by Annie Dalton
When I saw the flotation tanks, I understood why they were kept sealed off from the rest of Angel HQ. Those things were SCARY.
“Tank” generally makes you think of water, but these containers held a particularly high-octane cosmic energy. The minute I walked in, I felt my hair fizzing with electricity. Miniature bolts of lightning were literally crackling around Reuben’s dreads.
“OK, Beeby?” he inquired calmly.
“I’m fine,” I squeaked.
The energy in the tanks didn’t stay still for a second. It bubbled and swirled, constantly changing colour.
“You did say you wanted to go out with a bang,” Reubs commented.
I realised that was the first he’d heard of my change of plan.
“I was going to tell you, honestly—”
“Hey, I didn’t take it personally. My name’s not Brice! And it’s not Orlando, either,” he added in a meaningful tone.He was talking about the angel boy who’d broken my heart.
“You’re such a brilliant friend,” I told him emotionally. “You know what’s so great? There are never any silly complications. You’re like, the ultimate star brother!”
For a second there was this funny little vibe. Then Reuben’s smile was back in place. “Just my luck to be everyone’s favourite big brother!” he grinned.
Sam coughed. He was waiting to run through the procedure for this type of trans-dimensional travel. After that we’d be doing it for real.
Did I explain we had to totally immerse ourselves in this energy? It feels almost exactly like you’re drowning in light. Though when you’re drowning, you probably don’t feel your molecules melting back into their pure energy form?
I reminded myself sternly that this was an ancient angelic procedure. The concept of Extreme Angelic Melting was not exactly appealing, but if they’d been using it for aeons, it had to be safe, right?
Anyway, Reuben was in the tank next to mine, and there was absolutely no reason why I should have another cosmic freak-out. To give myself extra courage, I started to sing our anthem. “We’re not alone,” I sang squeakily. “We’re not alone.” Sadly, I’m such a wuss that I’m capable of singing uplifting anthems AND thinking scary thoughts simultaneously!
The lights above the tanks dimmed.
Not the best moment to remember Sam’s throwaway comment that this ancient angelic technique worked “nine times out of ten”.
OMIGOSH! I panicked. Suppose this was the tenth one today?
But it was too late to back out now. Numbers started flashing in the corner of the tank, some scary unstoppable countdown. TEN, NINE, EIGHT…
And then I saw her. I saw Tsubomi floating in front of me, like a ghost, that’s if ghosts wore Hello Kitty T-shirts, baseball caps and jeans.
“Tsu-Tsubomi?” I whispered. My voice sent gold and silver shock waves rippling through the tank.
Her lips parted, and I suddenly knew she was calling my name.
She wants us to come and find her, I thought.
…SEVEN, SIX…
Soul connections are a truly wonderful thing. Now Tsubomi had made contact I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t even mind that my molecules were dissolving into pure cosmic energy. I was free! Free to fly in any direction. Take me to her, wherever she is, I willed, take me to Tsubomi Hoshi now.
…FIVE, FOUR, THREE…
Something was happening, a fabulously thrilling sensation like a kite slipping free of its string. …TWO, ONE, ZERO!
The simmering shimmering colours vanished. Like a bird released from a cage, my soul went soaring off to a totally unknown dimension.
Chapter Four
Light flickered high above me. I could hear crickets chirping and the buzz of summer bees. The air was so hot and humid it was literally steaming. I was lying on warm damp earth, looking up into the branches of a tree. Sparkling drops slid off the leaves, and splashed on to my skin. We’d obviously just missed a heavy downpour.
“Phew! We actually made it to… wherever this is!”
I felt Reuben’s voice reverberating through my skull bones. We were lying head to head like little kids.
Bones? I thought in surprise. Heads? Didn’t we just dissolve?
We sat up and stared at each other in dismay.
“Oh, well,” Reubs sighed. “Mustn’t be picky.”
“It’s all right for you” I moaned. “You don’t care what you look like!”
“What are you complaining about, girl? That straw hat is totally you!” He patted my bare foot. “Pity they couldn’t stretch the budget to include footwear!”
Neither of us had the slightest idea why we were dressed like poor Japanese peasants, but then absolutely nothing was what we expected.
The Limbo dimensions we’d experienced in simulations were creepy colourless places, almost like you were trapped inside CCTV. This world was GORGEOUS! It was literally like we’d fallen into an old Japanese painting, one of those old scrolls, with a v. deep poem written in exquisite Japanese calligraphy. It would have to be a summer poem, I decided dreamily. It would describe the way the sunlight made patterns on the forest floor, and the blissful warmth on our skin. Oh, and the mind-melting scent of flowers after the rain…
I should just mention that, despite its beauty, this world had the most peculiar vibe. Reubs and I both agreed that it was unlike anything we’d ever come across before. It wasn’t necessarily an ominous-type vibe, but it kind of made you wonder if there might be more to this place than met the eye.
At the exact same moment, we noticed the bag hanging in a tree.
“Oh, that’s for us,” I said confidently.
Reuben looked bewildered. “How can you possibly know that?”
I shook my head. “I just know.”
“Wowie!” he said sarcastically, as he unhooked the crude leather satchel. “The perfect accessory for our scuzzy outfits!”
“I thought we weren’t going to be picky!” I teased.
The bag turned out to contain another bag. It was actually more like a miniature sack, filled to the brim with what looked like peach stones.
“O-kay,” said Reuben. “I’m sure it’s very nice of the local spirits to give us their old peach stones.”
“Actual peaches would have been nicer,” I agreed, peering over his shoulder. “But then there’d be that age-old Limbo dilemma of; Ooh, should we risk eating them or not! What’s that other thing - the rolled up paper?”
“You girls are so impatient!” Reuben made a big deal of extracting the scroll from the bag, slowly untying the grubby piece of cord and unrolling the parchment inch by inch, until I threatened to thump him.
“Sweetpea if you don’t let me see it right NOW, you’re going to be so sorry,” I told him, genuinely peeved, as he held it tantalisingly out of reach. Then I saw his stunned expression. “What?”
“D minus for refreshments, spirits,” he murmured. “But a definite A plus for map making skills!”
I’ve had some bizarre experiences since I’ve been in the angel biz, but this was the first time either of us had come across actual magic. And the spirit map was magic, without a shadow of a doubt. The vibrant coloured markings were busily rearranging themselves even as we watched.
First they showed a close-up of our immediate surroundings then we got the aerial view of how it all fitted together.
“Oh, man,” said Reuben in a weird voice.
When I saw the tiny blue butterfly pulsing in the corner of the map, my heart actually stumbled over a beat. The mysterious map maker was showing us where to find Tsubomi!
Jessica had mentioned the possibility of running into helpful spirits in Limbo, but I didn’t remember her mentioning anyone drawing maps.
All my misgivings faded away. This was going to be a doddle! We’d survived Extreme Angelic Melting. We’d located exactly the right dimension by using our own natural magnetism. Now we had a helpful flashing butterfly to show us which way to go. Missions don’t get any more jammy than this, I thought happ
ily.
Following the path indicated on the map, we made our way out of the trees into a sparkling rain-washed world.
Reuben was enchanted. “This is like a dream.”
“So pure angels do dream, then?” This was something I was always meaning to ask.
“It’s a phrase, Beeby!”
“Sorry! I forgot you guys don’t actually need to sleep!”
Reuben was looking down at the ground with a perplexed expression. “This should be killing our feet,” he said. “There are stones and all sorts in this mud.”
“Maybe Limbo feet are tougher?” I suggested.
I felt heaps tougher in general. It was getting really hot and the air was loads more humid than I’m used to, yet I was twinkling over the ground like Tinkerbell.
In flooded fields beside the road girls were planting seedlings. Wading knee-deep in the muddy water, they sang as they worked, a truly heartrending melody. Reuben reckoned they were singing in medieval Japanese. This could be true, but I couldn’t seem to get past their strong country accents.
“They’re asking the god of rice to come down and bless their seedlings, so they’ll get a good harvest,” he explained.
“Think we can spare minutes to send them vibes?” I asked.
Discreetly as possible, we beamed uplifting vibes at the waterlogged fields. I didn’t think the girls had noticed us, but as we walked away, a few waved rather wearily, and one called out what sounded like, “Hope you find her!”
“Was there something weird about that?” asked Reuben, after we’d gone past.
“Yeah, like, how did she know?”
He shook his head. “Not that. Didn’t you get the feeling if you were to come by tomorrow, those girls would be doing exactly the same thing?”
“I see what you mean,” I said slowly, “like they were just there for local colour, or whatever. Do you think they stopped singing once we were out of sight?
“Or stopped existing,” he suggested.
I shivered. “That’s not funny.”
Jessica had constantly warned us: “Limbo is a world of traps and tricks. Never trust anything or anyone.”
“When I think about it,” I admitted, “they didn’t seem exactly real. Not real real.”
“And the birds are wrong,” he said suddenly. “They sound right, but they fly all wrong.”
I burst out laughing. “What’s that supposed to mean? Like, they’re going backwards!”
“Don’t snigger, Beeby,” he said sternly. “Just look and learn.”
Spinning me around, my buddy pointed me at a patch of sky. After a few seconds a line of wild geese, or it could have been swans, flew out of some trees and disappeared towards a line of hills, making their sad honking cry.
I rolled my eyes. “And this is interesting because?”
“Keep watching and you’ll find out.”
Reuben started counting under his breath. He got as far as twenty.
“Bingo!” he said triumphantly.
An identical line of long-necked birds flew out of the same cluster of trees and disappeared towards the same line of hills, with the same eerie cries.
“And they always fly right to left, never left to right,” he said.
“They’re probably migrating,” I suggested vaguely.
“In sevens? I don’t think so! There are always exactly seven birds. Not five or six or eight. Seven, exactly. Every time.”
I didn’t share Reuben’s fascination with local bird behaviour, but he’s my mate, after all, so we hung around for a bit to test his theory. And actually it was quite spooky. Every twenty seconds on the dot, exactly seven birds flew out of the trees and vanished at exactly the same point between the hills.
“They’re like robot geese,” Reuben said in a baffled voice. “Same number of wing beats, same number of cries. I don’t get it.”
“Me neither,” I sighed. “But I think we’d better get going.”
A wicker carriage rattled past, drawn by two sweating horses. A lady was peeping shyly out of the window, half hiding her face with her fan.
At first, Reubs and I were genuinely charmed by the sights we saw on the road. Then we discovered that all these charming scenes and characters invariably popped up again further down the road, which rather took the shine off. After a few hours, we were like, oh right, another shrine, and yet more atmospheric temple bells. Oh, and another coy lady riding by in a quaint wicker carriage, and yet another travelling musician carrying some sort of Japanese stringed instrument on his back. Super.
We continually consulted the map as we walked to see if we were any closer to Tsubomi. But the blue butterfly seemed as far away as ever.
Reuben had been unusually quiet. I assumed he was still puzzling over the Riddle of the Birds, when he suddenly blurted out, “So is this like some old-time version of Japan or what?”
“It’s definitely old-time Japanese-ish,” I agreed.
We trudged along in silence for a few minutes.
“If you had to sum up the feeling in this world, in one word,” my buddy asked in an earnest voice. “What would it be?”
“Reuben, it’s a world. Worlds are full of zillions of different feelings.”
He shook his head. “Think about the people we saw earlier. Singing peasant girls, carriage ladies, harp players. Seriously, what vibe did you
get?”
“You mean, like ‘beautiful but basically weird’?”
“Beautiful and weird, for sure. But aren’t you getting any flashes of something underneath beautiful and weird?”
I frowned. “I’m not sure. Probably I’m not as sensitive as you, Sweetpea.”
We were passing a shrine to some local god. It was the spitting image of all the other shrines we’d passed, but for the first time I found myself taking a closer look. People had left offerings to the god; flowers and bowls of rice. A few had left toys and baby clothes. Local people had written prayers on scraps of paper, and tied them to tree branches. They fluttered in the breeze like tiny flags. I don’t know what it was, but something about that little prayer tree suddenly made me want to cry.
I thought about the beautiful carriage ladies, with their white, mask-like make-up. I remembered how each one had turned at the last minute, to gaze at us pleadingly over her fan.
And that last harp player, sitting down in the middle of nowhere, plucking those haunting, desolate chords…
“Sad,” I realised. “This place feels unbearably sad.”
Reuben nodded. “Have you ever been anywhere before where there’s just one overwhelming vibe?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
“Me neither.”
After that last musician, we didn’t see a soul for over an hour. So it was quite an event when we passed the hermit sitting by his fire.
The old man had been living out in the wilds so long, he’d become a bit wild and woolly himself. His robes were dirty and torn, and his hair had grown so long it was practically down to his waist. He patiently fed pieces of broken bamboo into the flames, to keep the fire going under an old cooking pot. He peered out through his straggly hair, calling a friendly greeting.
Remembering Jessica’s warnings, we weren’t sure if we should talk to him.
“It’d be good if he could tell us where we are,” I whispered.
The spirit map was fabulous on rivers and mountains and aerial views but it didn’t seem nearly so fussed about fiddly details like names!
“He’s probably OK,” Reuben decided.
So we said hi, and then we all did a lot of polite Japanese bowing.
The hermit invited us to drink tea with him but Jessica had warned us of the dangers of accepting food or drink.
“Oh, that’s OK,” I said awkwardly. “We wouldn’t want to put you to so much trouble.”
“I can see you’re not from this world!” The hermit’s smile seemed surprisingly young in such a wrinkled old face.
I’d been hoping we just blended i
n, but obviously our rustic peasant outfits hadn’t fooled him one bit. He broke off a new piece of bamboo from a plant growing beside the road, bent over his pot and began whisking its boiling contents into a bright green froth.
“I know who you seek,” he said calmly. “And I know the trials that lie in wait, if you refuse to turn back.”
I gulped. Did EVERYONE in this world know what we were up to? Did we have, like, a big sign: “Soul-retrieval in Progress”?
“Thanks,” Reuben said gruffly. “But turning back is not exactly an option.”
The hermit carefully poured the scalding green liquid into an earthenware cup. It looked suspiciously herbal to me. I wondered if this old man was some kind of Limbo wizard. Maybe we’d interrupted him just before he flung in the eyes of newts and dead man’s toenails?
He gave me an amused look. “This is a strange world to you, child; a strange, baffling, perilous world.”
I felt myself going red. The old hermit had virtually read my thoughts!
“You are strangers here,” he said gravely. “Without a guide, it is unlikely you will reach your destination, and no local will venture where you need to go. I advise you to leave while you still can!”
“We’ve got a job to do,” said Reuben stubbornly. “Perils or no perils, guide or no guide, we’re not leaving till it’s done.”
“You’re already too late!” the hermit said to my dismay. “The dark lord already has your friend in his power.”
“There’s a dark lord! Are you sure?” I gasped. “How-what did he do?”
“Do such trivial details matter, child? He used his power! Didn’t your teacher tell you the Dark Forces are more powerful in dimensions such as these?”
“Yes, she did, actually,” I said defensively.
“And did she tell you they have almost driven out the ancient gods who once dwelled here?”
“No,” I admitted. “But it was just a weekend course. Look, I’m really sorry about the nice gods baling out of your world, but we just have to save Tsubomi.” I was close to tears. “We have to.”
The hermit frowned. “Why do you care about her so much? She’s no kin to you.”
