The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  We all looked at each other in agreement with what Aki had said. What else could we do? We needed to have no reservations about our abilities.

  “Okay. So here are some general questions. What is Abbadon actually doing? I mean that in the big picture. We’ve asked that before. Why plan to kill off all life? What does it gain him?

  “Then, what is he doing with all these people he captures? Is he really turning the men into the zombie Raiders? How? We know that in the future he is using beings of all kinds to fuel his machines with their essence. Is that what he is doing now or is he experimenting? Why? Yes, there are many why questions.

  “And then what about these questions:

  “What happened to make Abbadon decide to do this? We believe that he got progressively worse after Anne turned him down. Did he? Or was that just a temper tantrum that revealed what he already was, and had already been doing? If Anne would have said yes, would he have stopped his activities?

  “Oh, and why does it seem that he is a regular man with kind eyes, and yet we see the damage he is doing, and will do, in Erda?

  “And after all those questions, I have planning questions. Do we agree with the Priscillas that we should capture him? Why? How? As far as we know Abbadon has great magical abilities. How are we going to capture him, and keep him? And then what? What will we do with him? Kill him? Imprison him? Take him back to the future with us? If he is so brilliant, won’t he escape?”

  Taking a breath, I looked around the room and wondered if I had asked all the questions in my head. Seeing the look on everyone’s faces, I decided that even if I didn’t get them all asked that was enough for now.

  “Well,” Teddy said, “That was a great set of questions. Anyone want to try to answer some of them or at least one or two of them?”

  It was Aki that spoke up.“I think most of these questions are going to be answered after we capture Abbadon. So I vote that we spend our time figuring out how to do that. I think that perhaps since the Priscillas brought it up, they might have an idea?”

  Pris jumped off my shoulder and into the center of the table. “Indeed we do! Actually, we didn’t come up with the plan, our relatives did. Or, maybe we did, and our relatives remembered what we did. Oh, phooey, we can’t figure that part out now. What matters is, there is a way to get him. And then perhaps Teddy or Pita have invented some way to drag out of him all the answers to those questions you have.”

  Pris almost cackled as she said those last words. It made me almost afraid for Abbadon. Almost.

  Abbadon Forty

  Throughout all our meetings, Anne and Garth had stayed quiet, just observing. So when Anne stood up, we were all surprised.

  “Before you continue down this road, I have another idea. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. But when Kara Beth asked the question about Abbadon reacting after I turned him down, and I realized how much we don’t know, then my plan seems like the better idea.”

  Garth looked up at his sister with a worried look on his face. He must have sensed what she was going to say because even before she said it, the word “no” was already forming on his lips.

  “Instead of telling Abbadon no, what if I said, yes?”

  As the room erupted, Anne held up her hand. “I know you don’t like this, Garth, and the rest of you might think I’m crazy, but hear me out. If I said yes, and agreed to go to his Castle to live with him until the wedding, I can also say that I want my brother, and my best friend to come with me. That way, we have appeased his anger, and we have three more people in the Castle.

  “If I can keep him in love with me, he is much more likely to tell me things that you are talking about instead of torturing it out of him. Why not let him tell me?

  “I am not holding out hope that I can convert him. But what if I can divert him while you come up with a better plan than capturing a man who has magical powers that we can only guess at, and hope to turn him into someone that cooperates with us before our time runs out?

  “And I guess, if my plan fails I suppose we could capture him, or if I have to, I could stop him myself.”

  Teddy was stroking his chin. Pita had closed his eyes. The Priscillas were standing in the center of the table staring at Anne. Garth had turned completely white, and his hands were shaking. Aki, Ruta, and I looked at each other, and Aki nodded.

  “I like it. There are many issues to be worked out here, but the idea is good. As long as Anne is willing to put herself at risk, I think we have to be willing to support her,” Aki said.

  “Am I your best friend in this scenario, Anne?” I asked

  “I thought that you would be. You could be, Hannah. That way there are five of us already in the Castle with Abbadon.”

  “It would be awesome to be your best friend, Anne. But now I have to ask all the questions this plan brings up, starting with, do you think Abbadon would know who I am? After all, my parents sent me away to be free of him, and now I would be going straight to the man they were trying to protect me from.”

  Ruta spoke up, “As far as we know, Abbadon in the past never saw you. Only his future self knows who you are. I, too, agree this plan might work. But there are obvious issues.” Turning to Garth and Anne, he asked, “While you were here in the past, did you meet yourself? You two mentioned that you felt you had to leave. Why? Did someone tell you to?”

  Garth and Anne looked at each other, puzzled by what Ruta had asked. Garth shook his head, but Anne kept thinking.

  “I dreamed it. In my dream, I heard someone tell me it was time to go home. When I told Garth about the dream, he said he had felt the same way. We had to return.

  “Maybe you dreamed it too?”

  “Perhaps,” Garth replied. “I certainly didn’t need any convincing even though up until then we both loved it here. And I thought Anne loved Abbadon.”

  “I did,” Anne whispered. “I saw his flaws, but thought they could be smoothed out with affection. I thought he had been isolated too long, and I would change that. But for some reason, the dream took precedence over what I was feeling.”

  Ruta nodded and looked at all of us. “Did someone come to Anne in a dream and tell her to go home and not marry Abbadon?”

  “Are you suggesting that one of us told her to go home last time and she remembered it as a dream? Which implies that we were here before and it didn’t work? And now we are back again to try something else.” I asked.

  Ruta didn’t need to answer “yes” to that question. We all understood what he said.

  “Putting aside that we don’t remember doing this, even if the past Anne says “yes,” we won’t be the ones in the Castle. She will. The past Anne and Garth don’t know what Abbadon is doing. We need to get the future Anne and future Garth into the Castle, meaning the ones sitting here at the table,” I said.

  “Exactly right, Hannah,” Anne said. It was strange to hear Anne call me that, but she was right. I couldn’t use my Erda name. “It will be me that tells Abbadon yes, not the past me. So we still need to send the past Garth and Anne home, but earlier than last time, and Garth and I need to take their place.”

  “But, what if what we are going to do makes it so that Anne and Garth don’t exist in the future to come back here?” I asked, confusing myself with the question.

  “That’s the chance we have to take,” Anne answered.

  “So who told you to leave last time in your dream?” Aki asked.

  Anne looked at all of us around the table as if trying to place our face. She returned to me and said, “I think it was you, Kara.”

  “Me? How could that be? I don’t remember any of this? Could you be mistaken?”

  “I could, but I don’t think so. I remember thinking I had met you before the first time I saw you back in Kinver. But I couldn’t place it.”

  “So t
hat means we tried this once before and did the wrong thing. We sent you home, not knowing that it would inflame Abbadon. This time, we try something else?”

  When Anne nodded and I added, “Let’s hope this is the last time.”

  Aki looked around the room and asked, “Does everyone agree?”

  Everyone nodded including the Priscillas. They agreed so quickly I wondered if the idea to capture Abbadon had been a ruse all along. One that would push us in a different direction.

  When Pris winked at me, I realized we’d been had. Who is orchestrating this mission anyway? I wondered. Maybe it’s been them all along. I hoped they knew what they were doing, because I still felt as if we were stumbling around in the dark, and I had yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  Abbadon Forty-One

  An hour later, Anne, Garth, and I were ready to go to the village and into the home where the other Anne and Garth were staying. If someone saw us along the way, no one would know that it wasn’t the Garth and Anne that they already knew. They would introduce me as a friend of theirs who had come to visit. How did I get there? Magical powers of transportation, I guess. In Erda, that ability might be accepted as normal. Besides, it was something I was hoping to learn how to do someday.

  We were counting on the theory that Anne remembered the encounter as a dream because that is how I told her to remember it. Garth and Anne were coming along to get me into King’s Watch and into the right house, and to be ready to take the place of the other Garth and Anne the moment they left, which, if all went well, would be immediate. The past Anne and Garth would leave through the portal that would bring them back to their own time. And hopefully, nothing would change once that happened.

  Our Garth and Anne were not going to show themselves to their past selves unless it became absolutely necessary. Who knew what would happen if all four of them were in the same place at the same time?

  Teddy reminded us that what we call time happens all at once, but seriously, does anyone understand that? And so what? It just seemed a bad idea to be in the same place at the same time. Even being in the same area at the same time seemed like a bad idea, but there was nothing we could do about that.

  Before we left, I said that I hoped that just because the town was named King’s Watch didn’t mean Abbadon was always watching. Aki assured me that even if he was, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The only suspicious thing would be if someone saw Garth and Anne outside, but knew they were inside the house at the same time. Yes. I would call that suspicious.

  “Or spies? What about spies?” I asked. “What if there are spies watching everything and they report to Abbadon what they see?”

  Pris pulled my hair, and Cil pinched my leg since Beru wasn’t there to do it.

  “Stop the whining, Kara Beth. We’ll be watching over all of you. If anyone should be afraid, it would be Anne and Garth.”

  Anne turned pale, and Garth glared at Pris.

  “That’s enough,” Teddy said. “We have work to do. Tomorrow is the day that Anne tells Abbadon. After she says, “yes,” she has to get herself, Garth, and her best friend, Hannah, who has arrived the night before, into the Castle.

  “Can you do it, Anne?”

  Anne nodded yes. After that, we spent time arranging what would happen next. Once we were in the Castle, we would find Niko and Zeid. We still hadn’t heard from them, and all of us were trying to hide our fears that something had happened to them.

  Teddy and Pita would remain in the tunnels waiting for directions. Tarla would be waiting for it all to be over so she could go home. Ruta would be moving with the trees. If we could get to a tree, we would find Ruta. The Priscillas said they would be watching and would get into the Castle on their own if they were needed there. To get Aki into the Castle, Anne said she would ask Abbadon if she could hire a seamstress to make her a dress for the wedding.

  Anne told us not to worry, Abbadon would want to move quickly. Maybe so he could own her. Perhaps because he really loved her. Although it probably mattered to the part of Anne that had loved Abbadon, it didn’t matter to the rest of us. We only needed every one in his Castle as soon as possible.

  Our goal was to stop him from destroying the future. But first, we had to send a few people back to the future.

  *******

  Cahir was waiting for us as we rose to the surface. Since the future Cahir had allowed me to see through his eyes, I asked this Cahir if I could do that with him. His answer was to look at me as if I had lost my mind and then said, “We are one.” I didn’t care if he meant that the past and future Cahir was the same one, or that he and I were one, or the whole of nature was one, I was just happy to hear his voice in my head.

  “Questioning things again,” Aki said, moving to my side. She was going to walk with us into town where she would set up a seamstress shop that would look as if it had always been there. Aki didn’t look like herself. Again. If she hadn’t spoken, I wouldn’t have recognized her.

  “Always,” I answered. “And here’s one for you. Were you born knowing how to do the magical things that seem to come so easily for you, or did you have to learn them?”

  “We are all born with our gifts, Hannah. Our job is to discover them and use them. But not everyone has all of them. All beings are unique, and yet we are all intertwined. As Cahir said, ‘We are one.’ Being a chameleon is a gift that belongs to my race of people. However, I still had to practice it, as you have to practice yours.”

  “I’m not so sure I know my gifts, Aki. They seem so unspectacular compared to the things that all of you do. Levitate, move within trees, shapeshift, disappear, and reappear at will. So far I can throw lightning bolts on my own. Everything else I have to use a tool, like my bracelet or star necklace.

  “Teddy and Pita save us with their inventions, Earl and Ariel are the wind and the storm. Oh, and then there is Leif and Sarah, the wizard and the Oracle. Seriously, I am clumsy and not great at anything that you and Niko have taught me.”

  I turned to look at Aki and said, “I know I sound as if I am whining and I am a little. But mostly I am worried. What good am I here? What if I mess something up? I don’t understand why I am of use here other than being the possible future Queen of Zerenity, which is not something I aspire to at all.”

  Anne and Garth had turned around to see where we were, and Aki held up her hand telling them to give us a moment.

  “Sometimes it is hard to see our own value. But questioning it means you are challenging the infinite One who made us all. Not those two bored-brothers on a spaceship. They are not the creators. I am referring to whatever made us all to express Life. It is not yours, or mine, to figure out. It is yours to agree to participate and do everything you know how to do. No one thread in a tapestry is more important than another.

  “When this is over, perhaps you will be able to look back and see how it only worked because you were there. Or that all of us were here together. Either way, this is no time to question your importance. As Cahir said, ‘We are one.’ What we can do is for the good of all, and that goes for all of us: even you, Hannah.

  “Now let’s get going. There is no more time for self-doubt. From this point on, you are Hannah, Anne’s best friend. Be that, and all will be well.”

  Abbadon Forty-Two

  Thirty minutes later I was standing outside the door where Anne and Garth were staying. The past Anne and Garth. I was alone. The others were waiting for me behind a stand of evergreen trees. Aki was almost invisible, having made herself look like the tree. Well, almost like the tree. If I looked closely, I could see her outline. I fought off the urge to be jealous and ashamed of myself for not being able to do cool things like that.

  What had Ruta said to me when I first met him? That I was too self-important. He was right, and I was still working on getting over it. I took one last big breath and
knocked on the door.

  Anne opened it without even asking who it was. Of course, in this timeline, no one knew of Abbadon the monster. Why be afraid of a knock on the door?

  We had all planned out what I was going to say to get in the door, but it turned out that it wasn’t needed. That was good because I was tongue-tied. It was hard to believe that it wasn’t the same Anne who was now hiding in the trees. This Anne stared back at me and then gestured for me to come inside.

  She closed the door and motioned for me to follow her. Wasn’t I a stranger to her? Why was she letting me in without saying anything? Anne turned and put her finger to her lips. The universal sign to not say anything. I could do that. I was too afraid to speak anyway.

  We walked down a long hallway to a room at the back of the house. Sitting at a small kitchen table was Garth. I sucked in my breath. Garth? I didn’t know I was going to be talking to both of them. Anne shut the door, motioned for me to sit, and then asked if I would like some tea.

  Still not speaking, I nodded, yes. No one spoke as Anne poured tea for the three of us and then sat down at the table with us. Taking a sip of tea, she carefully placed the teacup back on its saucer, and turned to look at me.

  “Hi, Hannah,” she said.

  I had just taken a sip of tea, and it came right back out as I choked and held a napkin to my face trying to stop coughing.

  “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have startled you that way. But, I figured you’d be along sooner or later. Does this mean it’s time for us to go home?”