Pettikin

by Abby Smith

  “Let. Us. Through.”

  A beat, then the faintest smile played across his lips, and he was gone.

  The steely resolve left me like air gushing out of a punctured balloon. My legs gave out, and I fell to my knees.

  “You did it Allie!” Pettikin came running up beside me.

  I pushed myself up. Taos hummed and pressed his nose to my face.

  “He can’t go any further, since this is his world,” Pettikin said. “Sunshine and Suzy will show us the rest of the way.”

  I put one arm around Taos’ neck and rubbed his nose.

  “Thanks for showing us the way,” I said.

  He hummed. Suzy and Sunshine stepped through the white diamond Gateway.

  “Pettikin, let’s get out of here.”

  14

  Blue sky.

  This was more like it.

  I floated in a blue sky that stretched endlessly in every direction. Not just any blue, but the blue of the sunniest, happiest, warmest summer day that ever existed.

  My body felt light and deliciously happy. I stretched out as long as I could, relaxed, and closed my eyes. I thought about taking a nap, although just floating here with my eyes closed was relaxing enough. As far as I was concerned, we could stay here forever.

  I had no idea how long I floated there before I heard a faint honking noise.

  At first, I didn’t pay any attention to it because why bother? When it grew louder and more persistent, I thought I should at least open my eyes and see if it was something that warranted some kind of action. Perhaps I could ask whatever was honking to stop so I could go back to enjoying this world.

  I opened my eyes.

  Initially, I didn’t see anything but blue sky, but then, an alpaca head appeared, fuzzy brown hair and round ears first, then nose and neck, like a swimmer surfacing from beneath the water.

  “Hey Sunshine!” It was so great to see her.

  Sunshine clucked at me, annoyed. Why was she annoyed when it was so beautiful here?

  I felt something stir inside my chest, a gentle fluttering. Wait, was there something I was supposed to be doing here?

  Pettikin appeared next to me, as if he too had just emerged from underneath the water.

  “Pettikin! Hi!”

  “Hi Allie!”

  “Isn’t this great?”

  “It’s so beautiful here! I love this world!” Pettikin clutched his hands under his chin dreamily.

  “Me too! Can we stay here forever?”

  HONK.

  Sunshine was exasperated. I felt the flutter in my chest again.

  “She keeps doing that, do you know what she’s saying?”

  “She says we need to come down there and follow her.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess we could do that.”

  The only problem was I wasn’t exactly sure how to move. I had no real reference for up or down, except for the way I was oriented and the fact that there was an alpaca below me, so call that down. I also didn’t seem to have any weight here, or maybe there was just no gravity to pull me in any direction. All I was able to do was rotate on my center axis.

  “Uh—how do we do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Pettikin stretched his arms and legs out to his sides and floated past me, spinning slowly, like a floating gnome version of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

  I tried to move to my left, but all I did was rotate in a counterclockwise circle. Pettikin and I both giggled.

  Sunshine honked, her front hooves appearing next to her head as she pulled the rest of her body up from under the blue surface. She galloped toward us, the sky coalescing around her to form a soft surface that she could push against as she ran. Pettikin grabbed on to her neck as he floated past her and swung himself onto her back.

  She hummed at me again, and I felt the stirring in my chest.

  “She says Vala should have shown you how to move through this world. Also she wants you to eat a cookie.”

  My chest felt warm when Pettikin said Vala’s name. There was something we were supposed to do here—what was it?

  Pettikin reached into Sunshine’s pack, and pulled out two chocolate chip cookies. He ate one and handed me the other as I drifted past them.

  I took a bite. The cookie was still soft, and the chocolate chips were melty. The sweetness spread through my body, replacing the giddiness I was feeling with a calm warmth. I finished the cookie and held my arm out in front of me. If I focused, I could make the sky have a surface that I could feel. I focused harder and moved a foot forward, willing the sky to come up and meet it. My foot landed on something that felt soft and springy.

  Cool. Sunshine snorted, and then turned and glided downwards, slaloming from side to side like she was skiing down a mountain. I followed after her. As long as I kept my mind focused, the sky came up to meet me wherever I wanted to go. I let my feet slip out from under me and slid the rest of the way on my backside. It was like sliding down a cushiony waterslide.

  As we descended, the sky lightened and became translucent. I could see other figures moving below us, like we were looking through frosted glass. We passed through a boundary, and suddenly, we were falling through the sky in a new world.

  We landed on a cloud, which, like the sky before, coalesced to catch us. We bounced up once, over the edge, onto a rainbow and slid down onto the soft and springy ground, like an inflatable bouncy castle at a kid’s birthday party.

  Suzy was there waiting for us. She clucked and pinned her ears back.

  Pettikin leapt off Sunshine’s back, and he and I bounced on the ground. We were surrounded by trees made of pastel colored light, pink and purple trunks radiating out into thin branches decorated with white and gold blossoms. Their boughs waved in the air rhythmically. Beneath them were clumps of plants, some with colorful blossoms, some like giant reeds or cattails, hollow tubes of varying diameters and lengths, and others like fat gourds cut in half with long, thin tendrils stretching vertically down them. Everything was brightly lit, although I didn’t see a sun. Light was emanating from all around—up from underneath the ground and down from the sky. Music floated through the air, a sweet melody with lots of flutes and a new-agey sound but no apparent source.

  Suzy snorted and hummed impatiently.

  “She wants you to eat a cookie.” Pettikin stood on his hands, turning in a slow circle. I wondered how his hat never fell off. Maybe he secured it with pins or something. The thought gave me the giggles as I reached into Suzy’s pack and pulled out a cookie. I continued to bounce and spin around, watching the trees and plants sway in time to the music.

  I bit into my cookie and slowed my bouncing as I realized the plants weren’t swaying in time to the music—they were producing the music. The gourds were like strings, the reeds like flutes, the flowers like horns and bells, the blossoms on the trees rustling like maracas. In a clearing just a few feet away from us, bright blue and green fuzzy turtles faced each other in a circle, bouncing yellow balls of light on their backs in time to the music—the percussion section.

  “This is amazing!” I stopped bouncing and turned in a slow circle, taking everything in. The red world was a distant memory. From now on, I was all about the blue world.

  Sunshine clucked and hopped, completely distressed. Pettikin had disappeared.

  “Hey Allie, watch this!” The voice came from above me. Pettikin waved down at us from the highest branches of one of the trees.

  “Hey be careful…” I started, but Pettikin had already leapt from the tree onto a rainbow. He slid down it like a slide, then bounced up from the trampoline ground onto a cloud. He bounced onto another rainbow, slid down and bounced up to another cloud, giggling like a maniac.

  “Oh man, that looks awesome,” I said.

  Suzy honked at me and stamped her front feet, but I ignored her. I shoved the rest of my cookie in my mouth, bounced in place a couple times to pick up some momentum, then sprang up onto a cloud. Pettikin waved at me from one cloud over. Laughing, I waved ba
ck. Two rainbows appeared next to our clouds.

  “OK, ready?” I said “On three! One, two… three!”

  We both jumped and slid down our rainbows, bouncing on the soft trampoline ground and up to new clouds.

  I had never seen Pettikin so happy. He was laughing, and his eyes were shining.

  “Let’s go again—race you!” I said.

  I scrambled to the edge of my cloud searching for a rainbow. I heard both Suzy and Sunshine clucking at me as I slid down and sprang up to another cloud. It felt like my heart skipped a beat. Was there something I was supposed to do? Well, whatever it was it could wait.

  Pettikin and I continued our game of cloud-slide until we got tired, then leapt up to a passing cloud and laid down on its surface. It was as soft as a feather bed. I sighed. Pettikin stretched luxuriously.

  I propped myself up on my elbows. From here we could see the whole world. The musical plants beneath us gradually tapered off into a strip of pink and white beach that bordered a vast lake or sea. The water was a deep, dark blue, with delicate wavelets that rippled across its surface and sparkled in the light. Groves of pink and purple trees with large golden leaves adorned the water’s edge.

  I felt a strange feeling in my chest again, like something was wringing my heart between its hands. Was I missing something obvious? I gazed at the water, and my thoughts slowed down.

  A diamond shaped web of white light glowed in the center of the sea, perpendicular to its surface.

  My heart started pounding erratically. I felt a little dizzy.

  Pettikin’s eyes were closed, a huge smile on his face.

  “Pettikin, can you understand what the alpacas are saying?”

  “Who cares? They’ve been hyper ever since we got here.”

  I giggled, but felt a small, sharp pain in my chest. My grin faded a little as I saw the alpacas running in small circles below us and humming.

  “No, but seriously, what are they saying?”

  Pettikin sighed and sat up. “They want us to come follow them. They say we have to get to the next Gateway.”

  The next Gateway. My chest tightened. “Why would we want to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Pettikin yawned and stretched out again. “I think we should just stay here forever.”

  I loved seeing him this happy. In fact, I was pretty sure I loved this little gnome. I felt a warm glow in my heart, and then it was as if some bubble around it burst, and a huge wave of warmth and emotion engulfed me. I gasped.

  “Pettikin, I remember now! We have to get to the Gateway because it’s the only way to get you home—to Arcorn and your Guardian!”

  As soon as I said the name of his world Pettikin gasped and sat up.

  “How could I forget about my own world? What are we doing? What were we thinking?”

  I was already to the edge of the cloud searching for a rainbow. “I think it’s fairly safe to say that we weren’t thinking. Man, the alpacas are going to kill us.” A rainbow appeared, and I slid down it to the ground. Pettikin followed behind me and bounced from the ground up to my shoulder.

  Suzy and Sunshine bounded over to us. As soon as they stopped, Suzy spat in my face and snorted.

  “She says from now on you should listen to her when you’re in the other worlds.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” I said ruefully as I wiped my cheek.

  I opened the pack on Sunshine’s back and pulled out two cookies and Professor Theopolous’ map for this world. I handed Pettikin’s cookie to him and held mine in my mouth as I unfolded the map.

  This one was even weirder than the one from the red world. It was just random arcs and wavy lines oriented every which way on the page.

  “I give up,” I said, finishing my cookie and refolding the map. “Is this your world Sunshine? Can you lead us to the Gateway?”

  She hummed as I stuffed the map into her pack and, when she was sure we were following, began bouncing in time to the music down a path through the musical forest.

  We bounced along after her, easily keeping pace, just as we had in the red world. Here no buzzy energy built up inside me, only a gentle, peaceful feeling. The flowers in the woods all turned their faces to follow us as we walked, and the trees and reeds swayed in time to the music. Rainbow colored rabbits and squirrels darted around, humming the melody as they gathered nuts and berries from the ground. More than once, I found myself fighting against the urge to simply stop and stay there forever.

  The music of the forest gradually softened, and we could see the lake up ahead, glittering on the horizon. Once we reached the beach, the music faded into the background and was replaced by the gentle lapping of water against the shore. I bent down to pick up a handful of the sparkling pink and white sand. Like on the red world, they were small, perfectly round beads. Unlike the red world, the beads were not rubbery, but hard like crystals and filled with light. Each one glowed like a tiny sun.

  I dropped the sand and gazed out at the water. The light reflecting off the surface was so bright I had to shade my eyes with one hand. When we were in the clouds, the Gateway hadn’t seemed that far from shore, but from here, it was just a tiny diamond on the horizon. I could swim, but I wasn’t sure if I could swim that far, and I had no idea if Pettikin could swim. His roly-poly figure and stubby limbs didn’t seem like they’d be suited for it.

  Sunshine hummed.

  “She said that this is as far as she can go, and that we should follow Suzy to the next world.”

  I reached up and patted Sunshine’s head and smooched her cheek.

  “Thank you Sunshine—sorry we were so stupid before.” She hummed and pressed her nose against my face.

  Suzy walked a few feet inland to a grove of trees. She sniffed the ground, grabbed something with her teeth, and pulled backwards. It was a large, golden leaf, almost as big as her. She dragged it to the water’s edge and honked at me.

  “She says we should go get a leaf.”

  “OK,” I was confused but not in the mood to disobey her a second time. I walked over to the grove of trees. Underneath it was a large pile of jurassic-sized golden leaves which had apparently fallen from the trees.

  “Man, these are huge. How big do I need?”

  Suzy hummed.

  “As big as we can find, she says it has to hold us.”

  “Hold us?” I turned around. Suzy stepped onto her leaf with her front hooves, pushed off with her back then hopped the rest of the way onto the leaf as it floated out into the water.

  “Oh boy.” My pulse quickened. I rummaged through the pile of leaves, until I saw one at the bottom that seemed like it would be big enough. I yanked it free. It was the shape of a large teardrop, maybe four feet across at its widest part and six feet long. It was about two inches thick and curled upwards at the edges. Whatever material it was made of was hard but not dense. It wasn’t heavy, but its size made it awkward for me to carry, so I dragged it to the water’s edge by its stem like Suzy had.

  Suzy drifted out to sea, carried by some unseen current.

  I pushed the leaf into the water. It floated, so that was good. I crouched next to it, holding on to the stem so it wouldn’t float away. My sneakers got wet as water lapped over them.

  “Want to get on Pettikin?”

  He climbed back onto my shoulder, and then dropped down onto the leaf. It wobbled slightly but didn’t tip over. He moved to the bow and sat down with his legs out in front of him in a V. The HMS Gnome.

  I put my left foot gingerly on the leaf, pushed off from the shore with my right and pulled it up quickly. I flailed my arms and almost lost my balance as the leaf wobbled and floated out into the lake, so I quickly eased myself down and sat cross-legged. I wondered how Suzy could remain standing without losing her balance. She was already several yards in front of us, as if she had been surfing her whole life.

  I dangled one hand over the side of our boat. The water felt warm. I wondered if I should paddle or try to steer, but after a few minutes I realized it w
ouldn’t be necessary. Whatever current we were riding was carrying us directly toward the Gateway. A gentle breeze blew over the water and lifted my hair from my face. I closed my eyes, feeling warm and light and happy, and lost track of time. The overwhelming desire to stay here forever returned. As I was slipping into that mindset, I felt another stab in my chest and opened my eyes.

  The Gateway loomed in front of us, as tall as a tree. I squinted up at the web of white light. For a minute, I thought we would just sail right through it to the next world, but, when we were about five feet away, the current shifted and began circling it instead. We joined Suzy in a slow orbit around the Gateway.

  “So how do we get through?”

  Suzy hummed.

  “She says you’re the Gatekeeper. You have to get us through.”

  “Oh man.” I stood up, wobbling unsteadily. Could we just swim over to it?

  Suzy hummed again.

  “She suggests you use your other sight.”

  “Oh. Right.” Would I ever get the hang of this stuff?

  I took a deep breath and relaxed my mind. Everything became luminous. Something shimmered around the Gateway – something that had shifted the current. I concentrated as hard as I could, and slowly, it came into focus.

  The Gateway was inside a spherical structure made of smaller interconnecting geometric shapes, like a giant golf ball, but translucent instead of white. I reached over the side of the boat and paddled, trying to get us closer without crashing into it. Pettikin went to the stern to help steer, like a little rudder. We drifted up beside the sphere, and I reached out for it.

  Its interconnecting blocks were as cold and hard as stone and at least a foot thick. I rapped it once with my knuckles then had to shake my hand to take the sting out of my fingers. It didn’t feel fragile, like glass, but solid, like rock.

  I put both hands on it searching for any type of entrance, but the lattice was solid. I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the water. The sphere extended below the surface, so no underwater entrance. We circled the entire structure once before I gave up that approach.