The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  Suzanne and the twins called us over. “We think we know what to do. Could you describe it one more time for us, or even better, could you show us?”

  “Show you? How could I do that?” I asked. I turned to Ruta. “You knew that they were here. Can’t you see them?”

  “No. I just felt them with the help of the trees.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know how to show you,” I said. “I used this star to refocus the way I see the world. And in the 4D viewpoint, I could see the town. Everyone was frozen. Dark threads were running through the air all around them. Since they were frozen, I don’t know if they could see me, except for Liza. She’s the girl who gave me this star because she can see 4D without it. Liza projected the word ‘portal’ into the air for me to see.”

  Garth spoke up, “That’s perfect. The word portal is all we needed to know. We thought that was what has happened. They are in a portal the way the people in Eiddwen were, but Abbadon opened this one and stuck them there.

  “But we think that we can get them out. As you know, portals between dimensions manipulate time and space. Neither of which are linear, even though it appears that way to us.

  “That’s why we can travel to many dimensions which are operating in what you might call different time zones and return to this dimension, and it will be just as we left it.”

  Suzanne spoke up, “That’s how I could travel between Earth and Erda which operate on a very different sense of time. The danger lies in the transporting. If something goes wrong, the person could be trapped somewhere in time, or pieces of themselves would disperse into many time zones.

  “We are lucky in that Abbadon appears to have frozen the people of Kinver in time and space instead of dispersing them throughout the universes. They are in a place similar to the waiting room in the portal where we kept the village of Eiddwen.

  “The difference is that he froze them there. That way he could keep them there forever, trapped between life and death. Perhaps he didn’t know you would be able to see them. Or maybe he knew you would find them, but didn’t think you would be able to unfreeze them without killing them in the process. That is the more likely scenario. He expected you to find them, try to unfreeze them, and then fail. That way you could feel guilty forever.”

  “But we won’t fail. We do need you to take us there though,” Suzanne said. “We need to use you as a marker. You are here, but you can see inside the portal. If you can hold the vision for long enough, we can find the opening to the portal, step inside, and let the villagers out.”

  “And if I can’t? What will happen to you?”

  “The same thing that will happen to the rest of the village. Either we will all be frozen forever, or dispersed in time and space.”

  “So if I fail, you die?” I whispered, fear creeping through every pore in my body.

  “You won’t fail,” Suzanne said. I knew enough not to say anything. I needed all the encouragement I could get, and she was speaking it for herself as much as for me.

  “One last thing. You said dark threads. Could those threads be worms strung together?”

  The horror of what Suzanne said hit me like a sledgehammer. They could be worms. If we unfreeze the people, the thought-worms will be loose.

  “We can handle that part, Kara Beth,” Niko said. “We have the disrupters. Coro and Ariel can be called in. The villagers will be a little wet, but I don’t think they’ll mind. We have a drone to check if someone is already infected. And of course, the Priscillas will have the goats here.

  “All you have to do is hold the vision so that Garth, Anne, and Suzanne can find the portal.”

  I looked around at everyone waiting expectantly. People who believed in me. I thought of the people waiting for us to free them, and said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

  Suzanne, Anne, and Garth gathered around me. The twins held my hand, and Suzanne put her hands on my shoulder and said the same words she said to me the first time we went through a portal together. “Go, go, go.”

  I touched the star and showed them the village. All I had to do was hold that vision. I focused on Liza, knowing that if anyone could help me, she could.

  I heard Anne whisper, “Wow,” and then the world started to shatter.

  Deadsweep Fifty-Eight

  I groaned and tried to sit up. “What happened?” I asked, still struggling to open my eyes. Someone was helping me, but my eyes wouldn’t open enough to see who it was. All my body wanted to do was lie back down and go to sleep.

  The sweetest voice I had ever heard said, “You fainted.”

  My eyes flew open, and all sense of tiredness vanished. “Beru!” I yelled.

  I didn’t care if she didn’t want me to hug her, I did it anyway. She was thinner and tired, but as beautiful as ever. Still holding on to her I almost fell over my feet to get to James and Liza.

  Tears streamed down my face as I saw that the whole village had returned. People were already in their homes opening doors and windows. Children were laughing in the streets.

  “The worms?”

  “No worms,” Suzanne said. “What looked like dark threads were cracks, like cracks in ice. Abbadon probably had to do the freezing quickly, which made it easier to release everyone because of the imperfections.”

  “Or else he did it on purpose,” I mumbled under my breath. In my head, Link answered me, “You may be onto something Kara Beth.”

  I should have been elated. But once the excitement of seeing Beru and the people of Kinver had faded, I found that what I felt was depressed. I think I hid it well though.

  In spite of feeling depressed or maybe because I was, I wouldn’t let Beru out of my sight as we all circled through the village making sure that everything was okay.

  We spent a few minutes in James’ home. His wife was busy making food and wanted us to stay, but we knew we couldn’t. Something was still bothering me. Even though Deadsweep had been terrifying, and finding a burned village and a frozen village was horrible, it seemed as if we were missing something.

  It had been hard, but easy at the same time. Almost like we were being played. Well, not almost. We were being played. We were responding time and time again to the manipulations of Abbadon. First his Shrieks and Shatterskin, then the Deadsweep infection of thought-worms, and finally the burning and freezing of whole towns.

  We were always running after a problem to solve it when Abbadon was the real problem. We were going to have to change our tactics and go after him.

  Even the idea of riding in the Sound Bubble didn’t cheer me up. Preparing to say goodbye, I hugged everyone I could in the village one last time, with longer hugs for James and Liza. Liza had given us the answer, and I told her that she was the hero of the moment. She didn’t say anything, just held my hands and told me she loved me and that all was well.

  Liza was a wise girl, soon to be a wise woman. I had a feeling she would be playing a more significant part in finding Abbadon. When she winked at me, I realized she already knew that. I stayed longer in James’ hug, being Hannah for a few minutes. That helped too.

  The Sound Bubble arrived, and it helped a little bit. The harmony reached deep into my bones, and vibrated through my blood, raising my spirits. Whoever had “invented” the Sound Bubble had done a wonderful thing.

  Anne and Garth had their own bubble. They were returning home. We had all asked them to come to the Castle with us so that we could thank them officially for their help, but they refused, saying they needed to check on their village. Garth added that now that we knew where to find them, they did hope we would ask them to help again.

  A second Sound Bubble descended over everyone except Suzanne and me. I thought it was a mistake and turned to ask Suzanne how we were getting back to the Castle. Instead of answering, Suzanne morphed into a dragon right before my eyes. No one in
the village seemed surprised, but I still couldn’t believe that kind of thing happened as an everyday occurrence. A dragon. I stood and looked at her, not sure what was happening.

  Dolt that I am, it took a push from Liza to realize that I was going to ride back to the Castle on the dragon, on Lady. A bolt of happiness shot through me. It was just what I needed. A dragon ride. A dragon ride with no danger. Just the joy of flying. James had run back into the house and got a harness for me, but I shook my head. I was going to hold on. I could do it. I was Princess Kara Beth, dragon rider.

  Lady bent down, and I hopped on, tucking my legs in the crease of her wings and holding onto the red comb of feathers on her head. They were soft, so I could lie in them and hold onto her head that way if I needed to. But I had a feeling that Lady was going to take me on a leisurely trip and I wanted to see everything.

  Lady slowly flapped her wings, everyone stepping back to give her space, and lifted into the air with the same grace I had seen my pileated woodpeckers in the Earth dimension have. To my delight, as we rose, I saw that other dragons were waiting for us. We were going to fly together.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the glory of that ride. Lady took her time. We flew over villages and mountains. At times I was cold, but the joy I felt overrode any discomfort. I was part of something so much bigger than myself. I was a dot of a person flying on a dragon within the midst of a mighty crown of other dragons.

  The sky was vast, the sun played hide and seek in the clouds, and the land below us was fertile and green. Coro arranged a little storm for us off in the distance so that I could see its full majesty. Ariel gave us a tiny push of wind once in a while and played with the tree leaves as we passed over the old growth forests of Erda.

  The whole experience was like a dream. A beautiful dream. I knew that was Lady and her dragon friends’ intention. They wanted to give me back my hope and joy. It worked. When the roof of the atrium opened, and Lady and I dropped down onto the practice field, I felt like a new person.

  We had prevailed. Beauty and goodness were the King and Queen of the Kingdom of Zerenity, and I had the privilege of keeping it that way. Nothing else had changed, but I had a new viewpoint, and that made all the difference.

  Deadsweep Fifty-Nine

  The Castle was in full celebration mode. Suzanne and I could hear the laughter before we even touched down. By the time we made it to the atrium, we felt re-energized just from all the happiness weaving its way through the Castle.

  Beru was waiting for us. We slid our hands and wiggled our fingers in our familiar salute to each other and walked hand in hand to the table where everyone was already seated having dinner together. It had been a long day.

  I patted George, the metal toadstool, on the head, and he skipped a step almost knocking the drinks that he was carrying off his tray.

  Once I found my seat beside Zeid, I asked, “Where is Aki?”

  “She and Berta, along with your father, are supervising the rebuilding of Eiddwen. We’ve already sent a group of workmen to help, but it will take a while. Of course, a little magic here and there will make it go faster,” Professor Link answered.

  “Are you planning to visit?” I asked, knowing full well that Professor Link didn’t like traveling. He knew I was asking if he was going to miss Aki personally. When he answered, “I will,” we both knew what he meant.

  After lunch, and a brief visit to our bedrooms to get cleaned up, we all met back in the planning room. We knew that there was one more mystery to solve. It would have been so easy not to do anything and wait until the next crisis, pretending that the bigger problem was over, but all of us knew what was at stake.

  Once we were all settled, with the Priscillas sitting on the edge of the table in front of me, Niko stated the problem.

  “This is what we needed to know. Who delivered the walking sticks? Who was the spy in our midst, and are they still here?”

  “Since you used the past tense—needed to know—does this mean you have the answer?” Zeid asked.

  “Yes, I do. And the answer is disturbing, to say the least,” Niko answered.

  “Oh, let me guess,” I said trying not to be sarcastic and failing miserably. “It was Abbadon.”

  A chorus of astonishment and disbelief went around the room.

  “No, it couldn’t have been,” Zeid said. “We would have known. Besides he lives thousands of miles away in some castle, locked away all by himself.”

  “That’s what he has wanted us to believe, and we all fell for it,” Niko replied. “Instead, he was here, working in the Castle.”

  An appalled silence fell over the room. The idea that the man who had been causing all the death and destruction had been with us the whole time was too hard, and too awful, to contemplate. After what seemed like an eternity and when no one asked the next question, I did. I had something to tell them, but first I wanted to hear what Niko had to say.

  “How did you find out?”

  Niko nodded at Link, and he took over.

  “While you were all out taking care of the mess that Abbadon was making, I spent some time personally talking to every member of the staff. Eventually, I discovered that a person was working in the Castle that everyone saw once in a while, but had no idea what he did, or where he came from.

  “The problem was, no one said anything. They let it go, thinking that it wasn’t important. But once I started asking around, it became obvious it was someone who wasn’t supposed to be here. When I started putting the timing together, I discovered that the unknown person had left about the same time the Deadsweep infection began.”

  “Walking down the road as a tradesman selling walking sticks,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Niko answered.

  “One problem. Well probably more than one problem, but there is something that doesn’t make sense. How could Abbadon have made Deadsweep thought-worms while working in the Castle?” Ruta asked.

  “Or if he was here all along, how did he make the Shrieks and Shatterskin?” Beru chimed in.

  Niko shook his head. “That’s something I don’t have an answer for. Perhaps he made them all before he came to work here. Maybe he stored the walking sticks here until he was ready to release them. Or someone else brought them to him.”

  “Or that.” Link responded.

  Listening to everyone, I wasn’t sure if I was getting depressed or angry. I decided it would be better if I got angry. That way I might be able to do something. I could feel the depression creeping in, making me feel like going to bed, curling up in a ball, and pulling the covers over my head.

  In the end, what good would that do? Abbadon would still be out there. He would invent another thing that we would have to fight. The whole ziffering mess would start over again.

  It was Zeid who asked the question I didn’t feel like answering.

  “How did you know that Abbadon was here, Kara Beth? You weren’t surprised by what Niko said, so you must have known. Did you?”

  Everyone turned to look at me as if I had an answer for them. As if I was magic or something, and could tell them the answer to all the questions, and then fix the mess too. I didn’t have anything other than a piece of paper that I had kept clutched in my hand from the moment I had found it.

  Instead of answering, I opened my hand and let the crumpled paper fall out onto the table. Zeid looked at me with both love and pain in his eyes and picked up the paper. Opening it, he read out loud, “See you soon, Princess Kara Beth. To our future together. Abbadon.”

  “Where did you get this,” Zeid whispered.

  I dropped my head, afraid to look up, and whispered back, “It was on my bed when I went back to my bedroom.”

  The room erupted. Everyone was talking at once. Link left the room, and we waited for him to come back. Zeid had pulled me close, an
d I gave in and let my head rest on his shoulder. Really, at the moment I had no fight left in me.

  When Link returned, we stopped talking and waited to hear what he had to tell us. We knew where he had gone.

  “I checked with the staff. Every day someone went into your bedroom and cleaned it waiting for your return, Kara Beth. So if you found the note today, it was placed there today, after you left.”

  “Which means,” Zeid continued, “That either Abbadon came back, never left, or he has people working for him in the Castle.”

  Deadsweep Sixty

  We were back, standing on the bluff overlooking Eiddwen. The last time we had stood here we had found a burned out village. Now, only a week later, everything that had been burned had been cleared away. Even from where we were standing we could see the shells of homes going up all over the village.

  Eiddwen was bustling with villagers helping each other rebuild homes and gardens. Their time trapped in the portal seemed to have renewed their spirits. We had heard reports of people going back to their gifts of magic and skills and practicing again.

  Their joy and happiness were contagious. The closer we got to the village, the happier I felt, and I knew Zeid felt the same way. We were walking hand in hand as if we didn’t have a care in the world, and that was the way I wanted to feel for as long as possible.

  The ever-resourceful Ginete had supplied tents, and that’s where everyone was living until they finished their homes. We were heading to the tent at the edge of town. The only way I knew it was my father’s tent was the small flag flying from the point at the top of the tent. Otherwise, it looked the same as everyone else’s. That too made me happy. We were part of a community. Perhaps responsible for its wellbeing, but not above it.

  Zeid and I were there to say goodbye. Everyone else in the team, including Aki, had gone to say goodbye to their friends and family, too. We weren’t waiting for the next disaster. We were being proactive and going after Abbadon before he unleashed another catastrophe on the kingdom. That’s what we told people. But we weren’t naive. We were sure he knew we were coming, and had already planned on how to stop us.