Back at school, I remember reading on the Internet that there was some huge controversy with that organization in Switzerland – CERN. Some people were concerned that they could possibly create a black hole with their nuclear Hadron collider, one that could swallow up the Earth and maybe the entire solar system. Some fringe groups even filed a lawsuit claiming that CERN could potentially open a portal to another world and allow demons to come here.
It’s not CERN they need to worry about; it’s me with my iPad device!
My hand is shaking. I might have just now caused some sort of Armageddon…and for what? None of this helps me find Mom!
Enough of this screwing around. This iPad device is going back to school tomorrow. I’ll never look at it or touch it again.
I feel a soft brush against my leg. It’s Bastet. “You are trouble, girl!”
Her mischievous smirk is back.
“Why does Janus dislike you so much?”
She kneads her paws on the ratty couch, ripping the soft cloth with her claws. Her tail forms a question mark before she plops down on my lap. Oh, to be a cat…what a life!
Janus’s wacky reactions to Bastet give me pause. Now more than ever, I’m sure that I can’t trust him. It feels as if there’s something more going on here.
Wait a second. Since I found this odd iPad device in my mom’s secret room under the school, could it somehow lead me to her? Could the alarm on the device be some sort of hidden message from her, or maybe even a call for help?
I feel a surge of heat on my chest. It’s Mom’s cypress tree charm. An intense pulsing fills my heart. I feel compelled to go back through the mirror, to that other place…to “Olympus.” It’s as if the soul bridge between my mother and me – that invisible energy force that tells me she is still alive – tugs at my heart, urging me to act now. It’s as if she’s calling me to go to back there.
I tiptoe down the stairs to the shop and hold my finger out to trigger the basement door open. But it won’t budge. Crap! Janus did this. He changed the lock, and now I can’t go back there even if I wanted to. Depression hits me as I slump to the floor in defeat.
Suddenly, the red light on top of the device starts to flash again. Not again! I start to panic, but then I notice that, this time, the screen remains blank…until a remarkable thing happens.
Another source of low red light starts to flash on and off.
It’s coming from the bookshelf-that-is-the-door to the basement. An idea comes to me to touch the light on the device to the light on the door.
Instantly, the flashing lights cease…and click! I’m inside.
Glee fills me as I run down the stairs, flip on the lights, and peer inside. My moment of triumph, though, is short lived. I see the grand mirror, but it’s covered by a white sheet. Janus must have done this, too.
I yank on the corner, and the sheet falls to the ground in one fell swoop. But the mirror is just a mirror. I knock on the glass, and nothing happens. I sigh in annoyed frustration, pacing around to check the back and the sides and then again to the front. Nothing.
I know why! Bastet didn’t follow me down here. Where did she go? I thought she was right behind me. Frustrated, I start to worry that the place beyond the mirror might not really exist, when I notice that the heat is rapidly rising in the room. I hear the pitter-patter of Bastet’s paw pads as she runs down the stairs.
I study my reflection and notice that the cat’s-eye stone at the top of the mirror is starting to glow, casting the same eerie bioluminescent blue light that I remembered from the last time I was here. As the shimmering surface of the mirror starts to fade, I jump through. Like last time, my vision starts to spin as the world around me swirls into a magnificent blur of colors and lights, all racing forward to merge dynamically into the epicenter of a massive vortex.
When I open my eyes, there are two wide-eyed kids staring down at me. The boy and girl are maybe eleven or twelve, with skin of rich ebony. Their faces are wary and parched as they stand there holding gas masks in their gloved hands. The boy has a fresh scar on his cheek, as if he’s recently been in a fight. They’re wearing some serious desert survival gear. Every so often, they place a breathing ventilator over their mouths to take a breath.
The stare down continues as I attempt to stand, dusting off my body from the arduous journey. I feel a sharp pain in my side. The boy has stabbed me with what looks like a red-tipped spear.
“Hey!” I raise my voice. “That hurts.” It barely sticks into my skin, so I pull it out and throw it on the ground. “Who are you?” I ask, irritated.
“You first!” the boy yells as he retrieves his spear.
“Yeah!” says the girl. Remarkably, we all seem to speak the same language. That, or it could be like Greek, where I somehow have the ability to understand them. Who knows?
Standing up to my full height, I tower over them. “I’m Helene. I came from there,” I say, pointing back to the glowing portal.
“Yeah, we saw it,” the boy says. His voice is laced with sarcasm.
The girl chimes in. “We’ve never seen a Dreg come through the Gate backwards before.”
“Dreg?” I ask.
“Anyone who comes here to Gaea from the other side is a Dreg,” the boy says firmly.
“Gaea?” I ask, puzzled.
“Yeah.” His face is shrouded in apprehension. “You came from Earth.” He waves his arms in an arc around him. “This planet…this is Gaea.”
The girl seems calm. She looks at me, pointing behind us to where my behemoth lioness sits, and asks, “Is that your animal?”
Bastet glares intensely at the girl as fire dances in her stunning amber eyes.
I nod. “Yeah.”
The kids look at each other Almost instantly, relief passes between them.
“I am Xonos.” The boy steps up, then points to the girl. “And this is my sister, Serina.” He points through the gaps in the crumbling stone open-air structure that we stand in, out to the far reaches of the desert, where the skies are consumed with raging fierce clouds of red dust slowly spinning counterclockwise as it crawls across the sand dunes towards a vast mountain on the horizon. It looks like a hurricane but out on the desert instead of over water.
“That’s a sandicane.” The boy’s expression is grim. “It’s headed this way. We don’t want to get caught in it. We have to leave now.” Xonos nods, then turns towards the Gate, which somehow has gone dormant, just a blank wall. “Turn it back on! You’re going back!”
“I don’t know how,” I stammer, perplexed, as I look around for Bastet. She’s nowhere to be seen.
The ground starts to shake. The kids scream in fear as they point outside. “Look!”
Directly outside the door of the structure we stand in, the earth cracks open to form a large fissure, from which an enormous creature rises up. The beast looks like a wing-less cross between a dragon and a snake, with dark brown scales and blazing red eyes. Jagged horns cover the top of its head and grow smaller as they run down the spine of its snake-like body. It roars in fury as fire blazes from its mouth. The land churns and quakes as the creature snakes in and out of newly formed cracks in the sand directly in front of us. Just as the beast almost reaches the door to our structure, I spot what looks like a tiny man riding on the back of the beast. I point at him.
The kids yell, “Drakon rider!”
The giant beast roars one last time and plummets back into the depths of the dark crevasse. The land grows quiet and silent.
“What was that?” I ask, breathless.
“Drakon,” Serina says with passion. “The riders guide them to break up and loosen the land and rocks with the fire from their
mouths. Then the miners come in and take out the lumite. This mining is why this planet and others nearby are worthless desert wastelands.”
We walk over to the edge of the crevasse that is quickly filling with sand. Directly in front of us is a large, smoldering, luminous white rock. Xonos points to it. “This is lumite, the primary source of power for the city of the gods, New Olympus.” He points somewhere far off in the distance to where I can barely see a massive shiny silver pyramid jutting out of the desert sand.
“So, you’re telling me that the gods from the old myths are real?”
The kids look at me, astonished, and say together, “What myths?”
“You know, the myths about the gods?” I say.
The kids look confused, but then Xonos says incredulously, “Oh, so you think that the gods are like characters in a fairy tale or something?”
Serina smirks. “I sure wish that were true! Then we could close the book and be rid of them, those yikkers!”
“But you can’t because they’re immortal, right?” I ask intently.
“Immortal?” she asks as if she doesn’t understand what I mean.
“Yeah.” I explain, “You know, like they live forever, can’t be killed.”
The kids exchange glances, then burst into laughter.
“Oh, they can die,” Xonos corrects me. “In the old days, there were many more of what you think of as gods, but now only a few are left.”
Something bothers me about this. If these “gods” can die and are not immortal, then how is it that thousands of years later, they are still alive? Time must move here at a much slower pace than in our universe.
The whistling winds of the sandicane are fast approaching. As we turn back towards the door to the structure where the Gate is, Bastet comes bounding around the corner, rushing past me towards the Gate. A harsh gust of wind sweeps past us, stirring up the sand. I feel the impact. Whack! I’ve been hit by something hard. Teetering and off balance, I slam against the side of the structure and onto my butt. That hurt!
“Are you okay?” I hear Xonos ask with genuine concern.
As I sit up, my ribs smart in pain. Not a good sign.
Some tumbling debris lies on the sand next to me. With the ferocious wind whipping my hair into my eyes and face, I can barely see it. I grab it, crawling on my belly through the sand. The kids follow behind me. We barely make it through the door into the structure. Sweat drips down my face as we stop to rest next to the Gate.
Bastet’s cat’s-eye charm is glowing brightly. The shimmery blue surface of the Gate looks alive in its bioluminescent splendor, all ready for me to go back to Earth.
The debris next to me look like a branch from a living tree. I’m surprised to see any sign of green plant life out here in this wasteland. The tree must be nearby if its branch is here now. It’s not likely that the branch could tumble that far, even with the intense winds here.
This branch is odd. It’s covered with symbols, as if they were carved with a knife but by different people, like graffiti. As I run my fingers over these symbols, I can feel my necklace getting warmer. I look down, and as I touch my mother’s cypress tree pendant, it begins to glow.
“Hey, where did this come from?” I ask the kids. Something about these symbols seems eerily familiar to me, as if I’ve seen them somewhere before, but I can’t recall where.
The kids tell me about the legend of the Last Standing Tree, which supposedly exists somewhere on Gaea. “But no one knows where it is. It’s a mystery,” Serina says with wide, innocent eyes.
“I don’t think it’s real,” says Xonos.
Hearing this brings to mind my mom. When I was growing up, she would tell me stories about an enchanted cypress tree, one that stood all alone in a friendless desert, the last of its kind.
“What are these carvings?” I ask, curious, still feeling the warmth on my chest. The howling of the wind is starting to reach the interior of the structure. I know there’s no time for this, but I’ve got to know.
Xonos’s eyes grow wide at the stirring sand around us. “We have to go.” He motions to Serina, who places a full mask on her face. Just before Xonos starts to place the mask over his face, he becomes irate. “Helene, you won’t survive the storm. You have to go back through the gate…now!”
A bizarre, soothing calm comes over me. Something about the warmth of the tree on my neck and this tree branch under my fingers makes me hesitate. I can’t go back now.
“No!” I yell back. “I want to know more about this tree.”
They both ignore me, shaking their heads through their masks.
Urgent, overzealous need overtakes me, so I grab Xonos’s arm in desperation. Before I know what’s happening, though, he forces me backwards, pushing me through the Gate. I hear Bastet roar behind me as I free-fall through space into nothingness…
19 – Olympus Arch
The cold, hard floor of the basement feels harsh under my aching body. I grunt as I turn my body over, my ribs smarting in pain. My headache is back too. It must be almost time for me to go to school, but I can’t imagine going like this. Maybe I will call in sick.
I look around the room for Bastet, but there’s no sign of her. What if she didn’t make it back and she’s stuck on Gaea? That would be bad. I’m not worried about Bastet being there alone because she seems more than capable of fending for herself there. But how will I get back?
My cell phone starts to beep. Crap! It’s my alarm. Time to get up. Even more than before, I want to call in sick. I totally would except for my urgent need to get rid of the strange iPad device. It must go back to the secret room under the school…now.
Because I’m already running late, I skip the bus and take a cab to within a few blocks of the school entrance. I just finish paying the driver when I hear a weird scraping noise somewhere behind me.
The sound is strangely familiar to me, but I don’t know why. I halt and listen.
The sound stops.
Okay, that’s creepy.
I start to walk again.
Scrape…shuffle…scrape.
A memory floods my mind. I flip around.
There’s nothing there but my shadow stretching long across the sidewalk in the early morning sunlight. A throng of tourists stands on the sidewalk across the street taking photos of an average-looking building.
There’s enough people here that I’m not that scared…not like before when that washed-out, sickly looking man at the Metro station was following me and gave me the ring!
I start walking again, but this time, I watch my shadow move behind me from the corner of my eye. Just then, a much larger shadow emerges from mine.
Shuffle… scrape…
I whip around to face my perpetrator. Instantly, I recognize this pasty-pale seventy-something man with disgusting yellow teeth and wearing a crappy suit: my mom’s attorney, Harold “Hal”’ Avery!
I open my mouth. “Hal…”
Before I can finish, a horde of tourists crosses the street and swallows him up right before my eyes.
Where did he go? I search the crowd, but there’s no sign of him. I blink my eyes a few times. But he’s not there. Gone.
At school, I stifle a yawn as I plop my stuff down next to my desk and take a seat in mythology class. Our teacher, Ms. Petraki, who stands at least a whole head shorter than me, speaks in a squeaky voice as she hands me my corrected book report. For once there are no red marks on the page.
The chair next to me sits vacant. Usually a quiet, dark-haired girl named Anya sits there, but she’s out today, which is weird because I heard that she holds the class record for perfect attendan
ce. I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s Vani. Her usual perkiness is somewhat muted today, as if she’s deep in serious thought.
“First Sonia, then Philippos, and now Anya’s not here?” Vani’s voice is breathy, like she’s winded. “It’s weird.”
“Yeah, really. What’s going on with them?” I ask, curiosity suddenly overtaking me.
“No one knows. I tried calling Sonia yesterday and no answer. I’ve asked around to see what I could find out, where she could be. I made Alexis go to her house. He knocked on the door, but no one was there. It’s like she’s just vanished into thin air.”
I shudder. “That is strange!”
“Now, with Anya out – and you know she’s never absent – I know something’s going on,” Vani says. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”
Vani and I stare at the vacant seat just behind me on Vani’s left. That seat belongs to Samantha.
“By the way, where is…our favorite person today?” I say, suddenly curious.
Vani shrugs, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t know.”
It’s horrible of me, I know, but for a split second, I feel happy as I fantasize that whatever is going on with the others has also happened to Samantha, that she might be gone for good and never bother me again.
Ms. Petraki doesn’t seem to notice us talking as she walks the aisles, still handing out the reports, bending over occasionally to whisper into a student’s ear.
“One more thing,” Vani says, making me turn to face her.
“Yes?”
“I absolutely cannot stand it one more moment.” She looks exasperated. “I mean, really, you can’t continue to wear these blousy clothes. Time to upgrade.”
I look down and see what she means. The long, flowery shirt that I’m wearing with black leggings flows around my body like a giant tent. It looks a little silly and doesn’t complement my new physique at all.
“What do you have in mind?” I ask.
Protogenesis: Before the Beginning Page 18
