by Blair Drake
“See what?” She opened her eyes again to find the white fog all around her. “So this fog isn’t actually here. I’m in the library, but for some reason, I’m not seeing the other layers around me.”
She slowly rolled over, groaning as her body moved...or tried to. She flopped to her back again, feeling something firm underneath her. She dropped her hand and realized it was the floor. She could feel the floor underneath her back. “Have I damaged my eyes?” she asked in horror.
“No. Your eyes are fine.”
“My awareness then? Have I jumped into some space between layers?”
“Something like that,” the voice said quietly. “We’ve never seen a space like it.”
She tried again to sit up, but her body was too heavy.
“Although you don’t have the time to spare, you must try to get your body and your brain to reconnect.”
“You know how foolish that sounds, right?”
Silence.
She would have shaken her head, but it hurt to do so. Instead she called out, “Gideon, can you hear me?”
Instantly Gideon raced toward her. She could hear his light footprints clicking on the wooden floor. “I’m not sure what I’ve done, buddy. But stay close please.”
She wished she could see his eyes. Instantly, he walked onto her chest and stared down at her with huge, golden eyes. Could it be that he understood? “Gideon?”
Meow.
She smiled, reached up to stroke him. “I might be able to talk to you. But I guess that doesn’t mean you can talk to me, huh?”
“No, it doesn’t,” said the voice inside. “But he will be able to understand most of what you say.”
“That’s a huge gift,” she admitted in awe.
“It’s a very unusual gift to have the ability to communicate with animals, and it means you are blessed. You have achieved something most people don’t ever get a chance to.”
“Is it by his choice or by something I have done?”
“Both. It’s because he cares and because you care. A connection has been forged.”
“And Winter?”
“That bond was already forged. It will be interesting to see how Winter will respond to you now.”
“And you, I’m hearing you better and you’re talking more?”
“Again, you have done something we’ve never seen. We are here to observe. But you make it difficult to stay detached.”
“And yet you know me.”
The voices changed and the male one came back in. “We both know you. And you know both of us although one better than the other,” he admitted.
“You won’t tell me your names?”
“No. You will see clear enough when you have forged those tunnels and bonds. Then you will know who we are.” This time the voice disappeared, and she could sense just a tiny pocket of her brain that was completely void. Almost instantly, the space filled with information.
She realized how huge a gift that information was too. “I want information on these talismans,” she ordered.
Information rose on how the school pins became what each person needed. Depending on the ability the student had, the talisman was part of the quest. Some students used them, some students never found a way to unlock their power.
“And when the lights go out, is the power of the talisman gone forever then?”
“It changes. If you can’t complete the quest before that time, you lose the power of the talisman. If, however, you do complete it, the talisman changes. That change is different in every individual case.” The answer drifted through her brain confirming what she was horrified to consider but already assuming.
Simply put, when the talisman ran out of lights then she’d run out of time. She needed to get moving, and she needed to move now. She tried to sit up only to fall back heavily against the floor. If her head bounced she didn't know it because the pain was already so crippling.
“Gideon, is there anything to help me?”
He rubbed up against her head. She realized he couldn’t do anything to help, but the information should be there inside her brain. “Brain, tell me how to create a portal to go home.”
“The answer is inside,” said the voice once again.
“Well, inside my brain means it’s inside me.”
“No, it’s much more personal than that. Although you have created a shortcut we hadn’t expected, not all the information you are looking for is there. Some you will still have to deduce through experience, through internal learning, through self-assessment.”
She winced. “And what if I suck at all of those?”
“Well, you don’t suck at finding ways forward. You’ve already found much we hadn’t expected.”
“I wonder if I saw something more than you are aware of.” She didn’t know if this was the best moment to get into the whole conversation about the missing student, given she was so short on time, but it was hard not to consider his unfortunate plight.
“What do you mean?”
“Trace. The boy who was lost. I’ve seen him several times.”
Silence.
“If I can find a way to help him, I will,” Melissa said. “But I need the information from those books in my brain to do so. I can’t seem to access everything.”
“No, of course not. It will take time to assimilate, time for it to fit and file into an orderly system that’s accessible. Right now you have all that information scrambled. You won’t get all the answers you want right now.”
“So back to the beginning?” she hesitated. “And what about Trace?”
“We’re looking into that. He’s not your quest. Don’t get sidelined. And no, of course you don’t have to go back to the beginning. You’ve moved great strides ahead. But you need to pick up the pace.”
“Now if only I knew how to do that.”
“First things first. Pull yourself back together.”
Now she felt both voices disappear.
Somehow she slowly regained some sense of her reality, of the space around her. This time when she went to sit up, she succeeded, but Gideon jumped off her. She turned to look around. Still just a gray space. She closed her eyes, held her talisman to her heart, and said, “Help me realign the layers so I can return to the library.”
Chapter 14
Instantly, the grayness around her disappeared. Little by little, the room came into focus around her. Sure enough, it was the library. She sat on one of the ancient Oriental rugs with a great view of the huge, ornate cornices at the top of the ceiling. Gideon sat nearby, staring up at her with his beautiful golden eyes. She smiled. “Gideon, I’m so happy to see you.”
With great effort, she reached out, picked up the cat, and cuddled him close. Now all she had to do was access the rest of the information so she could figure out how to get home before it was too damn late.
Almost instantly, Gideon started to meow in her arms. She loosened her grasp, and he dropped to her lap. He started to knead, as if making a nest for himself.
She chuckled. “Gideon, I hate to say it, but I have to get up. You can do plenty of that when we get home. But right now we have other priorities.” She placed him on the floor beside her, rolled over to her hands and knees, and using the corner of the desk, she slowly brought herself upright. She glanced around the room, seeing different layers to the shelving and books on the other side, inside the wood. Everything 3-D atop 2-D atop some kind of weird optical illusion. What she was really seeing was an X-ray of everything around her. “How bizarre.”
She was too wobbly to stand, so she held on to the desk as she headed to the chair where she sat with a thud.
“Bizarre. Yes. And completely useless as far as what you need to do right now.” But the voice said this in a much happier tone. “Welcome back. We weren’t sure you would return this time.”
“Are you saying I’m home?” Hope flared only to be squashed immediately.
“No, but you are back in the library in your 2-D world. Now get back on tra
ck.”
Nice. Not. That transference learning was even possible just made her angry about all the assignments she struggled to learn in class. Could she have picked up a calculus book and learned the same way? If so, why all the torment to memorize and learn the hard way? Obviously, the librarians and teachers knew. Or did they? She had to wonder about that. If even just some of the students had abilities, it would make sense all the teachers had abilities, right? And, like the voice told her earlier, not all the students had abilities. Melissa wondered how many in her class this year.
But there were only ten students on the rooftop weren’t there? In the chaos it would have been easy to miss someone. So maybe only those had abilities? Or maybe all the hundred and forty did but grew or developed at different rates? She took a deep breath and relaxed in the librarian’s chair. She wanted to cry with relief. The whole world appeared rocky now, shifting under her feet, as if somehow she’d lost her connection to this dimension. She frowned, her mind searching through the databases she had since downloaded.
She wasn’t locating anything about the lost mind-body connection. But it’s not like she could give a keyboard command and bring up a search function. Or, if she could, she hadn’t quite figured out what the right commands were yet. Then again, she’d slammed so much information in there it felt like everything was disjointed and jumbled around inside. The information was there, but she couldn’t access it yet.
Like the voice forewarned her, she didn’t have time for her brain to organize all that data. She had to go with her own life experiences.
Disgusted at herself for being too focused on a short-term gain and not the long-term quest, she was now paying the price. She gently rubbed both temples. “You know, if Luke was still around, he’d love this transference learning system.”
A buzz filled the air as soon as the words fell from her lips. She straightened and looked around. “Luke?” she asked hopefully.
Silence.
What did she expect? Was he one of the students with an ability? No, surely he would’ve said something to her. He just moved on in his own world, without her. That was the problem with having too many years between them. If you were both fifty something, two years were nothing. But when you both were teenagers, two years appeared to be a lot—particularly when he graduated their private school then attended college somewhere. An old pain slithered through her. Would she ever get over that guy?
But she had more pressing issues right now, not the least of which was the constant throbbing in her head and the lack of accessibility in her brain.
She studied her talisman, staring in dismay as yet another light had gone out. Had she done that with her request to return to the library? Or was her talisman still failing from the horrendous blast with the accelerated transference learning? She stared at all the books behind the glass-encased bookshelves. “I want to know all of this. How am I supposed to do that without knocking myself out and using up my talisman?”
She wasn’t sure this information would be available again. And she didn’t want to lose out. Could she access the info, put the data on some temporary medium, and take it with her? She smiled at the thought. It’s not like she had a USB key she could just download all the information from the books onto and then plug the key into her earlobe or something.
She snorted. “You are starting to sound really crazy, you know that?”
She carefully stood to take a closer look at the titles, wondering if she dared try for any more. Instinctively her mind told her no; she was already on overload. But the other part of her brain said, To have all this information and not take it with you is wrong. About forty more books were on the shelf. But, for all she knew, they all worked within the same transference learning process. She was tempted to place her hands over as many books as she could cover, get knocked out again, and then wake up with it all inside. Even if she did that three or four times, surely it would be better than to miss out on this information.
“No,” yelled the voice in her head. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?” she asked quietly. “It’s valuable information. I may never get access to it again.”
“You will kill yourself,” the voice said. “It’s too much, too fast. You’ve already done too much. Most people would be unconscious and not wake up after what you’ve done.”
She frowned. “It can’t be that bad, surely,” she protested. “I feel fine.”
“No, you don’t.”
The bookshelf doors snapped closed in front of her. As soon as the two wooden and glass panels clicked together, the lock turned automatically. She reached up to unlock it and realized the key was gone. She’d been locked out. She frowned. “Okay. I’m sorry. Apparently, I did something wrong, but I didn’t mean to.”
But the lock refused to turn. She’d had a chance, and for whatever reason, she was locked out again.
“That’s not fair.” All that information should be available for everyone, including herself. But, for the moment, she could do nothing about it.
She walked around the desk and headed toward the double doors of the library, then froze. She spun around, “Gideon? Where are you, Gideon?”
There was no answer. No sign of the chubby tabby either.
Now in a panic, she speed-walked, as best she could, through the library, calling for him. He had to be here somewhere. The door out of the library was closed. Chances were, he was in a corner somewhere, having a nap. She raced through the shelves, calling out for him, up and down the aisles, her feet going faster and faster.
Finally, she came to a standstill in front of the librarian’s desk to see Gideon sitting on the big chair, staring at her with unblinking eyes. There was a question in his gaze as if to say, What’s the problem?
She cried out, scooped him in her arms, and squeezed him tight.
Meow.
She ignored him and hugged him tighter yet. “I thought I’d lost you,” she crooned. Shifting his weight in her arms, she strode quickly from the library. With the double doors closed behind her, she felt somewhat more secure. “Gideon, please don’t do that anymore. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Of course, her mind supplied the obvious answer: you’d be alone. The same answer that reverberated throughout her life and drove her crazy because of course she’d be alone. She’d always felt alone except for the short time with Luke. Once again, she panicked at the thought of losing Gideon too.
“Okay, so it’s not that I’m panicked about being alone. I was nervous at almost having lost you. I’d be terrified of losing you in this dimension.” She frowned. “You can travel with me through the dimensions, right Gideon?”
He stared an unblinking stare, but his engine worked quietly in the background—and his claws. No way would she leave him behind. Still, he’d gotten here on his own, unlike Winter.
Something else she had to confirm before leaving here and returning home.
With a shake of her head, she walked over to the big window at the nearest end of this library hallway and stared out. The black cloud appeared to be sitting right at the edge of the lawn.
Closer than ever.
How did it penetrate the force field that seemed to hold it back earlier?
This is so not good.
And whatever forces blew within it swirled and twisted in an angry motion, as if every time she did something stupid, like creating a useless 2-D to 2-D portal, it was attracted to the energy and came closer.
Perhaps it knew she was running out of time…and waiting for a chance to grab her.
Chapter 15
Something was so very creepy about the darkness she had to wonder what would happen when all the lights on her talisman went out. And she hated to say it, but it was pretty obvious that every time the talisman lost a light, the darkness moved closer yet again.
A fact that left her gasping at the proximity of it already.
So, what happened when the talisman turned dark? Was that synonymous with her wor
ld going dark then too? As in this darkness enveloping her in whatever medium it was? Is that what happened to the missing guy? Did the darkness just absorb him? Was the darkness alive? She didn’t remember seeing any books on the subject anywhere. And the voices didn’t know much about it either. So was this something new and different in the 2-D and 3-D worlds? Just great. I have enough secrets to uncover as it is. Yet, after what she’d been through, she was pretty damn sure anything could exist now.
She thought of all the stories of hell and brimstone. For her it was hard to consider that a devil was actually out there, waiting to suck her into its evil forces. Then again, she’d never considered portals real either.
Just the thought of actual evil existing tightened her chest. She needed to make the most of the time she had. She felt safe because she was here, inside the school, although the 2-D version of it. She missed the other students, her friends, the teachers, Hettie, even the headmaster, who weren’t here with her. She’d never considered working with others made her stronger, better, but she wished they were here with her now. Yet they were here, but they weren’t here, however that worked. She squeezed Gideon close yet again. “Gideon, I’m so very happy you’re here with me.”
She left the ground floor library area and wandered through the hallways, holding Gideon tight. The last thing she wanted was to have him take off in this huge school even if he showed no signs of wanting to disappear. He was content just being held.
Winter was hopefully still sleeping. She needed to check on him soon too.
The lack of noise was something weird also. Normally when she walked the hallways, she would hear an echo of her footsteps. Even earlier, before her transference learning experience, her own footsteps sounded in the library. Now there was nothing, as if she didn’t exist. As if, in this dimension, nothing was worth hearing. She wasn’t sure if that was because everything about this 2-D world was muffled in some way or if it was because of something she was doing. Or was it something tied to the energy remaining with her talisman? She pulled it from her pocket, and her heart stuttered in shock. Another light was out. She turned to stare out a nearby window—and saw only black.
