The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  Professor Link was ahead of me. “I think you could be right, Kara. I tracked the signal back to where the device is. You might find Mayor Tom there too. I don’t want to break in and talk to him in case he is in hiding.

  “And before you rush off to save him, it’s possible someone else has it and is waiting for you.”

  That was a sobering thought. It meant some of the people in Dalry, knowing that we would return, were lying in wait for us. It was hard to believe that we had been there just a few days before and were warmly welcomed.

  Things had changed quickly. Abbadon’s plan to destroy all life would not take long at this rate.

  After listening to what the Priscillas had seen, we decided we needed a different way to get into town. We had no intention of marching down the road to get there, but finding the perfect entry point was going to be tricky. We couldn’t let ourselves be seen.

  Even if we were not being purposely targeted, everyone who was alive was in danger from the people infected with the Deadsweep virus.

  We still planned to rescue anyone who was not yet infected, starting with the Mayor. That was our priority. Once that was done, our next priority was to find and remove the walking sticks without contaminating ourselves. We didn’t know for sure that it was the way Abbadon was transporting the worms, but we had to act as if it was.

  We also had to assume that the worms were everywhere. Watching for them was going to be difficult while trying to avoid getting killed by a villager.

  However, there was another possibility which eased our minds a little bit. It was a terrible thought, but one reason we might be safe from the worms was that they were all already in everyone’s brain. We knew the thought-worms stayed inside the body even after the host died.

  We knew that because before we left the Castle, the two men we had captured with Letha’s husband had died, and until Pita froze the room, the worms did not come out.

  We assumed that in the end, the worm’s activity in the men’s brains killed them. It didn’t matter how it killed them because the result was horrible. The last few days had been a nightmare to watch, and we couldn’t imagine what it felt like for the men.

  The other reason we might be safer than it might appear we were was also morbid. If so many people were dead, how many were there left to come after us?

  None of these scenarios made us feel any better. We might be safer because of the extent of the Deadsweep infection in Dalry, but that was a high price to pay.

  *******

  It was Ruta who came up with the idea that none of us had thought about. However, given that Ruta knew how to travel by tree, it made sense that he was the one that suggested it. Traveling by tree was just what it sounded like, even though I didn’t understand how it worked.

  Ruta, Mr. Block-Of-Wood himself, traveled that way all the time when we weren’t around. When he was with us, he chose to travel our slower way. On his own, Ruta would somehow merge with the tree and then pass through the roots, trunks, and limbs to get where he was going without being seen.

  That’s not what he was proposing for us to do, though. Good thing, because no one but Ruta could turn himself into some form of energy that traveled through the trees.

  When he had first explained that process to me, it reminded me of the transporters in Star Trek, but instead of turning into energy that traveled through space, he moved through trees. When I first tried to explain the beam concept to Ruta, he looked at me as if I was an idiot.

  “It was just a TV show,” I tried to explain. It didn’t help. TV shows didn’t mean anything in Erda, and since no one could beam themselves places in real life, Ruta was not impressed. In Erda, people just left one place and arrived in another. Ruta had once tried to explain that one to me too, but what he said sounded like gibberish to me.

  If all of us standing outside Dalry could do the leap-to- another-place thing, then we would have done it. However, none of us could—except for Zeid. But Zeid didn’t know where he would leap to that would be safe, so after exploring Ruta’s idea of using the trees, we decided it was the best plan that we had at the moment.

  The forest we were in came to the edge of a meadow that extended all the way to Dalry. However, a grouping of maple trees meandered through the meadow all the way from the forest to the center of Dalry. With the trees’ help we would use what I used to call the squirrel highway.

  In the Earth dimension, I loved watching the squirrels travel across the top of the trees, leaping from branch to branch, never touching the ground. We would do the same. Even though we were much bigger and nowhere near as nimble in a tree as the squirrels, the trees would help. The trees would make sure a branch was close enough and strong enough for us to move through the tree canopy into town without being seen.

  That was the plan anyway. We hoped that being in the trees would also make it easier for us to see places that people could be hiding without letting the other villagers know that we were there. The Priscillas planned to dart around without being seen and look for people who didn’t appear to be infected with the virus.

  If we found any, we would extract and test them. If they were free of Deadsweep, we would send them back to the Castle. If they were infected, we had another problem on our hands. How to round them up and where to keep them. The rounding up part was something that my bracelet was supposed to help with.

  Given how dangerous the mission had become, I didn’t think I could leave things to chance.

  I asked Niko if I could practice with the bracelet now. I thought he would say yes. He didn’t. He said it might attract attention, and I was going to have to do it right the first time. Then he added that he trusted in me to get it done.

  I held on to that thought as the first tree lowered its branches and we stepped up into another world.

  Deadsweep Forty-Four

  If we hadn’t been on such a dangerous mission, the trip through the trees’ overstory would have been glorious. I had heard of all the things found up in the canopy of trees, but had never seen it, and without the trees help, I wouldn’t have been seeing it then, either. I vowed that when all this was over, I would spend more time up off the ground in the tree world.

  We moved slowly to let the forest adjust to our presence and not give us away by any unusual bird or animal movements reacting to our being there. That meant we had time to stop and watch a bird feed its young, and examine a squirrel nest. We found plants that I thought only grew on the ground growing high up in the air.

  Large amounts of dirt had accumulated in some of the larger trunk spreads, and plants of all kinds were growing in them. It was as if the birds had planted their own garden.

  In other crooks of the branches, little ponds of water had gathered. We were waiting by one of those small ponds when I thought I saw something jump out of the water. I almost fell out of the tree when I realized it was a fish.

  “How did a fish get up here?” I whispered to Ruta.

  He didn’t answer me, just pointed back to the pond where I saw there was more than one fish.

  “What the ziffer?” I said, and then shut up as Niko gave me one of his looks.

  In spite of his gazelle-like body, Niko looked perfectly at home in the tree. It was weird how he almost blended into the trunk of the trees. Sometimes I had to look twice to see the outline of his body.

  Ruta also blended into the tree, but that was different. He was part tree. Niko was not. Or was he? Was he a shapeshifter or was he like a chameleon? And if he was one or the other how come I didn’t know that before?

  Niko answered me in my mind. “You hardly know anything yet, Kara.”

  I would have made a face, but it was obviously so true I had nothing to say. My big comeback was, “So teach me!”

  That was probably a mistake. Don’t piss off a fairy was one thing. Making Niko
a teeny tiny bit angry was a thousand times worse. At first I thought I was in deep trouble, but instead, he laughed. “Trying,” he answered.

  I realized in that one answer he had managed to put me down and encourage me at the same time. I guess that was one reason he was a master teacher.

  “Thank you,” was Niko’s response to what I was thinking. That was the perfect response, so I had nothing else to say.

  A few minutes later, the tree did what I could only call a shiver that ran all the way from its roots, up its trunk, and through its branches. We weren’t in danger of falling off, but we all got the message. Be quiet.

  Looking down through the tree’s canopy, we saw two men. I didn’t recognize them. They were trying to be stealthy, but were not doing a very good job of it.

  Half the time they were pushing and shoving at each other. One of the men growled at the other, which made me break out in goose bumps. I would not want to be on that guy’s wrong side. Either one of them, actually.

  “There’s no one out here,” one of the men said to the other.

  “Zut,” the other said. “Might as well keep going then. Heard the Castle has food.”

  “Yea. Lots of kinds of food and people!”

  We understood what he meant. We all tuned in to Link back at the Castle as he said, “I heard that. We’ll be on the watch for them, but they will probably kill each other before they get here. Still, glad you are all in the trees and not on the ground. Great idea, Ruta!”

  Link was right. Those two would probably never make it to the Castle, but that didn’t stop us from worrying. On the other hand, the fact that they were heading that way might mean that Deadsweep had done its worst in Dalry and the danger was mostly over. Dead people or uninfected people. Which would we find more of? I was pretty sure which one it would be.

  As we moved through the trees’ overstory, I tried to focus on the beauty and power of what we saw. This was nature at its finest. Birds, animals, plants, and even fish lived in the treetops, and Deadsweep had not reached any of them. So far at least.

  I knew that once Abbadon felt he had the people of the Kingdom of Zerenity under control, either dead or dying, he would then focus on killing the rest of nature. He couldn’t afford to let it remain, because he knew that sooner or later, if left alone, nature would find a way to destroy him.

  That meant we didn’t have any time to waste. We had to stop Deadsweep and then go after Abbadon himself.

  Once we reached the maple trees in the meadow, our view changed. No longer could we see just the beauty of the canopy of the trees. Instead, we saw bodies lying in the field, and the destruction of the beautiful village of Dalry lay before us. It was so overwhelming that we all had to stop and take a breath. How could all of this happen in just a few days?

  I heard a small rustle of leaves above and looked up to see the Priscillas. They looked like they were sliding down a beam of light. I knew it was a trick of perception, but I took it as a symbol of the power of good—something we always needed to hold onto, especially in times like these.

  “We found a small group of people hiding in a room in the schoolhouse,” Pris said. “We think the Mayor may be part of the group because of what the note said.”

  “What note? How could you see them hiding in the schoolhouse when no one else did. How do you know it’s not a trap?” asked Niko.

  La looked at Niko like she was going to tweak one of his ears, but was polite instead.

  “We know about traps, Mr. Niko,” she humphed. “There was a tiny note taped to an outside window that told us he was in there. Besides, it’s in the general location of the beacon that the Mayor was carrying.”

  At Niko’s look, she added, “Yes, it could have been a trap, and someone else could have seen it, and that would have been a dangerous thing to do.

  “But neither of those two things is true. No one but us could have seen it, being high up at the top of the ceiling, and it said, “Peach Blossom, Ten Teddy said you’d know what to do.”

  I knew what La meant. Only the Mayor knew about Teddy calling me funny names, so he mixed it up to tell us that ten people were in there somewhere.

  “That’s the good news,” Cil said. “The bad news is there is a large group of infected near the schoolhouse. Some are guarding the doors. Most are hanging out in the classrooms.

  “Well then, where would the Mayor be?”

  “That’s the part we don’t know. You’ll have to go in to find out.”

  “Past the infected,” I said to myself.

  “Yes, past the infected,” the Priscillas answered.

  Deadsweep Forty-Five

  “This might be a good time to use the bracelet,” Niko said.

  Everyone’s eyes swiveled to me. Not all of them were happy eyes. “I think I’ll stay here,” Ruta said.

  When no one else said anything, I said, “Okay, everyone stays here. I would feel better about that anyway.”

  I heard a low growl and saw Cahir at the base of the tree. “You too,” I said to him. I knew that Cahir and his friends had surrounded the village, and their job was not to let anyone pass.

  The two men we had seen in the woods had been trailed by one of the wolves until the two men had lain down under a tree and died. A rather peaceful death for someone infected with Deadsweep. I wondered if perhaps the trees had something to do with how easy it had been for them.

  When a wave of peacefulness passed through me, I knew that was true. I hoped if something happened to me it would be around a tree.

  “Nothing is going to happen to you, Kara,” Link said in my head. “You will do fine with the bracelet. Just take your time and don’t get emotional about what you will see.”

  “What if I hurt someone?” I whined back at him.

  “I’m coming with you,” Zeid said. “Don’t try to stop me. Instead, let me be your backup, and guide if you need one.”

  We both looked at Niko who nodded at the two of us, and Ruta rolled his eyes. The Priscillas clapped their hands together looking as pleased as someone could be as they sent their friend off to try some magic that could go horribly wrong.

  Niko was lying on a tree branch looking for all the world as if nothing was going on except an excursion into the woods.

  I whispered to Zeid, “Don’t Niko and Aki sometimes remind you of snakes?”

  Zeid smiled back at me and didn’t answer, but gave me a warning look when I started to respond. Zounds, Niko was right. The things I didn’t know.

  I tucked all those feelings of frustration, anger, and sorrow away where I could reach them when I needed them to light the flame inside of me. The fire that would help me with what I needed to do. Once that was done, I stepped into the next tree with Zeid following me.

  The noise from the village had quieted down. That was not good news. It meant more people had died. On the other hand, I also hoped that it meant there were fewer people around the schoolhouse. But once we could see the building, the opposite was true. Instead, it looked as if it had become the magnet for every infected person in town. Perhaps they could tell someone was inside that wasn’t infected and they were stalking them? That was a scary thought.

  Zeid and I dropped out of the tree as Zeid threw an invisibility shield around us. It was something I had learned to do for doors and buildings. I wasn’t aware that it could be done for people or that Zeid knew how to do it either until the day before. The problem was Zeid couldn’t hold it for long over people, and it took a lot of energy, so he would be vulnerable afterward if what I was going to do didn’t work.

  As we got closer to the group, I saw something that struck fear in my heart. The Mayor was part of the knot of men guarding the door. Zeid saw him too but motioned for me to do what needed to be done anyway. Maybe the Mayor was faking being infected. Or perhaps h
e was infected after he put up the note. Or maybe not. It could all be a trap. There was no way to find out except to go forward with the plan.

  “Go, Kara,” Zeid whispered. I looked up at him and then mentally closed my eyes.

  Aki had drilled in me over and over again that closing your eyes was not a good idea. What would you miss as you shut the world away? Too dangerous.

  Instead, I kept my eyes open, closed down the noise in my head, opened myself to the flow of energy coming from the earth and down from the sky. I felt the power of the millions of roots and beings that made up the planet, felt the spread of trees radiating life from their being, and then touched the picture jasper stone on my bracelet.

  A small beam moved out, and I expanded it until it became a wall of energy. I pushed it towards the schoolhouse. The infected must have felt it coming, but there was nothing that they could do to stop it. I directed it until it circled the building capturing everyone inside its radiance. Then sent one last blast of energy up from the ground, and everyone fell over. I hoped they weren’t dead. I was going for stunned.

  “It worked!” Zeid said.

  He had dropped the invisibility cloak and looked drained. I could feel the residual power of the force field still vibrating inside of me, and without thinking, I touched his hand. Zeid jumped back, and I worried that I had hurt him. Instead, he smiled, rubbed his hand, and said, “Wow, that was weird, but now I feel great.”

  “Come on, we need to make sure they are all down, and find the others before these people wake up,” I said, running toward the building. Inside of me, I was elated. So far I hadn’t hurt anyone. The bracelet worked. “Thanks, mom,” I said to myself. It could have been the rush of energy or wishful thinking, but I thought I heard, “You’re welcome.”