Between Worlds

by Skip Brittenham

  “We should just get out of here,” Marshall said, lifting his cap. “They could be dangerous.”

  “We’ll be careful,” she said, tugging gently on his sleeve. “Come on. We’re here, right? Even if we don’t exactly know what that means yet.”

  Marshall shook his head, but nodded toward the noise. They both started moving at a snail’s pace in that direction, trying to keep from rustling the tall grass. In a few minutes, he glimpsed the upper bodies of a trio of animals that were vaguely horse shaped, but with camel humps and shaggy greenish fur marked with wide black stripes. Their heads were low to the ground at first—presumably they were eating grass—but then a furry green head popped up and gazed at them with huge, soulful yellow eyes.

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Back away before it sees us,” she whispered.

  “Too late.” The impossible Alice in Wonderland look of the thing was mesmerizing. “It definitely sees us.”

  Two other heads lifted, and now all three creatures were sizing them up. There was nothing malevolent in their stance or appearance, but the animals were bigger than horses, with long, powerful-looking necks like giraffes but thicker, and looked more powerful. The nearest creature swallowed a mouthful of grass and took a step toward them. It seemed to be either grinning or passing gas—Marshall couldn’t tell for sure.

  “Marshall . . .”

  “I think it’s just curious,” he said, trying hard to keep calm. He backed up a step, and the nearest creature gave another soft chuff.

  “Don’t startle it,” whispered Mayberry.

  “Shhh.” Marshall held his ground as the creature shambled closer. It stopped a few feet in front of them, close enough for him to smell its earthy breath.

  A second one trotted up and stopped in front of Mayberry. Then both animals knelt down, lowering their heads and shoulders. For a second, Marshall thought the animals were bending to graze, but they kept their mouths closed and their eyes trained on the humans.

  “They . . .” she began. He saw her swallow hard. “I think they want us to climb onto them.”

  “What?” No way. This wouldn’t even happen on Star Trek. He took another step back as the creatures strained their heads forward, rolling their massive shoulders down below the level of the grass.

  “Whatever they are, they’re definitely friendly.” Mayberry reached a hand tentatively toward the kneeling beast, patting the fur on the back of its neck. Getting bolder, she scratched it gently between its hairy green ears. It wrinkled the skin on the top of its head and chortled with delight.

  “Marshall, I really think they want us to get on. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We have to do it.”

  As Marshall stood frozen with indecision, she approached the kneeling beast. “Nice . . . thingie,” she said soothingly. “Good thingie. Here goes nothing,” she said, lifting her right foot over the animal’s neck to straddle it and using its coarse hair to pull herself the rest of the way up.

  The creature slowly rose to its feet. She slid backward until she stopped in a natural saddle, just behind where its neck joined its chest. When it reached its full height, Mayberry’s feet dangled six feet above the ground. A wide grin covered her face, like a kid on the first day of summer vacation.

  “Marshall,” she cried, “this is unbelievable. You’ve got to do it!”

  The other creature was still staring at him with those golden eyes as he gently pulled himself onto its neck. The beast raised its head slowly, and Marshall slid down and started to laugh. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I know,” said Mayberry, running her fingers through her creature’s green pelt. “I know.”

  His creature took a couple of halting steps, and Marshall swayed unsteadily, grabbing the thick fur on its neck to stabilize him. “What do you want to—” But before he could spit out his question, both creatures shot off, galloping across the vast grassy meadow . . . and even farther away from the aspen forest.

  The two animals tore swiftly along, side by side. Fortunately, the beast’s natural saddle cradled him, and its rhythmic gallop made it surprisingly easy to stay aboard. The wind slapped Marshall’s face, the sun glanced off the beasts’ fur, and he heard the thunder of their hooves.

  Flocks of dark blue creatures with two sets of parallel wings darted through the cloudless sky. After a few minutes, the practical side of Marshall’s brain jerked to its senses as he realized that he had absolutely no idea where their mounts were taking them. He whipped his head around and saw that the aspens were no longer visible, only endless grass.

  “Mayberry, we have to stop,” he yelled across the gap between them. “We don’t know where we’re going.”

  Mayberry frowned. “You’re right. But how?”

  Marshall hadn’t considered that question. “Whoa!” he shouted, as loudly as he could. When that didn’t work, he grabbed the fur on both sides of the creature’s neck and tugged. The creature slowed, then skidded to a jerky halt. Marshall almost flipped forward over its neck, barely managing to regain his balance. He awkwardly slid off of its back.

  “Thanks for the ride, buddy,” he said, gently patting the creature’s head while backing away slowly.

  Mayberry’s beast turned around and trotted back to the one that had carried Marshall. Grasping its thick fur, she slid smoothly off. On foot again, they were wobbly-legged but unharmed.

  The friendly beasts snorted, then barreled away.

  “That was the most fun I’ve had in my whole life,” Mayberry exclaimed with twinkling eyes and a huge smile. “What were those creatures? Where are we?”

  “I know it’s amazing, but honestly, I think we need to get back to the Mystery Forest,” he said, pointedly ignoring her question as he tried to figure out the best way back based on the position of the sun. “I think we came north,” he said. “Or . . . but . . . oh, I really don’t know.”

  “Wherever we are, it feels pretty late.” She glanced at her wrist and frowned. “My watch stopped,” she said, raising her wrist to show him.

  He checked his own watch. It had stopped at nine thirty A.M., about the time they’d fallen asleep by the tree.

  She pointed toward a low hill—the highest point in the grassy countryside surrounding them. “Let’s climb up and see if we can figure it out.”

  Marshall nodded and checked his belt where he’d tucked the feather Mayberry had found, but it was gone. Climbing the slope to the top of the hill was a slog. Once on its peak, he scrambled up onto a couple of huge quartz-like boulders.

  It might not look familiar, but the landscape was undeniably beautiful. Jagged mountains in the far distance, shrouded in ominous gray and black clouds, framed the rolling grasslands. In the other direction was a dense forest with a towering canopy of leaves. Below their vantage point on the far left was a swiftly running river that sparkled with rolling white rapids.

  Another revelation hit Marshall, like a copper nail driven into the center of his forehead. He’d never seen mountains like those anywhere near Eden Grove. The accumulating evidence was pretty convincing. Had the Wishing Tree actually transported them to another world?

  As if Mayberry was reading his mind, she blurted out, “There has to be another explanation.”

  “Yeah. Right,” he replied. “Exotic jungle birds with feathers that fall from the sky and speed you up when you touch them. New mountains. Not to mention those alien animals we rode.”

  She glanced down, her anxiety evident in her tremulous voice. “I don’t care what the explanation is, Marshall. We have to find our way back home. Let’s retrace our steps.”

  He nodded and shoved his hands deep into his pockets so Mayberry couldn’t see that they were trembling.

  CHAPTER 15

  THEY HAD GONE a little farther when Mayberry sighed in relief.

  “What?” said Marshall.

  “Cows,�
� she said, pointing to animals grazing in the distance. “There must be a farmhouse nearby, which means a working landline so we can get some help.”

  Marshall couldn’t help but feel a tad disappointed by seeing such an ordinary animal. Now the only new adventure left for him to share with Mayberry would be finding a farmhouse on the cattle ranch. As they approached the river, he noticed how much broader it looked and how much faster it seemed to be running than when they’d crossed it on the covered wooden bridge.

  Mayberry started walking faster, obviously excited, but she slowed as they drew closer. One of the animals turned sideways. The wide-bellied creature had a thick coat of curly brown fur, but it definitely wasn’t a cow. Two sets of sharp, heavily ringed horns sprouted from its head, and a ridge of long jagged teeth lined a deep mouth.

  It swung its massive head down to pull up some of the heavy grass growing near the river. The rest of the herd lingered nearby. Mayberry was disconcerted by the strange-looking beast, but even more worried by what seeing it meant. Sensing their presence, the beast whirled its head and regarded them with small, malevolent eyes. It stomped the earth with its front hooves a couple of times, like an angry bull warning a matador to back off. A low keening came from its mouth.

  Then it charged.

  “Run!” Marshall yelled.

  Mayberry spun and ran as fast as she could, desperately wishing she had a feather to give her feet wings. The huge beast thundered after them, the ground quaking under the weight of its hooves. Too soon she heard a deep, ugly grunt behind her.

  “That way!” she screamed, pointing right. Marshall obeyed, veering sharply, while Mayberry dodged hard to the left.

  The charging beast leaned its head right, then left as its tiny brain tried to determine which of them to crush first. Confused, it dashed straight between them. A couple of dozen feet later, it planted its front legs in the grass and skidded to an unsteady halt, its hooves plowing deep grooves in the earth.

  “The river!” Marshall bellowed, pivoting to sprint in the opposite direction.

  Mayberry instantly understood Marshall’s thinking. The beast was bulky, with relatively spindly legs—it probably couldn’t swim. She dashed toward the water, straining to get every bit of horsepower out of her legs, but soon heard the crunching sound of the beast’s hooves behind her. A painful stitch scorched her left side as her muscles started to cramp. She imagined the thing’s breath on her neck—gasp—its deadly pointed horns slamming into her back—gasp—turning her vulnerable internal organs to jelly—gasp. Could she get to the river before the creature impaled her? She didn’t have to find out, because Marshall had stopped ahead, waiting for her in front of a big, dead, tall moss-covered tree by the riverbank. His fingers were interlaced at thigh level to make a step for her foot.

  “Jump!” he screamed.

  Without thinking, she vaulted in full stride, planting her right foot squarely in the palms of his hands. He pushed her foot into the air, high enough for her to grab a branch with both hands. She shimmied rapidly up the tree and swung her legs over a thick branch.

  Marshall jumped and deftly grabbed a low branch on the opposite side of hers, then scrambled up toward Mayberry’s side of the tree just as the beast’s horns rammed into the trunk beneath them. The tree vibrated to its core. The beast gnashed its teeth and looked up as the two climbed farther out of its reach. It reared back on its hind legs and squatted so low its flat tail almost touched the ground. Its legs compressed downward like metal springs. Then it jumped, propelling itself almost high enough to gash Mayberry’s leg with one of its horns. While descending, the furious creature opened its maw and tore off a strip of bark, rather than the flesh it sought. Then, landing nimbly like a cat on all fours, it spat out the wad of bark and trotted away.

  Marshall shot Mayberry a thumbs-up from a branch across from hers and started speaking, but the roar of the river crashing and churning below the tree muffled his words.

  He tried again. “That was close,” he yelled.

  “Yeah. Too close,” Mayberry shouted back.

  She squinted down into the whitecaps swirling below. A hundred yards away was a wide waterfall with a ten-foot drop. A series of smaller waterfalls cascaded downriver from there, until the water finally mushed together into a narrow, fast-moving channel that shot through a deep, rocky gorge.

  Mayberry turned to watch the retreating beast, but when it had gone only a dozen yards, it turned its head and locked eyes with her. Deftly spinning around, it pawed the earth, lowered its head, and rushed forward. Its knobby horns smashed into the tree trunk with even greater force than before.

  Marshall stretched an arm around the tree to grab her wrist and steady her, looping his other one around the trunk for additional purchase. “I hope that didn’t hurt him,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  The creature backed up a few paces and punched forward again.

  Slam.

  The tree swayed and quivered.

  Relentlessly, the beast continued to charge the tree and drive its sharp horns into the base.

  Boom. Boom.

  Stirred by the sounds of the turmoil, a few other beasts in the herd left their grazing and trotted over. Emboldened by seeing treed prey, a different beast charged.

  Whack.

  Another beast bulled into the tree, then another, then another.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  The brittle shriek of splintering wood echoed across the river.

  Mayberry screamed as the base of the tree split. She clung tenaciously to the branches as the trunk’s top half began falling toward the river. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed one of the smaller beasts trying to halt its charge midstride, but it slipped, then skidded sideways, and its momentum carried it right over the bank.

  CHAPTER 16

  MARSHALL’S BRAIN was operating in overdrive. Was it safer to cling to the fractured tree, or should he leap into the water before it splashed in?

  The decision was made for him seconds later, as the tangled mass of branches hit the river, sending plumes of water into the air. The rush of cold water was a shock, but when

  the branches popped back up into the air, he quickly wiped the water from his eyes and looked for Mayberry. He saw that she was still clinging to the branches near him.

  Something splashed into the water behind them. When Marshall turned around, he saw a small beast’s head appear, then sink under the waves, then pop up again like a cork seconds later. It was using its stumpy legs to dog-paddle

  toward them.

  The swift current swept the tree downriver, and before he could process it, they were at the edge of the biggest waterfall. The water’s roar grew louder as the world tipped away and the branches plummeted down into a vertiginous cloud of white spray and roiling blue water. Their tree became trapped in the whirlpool at the waterfall’s base, but after several spins around the bubbling vortex, it tore free and continued rushing downstream, bouncing up and down over the smaller cataracts below.

  Miraculously, they had both managed to keep hold of their branches. Bruised, freezing, and terrified, Marshall held on for his life. Mayberry screamed every time they hit a rock, and her hands gripped the branches so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

  Their fun day trip had become a desperate fight for survival. The tree tumbled over the last short drop and rocketed into the narrow channel running through the gorge. The sun’s rays were nearly blotted out by the rocky cliffs lining both sides of the river.

  “Should w-we let go of the tree and swim-m to shore?” Marshall yelled, shivering violently. Even the most basic decisions were beyond his numb brain’s current capacity.

  “I d-don’t know,” Mayberry screamed back. “I d-don’t think we can climb out of here.”

  Marshall leaned his head back and looked up. She was right. The cliff walls were made of sheer rock. They still
hadn’t lost the beast, either, whose head kept cresting above the waves. It was incredibly persistent and, Marshall suspected, hungry. If they left the relative security of the tree, it could catch them in the water, where they were more vulnerable.

  “What was th-that?” Mayberry shouted.

  For a second, Marshall didn’t know what she meant, but then he felt it too—a sharp tug that jerked the tree backward.

  “I don’t know,” he hollered back. “Maybe a branch snagged on something?” He looked back, his eyes straining to pierce through the dark web of branches and shadows.

  Suddenly he spotted the problem. It was the cow creature. It had latched onto a branch of the tree with its sharp teeth, and was using its legs and grooved hooves to wrap itself around the tangle of branches to get enough leverage so it could inch closer to Marshall and Mayberry.

  “Ummm, Mayberry.”

  “What?”

  Before Marshall could warn her, something started swimming their way, fast, pushing up the water in front of it. The river roiled, and a pewter-gray leviathan burst out. Its massive head had a giant purple eye, as well as a number of smaller ones, and from the sides of its snout sprouted dozens of long, wriggling tentacles. Its jaws opened wide, exposing pointed teeth as big as bowling pins, which clamped onto the beast’s hindquarters. Then its rubbery tentacles whipped out to stuff the whole beast down its cavernous throat. The monster glided smoothly beneath the turbid surface . . . then nothing. In a flash, both predator and prey had vanished beneath the murky water.

  “What was that?” Mayberry bellowed.

  “Some kind of . . . I don’t even know.”

  “I can ad-admit it out loud now, Marshall. We aren’t on Earth anymore.”

  Marshall nodded in agreement and tightened his grip on the tree. The river emerged from the canyon and widened, then began to slow. The cliffs tapered lower, sunshine stroked the river’s surface, and finally, the rock walls melted away.

  The water turned warmer. Color returned to Mayberry’s cheeks, and she stopped shivering.