Doc Harrison and the Prophecy of Halsparr

by Peter Telep

  I shut my eyes and focus, pushing against the connection, searching for a weakness in the endless black walls beginning to collapse on me. I’m totally cut off, no trrunes, meaning I can’t see where the Armadis might jump.

  I reach out again for the others…

  Nothing.

  “Aw, don’t waste your time,” Solomon adds.

  I turn back toward Meeka, who’s already disappearing into my chest and saying, “You made a terrible mistake.”

  “I did?”

  Oh my God. What have I done? Was this my decision?

  No. It felt like Julie took me, and I couldn’t stop her.

  Wait. Oh, no. The kiss… I did surrender. It was me!

  I let my guard down. I failed everyone.

  “That’s right, Doc,” Solomon says, reading my thoughts before I can shut him out. “You gave up. And now we have you. And we’ll kill everyone before they can do stop us.”

  “Don’t you feel anything at all… for anyone?”

  “What are you, my shrink? Of course I have feel things. I feel like there’s nothing left to talk about. I feel like when the attack is over, we’ll mop up the mess, you’ll become a lord, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Cue music. Roll credits.”

  I shiver and face the mountains behind us, where the domes of the observatory rise against the blue sky. As crazy as it might sound, I wish my father were here, just so I could argue with him over what to do.

  I turn my thoughts inward, toward my wreath.

  Solomon and his masters are blocking the connection to my friends in the bloom, but not the one I have with Grace or the scholar or the immortals I’m carrying inside my wreath.

  Corrales, Keane’s father, is still with me, since I haven’t had time to give him back to Keane. So are Hollis, Lori, Alina, and Brandalynn.

  Grace asks me to project them on the beach, along with Meeka and my father. I tell her that’s impossible. She says with the help of the scholar, I’ll able to do that. I close my eyes and project them. They form a half-circle behind me.

  Solomon smirks. “The dead can’t help you, either. Only you can save yourself… by joining us.”

  “He’s wrong,” Grace says in my thoughts. “We can use them to break the connection.”

  “How?” I ask her.

  “They have power too. It’s here… inside your wreath. We’ll set it free.”

  “Okay, tell me what to do,” I say.

  “On three, we turn back into a mask and attack…”

  “Wait. Just Solomon, right?”

  “And Julie.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Doc, you can do this.”

  “No, not this...”

  “Hey, Doc, you with us?” Solomon asks. “Look, I know this is hard to accept, but like I said it could’ve been way easier if you’d taken the deal in the first place. Maybe you could have saved your friends.” He smiles sarcastically, and then blows smoke rings in our direction.

  Julie looks at me. Pleading.

  My hands close into fists. “Mom, I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  As I transform back into a mask, the immortals whisper in my mind…

  Hollis tells me I know who I am and what I need to do.

  Corrales says he’s proud that his son has friends with as much courage as me.

  Alina says I’ve been like a son to her.

  My grandmother hopes I’ll learn forgiveness.

  My father says I’ll become a greater man than he ever was… And then, a final voice. One that destroys me:

  “Doc, you never heard my depardis, so please listen: My name is Meeka Larkspur Arabelle, daughter of King Verso and Queen Rosaline of the Royal House of Arabelle, and my fists are now yours. Everything I was is now yours.”

  My eyes widen as the bolts explode from them and slice across the beach.

  They strike Julie and Solomon and hurl them across the sea until they vanish—

  The black walls shatter, the beach blurs into dust, and I’m back with the bloom and linked to the others as we take heavy fire from the rings of masks inside the cathedral.

  “Everyone! I’m here!”

  “Just in time,” Keane answers. “Let’s do this!”

  The scholars instruct us to take a deep breath and focus on the rings.

  Cypress’s eyelo, which is now ours, spins rapidly as gold-colored bolts edged in silver extend from our eyes and break off into millions of smaller ones that tear into the masks.

  At the same time, hexagons race away from the eyelo to form gigantic umbrellas that shield us from the fire.

  All those enemy masks begin to pulsate with light, and in the next few seconds, their faces start chipping and peeling away.

  “Now everything we have!” the scholars cry in our minds.

  A more furious cloud of gold-and-silver energy explodes across the masks—

  And at once the rings burst into fiery pieces, sending those damaged masks shooting away like rockets and leaving the wreath of lords and ladies fully exposed.

  The wreath tilts toward us, drawing a perfect circle before our eyes. At its center, floating side by side, are Solomon and Julie in full armor…

  “Doc, whatever they say, don’t listen!” Keane warns me.

  “Don’t worry. I’m ready to finish this.”

  As I’ve learned from my grandmother and Dr. Arabelle, we can’t kill the masks or the lords and ladies because energy never really dies.

  However, with the power of our bloom, we can wipe the Armadis’s collective memory and scatter all those essences across the galaxy so they’ll never form a wreath like this ever again.

  Julie floats forward and returns to normal.

  I mean really normal. She’s dressed in jeans and a blouse, like she’s going to school. She looks real. Flesh and blood.

  She hovers in front of the enormous glowing wreath, clutching her chest and crying. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want to do this.

  But they’re forcing her.

  And I can feel her pain. She made a terrible mistake, and she can’t help herself now.

  Her fight is over. And that isn’t her fault.

  But now, if we go through with this, she’ll never remember me. I’ll never see her again.

  So it’s really no different from killing her.

  There has to be another way. She screwed up. Doesn’t she deserve a second chance?

  “Doc, what’re we waiting for?” Keane cries.

  In my mind’s eye, I see plates of chicken and red potatoes and baby carrots that look picture-perfect.

  I see the charm bracelet I gave Julie with the little hearts and stars.

  I see us back home and going to school. I ask her to prom. It’s a perfect night, and it ends with that same kiss we just had on the beach.

  The truth is, before all of this happened, all I ever wanted was her, and I’ll never forget that.

  “Doke, sometimes we have to make terrible decisions. I know what you feel. But we have to do this.”

  “She killed Meeka,” Steffanie adds. “Don’t even look at her! Don’t look!”

  “Doc, please, you’re not punishing her,” Hedera says. “You’re setting her free.”

  “Listen to me, son,” Tommy says. “Julie has the courage to finish this. The real question is… do you?”

  I wish I could answer that question.

  I wish I could take my eyes off of Julie.

  But I can’t.

  Oh my God. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my pathetic little life.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  As the lightning leaves our bloom and slashes across Julie, Solomon, and the rest of the Armadis—

  I take myself back to my bedroom on Tenerife. Julie and I are little kids again. We lie on the floor and stare up through the open window, where the stars always shone so brightly and where we drew circles around our hearts and crossed them. We didn’t know it then, but drawing that ci
rcle was like making a promise to yourself about so many things. All we knew was it felt right.

  “I had one of those dreams,” she says.

  “What happened this time?”

  “You were there. And you were sad.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “Not sure.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I think you were going away or something.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. And then I went back home to my mansion with the cats.”

  “You like it there?”

  “It’s lonely.”

  I frown. “But you got all the cats.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Well, I could visit you.”

  “I would charge you admission.”

  “For what?”

  “To see all my cats.”

  I snort. “Not worth it.”

  “I feel like…”

  I lean over to face her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I feel like some day we won’t be friends anymore.”

  “Because I’m a jerk?”

  She shakes hers head. “Because I am.”

  I smile. “I’ll always be your friend.”

  “Because you want more.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She smiles. “Good.”

  Now, with a strange flash, I’m standing in this enormous living room. There are two staircases rising on either side to form a grand balcony made of a strange blue wood that almost looks alive.

  Hundreds of cats of every size, shape, and color, along with dozens of grren, lounge all over the stairs, railings, and the rest of the furniture.

  On one of the end tables sits a familiar Hello Kitty alarm clock with a cloudy face and yellowing plastic shell.

  My gaze wanders farther toward vines creeping up the walls and dusty paintings of people and their personas like I saw in that old art museum in the City of Violet.

  A voice rises above the purring cats: “You didn’t forget.”

  I glance to my left, where Julie is getting up from a sofa and struggling to her feet with the help of a branch carved into a cane. Her white hair and the heavy wrinkles around her eyes shock me. She winces as she tightens the sash on a robe with paisley patterns similar to the Galleons’ ship.

  “Julie?”

  She nods. “Yes, Doc, it’s me. And of course this isn’t real. It’s just one of my fantasies, but I wanted to show it to you.”

  “The mansion…”

  “Yeah, I told you I’d wind up here. But I always dreamed one day you’d come, and even though we were both really old and hadn’t seen each other for years, you’d rescue me from all this, and we’d finally be together.”

  I can barely answer. “That won’t happen.”

  “I know.” She shifts closer and takes my hand. “I thought I could change him. I thought I was strong enough to do it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. And now I’m a mask. I don’t have an immortal to give away, but I can give you this… a memory of me saying good-bye.”

  I look into her eyes and begin to tremble. As the tears form, I force myself back to the bloom.

  Our final pulse of energy strikes the Armadis and spreads through the wreath.

  Julie reaches out for me while behind her, Solomon swells into a mask. He won’t go down without a fight—

  But that punk ass bitch is finally going down!

  The Armadis explodes a ball of blue lightning, sending Julie, Solomon, and the rest of the masks, along with the Lords and Ladies of Galleon streaking away like rockets in all directions.

  We float there in stunned silence as slowly, gradually, all those ribbons of light, thousands of them drawn against the stars, begin to fade, leaving behind a ghostly outline of the ship’s face. It, too, vanishes, leaving behind the emptiness of space and the blue planet I used to call home.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  I stand in a crowd of thousands near the old Monkshood Temple in Verbena.

  In fact, it’s probably tens of thousands. Maybe millions. People and grren stretch off as far as I can see toward the ruins of Violet in the distance.

  Everyone’s glancing around, looking confused or laughing or sighing or crying or hugging each other—

  Or just standing there like me, numb and still in shock.

  We did it. It’s over.

  A cheer begins to rise through the crowd, and fists pump in the air. Suddenly, I’m not feeling so numb anymore.

  Just then, Tommy, Steffanie, Keane, Hedera, and Cypress elbow their way through the crowd.

  “Son, are you all right?” Tommy asks, taking me into his arms for a bear hug. He releases me and adds, “It was a hard fight. Hard for us all, especially you.”

  I choke up and nod.

  Steffanie stares at an empty spot on the ground beside me and starts crying. I rush over, ready to give her a hug—

  But she pulls back. “Don’t.”

  I lift my palms. “Okay, sorry.”

  Her reply sounds more like a growl: “How much did he tell you?”

  “Who?”

  “Arabelle. Did you know Meeka would die?”

  “God no.”

  She studies me through teary eyes.

  “Steffanie, listen to me. If I knew that would happen, do you really think—”

  “I don’t know.”

  I bite back a curse. “Well you better know. If I could’ve saved her, I would. If I could’ve taken her place, I would. Arabelle told me how to fight. That’s it. Besides, even if he knew Meeka would die, you think he’d tell me that, knowing how I feel about her?”

  She shrugs.

  Keane clears his throat to save me.

  I turn toward him and Hedera. They’ve just finished hugging.

  “Doc, I’m so sorry,” Hedera says, once again surprising me with her real voice instead her persona’s. She wipes off the tears slipping down her cheeks.

  Keane flips the hair out of his eyes to reveal he’s crying, too, but trying to keep it together. “This wasn’t the first time Meeka saved my life. Did you… was there time to get her immortal?”

  “The queen robe gave it to me. Let me show you. And you, too, Steffanie, please. All of you.”

  I connect with everyone, and in the next few seconds they realize just how significant Meeka’s warrior spirit really was.

  Of course, seeing my conversation with the queen robe also makes them cry even harder. Even Tommy’s about to break down. And Steffanie looks at me like maybe she understands now… maybe she believes me.

  “Do you think Meeka knew?” Keane asks.

  “What do mean?”

  “I mean do you think she sensed what she had to do?”

  “I think she just fought harder than us, so they went after her first.”

  “She always fought the hardest,” Steffanie mutters.

  “And that’s why we’re here,” I add.

  Hisses and high-pitched barks rise from the crowd behind us, and Cypress lets out a scream of joy.

  Punk and Mr. Gurdy trot through the crowd and knock her onto the ground, clicking their teeth and rubbing their cheeks on hers as she tries to push them off.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the grren who helped us, including Roam and his translator, bring up the rear. I connect with the translator and tell her how thankful we are for their help.

  She says Roam is deeply sorry for my loss. He says that when they return to Halsparr, he’s going to put out a call to all of the woven, asking for a truce. He says the time has come to heal old wounds and start a new future. He says that the scholars have some ideas on how to treat the virus on Halsparr, and they’re planning to travel there and perform some experiments…

  That’s big news to me. I break the connection and share it with the others.

  Cypress widens her eye. “Doke, maybe I don’t have to hide anymore.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Maybe you can stay here wi
th us,” Keane suggests.

  “But Halsparr is my home.”

  Hedera shakes her head. “Home isn’t a place, Cypress. It’s people… a new family.”

  She considers that. “Maybe you’re right.”

  And then from behind Cypress come a few more grren.

  Okay, I lose it. Lots of tears now. Why?

  Because it’s Brave, Mama Grren, and Grandpa, three of the most loyal friends I’ve ever had.

  I can’t believe it. They’re back. Mama Grren was with us when we first came to Flora and helped us escape from the Palladium when the nomads attacked. Brave would’ve died were it not for Julie’s family, and he risked his life to help us find the engine to get home and save my father. Grandpa and his pack helped us get to the coast so we could learn more about how to defeat the masks.

  Mama Grren shoves her face into my shoulder and sounds like she’s crying, too. All three grren connect with me, and I share with them what happened.

  A hush begins to fall over the crowd.

  “Doc, something’s happening,” Tommy says.

  I break my connection with the grren. “What now?” I get up on my tiptoes, straining to see, just as a tingling sensation forms in my chest.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  With a rush that feels like someone’s trying to pull the ribs out of my chest, the scholar blossom attached to me breaks free and flies out from beneath my shirt. She soars into the air, joining thousands more that have detached themselves from their hosts.

  At the same time, the masks we were carrying materialize in front of us.

  In the next few seconds we’re joined by my mother and Mr. Blue Bandana himself, Rific. They seemed relieved to be free from our wreathes.

  Next to Rific is Wexx from our group of rumms, along with our doctor Zach and Daliah, our prospector friend from Chrysantha.

  They’re all still wearing their suits of armor and glancing around at the crowds, their mouths widening in amazement