The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  “It is those rifts that Abbadon will target. It’s how an infection like Deadsweep might be able to get in. Just like infections can get in through cuts in the skin. They need to be healed.

  “Deadsweep is a mental infection. At the moment, it’s an invisible infection, which makes it more dangerous than the Shrieks or Shatterskin. Therefore, we can’t take any chances. Repair the riffs. No matter how small.

  “The one that is right in front of you is the one with Beru. It’s dangerous for you both, and then ultimately for all of us. See if you can discover why her feelings are so hurt. That’s something you can do right now.”

  I nodded and then impulsively leaned over and kissed his cheek. Leif smiled, his blue eyes twinkling back at me. At that moment all was right with the world. Leif patted my hand and said, “You have it in you to be a great Queen, Princess Kara Beth.”

  Stunned, I watched him as he stood—almost like water standing up it was so smooth—and reached out his hand for his staff. Before I could blink, the staff was in his hand, looking ordinary even though I knew it wasn’t. As Leif walked out the door, he turned once more and smiled at me.

  I stood and looked down the hallway after him, wondering at what I had just seen. I didn’t see what I now knew to be a wizard. Instead, I saw a blue haze surrounding a blue light—Leif and Sarah.

  There was so much I didn’t know. And I knew there was not that much time to learn it.

  Deadsweep Twenty

  I went looking for Beru. The fact that she wasn’t waiting for me reinforced what Leif had told me. We had a problem. Beru always waited for me. She had been my guide from the moment I fell through the portal.

  Ruta, on the other hand, hadn’t been particularly happy about my arrival. Truthfully he had been a huge grouch head. However, Beru took on my clumsiness, confusion, and lack of awareness as if it was a pleasure to help me.

  It was Beru who taught me how to feel in order to see things that are invisible to the eye. I first learned to do that by internally feeling to find the door to get to my room in the Castle. After that, I could feel, and then see, all the door numbers previously invisible to me.

  It was Beru who taught me to feel nature, the earth, the trees, wind, and sky and let them carry me along as we ran from the Shrieks. It was my first taste of what people in the Earth Realm call magic. In Erda, they know it is the way the world works, it is the essence of Life.

  Now, as I searched for Beru, I didn’t need to do anything to see the door numbers. And even though we were indoors, I could feel the light that the roots were radiating from where they were hidden with the walls. So many things that I had struggled with had become easier because Beru had been my guide.

  Now, I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t feel her. That meant she was hiding. I stopped to think about why she would hide. I hadn’t been that mean to her that morning.

  Mean enough, but we had tiffs before and then laughed them off. Was it me that had hurt her, or was something else going on and I had pushed her over the edge?

  We had just come from Beru’s village. Had she been happy there? Thinking back I realized that something had been wrong there too. She had looked like the beautiful flower person that she always looked like, but I wasn’t sure I had heard her tinkling bell laugh. If she had laughed, it had sounded a little off. No bells. Why hadn’t I noticed?

  Perhaps it was because I expected her to be a little sad. Her parents hadn’t returned to the village. She hadn’t seen them since they left after Beru warned them about Shatterskin.

  When I had first come to the Castle, Beru had berated me for not getting to know the people that were helping me. Instead, I was calling them things like Miss Floaty, Professor Pinhead, and Gazelle man. I had learned their real names after that—Aki, Professor Link, and Niko—but not much else.

  We had trained, fought, laughed, worried, and planned together, but I didn’t know their history. I barely knew Ruta and Beru’s even though I was with them the most.

  Had Ruta and Beru known me before I went to Earth? I remembered the Priscillas and Zeid, but what about everyone else?

  The temptation to fall into the rabbit hole of beating myself up was so intense I had to stop and put my hand on the wall and feel the light pulsing through it. I couldn’t afford that emotion. I could rectify the situation as it became appropriate, but regret was not going to defeat Deadsweep or find Beru.

  Putting my hand on the wall gave me an idea. I took off my shoes and felt the earth through the Castle floor. It wasn’t as hard as it might seem even though we were in a building. In Erda, everything retained its life force. Probably did in Earth too, but I didn’t know to look for it when I lived there.

  I walked in meditation, feeling our connection. I let my love for Beru and her strength send out waves like sonar. I stopped looking for her. Instead, I remembered that she and I were connected. It was a very different feeling than searching for a lost person.

  It didn’t take long before I knew where I was going. I had never been there before. I was going to Beru’s room. Why hadn’t I been there before? She always came to me, that’s why. She did most of the work. She took care of me.

  Now it was my turn to go to her, do the work of taking care of her. Whatever she needed, I would be there for her.

  A few minutes later, I was standing outside a room in a hallway I never knew existed. That wasn’t so unusual. The Castle was huge. Besides, I was usually either in training, planning, eating, or sleeping. There hadn’t been that much time to explore.

  I felt it again. That desire to be mad at myself. Why hadn’t I done this before? Regret and self-recrimination were howling around me trying to get in. This time, I pretended that Pris was pulling my hair yelling at me to stop it. I smiled and knocked on the door.

  The door opened by itself and I stepped into a room that reminded me of Beru’s village.

  Even though we were inside the Castle, there were two gardens lovingly tended on each side of the door. To get into the room itself, I walked under an arbor. Everything was blooming. The air was filled with the scent of roses and fresh earth.

  I thought that the tree roots must be giving off the kind of light that these plants needed to grow, because there was only one window, although it was so big it took up almost the whole wall of the interior part of Beru’s room. The curtains were closed. It was so dark I had to wait for my eyes to adjust before I could see that the room held a bed, a small table, and two chairs.

  Sitting in one chair, looking as bleak as I had ever seen her was Beru. She gestured to the other chair. As I got closer, I saw the tracks of tears running down Beru’s beautiful face. This was Beru who sewed little ladybug appliqués inside my leggings to remind me of my Earth mother and what she did for me. This was Beru who tried to bring happiness wherever she went.

  My heart broke for her. I sat and waited. I would remain forever if I needed to.

  Deadsweep Twenty-One

  I did wait a long time. We just sat there, both of us staring at the table, until finally Beru said, “Thank you for coming to find me, Hannah.”

  That was the second time that day that I was called by my Earth name, Hannah. When I had first found out that I was Princess Kara Beth I never wanted to be called that. Ever. But once I realized that Princess Kara Beth was the name that inspired people to fight back against Abbadon, I accepted it. I admitted who I was and stopped resisting it. I let it be true.

  However, even though it had been over six months that I had been in Erda, I was still working on that acceptance. I was accepting the fact that I had magic skills, and that I had a responsibility to save the Kingdom. I was much more reluctant to accept the latter.

  The title Princess sounded lovely, but as far as I am concerned, it asks more than it gives. I didn’t want to even think about what being a Queen would mean. Just thi
nking about the responsibility and the rules freaked me out.

  Sure, it might be fun to wear a crown once in a while, but I could do that for a costume party—no need to be a real queen to wear a crown.

  But for Beru to call me Hannah meant something. Beru hadn’t known me in Earth. Or at least I didn’t think so. What did the Earth Hannah know that perhaps the Erda Kara Beth had forgotten?

  The answer was so obvious that I smacked myself in the head, which made Beru giggle just a bit. She could read my mind. She knew I had remembered something I was better at doing in the Earth Realm than I was in Erda. I was a better friend. A better comforter. Yes, I had been a child in Earth, but I had understood the need for being childlike and loving without hesitation.

  Since arriving in Erda, I had held back, thinking that childlike would not be princess-like. And that comforting might not be something that people wanted. I have never claimed not to be an idiot, but this realization was so fundamental I felt like one. But I laughed about it instead of being mad at myself. And then Beru laughed.

  I stuck out my hand, and she slid her tiny hand on top of mine, and we wiggled our fingers at each other and laughed again. Beru laughed with tears running down her face, which on her was quite charming.

  I stood up and looked around at Beru’s room. There was a small kitchen against one of the walls, just like mine. “We need a cuppa,” I said, pretending that it was something I always said, instead of something I heard people say and thought was cute.

  I found the water, the tea, and managed to make us a cup of some floral blend that was delicious. On the way back to the table, I opened the curtains and let the sunlight stream in. From Beru’s room, I could see Dalry, the village where I first met the Ginete. Perhaps a walk into the town later would be good for both of us. We could stop into the tavern with the squeaky sign and see if people still stared at me as if I was an unwanted alien.

  “Okay, Beru, talk to me,” I said. “I know this can’t be about me being such a jerk, although I am sure that didn’t help.”

  When she didn’t answer, I asked questions instead. I asked her about her family. What were her mother and father like? Did she get along with her parents? Was she like her parents or different? Did she have other relatives?

  I had so many questions. The same kind of questions I would have asked in Earth to get to know my friends. Something I had entirely skipped over in Erda.

  Yes, she missed her parents even though they never quite understood her. And no, she wasn’t much like them. They were more content with how things were. She loved change. Not necessarily Abbadon type change, but change was good in Beru’s eyes.

  She was worried. Why hadn’t she heard from her parents? No, she didn’t have other relatives. She thought of Ruta as her brother. Now that was news to me. I knew the two of them were close, but not that close.

  It was dinner time by the time we had finished talking. Our tea had long gone cold, but neither one of us had noticed. We had shut the door on the problems out there in the world and concentrated on being friends.

  Leif was right. There had been a rift between us, but it wasn’t so much the riff of what had happened, but what hadn’t happened. I realized that if we were going to destroy something that infected people without their knowledge, then we were going to have to be closer than ever before.

  As we walked to dinner together, Beru and I talked about the possibility that Abbadon was going to force a better world, because instead of being complacent, we were all waking up.

  The people of Zerenity were realizing that they needed to practice their magic skills instead of being complacent about them.

  We would all find deeper friendships within our communities. We would take better care of each other. Yes, perhaps it was being forced on us because of something that could infect us if we didn’t pay attention, but we could use it for good.

  “I agree with all of that, Kara Beth,” Beru said. “But there is also the chance it tears us apart. If we don’t know how Deadsweep infects people they might go off on their own and hide, or suspect friends and neighbors of trying to infect them. It could turn into a disaster.”

  “We could destroy ourselves, even without Abbadon’s help,” I agreed.

  “So how do we stop that from happening?” Beru asked.

  It was one more question that neither of us had an answer to. It could go either way. We needed much more information, and we needed it quickly.

  Deadsweep Twenty-Two

  Everyone was at dinner except for Earl and Ariel. I assumed they were off commanding storms and wind where they were needed. They were both instrumental in destroying the Shrieks and Shatterskin. Earl, as Coro, had dumped a deluge of salt water on the Shrieks and Ariel, as the wind, kept pushing it the right direction until every green blob had been dissolved.

  Then the Priscillas insect friends had come along and cleaned up all the green globs left lying on the ground, and that was the end of them.

  I wondered briefly where all those insects had gone and shivered thinking they might be around. When I heard the Priscillas giggle, it made me wonder. What had they done with them?

  La, who didn’t like misinformation being scattered around even in my imagination, pushed into my head a picture of where they were.

  The Priscillas had returned them to a land far away from us. It was where they had lived before, and they were happy to return to their home. They were needed there as part of the ecosystem. Here they would have always been looking for food sources that didn’t exist.

  The Priscillas had been sitting on the table waiting for me. I realized how kind it had been of them to let me go to see Beru by myself. I loved the Priscillas. Not just because they were the fairies of my dreams—what little girl didn’t think about fairies— but they were smart and loyal and kept me in line. Pris was justifiably famous for her faces that could make people do things or stop doing things. I had learned early not to piss off a fairy, especially Pris.

  Leif caught my eye as Beru and I came into the room together. We probably gave away the fact that our rift had been healed because we were holding hands. It was something I had never done before and I could feel Ruta jerk back in shock. I could almost hear him say, “What, Miss High and Mighty lowers herself to holding hands?”

  Ruta didn’t actually dislike me. He had just formed an opinion of me when we first met that I thought too much of myself. He had been correct, of course. In turn, I had thought Ruta was the biggest grump I had ever known. I was right about that, too. But the two of us were changing, and I admired and respected Ruta, especially knowing now how much he meant to Beru.

  Ruta was the healer in the group. Something I wouldn’t have guessed and didn’t know until after the battle with Shatterskin when he had healed many of us. His healing abilities were something I would need to learn more about. How was Ruta healing? Why had he kept it a secret? Aki had told me it was because they didn’t want him to be targeted by Abbadon. That didn’t seem like the whole reason.

  Beru and I didn’t sit together. We had both decided to get to know the other people on our team better. I thought she was referring to me, but she assured me that there were many people in the group she didn’t know well. At least not well enough to see if anything had changed, or if they needed help, or if an infection had begun.

  She went to sit next to Suzanne, and I ended up next to Thomas, chosen because that’s where the Priscillas had decided they wanted me to sit. It was a good idea. Although Thomas, as one of the four men from Kinver, had been around for the Shatterskin destruction, we had never really talked.

  I asked him many of the same questions I had asked Beru. I asked him why he had chosen to come with us again. He said it was because of James. He had always admired James and his two brothers. John, of course, was with us, but their other brother had stayed behind to take ca
re of the families and the family business. It was a good decision. I always thought it was idiotic that men went off to war leaving families behind unprotected.

  Thomas said he didn’t have a family. Someday he hoped to marry and have children, but for now, the adventure of going after Abbadon was what called him. “Yes,” he said, “I know it’s dangerous. But at the same time, I will always have these memories.” Thomas waved his hand around the table, and I knew what he meant.

  It was odd how sometimes evil brought people together more than good times. It was a disquieting thought, and one I tucked away for future reference

  After the metal toadstools brought us dessert, and I patted one on the head and I swear it purred at me, Sam asked me if I wanted to go into the village the next day.

  Since I had just thought about how much I would like to revisit Dalry, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Someone either stuck that idea into my head or picked up on it. But Sam, a Ginete, asking me? Pita was the Ginete we dealt with the most because he was, as he called himself, the head brother. So Sam asking me instead of Pita meant something. Plus, although the first time I had met the Ginete was in the village, I had the impression that the town was a little leery of them.

  “Oh, they still are,” Sam said. “It’s kind of fun to mess with them.”

  Seeing my confusion, Zeid stepped in. “We’re all going, Kara. Or at least most of us. And yes, we’re messing with your expectations. Or at least Pita and his brothers are.”

  I looked over at the Ginete brothers. They always reminded me of a combination lighthouse with their huge eyes and a dwarf, or maybe ET. But I was warned never to call them dwarfs. I didn’t want to see what would happen if I did. What I did know is that they were crucial to the success of our last mission. Not fighters. Providers. They enabled us to do what we needed to do.