The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults)

by Robert Scanlon

  Though she knew it rationally, the full force of the consequences of shutting down the rem collider and sealing the portals from both sides hadn’t yet hit home.

  “We’re really stuck here?” An image of her mother wringing her hands and looking out of the lounge window sent a wave of sadness through her.

  He nodded. “So far, anyway. I have some ideas to test, but they all depended on you being ...” He looked forlorn. “I’m glad you are better. The township is a great place to live, but I’d rather be back home. And if I can’t, then at least I have a friend here to remind me of what our world was like—” he shrugged, then fell silent.

  She nodded, then realised she’d been ignoring her growing hunger pains. “Is there, er, anything to eat?”

  They all laughed. Eva patted her shoulder. “You probably don’t realise how good it is to hear you say that. Lucio will bring you something.”

  The next few days saw her able to get out of bed and, together with Nathan and Lucio, they explored the township. She realised what a pretty place it was, with all the brightly coloured structures, the sunshine, the green fields—and better yet, happy people everywhere, out and about. It occurred to her that up until now, she’d mostly experienced Paolo’s world in the dark and under dramatic circumstances.

  People she didn’t know stopped in the street to smile and thank her. Some dropped to one knee and gave thanks to the Orange Witch. Embarrassed, she received their thanks gratefully and told them not to kneel; that in her world, everyone was considered equal, even if that wasn’t entirely accurate.

  On many occasions, she experienced a wrenching sorrow: She knew they had done the right thing; that whatever had happened back in her world, she had discovered a determined and heroic part of herself, never to be lost. But that didn’t make any difference to her aching heart. “Nathan?”

  “Yes?” He was sitting across from her at the cabin table, engrossed in taking apart a plough release mechanism.

  “What do you think of, when you remember ...” She couldn’t finish her question and tried to hold back her tears. Somewhat unsuccessfully.

  Nathan put down the mechanism and looked at her for a while before answering. “What do I think about, when I think of home? I miss my mum and dad, even though they never really understood what I did, they’re still my mum and dad, and they always supported me. Actually we moved around the country a lot, so I was always changing schools. I think it’s helped me adjust to ... being here and never going back. I guess I got used to missing old friends.” He shrugged. “Why do you ask?”

  She wiped an errant tear. “Why do you think? Every time I think about home, my mum, my friends, and being stuck here ...” She turned away.

  “Sorry, Sarina. I’m being a wally. It’s really hitting you hard, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, but didn’t turn back.

  His voice became gentle. “Would it help to think about all those millions of kids who will be able to use their imagination again, all thanks to you? Me, I was already stuck here, because I was stupid and thought I could rescue the Prof all by myself. But you did something I don’t know I could ever do. You deliberately left behind you everything you love. All because you believed in something. Something bigger than you. In my world, that’s the stuff legends are made of. Being sad is all a part of the same thing: Of course you’ll be sad. You’re sad because you care.”

  She took a deep breath, and turned back to look at Nathan. “Thanks. If you weren’t here—”

  “I know, I know. There’d be no brains in the team.” He looked at her, poker-faced.

  “Bah! You’re impossible!” She picked up a fruit from the bowl on the table and threw it at him, and walked out.

  He called after her. “Hey, I’m only trying to cheer you up!”

  Sarina looked back on her way out through the doorway. “Lucky for you that it worked, then, isn’t it?”

  “How much fruit would you have thrown if it didn’t work?” he said under his breath, and returned to the mechanism on the table.

  “I heard that!”

  One evening, the township’s Elders’ Committee invited her and Nathan to a ceremony held in the town hall. They turned up to a crowded room, expecting to place themselves at the back of the hall to witness a township tradition, but instead found themselves ushered in to take their seats on a makeshift stage at the front.

  Andreas stood next to them and held up his hands for quiet. “People of the township, we are here tonight to bestow our greatest honour on our two dear friends, who have given up their own world to help save ours and theirs, and in the case of Sarina, she almost gave up her life.” He reached down beside him and pulled two identical red- and purple-striped sashes from a wickerwork box. With great care, he opened the first sash into a large scarf-like loop, and placed it over Nathan’s head.

  He looked over at the crowd. “To become an Elder of the township requires extraordinary dedication, time; and the reaching of a certain age. In this instance, the extraordinary dedication shown to us by young Nathan was so great we cast aside the time and age requirements.” He looked at Nathan. “To say we are grateful is an understatement. Twice now you have risked your life to save the township and its people and we are greatly in your debt.” He whispered to Nathan. “Stand up and say something.”

  He stood, and the crowd clapped and cheered. He fingered the colourful silken sash for a moment, then looked around. “Thank you for this great honour. You probably already know how much I miss my world. But if I had to think of anywhere else to live, it would be here, with you lot. I hope I can live up to this”—he fluttered the sash against his chest—“and grow to be a wise old Elder, with no more fights with sorcerers.” The crowd laughed and applauded, and Nathan sat, red-faced.

  Andreas turned to Sarina, and the crowd hushed. This was what they had been waiting for. He opened the sash in his hand and lowered it over her head and the crowd roared in approval. He motioned her to stand, and he took her left hand in his and raised it high. “My friends: The Orange Witch!”

  The crowd stood and clapped, people stomped their feet and the kids, led by Lucio, waved a stick-like instrument around their heads that clattered like a frenzied snare drum.

  Sarina smiled and nodded at those she knew—especially at Eva, Tomas and Rocco in the front, who were clapping and yelling.

  Andreas lowered both their hands and raised his eyes at the crowd. “A speech?” They whistled and screamed. He stepped away and, with a twinkle in his eye, gestured for her to talk.

  “The privilege is all mine,” she said, rising to her feet, and the crowd hushed. “Without your care and your trust, I would not be alive, and nor would I have had the chance to try to save my own world. Before all this happened, I was just a girl who liked to paint. Now, I’m ...” she looked down and struggled for words.

  A voice from the back yelled, “The Orange Witch!” The crowd tittered and some close to the yeller hushed him.

  She looked back up and gazed slowly from person to person. “Yes. Now I know there is much more to me than I ever knew. As the Orange Witch, I am at your service.” She bowed low and the crowd roared approval, then she straightened and held up her hand for quiet.

  “But first and foremost, I want you always to call me Sarina, and think of me as the girl who loves to see beauty all around, and tries to capture it in her art.” She smiled and sat down to rapturous applause.

  Nathan leaned over. “Cool speech. Been planning that for a few days, have you?” She thumped him with her cast, wincing at the slight shock of pain.

  The evening of the ceremony finished with a giant feast in the park. After gorging herself on a dazzling array of fruits never before tasted, Sarina felt herself getting tired, and sat beside Nathan, who was tucking into some large, tomato-topped flat-bread.

  “I eshplayned pitthha thoo them,” he said with his mouth full, “but I doth think—”

  Sarina made a face at him. “Finish your mouthful first, you ho
rrible boy! You’re an Elder now, and I expect you to lead by example.”

  He went red and kept chewing until he swallowed his last morsel. “I said, I explained pizza to them, and I don’t think they quite nailed it”—he pointed to the flat bread he’d been eating—“but whatever it is, it’s delicious.” He reached for another, but Sarina stopped him.

  “I was thinking about our world. Probably because we’re in the same park where so much happened ... before. Do you think we’ll find out if they succeeded?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “This kids and the Professor?”

  “Kind of.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “But more than that. If they all returned to a normal life.”

  He nodded slowly. “Do you still miss them?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What a stupid question. Of course.” She stared into space. “But I wonder if they miss us? I hope it all worked out.” She fixed her gaze on him. “Do you think there is any chance at all we could ever make it back?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up. And it kind of relies on your wrist healing, so I knew I could bide my time.” He stared her in the eye. “And I still don’t want you to get your hopes up. As far as I know, the connection could be completely broken. It depends on what the Prof did with the machine. Knowing him, he would have kept it available until the last minute, but I expect by now, unless he’s solved the problems it had, it’s space junk.” He gave her a mischievous smile. “My great-great-grandfather—” but he never finished the sentence, because Sarina used her good hand to tip a goblet of water over his head, and before he could say anything, Paolo showed up.

  “That looks like fun. Can I join in?” He smiled and sat down and looked at them both. “What is the matter? Did I interrupt something?” Sarina shook her head and Nathan nodded, wiping the water from his face and scowling at Sarina.

  “Well, which is it? I did, or I did not?”

  “You didn’t really,” she said, “we were just thinking if we could find a way back ...”

  Paolo eyes looked sad. “I would miss you both. But I would break my own arm if it would help you return.”

  “Goodness! No need for that, Paolo! But you never know, we may need your help. I think genius-brain here still has some ideas he’s channelling from a long-dead relative.”

  Paolo frowned. “Channelling?”

  “Never mind.” She grinned. “Will you take me to the fields tomorrow? I’d love to see your farm!”

  Paolo blushed. “Of course. Anyway, it is forbidden to refuse a request from an Elder without good reason.” He smiled. “Nathan, come along. It will be like the old times.”

  “Without the bows and arrows you mean? Okay, that’d be cool.”

  Paolo’s brow furrowed again. “Cool? Like your plank on wheels?”

  Nathan shoved him on the shoulder playfully. “You got it, dude!”

  Sarina shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  And so it was over the next few weeks. They visited all the farms. Nathan helped re-engineer the plough mechanisms. He’d even started to build a skateboard for Lucio. “I have no idea how this will cope with cobbles,” he said, holding the contraption above his head and twisting it around.

  Occasionally he would disappear for long periods, and come back with a beaten look on his face. When she asked him what was up, he shook his head. “Spatial coordinates maybe, I dunno. I think I need great-great-grandpa to explain dark energy to me again.” He refused to say more, and stomped off.

  The day came when her cast was due to come off. Eva arrived with Lucio in tow, at the cabin Andreas had cleared—and divided into two separate spaces—for her and Nathan.

  Lucio held her hand while Eva painstakingly cut the cast off. Though she had no pain, she was disappointed to see the shrivelled state of her arm, and leaned down to look at the wrinkly skin, then recoiled. “Ughh! It stinks!” She wrinkled her nose and looked at Eva, who laughed.

  “You will have to bathe well today, but the air will soon take care of that. It will take another week or two to feel strong enough to use, and a lot longer to feel normal again.”

  Sarina nodded. “Thank you, Eva.” She flexed the wrist. It was stiff, and throbbed when she moved it. Fortunately she’d been taking some time to improve her left-handed painting skills, and had discovered with delight that some of the townswomen were skilled in the art of pastel-making. The remnants of Rona’s pastels that had come with her through the playground, what felt like lifetimes ago, were now long gone.

  She sighed. Rona. Her mother. Her friend Georgia. The competition. Art school. So many things to make her happy or sad, angry or joyful, but now, all gone. No matter what, she had to find her own way. Getting enough movement back in her wrist would be her first goal, then she had committed herself to teaching more painting techniques to the kids.

  Nathan knocked on the door.

  “Come in, it’s your cabin too!”

  He pushed the door open the rest of the way. “I wasn’t sure if you were decent.”

  “You don’t get undressed just to take a cast off, Nathan!”

  He pouted. “How would I know? I’ve never broken anything.” He sniffed the air. “Phew! What’s that smell?”

  She held up her wrist.

  “Ewww. That’s ugly-looking. And smelly.”

  “Did you say you hadn’t broken anything? Can I help remedy that?”

  “Ah, okay, sorry. How long before it’s fully-functioning?”

  “Some time yet,” Eva said. “But we can all help her with restoring movement, using it to carry things. The more she uses it, the quicker it will get strong.”

  “Excellent. There’s a big pile of wood we need brought up to the cabin. You can start there.” He kept a straight face until Sarina stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Anyway,” he said, “now the cast is off, we should talk. About ... you know.”

  “Oh! Yes. When do you want to do that?”

  He glanced at Eva and Lucio. Eva caught the look. “Lucio needs lunch. We will see you there. Make sure she has a large pile of plates to carry, Nathan,” and she looked at Sarina and winked.

  “Have you been teaching her to be cheeky?”

  Nathan shook his head. “Comes naturally I think. Now. Do you want to go home, or not?”

  Her stomach churned. Now she was torn. The townspeople had made her feel like a member of their one giant family, and surprisingly quickly, they’d both made a new life. But this wasn’t her world. She thought of her mother and started to cry, for the first time since ... well, a long while.

  He sat next to her on the bed. “If you’re feeling what I think you are, I know the feeling. It twists my gut to think of leaving here ... but Sarina, we have our own lives, our families, for better or for worse. I know if I manage to get back, I’m going to be a different person, because of all this”—he gestured around to the cabin and outside—“and I wouldn’t swap that experience for the world. I hope it’s made me a better person.”

  “Me too,” she blubbered. “Made me a better person, I mean.” She wiped her tears and looked at him. “Yes. Of course I want to go back. Do you think we can?”

  He nodded. “The idea must have seeded when you made that interference field.”

  “Huh?”

  “The mesh thing.”

  “Oh. So do I have to do that again, do you think?”

  “Something like it, yes. That’s why you need a fully-functioning right arm. Though from what I’ve seen, you’ve turned into a pretty good lefty these last two months.”

  She gasped. “Two months? Has it really been two months?”

  He nodded. “Just over, actually. Which is what has given me the time to try to work this out. Something I read about Grandpa Rosen”—she noticed he’d been dropping the ‘great-great’ recently. Maybe he’d realised how conceited it made him sound. ‘Grandpa Rosen’ brought to mind a nice image of an old man in his rocking chair and slippers. She realised he was stil
l talking—“which means, in theory anyway, it should be possible.” He peered closely at her. “Did you get any of that?”

  She smiled. “No, sorry. But I thought the link was severed, and closing the portal from both sides would prevent us opening another?”

  “Yes and no. That’s what I was just explaining, if you’d been listening. You see, I was looking at this one day”—he pulled out the mobile phone, which had only been usable as a paperweight ever since the fight with Valkrog and Makthryg—“and in a daytime fantasy, I thought how amazing it would be if it worked here, and I could dial home and say ‘come and get me’. Then I slapped myself. Of course it wouldn’t work here, even if they had mobile phones, they would probably use a different frequency, or the frequency I wanted to use was blocked, or used for something else.” He sat back with a smug grin. “Then I realised we might have the answer right there.”

  She was staring at him with a blank face.

  “Don’t you see?”

  She shook her head.

  “Frequency. It’s all to do with the frequency—vibration, if you like. The portals you’ve been opening, and that the Prof was trying to make with the collider, have all been created in the same spectrum of frequency. The same one we sealed off and blocked for further use. I’ll give you an example. Imagine you are out in the country, and someone switched off the sun. What would happen?”

  She felt silly. “Um, it would be dark?”

  “Right! And you couldn’t see a thing.”

  She frowned. “Yes, but what’s your point?”

  He held up the mobile phone. “You could still use this though, couldn’t you?” He had a smug grin.

  It was slowly dawning on her. “The mobile phone can make a connection, even if there is no light. Is that what you are saying?”

  He nodded. “Exactly. They function at completely different frequencies. One can still work, even when the other is blocked. A mobile phone signal can still work inside a completely unlit wooden cupboard.”