by J B Cantwell
It was disgusting.
And, I saw now, we probably wouldn’t have made it across the desert on our own.
I dug through my pack, searching for something to reassure me. There at the bottom was the pile of gold marbles I had created, but I dared not remove them from their pouch. A shiver ran through me as I imagined what would happen if I were to drop any of the precious stones from this height. I shoved them down deeper into the pack. I couldn’t take any chances.
Instead, I took out the Book of Leveling. I had asked Kiron for it the day before so I could look through it for any clues about how to complete our task more quickly. I spread it out across my legs and began to study.
Whatever Jade had known about the planets we were to visit she must have learned from her former education. Here in these pages, little detail about what awaited us at each leg of the journey was written. Occasionally, a notation might be found in the margins. “Snow,” or, “Mountains.” But little information other than basic planet names and the number of stones required to balance was in the book.
It was not the distraction I had been hoping for.
After a while, I stuffed the book back into the pack, secured it to my back and lay down, belly to ground. I watched as the desert rolled by. My bee seemed unaware or uncaring of my movements across its legs, and I slowly began to be more comfortable with this strange mode of transport. Since entering the Fold, I had traveled by ship, panther, sail and link. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I could find comfort within the grasp of one of the more horrible animals I had ever encountered. Now, I found myself dozing, and soon enough I was asleep, rocked into oblivion by the flight.
For two days, I lived as if in a dream. Though Larissa was available to us to pass messages back and forth as she flew freely on her own power, none were relayed. I guessed that the boredom combined with the steady hum of wings had lulled my companions into the same stupor I was experiencing. We didn’t talk much on the ground, either, not that there was much opportunity. Aside from one brief stop on the second day to allow us all time to eat and rest, the bees pushed onward.
In between sleep and consciousness, I realized that the landscape below was beginning to change. Faint strips of green ran down the sides of vast mountain ranges, offering a glimpse of hope on this dying planet. The bees drew closer to the rocky peaks, noticeably slowing as we neared them. And finally, days in the air, they landed, releasing their legs, and us, onto the rocks.
Larissa walked among them, muttering to herself or to them, I couldn’t tell. Cait scampered to her and took her hand, clearly relieved to be free of her cage of legs.
We all groaned, stretching our legs and backs. I dropped my backpack to the ground for the first time in days, and even its featherweight released from my shoulders was a relief.
“This is the place, then?” Kiron asked, approaching the bee Larissa was standing beside.
“Yes,” she said. “The pedestal lies in the valley below. We are to watch for the yellow jackets, the bees’ natural enemies. They are not kind like our friends here.” She patted one of the bees on its nose.
Kiron walked toward the edge of the rocks. I followed behind, and what I saw took my breath away.
It was like looking at a vast, flowering garden. Grass and trees and blooms sprang from the earth below in bright colors and odd shapes. But, just visible against the green, large, flying shapes hovered around the land.
“We’ll need to walk at night,” Larissa said. “We’ll be less likely to draw attention to ourselves. Even now, we should hide. We need to avoid a confrontation with the wasps at all costs.”
“Done,” Kiron said.
Then, he approached the largest bee, the one who had given me my ride. He bowed deeply before him. I followed and did the same. Everyone joined us. Even Donnally. And though no thank you was uttered, the message was received.
The buzzing of wings was deafening as the group powered up and took off.
“Goodbye, friends,” Larissa said, one hand outstretched as the bees departed.
They kept low as they journeyed back toward the desert, not wanting to give away their position to the wasps. I felt oddly sad at watching them go. They had been our allies on this planet, no matter how frightening they appeared from the outside. I wondered how many other allies we might find in our travels, and I gritted my teeth as I realized the truth.
Probably not many.
And then they were gone, vanished from sight as they sped away from the danger we now faced.
Chapter 14
We spent the rest of the day hidden in a cave, just as we had been instructed to do. The occasional peek over the side of the summit told us that the danger of the wasps had not yet passed. Now that we were stationary and on the ground, a feeling of restlessness permeated the group. We didn’t need sleep; we had all slept more than enough over the past two days. We needed to move.
As the sun slowly set on the horizon, and the wasps gradually disappeared from sight, we carefully began the journey down the mountain. Cait and Larissa led the way, Larissa holding tight to her hand as they navigated the rocky ledges. Then, as night fully closed in around us, we made it to the grassy slope that ran in ribbons down the sides of the mountain. Here the ground became smooth, and I got the impression that Cait would love nothing more than to lay down and roll all the way to the bottom.
Our progress was swift. Within an hour, with nothing in our way, we had descended into the valley. It was a giant bowl of green, and the ground in the basin was as smooth as the sides of the mountains.
There was nowhere to hide, though. We had some time. The days, and nights, here were so much longer than we were used to, and we had extra energy after our days of rest with the bees. But eventually, in fifteen hours or so, that time would run out.
I caught up with Cait.
“How far do you think it is?” I asked, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want to risk any chance of waking the threat of the wasps from their evening sleep.
With her hands she indicated a space about an inch across from her two palms. Then she put one finger to her eye, then pointed up ahead.
“You can see it?” I asked.
She nodded.
“So we’re close,” I breathed. “How many hours, do you think?” It was, perhaps, a technical question for such a young girl, but she didn’t hesitate. She flashed her hands.
Sixteen.
Sixteen hours until the sun rose fully over the horizon. Maybe we would get a little extra time, being shaded in the basin of the valley. But the dawn would be long, and the wasps would surely be out once first light began to touch the sky. Would they recognize us as intruders? We would be so small to them, like ants on the ground as they flew above. Would they even notice us?
We could afford to take no chances.
“We need to move faster,” I said. I backtracked and caught up with Kiron, who was walking beside Finian, mumbling something I couldn’t hear. “We don’t have enough time. There’s nowhere to hide out here, and Cait says sixteen hours until we reach the pedestal.”
They both stared, but none of us dared slow our pace.
“We could jump,” Finian said. “It would be uncomfortable, but it would get us there faster.”
Kiron spoke my own thoughts.
“We don’t know if the wasps will notice the noise,” Kiron said. “That’s a chance we can’t take.”
“We won’t make it, then,” Finian argued. “We don’t have enough time. You know we don’t.”
We walked for a time, each of us thinking hard, trying to come up with a solution. Finally, Kiron spoke.
“We’ll use them at the last,” he said, touching his hand to his chest. Underneath the rough fabric shirt I knew a cord of short-distance links hung.
We walked without stopping, not for rest or food. We drank from the last of our filled bottles, hoping there would be another source along the way. I had seen a river from the mountaintop, and if our path brought us past
it, we could stop to refill. Food was passed among the wizards as we walked.
I never tired, even though many hours were passing. I was focused singularly on the goal ahead, my eyes flitting to the horizon every once in a while to make sure the sun wasn’t yet rising.
But my wishing couldn’t hold it off forever, and eventually the sky began to lighten. One by one, we all tensed, moving as fast as our bodies would allow after such a long night of walking. Ahead, the stand of trees I had seen from the peak stood thick and waiting. Though it was far off, I felt sure that if we could just get there before the sun rose in earnest, we would have a fighting chance of staying hidden. I made my way to the head of the group again where Cait led us all onward as if she were the born leader of our band of travelers.
“How much longer?” I asked, my voice low.
She didn’t look up. Her eyes were starting to glaze over with the same far away look she had worn on Earth when we had nearly made it into the depths of the mine where Father waited. She held up one hand in answer.
Two.
Two hours until we would reach our destination. Somewhere in the distance, a faint chopping buzz made it to my ears. Immediately, and without speaking, we all began to move faster.
“How long until we make the trees?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
Her sight might give us inklings of the distance we needed to travel, but to estimate the distance between here and the trees was anyone’s guess.
“An hour,” Kiron said from behind me. “At best an hour.” His voice was harsh, and he had begun to breathe heavily.
I wanted to encourage us all to move faster, but the looks on the faces of the men who followed us were finally starting to show the wear of the journey. Tristan, the largest of our group, looked the most tired. And both Elidor and Donnally were limping slightly, I guessed from blisters in their boots. Though Larissa had alternated all night between walking and hovering with Cait in her arms, she was starting to show wear, too. I reminded myself that she hadn’t only joined us for our flight into the trees, but that she had spent the past two days flying alongside the bees, resting only when they did. Only Finian, whose face was set with the iron resolve of a soldier, and Father, who ambled along with no visible complaint, looked untouched by the hours of travel.
So I didn’t encourage anyone to hustle along. Instead, I simply picked up my pace, hoping that the urgency of our travel would sink in and they would follow.
I needn’t have bothered, however, because the sound of stirring wasps was growing louder and louder with every step we took. That was all the encouragement anyone needed to quicken their pace. Soon, the beasts were visible high up in the sky, already flying in agitated patterns across the blue. I moved to Kiron’s side.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Camouflage?” Finian answered from Kiron’s other side.
“No,” Kiron said. “There’s no time. And a few blades of grass across our backs will not fool them for long.”
We shuffled along now, not quite jogging, but moving faster and faster as the threat loomed closer. With each glance up to the sky a new wave of fear shot through me.
As the tip of the sun crested over the mountains that ringed the basin, the behavior of the wasps changed dramatically. Where before they had flitted around with no discernible pattern, now they joined together in twos, crisscrossing across the sky, searching for any disturbance within their precious valley.
And it wasn’t long before they found the threat they were looking out for.
Larissa stopped dead, staring up, her mouth gaping.
“These are not the same as our friends who brought us to this cursed place,” she said. “Run!”
In an instant, our feet began pounding the grass. The wasps broke their pattern, gathering others until there were eight, ten, twelve of them flying together. Then, like a squadron of fighter jets, they dove for us.
And we ran. We ran like fools.
It was too soon. We couldn’t fail so miserably on just our second planet. Maybe if we had completed five or six of them, another group might stand a fighting chance to finish the job. But the wasps would not allow such a victory, I knew.
I had the best chance of making it to the pedestal, of at least finishing our task on Grallero before death found me. As I pulled away from the wizards, only Cait waited up ahead. I scooped her little body up as I increased my pace.
Behind me, cries of outrage or fear rang through the morning. I risked a glance back just in time to see Donnally, who had fallen behind, taken by one of the wasps. His fighting form sped upward away from the group, his shouts of despair reaching every ear on the ground below.
I ran faster. I could do it. I could make those trees within minutes if I only tried hard enough. I had the speed, my own brand of magic, that nobody else here could match. I had the book. And the gold. And the guide.
My legs felt surprisingly invigorated by my flight. I had expected exhaustion to catch up to me, but instead I ran faster and faster. I shot across the open field like a bullet, leaving them all behind. If they survived, I hoped they could forgive me. I hoped they would understand.
A quarter mile from the trees, Larissa caught up with me. She had left the group, too, to keep her watch over Cait, I guessed.
“Faster, boy!” she bellowed.
And I listened.
And then, all at once, we were there, inside the trees. The growth was dense on all sides. But was it thick enough to keep them out? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t slow.
“Point me as I go, Cait!” I yelled the words. I couldn’t help it.
She held out one hand and pointed me slightly to the right.
The trees blew by us in a blur. Larissa’s flight darted in and out their tall, thin trunks, and I could tell she was having trouble keeping up with us.
It felt like an eternity, but it might have only been minutes before Cait squeezed my shoulders, indicating we were close.
And then I could see it. Up ahead, a clearing in the trees surrounded a depression in the earth. I was there in seconds, just as the first of the wasps began circling over the small break in the trees above. They might not have been able to make it through the thick stand of forest we had hidden within, but here, all they needed to do was point their noses downward and rocket toward us.
I ran for the symbol, which I recognized now as the hallmark of the pedestals, and stood directly over the diamond.
Immediately, the ground beneath me shook and the diamond began to descend into the dirt. I just barely held my footing, and I imagined with a sharp stab of pain that Kiron and the others must be tumbling to the ground out in the valley from the earthquake made by my actions. The wasps would take this as an advantage, their skies free from the disturbance that affected only those of us on the ground.
“Larissa!” I called as I sunk into the chamber. “Find the others! Lead them here!”
In the distance I saw Larissa’s form ten feet off the ground pause, and then shoot after me again. My head was nearly below the surface once she got close enough to exchange plans. Above us, the wasps crossed over the clearing, angrily trying to discover a way down.
“Make the link once you get them into the woods!” I called.
“How will we find each other?” she asked.
I don’t know. It’s too fast. I don’t know.
My head was below the ground now.
“Just get them as close as you can,” I said. “We’ll just have to figure it out then.”
One of the wasps overhead had begun buzzing back and forth across the opening, slowing just enough to begin descending down the column of air between the trees.
“Go!” I shouted.
I just saw her form rise from the ground and shoot away when the first wasp was upon us. It stopped at the opening, trying to smash its way into the hole after us. Cait gripped her arms around my neck hard. I jumped down from the platform, trying to stay as far away from that thing and
its angry stinger as I could.
The work of the balancing was easy, though, now that I had the gold spheres ready to go. I checked my list one last time, making sure that I was right about how many I needed.
Two. Just two.
I approached the pedestal and carefully extended my hand. The bowl that hovered above the pedestal looked the same as the one back on Yunta. The wasp above us was furious now, and I felt sure that if Cait could have found her voice again she would have been screaming. I tried to shake off my own prickling skin, my panic, and focus. I placed the first ball into the bowl.
It brightened immediately, beginning its spin.
Only one left.
Then what?
The beast above was trying to push his way into the chamber, buzzing more loudly now with its frustration. Small chunks of earth fell from around the edges of the opening. If we gave it too much time, it would dig its way in, I was sure of it. I could think of only one way to save us. But it would be temporary, and could cost us our lives in the end. I wished now that I had spread the gold out among the group, or at least given some of it to Kiron to watch over. If we became trapped down here, as I expected we would, the quest would have no chance of completing their mission without me.
But it was too late. I would just have to find a way out.
I dropped the second gold stone into the basin.
As before on Yunta, the room exploded with light. I tried to cover my eyes, but my arm over my face barely blocked out any of it. I heard the rumbling of the platform as it began to ascend back to the surface.
Cait pulled at me, trying to tell me that we needed to leave. But I found her little hands and held them still. Then, kneeling down, I pulled her into a tight hug. I felt her tears hit my cheek as we held onto one another.
“It’s ok,” I said directly into her ear, close enough to her that I knew she could hear me over the angry buzzing and rumbling. “I have a plan. Just wait.”
But I didn’t have a plan. And as the platform finally made it all the way to the surface, I had no choice but to face the truth.
