by Beca Lewis
“Don’t worry, Princess Pea,” Teddy whispered, “We had trouble telling you guys apart, too, at first.”
We both broke into giggles. I don’t know if the other Whistle Pigs could read our thoughts, but our giggles made them giggle too. Soon the whole room was laughing over nothing, really. But it sure felt good and broke the spell of gloom that had been hovering over the place.
The room they used was just another of the many beautiful places in the Castle. Now it had been set up with six stations partitioned off from each other with colorful curtains.
“Thank you for making this cheerful, Teddy,” I said.
“Speaking of cheerful,” Teddy whispered, nodding at my pocket.
I looked at him with a pleading look. He knew what I was asking. Would the test be okay for the Priscillas? And did he know what was wrong with them?
“It will, and I don’t,” he whispered into my ear, “But don’t worry. Let’s do this first.”
A Whistle Pig came over and led Beru to one of the curtained stations, and Teddy took me to mine.
“This is like a cross between an X-Ray and an MRI. However, it won’t make noise, and the rays that are going to look into your head aren’t dangerous. But the Priscillas would be better off doing this in the space that we have for those that are not so ‘human.’”
I lifted the Priscillas out of my pocket and placed them gently in Teddy’s hands, and he took them over to another station. I lay down on the bed, and a small drone like thing briefly hovered over my head and then moved away.
“Okay, all done,” Teddy said handing the Priscillas back to me. I kissed the top of their heads and noticed they were a little perkier. I thought it was probably that their curiosity had been piqued. Fairies are like me. They like knowing everything.
“That’s it? Do you have the results?”
Teddy took me by the elbow and led me out to a row of tables on the other side of the room. Beru was already there waiting for me. The other four Ginete brothers were staffing the tables. There was what looked like a laptop in front of each of them.
The Ginete I knew as Sam turned the machine around and I saw a picture of what I knew to be a brain.
“Your brain,” Sam said. “Nothing there, and nothing in Beru’s or the Priscillas, either.”
We all laughed. Nothing in my brain sounded about right.
By then everyone had arrived ready to be tested. The line going in was sober and understandably withdrawn. The line coming out was noticeably cheerier.
I noticed Ruta standing on the side looking miserable. I knew he was in charge of taking people away if they were infected. The reasoning was he was the most unlikely of everyone to be infected by either the thought-worms or the desire to be in command.
They were right about that. Ruta was incorrigible. He might be Mr. Grouch, he might not always approve of me, but Ruta was, well, Ruta was Ruta. I considered it one of the blessings of coming to Erda to have met Ruta. I waved at him. He pretended not to see me, but I saw the hint of a smile on his face. I wanted to hug him, but he would have hated that so I just winked at him.
We had agreed to meet in the atrium for dinner after the testing was done. The table was already set when we arrived. We sat down, and the metal toadstools came by with their trays of food. I was starving. I hadn’t realized how afraid I had been that I was infected. Now that that worry had been taken away, I felt a million times better.
Everyone else must have experienced the same thing because as another person entered the room, everyone brightened up more and more. James walked in with his brother John who looked the happiest I had ever seen him. I couldn’t stop myself. I hopped up and ran over to John and hugged him.
“Thank you, Kara,” John whispered in my ear. “I am not sure I deserve your admiration. I’m so negative sometimes.”
I stepped back and held John’s hands and said, “We need you to question, John. Don’t stop asking things that we might have missed.”
James leaned over and kissed my cheek. I hugged him as he said, “Thank you, Hannah.” I loved that James treated me like a daughter. His daughter Liza was a lucky girl.
When Ruta walked in as light-hearted as I had ever seen him, we knew all was well. No one in the Castle was infected with Deadsweep. Even the Priscillas were back to being mischievous. They flew over to Ruta and sat on his head. To his credit, he didn’t flinch.
Niko stood at the front of the table holding up his glass of water. I used to think of him like a gazelle on steroids. He used to scare me. Now, I was so used to him I had forgotten how much he looked like a Greek statue. His dark skin glowed in the light coming down through the atrium ceiling.
Niko taught us how to fight if necessary, but this fight was going to be different, and we all knew it. So he was standing there to encourage us all. We had passed the first test. There was more to come, but at that moment we were reveling in our good fortune.
“To us,” Niko said.
“To us,” we responded.
Deadsweep Thirty-Eight
“These are the things we need to work out,” Niko said. We were back in Professor Link’s classroom after having dinner.
“We have some ideas for each area, but let’s see if we can fill in more gaps by stating the problems up front.
“Here’s what we know. We know why people are acting out. The thought-worms are causing brains to malfunction. We know the worms live inside the brain. We know that in subzero cold they crawl out of the person’s ear and die. We know how to determine if someone is infected.
“Here’s what we don’t know. We conjecture that even though the thought-worms enter through the ear, it’s possible they get in another way too.
“We don’t know how Abbadon is getting them here. What’s the mode of delivery? How come some people are infected, and others aren’t? We don’t know how to kill them. We don’t know how to get them out of an infected person, without killing the person.”
Niko paused and looked around the room. None of us moved. It sounded hopeless. How were we supposed to stop something we knew so little about?
“Well, what was the big plan that Pita mentioned?” John asked, almost as sarcastically as he had been earlier that day.
“I think you have seen the results of what the Ginete and Whistle Pigs have accomplished so far, John. Without them, we wouldn’t know anything at all. We wouldn’t know that the thought-worms existed, nor would we be able to test people to be sure they are safe.
“While they were finding all that out, what were we doing? We were waiting for the information. We need to give Pita and Teddy our thanks, not our scorn.
“And to make that more imperative, we believe that it is possible that rifts between people, or within themselves, make us more attractive to the thought-worms. Easier to manipulate. Therefore, I stress that we remain calm and supportive of everyone, at all times.
“You can see that the Ginete are not here,” Niko continued. “That’s because they are busy preparing the next phase. They have not stopped working on the way to destroy Deadsweep before it’s too late.”
“What is the next phase?” I asked, sparing John the embarrassment of being the only one who asked the questions. Besides, I could see that he was still seething over Niko’s response. However, I knew Niko was right. We needed to heal all rifts. I trusted that his brother, James, would help John. I thought John was so scared he didn’t know what else to do but act out.
Niko’s face hardened as he answered my question. “Tomorrow morning most of us will be leaving the Castle. After being tested, more people will be let into the Castle. Then the doors will be closed again.
“A few Whistle Pigs will stay to maintain drone stations. They will need them just in case they need to test someone in the Castle. This decision is more for peace of mind than t
he belief that someone here will be infected later.
“Since we don’t know how Deadsweep thought-worms are transmitted, everything that comes into the Castle will be monitored. There won’t be much to track because the Castle is self-contained. Little, if anything, will be coming in. However, if something shows up, all of us will be alerted.
“In the meantime, some of us are heading back to Dalry to try and determine what the three men had in common.”
Niko paused and looked towards Suzanne.
“Thank you, Niko,” Suzanne said, taking over. “The dragons have brought bad news. Terrible news. There is unrest in every village that they have flown over.”
“Which means every village is infected?” John shouted.
“It means that in all the villages that they have seen, someone is infected. We can see the results of the fighting, and people are staying out of their gardens and the streets.”
Beru and the four men from their village stood up together. “Our village?” Beru asked for them all.
“Yes, we saw evidence of violence in Kinver, which is why the five of you and a Whistle Pig will be returning to Kinver in a Sound Bubble tomorrow. We’ll be sending you with the drone that can check people, so you can isolate those that are infected from those that aren’t.”
“We can’t send people everywhere, so we are concentrating on just a few villages. Kinver, Dalry, and Eiddwen. Dragons will be watching over each town, and there will be a drone for each group.
“Eiddwen was closed down the minute you left, Kara Beth. So far there is no sign of the infection, but we are in touch with Berta at all times, and she will let us know at the first sign. I sent a dragon to her yesterday with the drone and earplugs.
“Oh yes, earplugs. Although the thought-worms may be entering through other places than the ears, we do have a fairly invisible plug for everyone to wear in your ears. It’s almost the same technology as the ear muffs had been. You will hear just fine, but nothing can get inside your ears.”
“What if it’s not through the ears?” I asked.
“That’s why no one sleeps alone. We would notice if something crawled on us while we are awake. So while you sleep, someone else is going to be watching you at all times.”
When Suzanne said that Eiddwen was safe, at least for now, I had collapsed back on my seat. I hadn’t realized how frightened I had been that my father and all the lovely people I had met were in danger, or infected. It was such a relief I almost didn’t hear Suzanne say Berta’s name. It took a beat before I realized what she said.
“So Berta has been in touch with you all this time? Even while I was there?”
“Of course,” Suzanne laughed. “Do you think we would have left you undefended or us out of touch for even a minute?”
If things weren’t such a mess, I probably would have indulged a moment of pouting, but I managed to collect myself and act more like a grownup before anyone noticed except for Zeid who gave a soft snort. I tried one of Beru’s looks on him, but that only made him snort again.
Niko stepped to the front of the room again. “What we haven’t talked about yet is how we are going to subdue the villagers fighting each other. We have to do it without hurting anyone. And we will have to contain them. And feed them. And hope they don’t die before we discover how to get the thought-worms out.”
“How big a problem is this?” Zeid asked.
“In Dalry, almost everyone is fighting each other. There are only a few pockets where people are hiding from their own family and friends. It’s bad. In the few days we have been gone, something happened. We need to find out what and how as quickly as possible.
“The enemy that we will be fighting are our own people. Just as Abbadon wanted it to be.”
Deadsweep Thirty-Nine
The sun was just coming up over the horizon, a few rays hitting the top floors of the atrium. We were all waiting for the Sound Bubble. James, John, Thomas, and Mark stood together, James with his arm around John’s shoulder. They looked frightened but determined.
Beru was with me. We had stepped behind one of the enormous ferns, and I was sobbing. Beru was doing her best to comfort me, but she was torn between leaving me and knowing she had to go to Kinver.
The people in Kinver had not listened to her when she had told them about the Shrieks and Shatterskin. Later, the villagers had learned that she was right and stepped up to help fight. Beru hoped that they would listen to her and the brothers now as they attempted to protect the villagers against themselves.
If there were only a few infected people in the town, Beru and the men going back with her would use the other townspeople’s help to isolate the infected ones, and then use the gas that the Ginete had prepared to keep them subdued until we could find a cure.
If Kinver was engulfed with violence, the only choice they had was to get the ones who were not yet infected back to the relative safety of the Castle, using the Sound Bubbles.
“Don’t cry, Kara Beth,” Beru said, “We’ll be fine. It won’t be long until we meet again. Besides, we’ll be able to talk all the time on the channels that Professor Link has set up.”
I nodded and hugged her close, and she let me, resting her head on my shoulder. A few moments later we heard the beautiful harmony of the Sound Bubble coming closer. We walked hand in hand out to join everyone else and then, wiggling her fingers at me, Beru went to stand with the men and a Whistle Pig named Pete. Pete carried a bag which I knew contained the drone and the gas. I had already sobbed on James’ shoulder. He too had promised me that he and his family would be safe.
The glass ceiling opened and the bubble slowly descended. It is hard to feel anything but joy when the Sound Bubble arrives. It lowered itself and surrounded all six of them within seconds, paused, and lifted off. I waved until the bubble had risen out of sight and the ceiling had closed. I didn’t care that tears were still streaming down my face. I had learned that tears were a good thing, and just because I had tears on my face didn’t mean that I wasn’t ready.
The next to leave were Suzanne and Aki. They were going to Eiddwen. I hugged them both goodbye, not stopping to think that Aki had never hugged me before. I knew Aki had skills I had not yet experienced. I knew she could take care of herself. But I needed her to know how much she meant to me, so I had hugged her as hard as I could.
Aki was riding Suzanne, as Lady the dragon, to Eiddwen to assist Berta with the village. The first thing they were going to do was test my father, King Darius. If he were free of the Deadsweep, they would put him into a Sound Bubble and return him to the Castle. That was the plan. He wasn’t going to be given a chance to say no.
There was a side benefit. Perhaps being in the Castle with his people would rouse my father from the depression he had fallen into. Leif had said he would help, and I had a feeling a little wizard magic might be just what my father needed.
Leif and Sarah had appeared in time to say goodbye to everyone. They were staying in the Castle with Link. Link needed to be safe to keep all our channels open. Leif and Sarah could be wherever they were required at any moment, but staying in the Castle meant they could help with the crowds of people who would be arriving, and help keep order. And of course, support the Ginete and Whistle Pigs who were staying behind. They would be using the information that we would send back to find the answers to all the questions we still had.
We still needed to know how the thought-worms were getting from town to town. We needed to know how to stop them from entering the brain and how to remove them from everyone that has already been infected.
The teams going out into the towns would be doing crowd control and information gathering, but it was the people back in the Castle who were going to discover how to stop Deadsweep from taking over the Kingdom of Zerenity.
Suzanne stepped into a clearing in the atrium
and transformed into Lady. It never failed to amaze me. One second she was the beautiful Suzanne, and the next she was a beautiful pileated dragon. She was still Suzanne, but also Lady the dragon. A dragon that had grown big enough to carry a person, or two, or three.
Aki climbed onto Lady’s back. Aki carried a drone and the gas in a backpack. Link wanted to send a Whistle Pig with them, but Aki said they would be fine. And, besides, a Whistle Pig riding a dragon wasn’t going to happen. Both Lady and the Whistle Pig agreed with that decision.
Aki’s eyes grew dark, the ceiling opened, and they were off. Watching them leave, I remembered that Suzanne had hinted there were other shapeshifters in Erda, and I wondered if I would meet them soon.
Beside me, I heard Professor Link whisper, “God speed.” I had a feeling that he was directing that wish to Aki more than anyone else, and I wondered if there was something more going on between the two of them than just friendship.
If Beru had been there, she would have pinched my leg to make sure I didn’t say anything. Instead, this time it was Zeid who pinched me, which startled me so much I jumped a little, but no one seemed to notice. Everyone had too many tears in their eyes to see anything.
Deadsweep Forty
After everyone had gone, those of us who were left had one last meeting with Link. Niko, Zeid, Ruta, and I were going to Dalry. It was where the dragons had reported the most violence, and Link wanted to go over a few things with us before we headed out.
He reminded us that our main job was to find a connection between the three men, and to extract the remaining unaffected people from the village without getting hurt ourselves, or harming anyone.
