The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  There was no time to think about it. We reached the Mayor first. He was out. So was everyone around him. I sent a message to Niko to come with the nets. The plan was to wrap everyone before they woke up, and then drop them all down into the chambers that the Ginete and Whistle Pigs had prepared below us.

  Within seconds, I saw Pita and his brothers coming through the schoolyard, prepared to help. As always, they were there when we needed them. I knew the Whistle Pigs were down below waiting for the bodies to be lowered to them.

  Once the roundup began, our job was to find the uninfected, if there were any, and get them safely away to the Castle.

  “Call out, we’re here to rescue you,” we all yelled, as we moved through the rooms in the schoolhouse, trying not to step on the inert bodies of the infected villagers, and watch for worms at the same time.

  My blast from the bracelet was meant to affect only the infected villagers, so, if it worked properly the uninfected, would still be able to answer.

  We were just about ready to give up, thinking that, yes, it had been a trap, when I heard a tiny voice say, “Is that you, Princess Kara Beth?”

  I thought that I would never again complain about that name. “Yes!” I said.

  We heard the squeak of a door coming from another room. When we got there, nine people including five children were waiting for us, looking frightened. I prayed they weren’t infected.

  “What happened to the Mayor?”asked one of the children I had seen a few days before. “He went to get us food, and he never came back.”

  Forgetting all about infection, I gathered the child in my arms, and we cried together.

  Deadsweep Forty-Six

  While the infected were being gathered and taken down to the rooms the Whistle Pigs had prepared for them, we were holed up with the drone in the schoolhouse. We tested the four adults and five children that had been hiding behind a wall in a coat closet. Thankfully, they were all free from the Deadsweep infection.

  Amanda, the little girl who had cried with me, told us that they had gotten so hungry and thirsty the Mayor had risked going out to try and find food and water. He volunteered even though he knew what could happen.

  Somewhere along the way, a worm must have found him, and he had never returned. On the other hand, he had not led the infected to the people he was protecting. He knew that we were coming, but he didn’t warn anyone. So even while he was going crazy, he remained conscious of what he needed to do to save the people he had hidden.

  That gave us hope that Mayor Tom, and maybe the other infected people, could be saved. However, based on what had happened with the other prisoners we knew we only had a few days before whatever the worms were doing to them, killed them.

  We sent the nine infection-free people back to the Castle in a Sound Bubble and then dropped below to check on how the infected were doing and to find out if there had been any progress in discovering how to stop the worms and remove them. There had been thirty infected people at the schoolhouse. That combined with the nine we found meant that there were only forty-two people left in Dalry, counting Letha and her children. The death toll was staggering. If this were happening all over Zerenity, it would be devastating.

  Ruta and Niko had found the walking sticks. One was in the tavern and one was lying outside the schoolhouse door. Niko wove a spell around each one of them, which encased them within something that looked like plastic, and then without touching them, levitated them down with him into the lab where Pita and his brothers were working. Once there, they placed them behind a transparent barrier which allowed them to examine the walking sticks without physically touching them.

  Somehow the Whistle Pigs had prepared thirty rooms for the people from Dalry. I knew that they had to use some form of magic to get them built that fast. How did they know it was going to be thirty people?

  We wished we could put the people together, but we already knew that wouldn’t work. However, seeing those poor people isolated in their rooms was hard to take. Being isolated seemed only to make them crazier.

  However, the Whistle Pigs said they were going to try all kinds of things to calm them down. We knew that the gas worked, but only for a time, and it certainly didn’t make the thought-worms leave their hosts, which is what all of us wanted the most.

  Once everyone was safe, we ate a quick meal, and then each of us went to our rooms for much-needed rest. Everyone except the Priscillas. Once again they were flying off on their own without telling me where they were going. But I had learned. Don’t ask what they were doing. When they were ready, they would tell me.

  A few hours later our group met in the planning room to discuss what to do next. Pita was there with his report. Yes, the walking sticks had carried the thought-worms.

  One of the sticks was empty of worms, but the one by the schoolhouse still had a few thought-worms left in it.

  That was a piece of good news. First that no one in our group had picked it up and became infected, and second that the sticks still had worms they could study that hadn’t been activated yet.

  “On the other hand, since the walking stick with the worms was the one found by the schoolhouse, it is probably how Mayor Tom became infected. He might have seen it there, picked it up to defend himself and in the process became infected,” Pita said.

  Niko stood. “Here’s what we know now. We know the walking sticks are carrying the worms, and that at least one tradesman is bringing them to the villages.”

  “Why isn’t that tradesman infected?” I broke in.

  “That’s a good question,” Niko said. “But a question that we might not be able to answer until we capture him, or them, if there is more than one. And, Kara Beth, you mentioned something we need to think about. Did he come from the Castle? Is it someone we know?

  “The dragons have reported that the villages further away from the Castle are less infected. That does imply that it is just one person moving outward from the Castle. Or he could be targeting the communities where we have been, or where our families live.

  “Also, no one could walk this quickly. So if it is just one person, he’s using another mode of transportation to get to each village.”

  “Like Leif, Sarah, and Zeid can do?” I asked.

  “Possibly something like that,” Niko responded. ”Which makes him someone who is skilled at using magic.”

  “Which makes him even more dangerous,” Zeid said.

  “Why would someone support Abbadon like that?” I asked. “What would anyone else get out of destroying all life? What could Abbadon have promised him to make him be an instrument of destruction this way?”

  “Of all the people here, Kara, you’d think you would understand it best,” Niko said. “You’ve been to the Earth dimension where power and greed take over someone’s thinking, and the result is the destruction of life. Perhaps no thought-worms are doing this in the Earth Realm, but something destroys the goodness inside of those people bit by bit.

  After that, there is no longer any rational thought, or feelings, involved. It’s just evil. The person they were before is gone. Walking dead, skinwalkers, whatever you want to call them. Here in Erda, we have Abbadon reproducing this destruction in an obvious way. Quite symbolic, really.”

  I knew what Niko was talking about. For all the goodness found in most people, in the Earth dimension, there were those who were so out of touch with their humanity that they were systematically destroying life. Not as directly as what was happening in Erda, but it was the same thing.

  In a way, this was easier, at least for the moment. We knew who had started it.

  I knew who was going to end it, too. We would stop it. We had to, or everything would die. There was no way I was going to let that happen.

  Deadsweep Forty-Seven

  “What is the news for Eiddwen and Kinver?�
�� I asked. I found it suspicious that we hadn’t had any reports from either team who had gone to those towns. When Niko hesitated, I knew that I was right, and I steeled myself for upsetting news.

  “We have no news,” Niko finally said.

  I looked at Ruta and Zeid and knew that they were already aware of that fact.

  “And you didn’t tell me, why?” I fumed. “Obviously I am the only one who doesn’t know.”

  Professor Link broke in. “It was my choice, Kara. We needed you to stay focused on dealing with Dalry and using your bracelet to access that power to stun but not kill. If you would have been a little upset, I wasn’t sure if you might have miscalculated.”

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I could see that Link had a point. I had struggled to release just the right amount of power. But that didn’t excuse the delay in telling me. We had been back for hours.

  “Okay, I concede that it might have been a good idea to withhold the information from me then, but why the wait?”

  Niko was the one who answered. “That was my choice. You would have wanted to rush off without eating and resting, both of which you will need to be effective. Besides, there were things we could do from here, and the Ginete and I did that while you three rested.”

  There was no point in continuing to argue, so I just allowed myself a tiny pout and a bigger flame of anger, that I stored away before I asked the obvious question.

  “What did you find out, and when are we leaving?” I asked.

  Niko smirked. “I rest my case. You want to rush off.”

  “No, I don’t. I want to know first, and then I want to rush off.”

  “Which place are you going to first?” Niko asked.

  “You mean both teams are not reporting in?” I asked, realizing that was what Niko had said in the first place, but it hadn’t registered.

  “There could be multiple reasons why they are not connecting to Link’s channel. They could have turned it off on purpose. Maybe they discovered something about our communication that meant it was safer not to be connected,” Niko answered.

  “Or maybe someone turned it off for them,” I responded sarcastically. Sarcastic was a better choice for me at the moment, because otherwise my voice would have trembled and I might have broken down into a sobbing ball of uselessness. The idea that Suzanne and Aki or the brothers and Beru were in danger and we weren’t there to help threatened to be paralyzing. Which one would we choose to go to first?

  “They might have,” Niko said. “But all of them are capable of taking care of themselves, so we are going with that they are staying quiet for a reason.”

  “So, still my question is, which one are we going to first?” I asked, a little less snarky.

  “Neither yet. We are waiting for a report from Teddy and Pita. We will need more information before we go rushing in,” Niko said.

  “How long are we going to wait, though?” I asked, thinking that I was leaving no matter what they said.

  “Not long, Pink Ears. We have a few things that we think will help.”

  *******

  We left right after Teddy showed up at the meeting calling me Pink Ears. The Priscillas returned from wherever they had been, and practically fell into my pocket and promptly went to sleep. I was just happy to have them back with me before we left.

  But we weren’t going to either town. We were going back to the Castle. The best part of that decision was that we got to ride in the Sound Bubble to get there. In spite of the terror of what was going on, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of joy as the bubble descended, rose, and zoomed us back to see Ariel and Earl.

  That’s the other funny thing about the bubble. If you looked at the Sound Bubble, you would think that it would float slowly to wherever it was going, like a hot air balloon. But it didn’t. It covered the distance between Dalry and the Castle in just a few minutes, as it always did.

  I know I am dense, but I had never stopped to think about how that was happening.

  There was no visible sign of a motor or a steering mechanism. The Sound Bubble would show up, and take us where we were going. No one was driving it. I wasn’t even sure who it was that was calling it to pick people up. This unawareness was another example of what Niko had said. I didn’t know much, and that probably made me more dangerous than it made me helpful.

  “Not really,” Zeid said, squeezing my hand. “But not knowing can be very dangerous, just like rushing off is not ever wise.” Niko turned his face from us, so I knew he wasn’t ready to interfere with this assessment, even though I knew he agreed with it.

  Although I loved the bubble, Ruta hated it. He always had to do his best not to look as if he wasn’t going to throw up. It was funny how Ruta could be high up in a tree without a thought, but in the Sound Bubble all his fear of heights showed up.

  I tried to hold his hand, but he rebuffed me. I didn’t take it personally. I have called Ruta Mr. Grouch Head more times than I could count, but Ruta was our healer, our rock, the one who hid his deep compassion by doing his job. Showing weakness did not fit into Ruta’s personality. I could understand that, and I admired it.

  I wished I was less volatile, less displaying of all my emotions out in the open for everyone to see.

  Since it only took a few minutes to get back to the Castle, I didn’t have a chance to find out how the bubbles worked. But I did have a thought that perhaps they were like the portals. Somehow they manipulated time.

  Niko glanced over at me and touched his nose. Huh, I might be onto something, I thought. That meant I had a question that might help with the thought-worms, and I almost started to ask it. But then Niko shook his head, and in my head, I heard him say, “Not now.” I nodded. I understood. Later.

  Instead, we all looked down at the glass ceiling of the atrium as it opened and we lowered into the garden where Leif and Sarah were waiting for us. Like the Sound Bubble, it was hard not to be happy to see the two of them, even though I knew that what they had to tell us might be horrible.

  Still, they smiled and waved, and we all waved back, even Ruta.

  Deadsweep Forty-Eight

  One thing that I had learned from Leif and Sarah—both in the Earth Realm where they had been “ordinary people” with extraordinary gifts, and now in Erda where one was a Wizard and the other an Oracle—was that some things are more important than others.

  And waiting for an answer was the most important thing we could do at that moment. It didn’t mean that I liked it. But I knew that they were right. Sometimes that answer was immediate, other times it took time. But without that answer that came from the still small voice within, an Earth term that Sarah still used in Erda, there was a chance we would be doing the wrong thing.

  That didn’t mean we wouldn’t do something. Pausing to listen was good, stalling was something else, and I often didn’t know the difference. Or at least that’s what I’d been told before, and the fact that I was feeling the impatience eating at me, told me I hadn’t yet learned to listen.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Sarah said, as she hugged me after I stepped out of the bubble. “You often listen; it’s just that your listening usually takes place in dreams.”

  “Or daydreams,” I added.

  Sarah nodded in agreement and said, “So don’t discount those flashes of insight, Kara Beth. Not everyone listens in the same way. And internal instruction doesn’t always arrive when we are still.

  “For some people, action is the door that opens the way for wise instruction. The trick is being able to discern which is which.”

  Standing in the garden with Sarah was so lovely I almost forgot why we were there. But, the arrival of Earl and Ariel was enough to remind me. I couldn’t decide if the fact that they were there too made me more afraid or less afraid.

  Earl laughed, and his
laughter rolled through all of us like a wave of thunder and I felt better immediately. I almost set off a bolt of lightning just to participate in the idea of a storm with thunder, but that seemed a touch too playful, and perhaps a bit dangerous.

  Zeid, knowing how tempted I was to be a little mischievous, shook his head at me and I rolled the energy back. Maybe after this was over, Earl and I could play? I wondered what that would be like.

  “Looking forward to it, little one,” Earl pushed into my thinking. Earl made the phrase “little one” sound so endearing that tears sprung to my eyes in response.

  Leif raised his staff and used it to point at the table. “We’ll eat, you’ll sleep, and in the morning we will put Teddy’s plan into action.”

  “Not tonight?” I blurted out. Of course, I knew it was the wise thing to do. After all, this had been a long day. It was only that morning that we had headed into Dalry, and the sun was setting as the bubble had lowered itself into the atrium.

  Perhaps Sarah’s mention of dreaming was a reminder that some pieces of information would come to me, and maybe others, while we slept. But the worry that something might be wrong with my friends was eating at me so much I was anxious to go.

  “It won’t work at night anyway,” Niko said, “And you know it.”

  The Priscillas chose that time to wake up and stretch. La must have forgotten that she was in my pocket because as she stretched with her eyes closed, she started to fall out. I caught her, and everyone laughed, except La, who looked embarrassed.

  Pris, being the protective older sister, put her arm around La, hugged her and then the three of them flew off to the table for their fairy food that was always there.

  When no one moved to join them, the Priscillas circled back and started pulling everyone’s hair, except Ruta who didn’t have any hair to pull. Instead, they knocked on his head until he began to move forward.