ear to his mouth.” Katie's tears began to flow. Edward knelt down beside her, and pulled her into his arms, and hugged her tightly, trying to give her comfort. If he were truly dead they would have to find somewhere to bury his body. The densely wooded area they were in would not be suitable. There was no way they could dig deep enough to keep his body from the ravages of wild animals here. They would have to take his body with them until they came across a clearer area. “I wish we could have gotten to know him better,” Katie sobbed. “He was a good person and didn’t deserve to die like this.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Edward murmured, as he leaned back out of the hug. “The very least we can do for him now is give him a decent burial.”
Katie looked around at the surrounding forest for a good place with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Where?” she asked.
“We will need to find a clearing in the woods, or wait until we leave the forest, I think,” Edward replied. “There are just too many trees here and I’m sure the ground is riddled with roots.” He stood up and held his hand out to Katie to help her to her feet. “We will have to lay him across the horse in order to take him with us. Get a hold of his feet and help me get him up there.”
Katie bent down and grabbed onto Mike’s feet while Edward hooked his arms underneath Mike’s armpits. Together they lifted him and slowly made their way over to the horse. It was a struggle, but a couple of minutes later Mike’s limp body was dangling across the horse’s rump.
The tears on Katie’s face had started to dry up, but now she found them returning as she bent over to pick up Mike's sword from the ground.
Chapter 10
Through the night, Jack and Natasha stayed alongside the others while they traveled. The group stayed within earshot of the babbling stream that separated the forest from the mountains as Amber led them northward. Just before the moons had disappeared from the sky entirely, the group had come across a suitable clearing in which to bury Mike. Katie looked around until she found what she felt to be the perfect spot, and then fell to her knees, clawing at the ground with her hands. Edward joined her moments later and began to help. It wasn't long before he stopped digging.
"I wish that I knew a spell that could help us with this," Edward said in disgust. "We could be here for days at this rate and my fingers are already starting to get sore."
Jack sauntered over to where the two of them were talking and sat down beside Edward. He rose up one of his front paws and lightly tapped Edward on the back to get his attention.
When Edward turned his head he was startled for a moment. He was not expecting to see a wolf that close, and for a second he nearly fled in fear. Jack looked at his expression with his head cocked to the left in curiosity. When Edward looked around, and noticed the smaller wolf sitting next to Mike's body, he began to calm down again. The realization had finally struck home that it was Jack sitting next to him. Just then, he stood up and moved between Edward and Katie, to the small hole they had dug, slowly stepping inside. He began to softly move one of his front paws in the packed earth so Edward and Katie would see what he was intending to do. The two of them backed away from the hole; neither of them had the desire to be pelted by flying dirt. As soon as they were both clear of it, Jack began using both of his front paws to dig. For the next fifteen minutes, he kept a furious pace going as the dirt continued to exit the hole in a steady stream.
As Jack began to disappear from sight, the digging seemed to stop, followed by Jack's emergence from the hole. He sat down at the edge of the hole with his tongue hanging from his mouth, panting lightly. Edward got to his feet, went to the hole, and looked inside. It definitely looked deep enough now. “Let’s get this over with,” he told Katie as he walked toward the spot where Mike lay.
Once Katie was beside the body, she leaned down to grab his feet, and Edward bent to hook his hands under Mike’s arms. Together they lifted and began shuffling their way over to the hole. When they got there, they set him gently back onto the ground and rolled his body into the hole. The crunch of bones breaking could be heard in the still night air as the body landed heavily at the bottom. Katie turned away for a moment as she struggled with her gag reflex, hoping that she would not be sick. A lone tear leaked from the corner of her right eye and blazed a path of clean skin down her dirty cheek.
Edward stood at the edge of the hole with his head bowed and a lump in his throat as he closed his eyes to silently pay respects to his fallen friend. Natasha joined Jack beside the open grave and sat down next to him. For a moment they hung their heads as if mimicking Edward. They then raised their heads toward the moonless night sky and let loose a mournful sounding chorus of howls. In a final display of respect, Katie retrieved the sword that Mike had carried with him during his time in Desolace and gently laid it into the grave beside him.
When everyone was through paying homage to their fallen comrade, they began to silently push dirt back into the grave. Eventually light began to creep into the sky as the morning sun started to reflect off of the distant clouds and Amber began to fade once more. The remainder of the group, exhausted from the night's work, began to arrange their belongings so they could get some much-needed rest. Too tired to gather materials and make a fire, they laid down in a neat little row; side by side so they could use the body heat from those next to them to stay warm. This time they chose to forego setting a watch. Within minutes of lying down, the sound of the babbling stream nearby had put all four of them to sleep.
Chapter 11
The sun had peaked in the sky when an unfamiliar voice awoke Edward. It had a strange, gurgling quality to it as if someone were talking with a mouthful of water. “Wake up! Wake up!” the voice said in a somewhat fearful tone.
Edward turned and scanned the area behind him. He could swear the voice came from near the stream that babbled a mere fifty feet from where they had been sleeping, but as he carefully moved his eyes over the area, he could not locate the owner of the voice. Just as he was beginning to think that his mind was playing tricks on him the voice broke the midday silence again. “Evil is coming! Leave now!” the voice insisted.
Edward reached over and began to shake Katie. “Wake up, Katie,” he whispered. She opened her eyes slowly and saw Edward leaning close to her with a blurry finger upraised in front of his lips indicating that she should be quiet.
“What’s going on?” she whispered to Edward, noticing the troubled look on his face.
“I heard voices coming from somewhere near the stream, but I don’t see anyone,” he replied in a low voice.
They sat in silence, focusing their attention in the direction of the stream. A couple of minutes went by without a sound other than the babble of the slowly flowing water. Just as they were about to give up the voice broke the silence again. “You must hurry! Hide!” the voice stated in an urgent tone.
Katie stood up with a determined look on her face. She was frustrated and wanted to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. As she stood, Edward noticed for the first time that Jack an
d Natasha were no longer with them. It seemed that they had wandered off again. He sighed in aggravation. Katie glanced down to see what was wrong and Edward pointed to the spot on the other side of Katie where Jack and Natasha had been laying. The grass was still smashed flat to the earth in the shape of their bodies, so they couldn’t have left that long ago.
Katie shrugged her shoulders at him and then turned her attention back toward the stream. She slowly began walking toward it. Edward rose to his feet and followed close behind her, looking to either side for the source of the voice they had heard. When she got within a few feet of the stream, Katie suddenly stopped in her tracks. Edward bumped into her, not realizing that she had quit moving forward.
“Why did you stop?” he asked in a hushed tone.
Katie pointed to the stream. At first Edward saw nothing, but then the creature moved slightly and he stared at it in fascination. Before them was a strange-looking fish, which had two heads and was peering at them from just above the surface of the water. The heads shimmered slightly in the early morning light. One of the heads was distinctly darker than the other, but both were shades of green, which accounted for the difficulty seeing them. Katie and Edward moved toward the stream until they were standing on the rocky bank.
“Hurry!” the lighter head told them, followed immediately by the darker one saying, “You must hide! Now!”
“Who are you?” Katie asked, unable to believe she was talking to a fish ... and one with two heads, no less. “Why must we hide?”
“There is no time for explanations,” the darker head told her. “Danger is rapidly approaching!” the lighter one said urgently.
Edward looked around for a place they could hide. The only place he could see that seemed suitable was on the opposite side of the stream. “It looks as if the best place to hide would be behind that large rock over there,” he announced, as he pointed to the other side of the stream.
She glanced in the direction he was pointing briefly. “Won’t splashing through the water attract attention from whatever it is we are supposed to be hiding from?” Katie's eyes momentarily met his.
“There is a place over there,” he pointed at a spot roughly fifty feet downstream, “where the stream looks narrower and it appears there are stones we could step on to cross.”
“What are we waiting for then?” Katie asked with an anxious look. They quickly made their way downstream. When they got to the place they would cross, Edward noticed that the stones in the water looked to have been placed there by someone. The way the stones were arranged made him think that perhaps they were put there as a sort of dam to reroute the water of the stream.
While Edward had been lost in thought, trying to figure out the reason why the stones were placed as they were, Katie had quickly made her way to the other side and was looking at Edward impatiently. “Are you coming or what?” she snapped, drawing his attention back to what they needed to do. Moments later, he joined her on the opposite bank and they hurried to the large rock that he had pointed out. They had just gotten themselves out of sight when they began to hear a heavy object pounding on the ground. Katie’s imagination ran wild. To her it sounded like the footsteps of a giant, much like one from an old monster movie, where everything sounded exaggerated. That is, until she noticed the cadence of the steps.
Curiously, she peeked around the edge of the rock to get a better look. What she saw both excited and terrified her. The heavy stomping ceased. Katie couldn’t believe her eyes. Standing on the opposite side of the stream, near the clearing they had slept in the night before, was what appeared to be a large, metallic horse. This one had six legs, which made her think of some strange crossbreeding of a horse with an insect, and two heads. What terrified her more than anything was not the appearance of the strange mechanical creature, but the person sitting on the back of the horse. A person that was very familiar to her. There, on top of the horse-insect creature, was her old bus driver Mr. M, whom she had recently discovered was also a serial killer. Even dressed in the clothes of this world she had no trouble recognizing him. Katie wondered why he was here, not just in this world, but also why he had stopped in the clearing where they had slept last night.
Suddenly he turned and looked in her direction. She quickly ducked her head back behind the rock, hoping he hadn’t seen her. Anxiously she waited in silence beside Edward. The minutes felt like hours while they hid. She desperately hoped that Mr. M. wasn’t planning on making camp there. She was going to need to stretch her muscles soon, and with Edward being significantly taller than her, she imagined he would need to do the same. Her back was already beginning to cramp up and hurt from being scrunched low behind this rock. Neither one of them dared to move, as the smaller rocks beneath their feet might shift and draw attention to them.
After what seemed like hours, the heavy clomping footsteps resumed. Katie poked her head out just enough to see. Thankfully, the strange-looking horse and its murderous rider were leaving the clearing and continuing on toward the south. Edward and Katie waited behind the rock until the sound of the stomping metal hooves had faded into the distance. Even though they could no longer hear the steady clomp of its heavy feet, they still hesitated to move from their hiding place. Since the threat was no longer visible to them, they were comfortable enough in knowing if they were to move slightly that their movements would not be heard. Instead of crouching behind the rock, they shifted their positions and sat down; easing their cramped muscles.
About fifteen minutes had passed since the immediate danger had left the vicinity. Katie and Edward, much more relaxed, had nearly fallen asleep in the warm midday sun when suddenly the two-headed fish returned and began speaking to them again. “Whew,” the dark head said, breaking the silence. “That was close!” the lighter head piped in.
Katie peered around the rock into the water. The two heads stared back at her. Was she crazy or were they grinning at her? “How did you know that they were coming? I didn’t hear anything until they were very close,” Katie said.
“The gods have granted us special gifts,” the dark head replied. “We have the ability to see things that will happen in the near future,” the light head said. “And we can also speak in every language known to man, beast, or machine,” the dark head added.
“I suppose my next question would be, why did you warn us?” Katie asked.
“Because we are guardians of this world and are here to protect and preserve life,” the light head replied. “We could sense that you have similar ideals and goals,” the dark one added.
“I don’t know about all that,” Katie said. “I originally came here to find my friend. It wasn’t until after I got here that Edward told me he felt the gods had sent me here to help him.”
“You never did tell us who you are,” Edward said.
“My humblest apologies, friend. There was not time for that before,” the light head said. “My name is Kronos.”
“And my name is Kieron,” the darker one said.
“We are well met.” Edward gave a gracious bow. “I am Edward the White and this is my friend, Katie Johnson from Earth. We have two other traveling companions that seem to have run off, perhaps back to their hometown of Haven. They are werewolves but seem to be well-intentioned folk.”
“Earth?” Kieron inquired. “I’ve never heard of that town.”
“It is not a town of this world,” Edward explained, “but rather a completely separate world from our own.”
“You come here from beyond the clouds then?” Kronos asked Katie.
“Not exactly. I got here by stepping through some sort of portal,” she told them.
“Interesting!” Kieron exclaimed. “I had no idea that the gods had opened any such things,” Kronos added with a strange wrinkle in his face that looked somewhat like a frown.
“The gods are not totally responsible for the portals,” Edward explained. “Perhaps the ones that only appear in certain locations are their doing, but I know that some are only t
emporary and brought into substance by magical means. I should know. I opened the portal that Katie stepped into to get to our world.”
“Fascinating! You can wield magic?” Kieron asked. “I didn’t know there was anyone left, other than the gods, that could do such a thing.”
“My father was my teacher in the art,” Edward explained, “so he can obviously use magic as well. I’ve heard rumors that there are others scattered throughout the world that have the ability to use it as well, but until the day comes that I actually meet another, I will consider them to be only rumors.”
“Perhaps you could demonstrate your abilities and help us at the same time?” Kronos inquired.
“If I can do something to help you it would be my pleasure to do so,” Edward said.
“The rocks that you used to cross the stream are not naturally occurring. They were placed there by the forces that work against us, to prevent us from going any further south,” Kieron explained. “Could you remove them for us so that we are not hindered in our duties?” Kronos pleaded.
“I will certainly give it a try. I have never used my magic to move an object before, so it might take me a little bit to figure out how to do it.” Edward sat down on the bank and opened his seemingly bottomless pouch, rummaging through its contents until he found what he was looking for. He removed a small, thick book from the pouch and began to flip through it.
Chapter 12
Even though he was sure that someone had been near the clearing he had stopped at a short while ago, George had decided to continue on his way. He felt there was no threat to him from whatever, or whoever, had been there. George was more interested in the tracks that he found in the clearing that departed to the south. They were strange tracks he had never seen before, as they appeared to be both human and animal in origin.
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