by Beca Lewis
There was one more thing that I was supposed to do. I was to try out using my bracelet. Sarah had shown me what my mother used to do with it, but there had been no time to practice.
Everyone going to Dalry had seen the bracelet in action when my mother used it. Why she didn’t have it on her when she went to visit Ruta’s village no one would ever know. However, I knew that everyone assumed she wanted to make sure her daughter, me, had it in case she never came back.
Mom had given it to Link right after they sent me to the Earth dimension. She had asked him to give it to me as soon as I returned to Erda. At the time, no one knew I would forget all my magic skills and would have to rediscover them. I think my mother thought I would put it on, and boom, I would be able to help save the Kingdom with it. After all, I was her daughter. It didn’t happen.
Once Sarah realized that I needed help accessing what it could do and that I was ready to learn, she stepped in to teach me. Sarah projected pictures of my mother practicing with the bracelet. Like the skills that Niko taught, no one thought about using magic as a defense or as a weapon until Abbadon decided to take over the world. Watching my Erda mother, Rowena, practice, I knew she had been practicing for fun, with no thought it would be necessary for defending anything.
Knowing I would never see her again, and that her final wishes were for me to be happy and safe, was hard for me. Watching her had been both devastating and exciting. It was in her memory that I would use the bracelet. And like her, only for good.
The jasper stone’s picture in the bracelet depicted a tree, and it was the powers of trees and stones that I was going to call upon. Picture jasper is valued for its deep connection to the earth. After all, it was the pressures and the forces of the planet that formed the picture found in the stone.
The stone itself symbolizes nurturing and protection, while the tree is the provider of all the things that life needs in Erda. The two of them together plus what Sarah was teaching me, would be very helpful during our mission to Dalry. That is, if I could make it work.
If all else failed, I could shoot lightning bolts and fireballs, but I wasn’t sure either of those would be useful except for maybe as scare tactics to get people to listen. I didn’t think that the thought-worms were going to turn and run away from me because of the lightning display. Although I did love the picture of those little worms slithering as fast as possible to their destruction.
Link also reminded me of the button that I wore. If I was in trouble, I was to push it. He held both my hands and looked me straight in the eyes as he reminded me once again that the Kingdom of Zerenity needed a leader, I was not to be taking any chances. I did my best to nod as if I agreed, but I wasn’t sure that I did.
However, I knew that Zeid had been told to push the button if I didn’t. Because even though I knew what Link told me was true, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to make that choice. Save myself at the expense of someone else? I didn’t think I could do that.
Cahir was traveling with us. He and his wolf pack friends would help round people up if necessary. I hoped it wouldn’t be, but I was happy that he would be walking with me for a while at least.
That left the Priscillas. Having recovered from their depression, which had turned out to be worry that they were infected, they were flitting around all of us as we made our plans. They wanted to go with me. At first Link and Niko said no, but when it became apparent that they would sneak off anyway, it was agreed that we could take them with us. I was delighted, and a little worried.
Although there was no evidence that the thought-worms had any use for fairy brains—so they probably weren’t in danger that way—it was the violent crowds that had me worried. However, the Priscillas agreed to stay out of harm’s way. They also argued that of all of us, they were most likely to see where the worms were coming from. Plus, they said they had a secret weapon that they would engage when we were ready.
Remembering the insects the Priscillas had recruited that had done the final job of eliminating the Shrieks, I thought that perhaps they had something like that up their sleeve that might save the day. I couldn’t wait to see what they were planning.
The Ginete and the remaining Whistle Pigs were returning to their underground laboratory to take the bits of evidence that we would find and turn them into something useful for stopping Deadsweep.
Before Pita and Teddy left, they came over and each said good luck in their own way. Teddy swept me up in his massive arms and called me Warrior Princess. Pita patted me on the head and winked at me. They were the heroes in all of this. Without them, everything we did would mean nothing.
Finally, all the goodbyes were said. I grabbed my favorite walking stick as the ground opened up below us and the five of us dropped down into the underground transportation room. Even Cahir dropped with us. Zut, he was not happy. He started howling the minute we began to fall, and he didn’t stop howling until we had returned to top side outside of the Castle. He shook himself and went off into the woods. He didn’t come back to walk with me for a few minutes.
“Sorry,” I projected to Cahir on his return.
“Necessary, but awful,” Cahir projected back.
That pretty much summed up what we were doing. Necessary, but awful. I hoped that the awful wouldn’t be too bad. But, it was.
Deadsweep Forty-One
We could hear Dalry long before we saw it. The noise was worse than anything I had ever heard. You’d think that the shrieking from the Shrieks would be at the top of the list and it was, but nothing sounded worse than what we could hear, because it was not a machine. It was human voices raised in anger and fright.
As soon as we heard it, we started running. The closer we got to it, the worse it got. It sounded like the three men we had first heard coming into Dalry, multiplied by one-hundred.
Every hair on my body stood up, and I could feel pulses of energy rushing through me. With my hand on Cahir’s back, I could feel the same thing was happening to him.
Niko called a halt while we were still out of sight of Dalry. He tapped his ears reminding us to keep our earplugs in. As if we would forget. I was continually scanning my body looking for those ugly little worms. No worm was going to get on me. Ever. So disgusting in so many ways. Abbadon certainly knew how to push buttons. He could have made any kind of little machine to spread his Deadsweep infection. No, he chose a worm because of how most of us would feel about it—crawling into our brains. Yuck!
Cahir’s ears perked up, and we all listened for what he heard. Footsteps were coming through the forest. Depending on how many people were coming we knew what to do. Zeid was carrying a supply of nets which he would shoot from what looked vaguely like a crossbow. Then Ruta would subdue them with a spray of the gas. Spraying gas in the open like that was tricky because we didn’t want it blowing back on any of us. We chose Ruta to do the spraying because the gas didn’t appear to affect him at all. Good thing worms didn’t seem to like his kind either. If necessary, I wondered if we could get an army of Rutas.
Ruta looked at me as if I was crazy. “No army,” he projected to me. “Got it,” I responded.
We had all crouched behind trees so that whoever was coming wouldn’t see us. Niko was ready with the nets and Ruta with the gas. Just as Niko was drawing his bow, I yelled, “Stop!”
I could see who had stepped out into the clearing. Hearing me yell, she screamed and pulled her children closer. It was Letha, the wife of the man that had been killed by his friends.
When I stepped out from behind the tree, she burst into tears. “Oh, zut, you scared me so much. We are trying to get further away from Dalry, and I didn’t know what else to do but head towards the Castle and hope they let me in.”
We all exchanged looks, and I invited her to sit on one of the always nearby rocks. Niko took out a container of water and offered it to them, al
ong with one of the food bars we had with us. She took both but looked at them suspiciously.
“Are you worried they are infected?” I asked.
She nodded. “I decided to stay away from everyone after you all left. How did my husband get sick? I couldn’t figure it out, so I decided not to do anything we normally did. We left the house, and we ate and drank only when necessary, praying each time that the food wasn’t where that awful disease came from. But we are so tired and hungry.”
They looked it. I wondered where Letha and her children had been sleeping, but whatever she did seemed to have protected her. After assuring her that the food and water were safe, they ate what we gave them. The children were barely moving. Their father had died, the town was in chaos, and they were tired, hungry, and terrified.
My hatred for Abbadon flared up, and a fireball flew out of my hand and landed by a pile of stones. This display of uncontrolled anger only served to scare the woman and her children so much they started crying again.
To me, Niko said, “Get a grip, Kara Beth. To them, you look infected. Besides, that kind of lack of control could get us all killed.”
He was right. I scared the ziffer out of the people I wanted to help.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the three of them huddled together trying to protect themselves against me.
“I haven’t quite got a handle on my skills yet, and the idea of what Abbadon is doing to my people made me angry.”
They nodded as if they understood, but I could see that they were still afraid of me. Who could blame them? I was afraid of me.
Niko spoke to the woman and explained that we had a device that would determine if she or her children were infected. Could we use it?
Her nod was tentative. Of course, she wanted to know, and at the same time, she was afraid. What would happen if they were? Thankfully, none of them were, and when we told them, they all sagged in relief.
All of this was happening with the backdrop of screaming and yelling going on in the village, which was keeping us all on edge. But Letha had information we needed, and we weren’t sure anyone else in the town would be free of the infection and could answer our questions.
Zeid knelt and put his arms around the little group. “You’re safe now. We’ll get you transportation back to the Castle where you will be taken care of. But before you go, could you answer a few questions for us? It would help us figure out how this is happening, and since you kept your family safe, what you did might be what we need to know.”
She nodded and smiled. Probably the relief of not having the Deadsweep infection and knowing they would be safe, had just begun to dawn on her. She answered all our questions but didn’t know as much as we hoped. Mostly she told us that right after we left, one by one people starting getting irritable, then grouchy, which rapidly progressed to violence.
She and her children had watched from a little hut that her husband had made as a playhouse for the children, not letting anyone know where they were. As the situation got worse, she stopped letting the children watch.
When we asked her what the three men had in common, at first she just stared at us. It was obvious. They were friends. They hung out together.
So, Niko changed the question. What had the three of them done a few days before that no one else had done yet in the village?
Again, she said there was nothing. It was just a regular day. Of course, it was an ordinary day to her, but what did they do?
Niko asked her to walk through what her husband had done right before he started getting grouchy. We were hampered by the fact we didn’t know how long it took for the thought-worms to take over. Should we be looking back a day, or two, or a week? We didn’t know.
Then she said something interesting, and we realized we might be on the right track.
Deadsweep Forty-Two
The moment we heard the noise coming from the village, the Priscillas had flown off. It would be nice to think that I have some control over what they do, but I doubted that anyone could control a fairy. I had to believe that they knew what they were doing, and were safe. Maybe they went off to get their secret weapons.
In the meantime, Letha had remembered something. When we asked her to tell us what her husband and his two friends did a few days before they started getting sick, she told us about the traveler.
“A few days before the sickness, my husband had gone for a walk before dinner. He often did that. He loved watching how the seasons changed, and he said a nice walk through the countryside helped clear his head.
“He walked the roads rather than through the meadows and forest because he didn’t like having to watch where he was stepping. He preferred daydreaming or meditation while he walked. He would return home at times having stepped in a hole or have little burrs sticking to his pants that had to be picked off.
“A few days before he got sick, he met a man on the road who was selling some beautifully carved walking sticks. My husband loved the trades that happens between our villages. The walking sticks were lovely really, and I understood why he bought them. But we had enough walking sticks, so he gave them as gifts to his two friends.”
Niko stepped in. “To be clear about this. Your husband bought two walking sticks, but then he gave them to his friends as gifts right away? He didn’t leave them in the house for any length of time?”
“No, he just popped his head in, showed me the sticks and then took them over to his friends, and came back for dinner. The next morning he was grumpy, which was so unlike him.”
“Did he say what the man looked like?” Zeid asked.
“Ordinary. Just a tradesman walking between villages. We get them all the time. We even have a few who live in our village and trade some of the things we make or grow with other villages. So meeting someone new wasn’t unusual at all,” Letha answered.
Turning pale, Letha asked what we were all thinking. “Was it something in the walking sticks? Did my husband bring this infection to our village?”
I put my arm around Letha. I could feel how thin she had become. She was shaking, and her children were huddled in her lap. “We don’t know. No one knows. But even if it was in the walking sticks, your husband didn’t bring the infection to Dalry. That man did. On purpose.”
We hadn’t proven that, of course, but it seemed pretty obvious. Somehow this man brought the worms with him. Perhaps he didn’t know what he was carrying. But if that was true, why wasn’t he infected?
“Do you know where those sticks are now, Letha?” Niko asked.
“The last time I saw them they were in the tavern. The men had them when they started fighting.”
While we were talking, Niko must have summoned the Sound Bubble because I heard the sound of hundreds of notes playing in harmony coming towards us. I didn’t think that I would ever tire of hearing that beautiful music. So opposite from what we could hear coming from Dalry.
I hugged Letha one last time, told her we would see her back at the Castle, and stepped away. I knew the three of them had never been in a Sound Bubble before. The joy on their faces was what I was sure I looked like the first time it descended over me and whisked me away.
We all waved to Letha and her two children and then turned to each other to discuss what to do next. Pris chose that moment to come flying out of the woods. She landed on my head, without even trying to slow down first, which meant her foot got tangled in my hair. As she righted herself, she pulled a few strands out.
I started to say “ouch,” but then I saw her face. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen Pris that upset before. La and Cil were right behind her, so I put my hands out for them to land on so that they wouldn’t do the same thing on my head.
After taking a few deep breaths, Pris said, “You can’t believe it. The town is almost gone. Buildings are burned down. People are lying in th
e street. Some of them look dead. There are even …”
When Pris couldn’t finish, La took over, “There are even children lying in the streets and fields. You have to stop it, but you can’t go in there while all that is going on. People are ripping each other and themselves apart with their teeth.”
“There is probably no one left there to save, but if they are, they are hiding somewhere, and you won’t be able to find them with all those crazy people. They are like walking dead, no longer people,” Cil said through her tears.
Niko took command. He told Link to broadcast across the Kingdom that under no circumstances was any villager to trade with a tradesperson of any kind until further notice. Niko told Link about the walking sticks. They decided to have any walking sticks acquired in the last few weeks carefully collected and burned immediately, or at the very least quarantined.
After he finished talking to Link, Niko turned to us as if looking for answers. We didn’t have any, but I did have a question.
“Dalry appears to be the worst village so far, doesn’t it?”
“What are you getting at, Kara?” Zeid asked.
“This is the closest village to the Castle. Do you think he came from there?”
Deadsweep Forty-Three
“Why didn’t the Mayor alert us as to what was happening in the village?” Zeid asked. “We gave him a communication device, but he never used it, did he?”
Niko shook his head. “No, he didn’t.”
The implications of what that could mean silenced us all for a beat. Either Mayor Tom had gone crazy right away, or he had been targeted and killed.
One other idea occurred to me, though. “Maybe he couldn’t contact us for other reasons. Maybe he found a place to hide like Letha and her children did, and then he was afraid to make any noise. Or maybe someone took it from him, or he lost it.”
