by J B Cantwell
“This is the first link I ever made,” he said. “I was just a kid. And I was never sure if I had read the frame right.”
He held out the link to me, which was made of a black, shiny rock with sharp edges jutting out on all sides.
“When you made it, what were you trying to do? How far?” I asked.
“Ten miles,” he answered. “Maybe more.”
Ten miles. That would get us along on our routes faster than anything else we had tried, faster even than the bees.
“Why haven’t you told us about this before?” I asked. “We could have used it on Grallero.”
Kiron shrugged.
“I don’t know what it can do,” he said. “I feared it would make things worse for us to use this. The forging of this link didn’t go as planned. In fact, it went so badly that I’ve never even tried to use it. I was too concerned about it backfiring.”
I looked around us at the falling snow. Cait’s whole body was shaking now.
“We need to try,” I said.
Kiron frowned, but nodded. He held out the link and we held onto him.
We landed in one piece. I was glad for that. But this place was scarcely better than where we had just come from. The sky was thick with clouds, and while no snow fell from above, it seemed somehow colder here.
Cait’s breath came in halting gasps beneath the blanket.
I turned to Kiron, who also seemed perplexed by our location. His eyes scoured the horizon.
“There’s no storm,” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t help us much if it’s just as freezing here as it was there.”
“You misunderstand me,” he said.
He held up the link, examining it.
“This isn’t what we thought,” he continued. “This is no ten mile link.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean,” he said, “that I have no idea how far we’ve come. Or how to get back. I don’t know where we are. If we had traveled ten miles, we would be able to see the storm from the outside. But here,” he turned, staring around, “there’s nothing.”
“We have to keep going,” I said, almost pleading now. Cait was not only our best shot at navigating our path toward each pedestal, she was also my responsibility. I had promised not one, but two people that I would care for her. Larissa and Rhainn.
“I don’t know if we should use this again,” Kiron said, still examining his crude first attempt at a link.
Finian strode toward me, reaching out a hand to touch Cait’s forehead.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We have to move. We’ll take it again. And again. Until we find a safe place. A mile link will get us nowhere. It could take us days to travel like that.”
“You don’t understand,” Kiron said. “We might be a hundred miles from where we started right now.”
“Good,” Finian said. “The farther the better.” He grabbed the link from Kiron’s hands, and we all crowded together.
Our next location held rain, and it looked nothing like the first two. There were mountains, and somewhere close by, a river roared.
“Again!” Finian called.
Desert.
“Again!”
Blizzard.
“Again!”
Steep foothills to a different range of mountains.
My head was starting to spin.
We jumped and jumped, wildly searching, with no guide, for a place we could safely rest. And finally, after a dozen more attempts, we landed in tall, yellow grass.
Kiron yelped with joy as he looked around, surveying our new location, which was dotted with trees of every sort. His eyes came to rest on one particularly large one, and he whooped with excitement.
It was an oak.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kiron loved oak. Once, I had traveled for an entire day to collect a bushel of oak nuts for him, only to have him choose just a single one to use in a potion he was brewing.
As I laid Cait on the ground, I opened the top of her blankets. She was still out cold, but her breathing was already starting to steady with the warmth of this place. The sun overhead indicated it was around noon, whatever that meant here. I was starting to get used to not keeping track of time in the usual way that I might on Earth or Aeso. It could be that on this planet the sun was always high overhead.
I looked up to find Kiron leaping away from the group toward the tree as if he were greeting a old friend he hadn’t seen in a ages.
“Should we gather?” Finian asked, surveying the landscape. Several promising looking trees were nearby, and I wondered what sorts of fruits they might hold.
“No,” I answered. “Go after Kiron. Ask him what else he needs for his brew. Find those things first. We’ll worry about food later.”
Cait stirred slightly, but as the sun warmed her, her shivering seemed to ease a little.
In what seemed like no time at all, they were all back, their arms full of a variety of fruits and barks and nuts. Kiron cleared a space on the ground and lit a fire in a pile of grass with his disk. In a flash, his tiny pot hovered above it, and he began throwing pieces into it.
While he worked, he murmured the whole time. He seemed oddly connected to the process, and his voice would go up and down along with the movements of his hands over the pot. We didn’t dare disturb him. I had never seen him brewing a potion like this before. Once, I had seen him finish a brew that had rendered a traveling pack invisible, the same one I now carried, in fact. But I had only seen him finish it at the very end, and I never knew what it was about the mixture that had rendered it magical. Now, watching him create the potion, I at least got a sense of what was happening. The intonation of his voice, the movements of his hands; everything he did seemed to have an effect on the spell, the contents of the pot bubbling and frothing with each move he made.
At last Kiron sat back and laid out every oak nut he had found beneath the single tree, inspecting each one carefully, searching for dents, holes, anything that might have damaged them. Finally, he settled on a single nut, smaller than the rest, but perfectly formed. When he plunked it into the pot, the mixture sizzled.
He sat back, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“That’s it?” I asked. “Is it ready?”
“No,” he said. “Now we wait.”
“How long?” Father asked. His eyes were not on Kiron, but on Cait.
“A few hours,” he said. “It would be better if we had more time, but …”
But we didn’t.
Our vigil over Cait began right at that moment. Each of us seemed intent on doing nothing but study her, looking for any signs of alertness, any alteration in her breathing, any change. A couple of times she coughed in her sleep, a throaty, wet sound that I knew wasn’t good.
The day slipped by, and I noticed that the sun above us did move, quickly now toward the horizon. Father came to sit beside me, but he didn’t speak for a long while.
“I find myself missing someone,” he finally said. “Someone I don’t know. I see her in my mind, her face, her hair, but I don’t know her name or where she is. I’ve never seen her before, but somehow she is familiar.” He looked around, frowning. “Sort of like this place is familiar.”
My stomach began to knot as I tried to think of answers to his questions.
“What does she look like?” I asked.
“Pretty,” he said. “Dark blue eyes. Brown hair that falls below her shoulders. Always a worried look on her face.” He paused. Then, “I want to go to her.”
I sat back, surprised.
“How long have you been feeling this way?” I asked.
“Just since Grallero,” he said. “Since we waited for you in the trees.”
Since Grallero was balanced. That was what he meant. Since the most recent band of blue had encircled his irises. Since my dad had come back into his own body. Just a little bit more than the day before.
“Why do you think you haven’t attacked me yet?” I asked.
“I—I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t feel his anger the way I did before. It’s fading, and I have more control of this body than he does. And of course I have no desire to harm you.”
“Is it possible—“ I started. “Do you think I—could I talk to him?”
A sad look came over Father’s face.
“I don’t hear his words,” he said. “He doesn’t speak to me. I only see images. Flashes. I see a city with giant glass buildings. I see a flat, barren landscape. Hard rock that I pick at with an axe. And her. That woman. I see her face more than anything. Do you know who she is?”
Of course I knew who she was. There could be no other woman who filled Father’s otherwise blank mind.
My mother.
Hours later, just as the sun was setting, Kiron stood. He had been hovering over the pot all afternoon, waiting for something I didn’t understand. A color? A smell? I didn’t know, but suddenly he was bustling about. He found a small cup in his pack and dipped it into the brew. It frothed slightly as it went into the cup, and a big plume of steam came from the piping hot liquid.
He walked briskly to Cait, blowing on the potion in the cup, his urgency suddenly obvious. He had seemed oblivious to Cait’s suffering over the course of the day, but I guess he had known how serious her condition was all along.
He stuck one finger into the cup, shook it off, and blew some more, impatiently waiting for the liquid to cool. He paced back and forth while he waited, blowing the whole time. Finally after several minutes had passed, he approached Cait.
“Sit her up,” he said.
I removed her blanket and a wave of shivers overtook her. Finian gripped her by the shoulders and, with a tenderness I didn’t expect, lifted and held her in a seated position. Her eyes fluttered like a moth’s wings and then closed.
Please work. Please work. Please work.
Finian tilted her head back slightly, pressing down on her chin so her mouth opened. Kiron carefully tipped the cup, letting a few drops fall onto her slack tongue. She swallowed automatically, shaking a little. He dripped more of the potion into her mouth. She swallowed again.
Her eyes shot open, wide and surprised. She grabbed for the cup, suddenly gulping the potion down as if it had been days since she had tasted water. Then, with the cup drained, she collapsed again. But this time her body didn’t quake with sickness. I felt her head and my hand came away wet. Her fever had broken.
We all sat back in relief. It seemed to be working, and just in time, too.
That night had a feast of sorts, made up of the nuts and fruits Father and Finian had harvested from the trees. Cait’s skin had returned to a normal temperature, and her breathing had slowed and become even. After checking on her yet again, I finally allowed myself to rest. We had done it. We had kept her alive long enough to find a way to help her.
I lay back, staring up into the night sky, the stars twinkling down at me from the reaches of space. The others had all settled down, and I suspected it was more than just my eyes staring upward. I felt content for the first time in a long while. And, for just that moment, I forgot about the journey we were on and all of the terrible reasons we were on it.
I awoke to the sound of crunching and, looking up, saw Cait biting greedily into a fat, green apple. The sun had risen, and she was up before anyone else, pilfering through the stores of food we had leftover.
“Hi,” I said. “Good to see you up.”
She nodded, but her face looked unhappy.
“Hi,” she whispered.
I sat bolt upright.
“You can talk?” I said too loudly. The other sleeping bodies around us stirred.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But it hurts.”
She chewed thoughtfully on her mouthful of apple. Then, suddenly, her eyes filled with tears.
“Hey,” I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “What’s wrong? You’ll be fine. I’m sure it won’t hurt for long. Kiron’s potions are magic, you know. You’ll be good as new in no time.”
She shook her head and then buried her face in my chest, sobbing.
“Cait, is the pain really that bad?” I asked. “Maybe we should get you more—”
“No,” she choked. “That’s not it. I—I saw things.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When I was asleep,” she said. “Before the potion. The whole time since I got attacked by those bugs I haven’t felt good.”
“I know,” I said. “You’ve been getting sicker and sicker.”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I mean I felt … wrong. And then yesterday, when I couldn’t stay awake anymore, I saw him.”
“Him? Who?”
She looked up and her eyes met mine.
“Rhainn,” she said.
It was the first time I had ever heard her call him by his actual name. She usually only referred to him as Rhainn-y. Hearing the change tugged at me.
“You mean, like you had a dream about Rhainn?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said. “Not exactly. It was like I was there with him. I could see where he was. And I could feel what he felt. And we have to find him!” Her voice was suddenly alarmed at the memory.
“Why?” I asked. “What did you see?”
“He’s all alone,” she said. “We have to go get him. He’s sick, too. But worse than me. That man … the bad man … just dumped him. And now he’s lost.”
Tears were streaming down her face.
“We have to find him,” she repeated.
The others had wakened at this point, and all were listening to her story. Indecision clouded every face.
But I knew that we couldn’t go. Not yet. We couldn’t waste a single moment now.
“Cait, we can’t go find Rhainn yet. Not right now. We have to keep focused. We have to do the leveling. Right now. Otherwise the Corentin will torture Rhainn and you and everyone. Forever.
“But you don’t know,” she cried. “You didn’t see him.”
“I know,” Finian said, moving closer.
He reached out one hand, drying her tears with his fingers. Finian had once had daughters of his own, and it was evident with each gentle touch he gave Cait. Sometime, maybe not too long ago, he had been a father. Before the Corentin’s power had taken them away from him.
“We’ll go find him,” he said.
“But—” I began to argue.
“But we can’t go yet. We need to wait.”
Cait began to protest.
“Just a little bit longer,” he said. “I promise. We’ll find the pedestal here. And then on Aerit. And when we get back to Aeso, and Larissa, you can go with her to find your brother.”
She stood up quickly from the grass.
“We need to start now, then,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Let’s go.”
Nobody was ready to argue with her forcefulness, even though she was scarcely taller than my waist. She seemed decades older than she was, and her command couldn’t be ignored.
We all rose, hastily stuffing our things in our bags. Finian and Father jogged to a couple of the closest trees and filled their arms with fruits and nuts to sustain us on the next leg of our journey. Finally, when we were all assembled, we looked to Kiron. In his palm was the ten mile link. He stared at it, uncertain. I spoke first.
“Which direction is the pedestal?” I asked her.
She turned and pointed directly behind her.
“Is it far?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll have to jump there. It’s too far to walk.”
“How far?” Kiron asked. “How many days walking?”
Cait shook her head.
“It’s too many,” she argued. “We would have to—”
“I’m not saying we should walk, child,” Kiron said. “But how many days would it take if we were to do so?”
“Too many,” she repeated, her jaw set. “At least a hundred.”
“Then we shoul
d try this again,” he said.
“But we don’t know where that thing will take us,” I argued. “It might take us farther away from the pedestal.”
“Yes, it might,” he said. “We have no idea where we’ll end up. But it might take us closer. I say we jump around for a while to see how close to it we can get.”
“Are you sure we’re still on Dursala at all?” I asked. “What if it’s taken us to another planet and we just haven’t realized it yet?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Not likely. I may have created a link that didn’t work properly, but back then I didn’t even know how to make an interplanetary link. And I didn’t have any gold. I’d bet most anything that we’re still on Dursala. Just far away from where we need to be.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Finian said. “It’s that or we jump mile by mile for days and days. I say we try it.”
We all crowded around and, holding the link in the direction Cait pointed us, jumped.
When we landed, in desert this time, we all looked at Cait expectantly.
“How many days?” I asked.
“Forty,” she replied.
We jumped again.
“Twenty five.”
Again.
“Seventy.”
Around and around Dursala we went, hoping for the off chance that we might make it within a few days of our target.
And finally we did.
We landed in snow.
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“Four,” she said.
“Close enough?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Alright,” Kiron said. “We all need to get bundled up. It will not be a warm journey from here on out.”
We all did as he suggested, pulling out blankets and coats from our packs and wrapping ourselves tight.
“We’ll have to get in and out fast,” I said. “It’ll be jump after jump. There won’t be any time for resting.”
Nobody spoke. Everyone agreed.
From Father’s arms, Cait held out her hand and pointed. I held out the stone link that would take us one mile at a time, and together we jumped into the storm.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
