by T.A. Barron
“You’re seeing things.”
“No, I’m not. It’s there!” She started to run her finger along the deep indentation, but the heat of the rock repelled her. “Somebody carved it. I’m sure of it. That means somebody else has been here! Maybe one of the explorers Ariella spoke about. Either they came here the same way we did—or there’s some other route.”
“Give up, Alien! Your brain is already—already melting. You’ll never get … out of here, and neither will I. We’re both going to—ah! oh!—roast to death! Already … I feel weaker, weaker all the time. I’m never … never …”
With that, he fell silent.
Kate wiped the perspiration from her face. She had to find a way out of here. She studied the line of the ledge as it climbed along the rocky cliff. No doubt this cliff was just on the other side of the mountains from the snowfields where she had landed. But it seemed like another planet. Perhaps the ledge was actually made by someone … someone long ago. Perhaps it was once a trail! To the waterfall, perhaps? But why would anyone have gone through so much trouble?
She gazed at the broken body of Spike, lying motionless against the rock wall, as the striking smell of melting crystal tissue reached her nose. It was as fresh as a spring rain, and as bracing as the bath Ariella had given her. Such a smell was utterly at odds with the desert dryness surrounding her. Again her eyes followed the long contour of the ledge until it disappeared beyond some weathered rocks.
Kate moved closer to the body. He might be alive, even though it didn’t look good. If she couldn’t help Ariella, and she couldn’t help Grandfather, at least maybe she could help somebody.
Clumsily, she lifted the limp snow crystal onto her back. He was heavier than she had thought, like a slab of tightly compressed ice from the very bottom of a glacier. She struggled to lay him across the small of her back, just as she had once seen a fireman do with an unconscious man. With one arm she held his head, with the other his broken base.
Hunched over from her heavy load, Kate started to walk along the ledge. Maybe, just maybe, if she could transport Spike over to the snowy side of the ridge, she could find someone who could help him. To her delight, she discovered that the ledge continued upward beyond the rock outcropping she could see from the waterfall. Still, it was very rough going: The would-be trail was strewn with broken bits of stones and unforgiving pits. In the sweltering heat, Kate frequently had to stop and lift one hand to her brow—without losing her hold on Spike—to wipe away the perspiration that stung her eyes.
Her ankle pained her with every step, and she tried to favor the other foot. As she lifted her load over one particularly large stone, however, she twisted it slightly.
“Ow!” she cried, dropping Spike’s body and collapsing on top of it. She burned her hand again on the hot rocks as she fell, and her ankle throbbed painfully. Tears brewed, blurring her vision, but she forced them back.
She picked herself up and tried again to lift her cumbersome load. With considerable effort, she placed Spike’s body back in position and continued to trudge slowly onward.
Recalling some words Grandfather had once chanted as they hiked over a difficult trail in Scotland, she began to repeat them over and over. Light as a feather, strong as an ox. Light as a feather, strong as an ox. At first the words made her feel slightly stronger, but soon they seemed as heavy as the body on her back, and she stopped saying the chant.
Slowly, she ascended the side of the ridge. At one point, the ledge suddenly narrowed into a thin shelf, barely six inches wide. Kate tried not to look down, but her memory of the sheer drop below was only too clear.
She hesitated, then glanced behind her toward the waterfall, which was now invisible but for the spiraling tower of mist. She was used to being alone, but this was more alone than she had ever been. She thought of Ariella, dear Ariella, and of Morpheus, who fought so valiantly to save her. She thought of Mom and Dad—so willing to let her be herself, difficult as she could be sometimes, and of Cumberland, her loyal friend who never asked for anything in return. And she thought of Grandfather—oh, Grandfather! Would she ever see any of them again?
Gathering herself, she stepped carefully across the stretch as if it were a slippery log spanning a roaring river. As she reached the other side, she heaved a sigh of relief and mopped her sweaty brow.
Then she saw the crevasse.
A few steps ahead, the rock-strewn ledge divided, as if a fault line had severed the entire mountainside. The resulting gap, more than five feet across, was so deep that she could see nothing but darkness in its shadowy depths.
Light as a feather, strong as an ox, she told herself weakly. Light as a feather, strong as an ox.
Kate moved cautiously to the edge. Swinging Spike’s body around, she positioned it like an ungainly sack against her shoulder. With an enormous heave, she threw her load to the opposite side. It landed with a thud on the rocks.
Once again Kate looked backward. The waterfall seemed so far away, and yet the top of the ridge seemed even farther. Where was she going, anyway? She wondered whether all this effort would lead only to another impassable crevasse.
Feeling weaker then she had ever felt, she bent forward to stretch her back. Her ankle hurt so much. The swelling was growing worse. Her braid fell over her shoulder, rubbing against her cheek. Kate suddenly remembered the way Grandfather used to run his hand along her braid, one of his gestures that said more than any amount of words.
Kate again eyed the yawning chasm. Her heart pounded. With a deep breath, she limped toward the edge, planted her good foot, and leaped with all her strength.
Made it!
She clung to a jagged rock and pulled herself clear of the crevasse. It was all she could do to lift Spike’s heavy body into the fireman’s carry again. Her swollen ankle ached and her steps grew increasingly wobbly as she climbed higher and higher on the rocky slope, but she pressed on.
At last, the ledge turned into an uneven trail, which ran like a ribbon over the ridge. By now Kate’s head was so heavy that she could not lift it to see what lay ahead: It was all she could do to make one foot move in front of the other.
A gust of cold air hit her, so suddenly that she lost her balance and fell on the side of the trail. To her amazement, gleaming white peaks towered above her left and right sides. Patches of snow were all around. She had reached the top of the ridge!
Kate found herself sitting on a low pass dividing the knife-edge ridge that separated a world of red desolation from a world of creamy white cornices. The trail continued over the ridge to a large snowfield below, where it disappeared from view. She raised her face toward the peaks and drank deeply of the rich mountain air. The wind felt cool against her sweaty face.
Her eye fell to Spike, lying as still as death on the rocks by a snowdrift. He had been right; she had caused Ariella’s death. Nothing could ever assuage that pain.
Some very strange things were happening to this planet, things she couldn’t fully comprehend. The Great Trouble was more a mystery than ever. Perhaps there was some connection between The Darkness, the soft spots, and the fields of dying crystalmeat. But what could have transformed the Bottomless Blue into a searing desert? How could all these things be happening under the very nose of the most beautiful star in the galaxy?
Earth, that sparkling blue sapphire she had seen from her perch upon Morpheus, now seemed so very far away. How she longed to glimpse it again, to feel its soil underfoot and its air overhead. To smell the chrysanthemums in the garden. To run through the old apple orchard, to swim in the pond behind Grandfather’s house, to play with Cumberland … oh, Cumberland!
Spying a large, snow-crusted rock sitting near the trail, Kate thought it would be a good place to ponder her fate, and Grandfather’s. She had given up any hope of finding him; he would never even know how hard she had tried. Only Ariella and Morpheus knew, and they were lost forever.
Dejectedly, she hobbled over to the rock and started to climb it. Then, without warning, the rock
moved.
X
Strange Encounters
Kate tumbled backward onto the snow-dappled ridge as the great rock stirred. Then came a deep rumble that she felt through to the marrow of her bones, and the rock shifted, heaved, and finally started to roll over.
With a gasp, Kate realized that the underside of the rock was coated with some form of densely matted fur. It looked silver in color, although it could actually have been white beneath the layers of finely crushed stones that clung tightly to it. What she had taken for patches of snow on top of the rock were, in fact, more of this rough fur. As the rock rolled onto its side, it began to lengthen and widen, stretching itself like an enormous hedgehog uncurling before Kate’s eyes.
The stretching continued until sharp corners began to appear on the surface of the rock, now standing three times as tall as Kate. Soon the rock’s front, back, and sides were covered with a precise array of angles and facets. As the rough face of the rock was replaced by these crystalline corners, it grew smooth, even shiny, except for the splotches of shaggy fur draping over the facets.
Then Kate noticed one thing more: In the center of the crystal sat a single round eye, as blue as the deepest ocean. Its piercing gaze was trained directly on her.
As suddenly as it had started, the rumbling ceased. The great rock, now no longer a rock but a giant dodecahedral crystal, sat motionless atop the ridge, its contours no less imposing than the gleaming peaks behind it.
Kate was too frightened to move. All she could do was to stare helplessly at the unblinking blue eye of the enormous, shaggy crystal whose breadth now blocked the light of Trethoniel, leaving her in shadow. She knew that she was being carefully examined, just as a small fish is examined by a giant polar bear before the bear pounces on it, crushing it to death between its powerful jaws.
“Fear … me … not.”
The words shook the ground like an earthquake. “Fear me not, unless you fear the truth.”
Slowly, Kate regained her feet. She stood in awe, not daring to step any nearer to this strange beast that had sprung so unexpectedly from the mountain tundra, and not daring to run away. Mustering her courage, she forced herself to speak. “I don’t fear the truth. I only fear The Darkness and the loss of people I love.”
The great crystal stirred, grinding together the stones beneath its massive body. Then it spoke again, in a voice as rough as a landslide pouring over a slope. “You have chosen well your fears. Who are you and how did you come to Nel Sauria?”
Kate stood as motionless as the mountains surrounding her and drew in a deep breath. “I am Kate Prancer Gordon, from the planet Earth. I came here searching for Grandfather, but now I’ll never find him. There’s no hope.”
Again the giant crystal stirred, crushing the rocks beneath it. “Hope is like a shadow, not easily lost.”
Unsure what to make of this comment, or of the shaggy crystal itself, Kate could only ask: “What do you mean?”
“Your search may have ended,” rumbled the huge crystal, “but your struggle has barely begun.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know what I’ve been through!”
“To live is to struggle,” the shaggy being declared. “To seek is to find.”
“Find what? Are you telling me I’m going to find something?”
“I am telling you,” the crystal replied in its stone-grinding voice, “that I have seen the one you search for.”
Fireworks exploded inside Kate. “What? You saw Grandfather?”
“A single eye can see many things,” answered the giant crystal.
With those words, the crystal’s deep blue eye suddenly flashed with light, like a signal mirror reflecting the Sun. Kate’s hunger to find Grandfather, now fully rekindled, overpowered her fears. She stepped closer to the great crystal.
“Tell me what you saw!” she pleaded. “Is he in trouble? Is he hurt?”
The crystal made no sound. Only the round eye, glowing strangely, showed any sign of life. Across it swirled a whirlpool of undefined shapes and colors.
Then the shapes coalesced into a sharp image. A single yellow star, shining powerfully, filled the eye. Could that be the Sun? wondered Kate, studying the image closely.
Without any warning, the star faltered, faded, and suddenly collapsed into a pinpoint of light. Then, as Kate shuddered, it disappeared completely, leaving behind only an empty sector of space. Nothing at all remained to show that once a star had been there, burning brightly.
Before Kate could ask any questions, the eye swirled again and swiftly evolved into a new image. It was a mighty red star, surrounded by a nebula of colorful gases. There could be no mistake about its identity; Kate had come to know it well. She momentarily forgot about the death of the yellow star, as the radiant beauty of Trethoniel touched her again with wonder. She could almost hear the distant strains of its timeless music floating across the heavens.
Then a sense of dread filled her as she discerned a darkened shape moving into view. Long and writhing, its body slowly swam across the brilliant face of Trethoniel, blocking its light completely. Kate released a cry of fear and pain, and instantly the eye went dark.
“Why did you show me The Darkness?” she demanded. “Where is Grandfather? I thought you were going to show me Grandfather!”
The great crystal again shifted its weight on the ridge, as the eye’s deep blue color returned. “I said only that I have seen the one you search for,” rumbled the reply. “It is possible, in time, that you will see what I have seen. But first you must understand a basic truth.”
“What truth?”
“There are two kinds of death for a star, and they are as different as hope is different from despair.”
“Different?” Kate cocked her head in puzzlement. “I don’t get it. Death is death, isn’t it? Anyway, what does all this have to do with Grandfather? Are you telling me that’s the Sun’s future? Or Grandfather’s future?”
Grinding more stones into the ground, the crystal spoke solemnly. “The future cannot be read, for it waits to be written.”
“Then why did you show all that to me?” Kate’s voice was cracking with exasperation. “I don’t need to know the future! I only want to find Grandfather!”
“To find him may be one thing, to save him another.” The ominous words of the great crystal hung heavily upon the air.
“Save him?” asked Kate. “From what?”
“To save him you must trust that life and death are both seasons of the Pattern. If you trust in the Pattern, you trust in yourself. And if you trust in yourself, your voice holds all the power of truth.”
“But why does he need to be saved?” demanded Kate.
The shaggy crystal made no effort to respond.
Kate shook her head in dismay. “Now I know who you really are! Ariella thought you were just a legend … but even in the legend nobody could understand your riddles.” She moved back a few paces so she could see all of the mammoth being. “You said you might show him to me. Please! Won’t you help me?” she cried, arms outstretched. “Won’t you help me find Grandfather?”
As if in answer, the Sage of Sauria began to shake violently. A great rumble shook the ridge, and soon the sharp edges of her many facets became blurred and rough-hewn. Her round blue eye closed tightly. Meanwhile, her entire body began to shrink steadily in size until, at last, the Sage of Sauria resembled nothing more than a large rock with several patches of snow encrusting its surface.
“No!” shouted Kate above the tremor. “Don’t go! I need your h—”
Suddenly, she caught sight of a dark form emerging from the clouds above. A wave of terror shot through her. The Darkness. It’s come back.
She ran to the Sage of Sauria, now just an appendage of the rocky ridge, and struck forcefully with her fist. The pain in her hand was dwarfed by the pain in her heart: The rocklike being didn’t budge. Like a turtle seeking protection inside its shell, the Sage of Sauria had abandoned her.
Ka
te scanned the ridge madly, looking for any place to hide. There was none to be seen. Again, she glanced skyward.
At that instant, she realized her mistake.
“Grandfather!”
Diving through the clouds came Orpheus, twin brother of Morpheus, with Grandfather leaning forward like a jockey urging his horse on to maximum speed. With a swoop of iridescent wings, they glided to a landing on the snow-crusted rocks next to Kate.
“Grandfather!” she cried again.
“Kaitlyn!” came the reply.
They ran to each other and embraced. Then Grandfather fell backward into a drift, pulling Kate down with him.
“Oh, Grandfather! I thought—I thought I’d never see you again.”
The old man shook the snow from his hair. “I thought I’d see you again—but on Earth! What in God’s name are you doing here?”
“I followed you! I was so afraid you might—”
“Get into trouble?” Grandfather’s bushy eyebrows climbed high on his forehead as his amazement now mixed with amusement. “Ah, you clever little creature. Just couldn’t bear to see me get myself lost in some far corner of the galaxy, could you?”
“Right! I was so worried about you … I just had to make sure you were safe.” She tried to frown sternly. “I couldn’t believe you broke your most solemn promise.”
“Yes, well … I had to do it, Kaitlyn. Please forgive me. The Sun is in such peril.”
“I forgive you,” smiled Kate. “I just hope God does, too.”
“God is very forgiving of Oxford men,” he replied with a twinkle. “You found the other ring, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Kate, suddenly somber. “But …”
The old man paid no heed to her change of mood. “Didn’t you realize how risky a trip like that could be? You’re very lucky.”
“Yes … but Grandfather …”
“I haven’t been so lucky,” he continued. “I’ve been exploring very close to the star—it’s a magnificent sight to behold—and I’m more convinced than ever that Trethoniel must be the greatest source of PCL anywhere in the universe. But I haven’t had any success at all in finding out how the star makes it, or how the Sun could make more. Meanwhile, I’ve lost precious time. I’m starting to doubt I’m going to find out anything before it’s too late.”
