The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  When I stood up all my friends stood too. “Have you all known who I am?”

  When no one answered, I had my answer. Yes, they had known and had waited for me to remember. To return. To protect the kingdom from the man who threatened to destroy everything in his path. I remembered Abbadon and his monsters. And I was mad.

  “Do you want to know our plan, Princess Kara Beth?”

  “I do. But first I don’t want to be called Princess Kara Beth or even Kara. Please call me Hannah. Someday I may return to the name you have given me. But for now, I am Hannah.”

  I looked around. “I don’t remember everything. I’m afraid because I still don’t have a memory of any powers I might have once had. I also don’t know if all of you were here with me before.”

  “Your parents thought it best to have you forget while you lived in the Earth dimension, Hannah,” Suzanna said.

  “It may take time for your powers and your memory to return to you, but we trust that it will. Plus you have your lifetimes in the Earth dimension that will help. You have learned ways of seeing things that we might not see because we have been here, surviving, waiting for the right time to bring you back and fight,” Niko said.

  I turned to Zeid. “Did I know you before?”

  It must have been a strange question to ask because I saw everyone glance at each other before Zeid answered. “You did. But that’s not important at this time. Now we must be going.”

  With one last glance at Zeid, thinking of all the things he might not be telling me, I answered. “So be it. Let’s go.”

  To Beru, I whispered, “Where are we going?”

  I might have remembered that I used to live in Erda, and know that I used to be royalty, but for the most part, I was still the clueless person I was before the ceremony. I hoped that would change soon, but in the meantime, I was going to have to count on Beru to get me through it.

  “And me,” I heard a tiny voice whisper.

  I looked down and saw a little face peeking out of my coat pocket. “Now, who are you?” I asked.

  And then I remembered.

  Shatterskin Twenty-Three

  “Pris!” I yelled as I snatched my friend from my pocket.

  “Stop it!” Pris said as she wiggled in my hand.

  But I couldn’t stop clutching her. I had never been so happy to see anyone. Still holding her in my fist, I asked, “Are your sisters here?” I was practically yelling at her until Beru put a restraining hand on my arm.

  “Whoops,” I whispered. “Yes, I must be quiet. Still, are your sisters here too?”

  By then I had opened my hand, and Pris was sitting on it smiling at me. She was as beautiful as I remembered. I realized that I didn’t know how long I had been away. I remembered two short lifetimes in the Earth dimension. But were there more that I didn’t remember? Did Pris look the same because I hadn’t been away for long in their time? Or was it because she didn’t age?

  Either way, she was there, sitting in my hand like old times. When I saw her, I felt as if the door into my past that had begun to open during the ceremony cracked open a little bit further. I remembered playing together.

  Pris had her hair in pigtails with tiny bows on the end of each of them. I remembered pulling them and her laughing and flying off. Having Pris as a friend when I was little was like having a live doll with wings. Smart, funny, and very clever. I also recalled getting in a lot of trouble together.

  “This is good, that you remember us,” Pris said. “Beru wanted to surprise you. But I wasn’t sure you would remember me, even after the ceremony. To answer your question, though, yes, they are here too.”

  Pris waved her hand, and I looked up to see two more tiny fairies heading my way. Cil and La. I remember asking Pris about their names. She had told me that their mother wanted to be able to call “Priscilla,” and they would all come. Most people couldn’t tell them apart. But I could. Pris was the oldest sister and had a tiny birthmark that looked like a star on her forehead. Cil was the only one with green eyes, and La’s hair had one streak of white in the front.

  The sisters landed on each shoulder and kissed my cheek. I couldn’t help it. My eyes overflowed. They both giggled and flicked off the tears at their older sister. Just like old times.

  “Thank you, Beru,” I said.

  “I thought you could use their company. Besides, they were driving everyone crazy wanting to see you. And now that they’re here, it’s time for us to leave. We have a long way to travel, and a few stops to make.”

  The three sisters tucked into my pockets ready to travel. As much as they like flying, they love being attached to someone and riding along more. I could hear them humming in my pocket, and my heart was happy in spite of the danger that lay ahead.

  “What stops? And I don’t see Suzanne. Isn’t she going with us?” I asked.

  “She went ahead. We need to collect your army, don’t we?” Beru said with a huff. “Look around you. As wonderful as we all are, do you think we can defeat the Shrieks and Shatterskin by ourselves? Get a grip, let’s go. Stop gibber jabbing and start walking.”

  If Beru had talked to me like that a month before I probably would have started to cry. This time I knew what she was doing. She was hiding how afraid she was for all of us, especially for me. I knew she had been assigned to me by Earl. But I also knew she cared for me, the same way I cared for her. There was no way I was going to let anything happen to her.

  As I looked around, I realized that I was not going to let anything happen to any of them. I had no idea how I was going to defeat Abbadon’s monsters. But I knew we could do it. Somehow. We’d figure it out. If we needed an army, then I was ready to get them. But I thought that there could be another way. Something kept flashing in the back of my mind. It would come to me.

  I just hoped it would come to me in time.

  The moon lit the way as Ruta led us through the forest. I knew now that the forest responded to Ruta. I knew that somehow everything moved to make a clear path for him, and therefore for us, so of course he would go first. The rest of us followed.

  Beru darted in and out of the forest, never losing sight of our little band, and always making sure that I knew where she was at all times. She was hard to see in the trees unless you knew what to look for. Aki walked with Ruta, and Niko was behind all of us. Up ahead I could hear Lady drumming. She was scouting ahead of us, sending back signals about which way to go,

  My friends walked together as if they had done this before many times. They were a team. I could see that now. Trained, alert, and prepared. I wondered how long they had waited for me to come back. The list of questions that I had kept stacking up.

  During my squealing with happiness fit when I saw Pris and her sisters, Zeid had stood aside and watched with a tiny smile on his lips. As we started moving, Zeid moved up to walk beside me. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell something was on his mind. Something had happened during the ceremony, or more accurately, something hadn’t happened that upset him.

  Perhaps he expected me to remember him and was disappointed that I didn’t. If I were in his shoes, I would be disappointed too. Still, he walked beside me, and I knew he was there because he wanted to be and he would protect me no matter what. I just didn’t know why.

  Shatterskin Twenty-Four

  “Why don’t we ride in the bubble?” I asked Beru.

  I was already tired of walking. We had stopped to rest by a stream to fill our water containers and eat. Judging from the sun, since there were no watches, I figured we’d been walking steadily for at least five hours.

  How much further could it be? Besides if there was magic everywhere why weren’t we using it? It seemed like a reasonable question to me, but Beru gave me a look that would have stunned a bird off its branch.

  Apparently, m
y question wasn’t worth answering because she stormed off to sit beside Ruta. The Priscillas had popped themselves out of my pocket and sat sunning themselves on a rock while snacking on sunflower seeds. Cil had flown off and returned with them to share with her sisters.

  Who knew how she found sunflowers in a forest, but if anyone could find food it was fairies. They had to have a nose for food. As tiny as they were they had to eat a lot, to keep their energy flowing. It reminded me of hummingbirds back home. Maybe it was hummingbirds in the Earth dimension and fairies in Erda? I added it to my growing list of questions.

  The rest of us were sitting in a circle eating food we had packed in our backpacks. Well, I didn’t pack mine. Beru must have done it before handing it to me. I snuck a look over at her sitting with her back to me talking to Ruta about something. Maybe she had a right to be angry with me. I was complaining even when so much had been done for me. But magic was to be used, right?

  “Wrong,” Niko said. “Wrong thinking. Stupid thinking. Selfish thinking.”

  Aki and Niko hadn’t said a word to me since the ceremony, so I was startled by him sitting beside me, the fact he was reading my thoughts willy-nilly, and by what he said. Niko was always short on words, and always abrupt, so maybe I shouldn’t have been. But, hadn’t I learned anything? People were still reading my mind, and my feelings were still getting hurt.

  “You’ll never be able to totally block any of us, Hannah,” Niko said. “You might not like it, but for now it’s for your own protection. Think of it like any of the protective forces you know from the Earth dimension, like the police or military. They wear devices to communicate with each other. We don’t need physical devices to communicate. Just as we don’t need most of the physical equipment you are used to using. We have harnessed energy differently.

  “As for using magic to get a ride. No. Not done. We are not wasteful. We don’t abuse the gift we have been given. If there is a reason to use magic we will. Not until then.”

  Taking advantage of Niko’s talking spree, I decided to ask him more questions. I could ponder what he had said as we walked. Didn’t like it, but I sort of, kind of, understood.

  “May I ask, please, Niko, how long we will be walking today and where we are going.”

  “Today we will walk until twilight. Use the time wisely. Think. Practice your fighting skills in your head. Look around you. Listen. You are not a little girl anymore, Hannah. You are Princess Kara Beth whether you like it or not. Remember yourself, because if you survive, someday you will be Queen Kara Beth. And if you don’t survive, neither does this world. Grow up, Hannah.”

  Niko walked away and turned his back on me the same way that Beru had done.

  Everyone had heard. I was mortified. I wanted to get up and stomp off. I wanted a door to slam. I wanted to cry, yell, run away. Instead, I sat on my rock and stared straight ahead. Grow up. Right. Easy to say. But I knew he was right. I was whining. No one else was, and for some reason, their fate rested in my hands. They didn’t ask for this either.

  No one said anything. It felt as if the entire forest had sucked in its breath and was waiting. Even the birds were silent. There was nothing for me to say except, “I’m sorry.”

  The forest let out its breath, and everyone returned to eating and murmuring with each other. The Priscillas flew to my head and attached themselves to my hair. If they did it the right way, they looked like decorations. La leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Everything will be okay, Hannah.”

  Simple words that spun through me washing away my frustration and revealing that tiny flame of purpose I had felt before, back in the Castle. I whispered back, “Thank you.” I lifted my head to the sun and let its presence fill me with renewed energy. Closing my eyes, I did a short meditation that Aki had taught me.

  I could feel the warmth of the sun, so it was easy to imagine light moving through me, filling me, dropping down into the earth and rising into the sky. I imagined the light moving out into an ever-widening circle surrounding my team and me with its power and protection.

  The rock that I was sitting on wasn’t solid anymore. It was a living, breathing being. Underneath it, I could sense tree roots connecting in a mass of intertwining fibers. They too were breathing. Everything was breathing. The world was breathing.

  One last light pulse and the image was gone. My eyes flew open, and I looked around. The world looked the same as it did before. What was that? Was I going crazy?

  Niko and Beru were no longer sitting with their backs to me. Everyone was smiling at me. Well, if I was crazy, then they were too. Might as well go with it. Besides, I felt the difference in myself. I felt supported. Not tired at all. The flame was still there, burning a little brighter than before.

  Niko gave me a nod. I had done something right. I corrected myself. I had gotten out of the way and allowed something to happen.

  I heard Lady’s drumming in the distance. This time I knew what she was saying. The coast was clear. It was time to move on. It was only after we had been walking another few hours that I realized that Niko had never told me where we were going.

  It pleased me that the need to know had faded. That thought must have pleased Niko too because I heard him say in my head. “Well done, Hannah.”

  Shatterskin Twenty-Five

  Niko was true to his word. We stopped at twilight. Everyone helped gather downed branches and logs from the forest floor. When we had enough wood, Beru held her hand out and started the fire, as easily as she had put it out before, right after I came through the portal. A million years ago. Or so it felt. I still had a bit of homesickness in my stomach, but it was fading, like a dream. I could sense the memories in the back of my mind, but details were blurry.

  Watching Beru starting and stopping fires, I wanted to do what looked like magic as effortlessly as she did, as they all did. Like Ruta clearing a path through the trees, or Aki levitating, or Suzanne appearing and disappearing. I realized that I had accepted them as part of my day. Magic as a way of being. And yet, I didn’t have any magic, let alone effortless magic. Or, if I did, it hadn’t appeared. I hoped I found it before it was too late.

  While we ate, Ruta was making trips in and out of the woods with what looked like logs, but he laid them in a circle around the fire rather than putting them in. I was too hungry to be more than slightly curious. Beru had produced bars out of my pack, and I was so used to her providing for me I didn’t bother to ask her how she kept doing that. Niko had filled all our water pouches, but I didn’t know where he had gotten the water. We had moved away from the stream. And again there were rocks to sit on, and I wondered how there were always rocks where we needed them.

  Back in the Earth dimension, all of this would have been extraordinary. Here, in Erda it was common. Or so it seemed.

  “You’re right about that, Hannah,” Zeid said sitting beside me. “And yet you’re wrong about that too.”

  “Zounds, Zeid, you keep doing that. You keep sneaking up on me! Cut it out! And stop listening in on my thinking, for ziffer’s sake.”

  Zeid laughed at me. “If you would pay attention, you would see me coming. Don’t you think that is part of what you need to learn? I’m not dangerous when I sneak up on you, but other people and beings will be. As for reading your mind, stop leaving it wide open to people like me.”

  “People like you? What kind of person are you? Mind reader? And what did you mean I was right and I was wrong.”

  “You’re right. It is common among us.” Zeid looked around the circle. “Our little crew has been gathered precisely for their skills. Each member has spent years honing their art. It’s second nature to them.

  “However, you’re wrong, because outside of these friends magic is a dying art. People have stopped practicing it. Many people have become complacent. They use their skills just enough to provide for themselves and hav
e a decent life. They remain apathetic to the danger of losing their abilities.”

  “So everyone in Erda has magical skills, they just don’t use them?”

  “Of course. Look around. Nature provides everything. It’s the visible expression of life that holds the earth together. Energy, force, doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s all around. In you. Around you. In everyone and around everyone.

  “There’s more than one reason why we are walking, Hannah. You are here to learn. To reconnect. To find yourself.” Zeid’s eyes burned into me as if his passion for what he was saying could somehow connect me to my skills.

  I looked away, barely able to handle what he was saying. If it was around and in me, why couldn’t I feel it yet?

  “Look, Hannah. You have to stop worrying about it. Part of using the magic within and finding your specific talent, is letting go and trusting. It’s a mindset. You are Princess Kara Beth. You have used your skills in the past. They haven’t gone anywhere.”

  “People keep reminding me that I am a zonking princess as if that will help. It just makes me feel worse.”

  Zeid shook his head. “Sometimes, Hannah, you disappoint me. But I do believe that we are on a mission that will succeed. It has to. Abbadon will destroy all that you see if we don’t. Without us stopping him, he will kill everyone. He wants to be the only person in Erda with magic skills. He wants to rule all of Erda. There is no way that we can allow evil to be the winner here. And Abbadon is the king of evil.

  “We will succeed. You will step up and be who you are. I know that you will, Hannah.”

  As Zeid moved away, I thought that he was dangerous, to me anyway. I tried not to notice how he looked at me and how that felt. Sometimes I could feel his azure eyes staring at me when he didn’t think I was paying attention. I paid too much attention to him, that was the problem. I couldn’t let myself feel anything for him. It made me feel disloyal to Johnny. That boy was fading in my dreams and Zeid was not helping. Zeid was wrong. He is dangerous.