by Jack Geurts
“Your other hand,” she said, exasperated, like a mother with a imbecilic child.
“But I’m a leftie.”
“A what?”
“I’m left-handed.”
“No, I am left-handed.” She raised her glove to illustrate. “That means you are right-handed. I only have one pair.”
Jasper grumbled and pulled it onto his right. The synthetic material fitted to his hand perfectly, like it had been designed for him.
“Whoa.”
“The material shapes automatically to the contours of the wearer’s hand,” Io explained.
“I’ll say. Why don’t you wear both?”
“Because it is difficult to focus your mind on two places at once. Like having two people speaking to you at the same time and trying to understand both of them. Some people can do it.”
“But not you?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Might I remind you that even though you are wearing a glove, you have not been trained in how to use it. You have seen what I can do with mine. Do you really want to antagonise me?”
It would have been threatening if she didn’t have the faintest hint of a smile when she said this, her eyebrows raised expectantly, waiting for an answer.
Jasper smiled too. “Not at all. Please...teach me.”
“Very well. Close your eyes.”
He did so.
“Now...feel your hand in the glove.”
Jasper wiggled his fingers and clenched his hand into a fist. The glove was soft, stretchy. Not restrictive in the least, but feeling more like another skin.
“I want you to imagine the thoughts in your head travelling through your body when you move your fingers. I want you to think about your brain telling your fingers to move. The cause...and effect.”
Her disembodied voice wafted over him, and he was reminded of his days back in primary school – after lunch when his teacher would tell all the students to lie down and close their eyes, while she put a meditation CD into the player. Slow, soothing music would begin to play, and a slow, soothing voice would speak over the top, encouraging him to focus on his breathing, to relax. A useful trick to get the students to calm down after running around outside. An effective one, too. More than once, Jasper had found himself nodding off and waking up with a start – looking around to make sure no one else had noticed.
“Feel the thoughts travelling down your neck, through your shoulder, all the way to your fingers.”
He wiggled his fingers again and was aware of his brain sending the instruction. The neurons firing down his neck and arm. The impulses shooting between the two places faster than he could think. Indeed, by the time he was thinking about it, that was another thought altogether.
“I want you to imagine your glove – well, my glove – as a conduit for your mind. You are going to think something and will it into existence. Cause...and effect. You will use this glove to light your way through the darkest depths, and to vanquish your enemies. The possibilities are limited only by the power of your mind.” Io paused to let this sink in, then continued, “You have seen what I can do, what Janus can do. What can you do?”
As she said that, Jasper’s own shortcomings were made painfully clear to him. He hadn’t previously considered how he would go about exacting his revenge on Janus, only that he would. He just assumed that sheer force of will would be enough to overpower him – and maybe it was – but not without the glove.
Without the glove, he was just a boy. An intelligent boy, but physically, he was weak. He knew that. He had always known. He’d always been more comfortable indoors with his head in a book than running around outside. Never one to climb trees or play sports unless he had to.
He considered Io – the fearless and formidable warrior who could fly spaceships with her mind.
He considered Janus – the teleporter and rider of dinosaurs.
Lastly, he considered himself – the gifted student and poor athlete.
“I want you to light the way now, Jasper. Open your eyes and light the way.”
He could do that.
Maybe he couldn’t shoot blasts of Elemental or fly spaceships or ride dinosaurs, but he could light their way forward through the tomb. Surely, he could.
Jasper imagined a ball of light descending from his brain and tracing the length of his arm. He imagined it passing through the fibres of his nervous system into his hand. When it got there, the ball of light expanded until it filled up his entire hand from the inside so it was throbbing with warmth.
“Open your eyes, Jasper.”
When he did, they went wide. He lifted his hand up in front of his face – the glove was glowing.
Glowing green.
Jasper couldn’t believe it. “Are you seeing this?”
“I am.” Io noticed that he was staring intently at the glove, refusing to break eye contact. “You know you do not have to look at the glove for it to work?”
Still, Jasper didn’t take his eyes away, reluctant to believe her. “It’s warm.”
Io laughed at his childlike fascination.
“I know,” she said. “Just like a lightbulb.”
Eventually, when he was sure the glow wasn’t just a fluke, that it wasn’t going away unless he wanted it to, Jasper glanced over at her, a big stupid smile on his face. She was smiling too, though it wasn’t nearly as big or as stupid, but it was a smile nonetheless.
Together, their gloves formed a pleasant turquoise glow – an aura of bluish-green light all around them.
“Why is it green?” Jasper said, asking the question they had both been thinking. But Io didn’t have an answer for him – it seemed just as strange to her as it did to him.
“Well...,” she began, venturing a guess. “The Elemental of my people has always been blue. Janus’ people have always been red. We have never seen human Elemental before. After all, you’re the first person in the history of your species to wear a glove.”
Jasper smiled – he liked the sound of that. “How do I shoot with it?”
Io laughed again. “Let us take...what is the expression...baby steps.”
Jasper was a little disappointed, but it was hard to maintain with his hand glowing green. He couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible this all was – the glove, the Flight Pod, the fact that he was standing in a place where no person had stood in over two thousand years. The fact that he had been led there by an alien princess who could travel through time.
Once again, he had the sinking feeling he was dreaming – that, at any moment, he would wake up and find himself back at the dig site. His parents chipping away at the dinosaur fossil and him wishing he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Not appreciating what he had while he had it.
Despite the adventure he was on – the kind of adventure he wouldn’t find even in his wildest dreams – he knew he’d give it all back just for another minute with his parents. He’d give it back in a heartbeat, just to have the chance to tell them he was sorry.
For all the times he’d sulked and moped about, all the times he’d complained and wanted to go home. For all the times his mum and dad had tried to get him involved, get him interested, and he’d just pushed them away – stayed inside the tent with his head in a book, learning about all the things he was now seeing with his very eyes.
If he could go back in time – and he could, if only Io would let him – Jasper would tell them all these things and more. He’d tell them he appreciated how much effort they put in, even when he refused to do the same. How devoted they were, how sensitive they were to his needs – knowing how hard it was for him on those long trips away from home, and how they tried their best to make it okay. He’d tell them how much he loved them, how much he missed them...
“Come on.”
Jasper snapped out of it and saw Io walking toward the end of the tunnel, where it became a narrower path. He joined her there and they each held up their gloves, casting a turquoise glow down the corridor. From where they stood, they could only light the tunnel to
a certain extent – beyond that, it burrowed away into darkness. They would have to keep moving forward to see the rest.
Dia was hiding behind Io’s legs, peering around them nervously, afraid of the dark. Jasper scanned the walls, looking for something.
“What are you doing?” Io said.
“Trying to see where the crossbows are.”
Io suddenly remembered Jasper’s earlier mention of booby traps and started scanning the walls herself. Neither could make out any holes or crevices – so far, so good. Then they both looked at each other, as if deciding who was going to take the lead. Jasper certainly wasn’t willing, so Io sighed and went first. He made to follow, but Dia cut in front of him with a savage hiss and waddled after his master. Jasper held out his hand in a sarcastic ‘after you’ gesture, then proceeded last into the corridor.
They moved through the fog of dust at a slow, measured pace, guided by the light of their gloves. Every inch forward exposed more and more of the ancient walkway, the sheer stone walls rising up into darkness. Every step was careful, tentative, as if it might set off one of the crossbows Jasper had read about.
Eventually, the path opened up into a wider area. A chamber of some kind. They couldn’t see anything beyond the bluish-green glow coming from their hands, so they resolved to split up and chart the extent of the room. Jasper headed left and Io went right, both of them edging along the wall and keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of a trap. Naturally, Dia went with his master, and as the two parties diverged from one other, the semi-spheres of blue and green light that had previously been fused together were now totally separated.
The room seemed to be getting bigger instead of smaller as they reached the side walls and made their way along either flank. Jasper ran his bare hand over the ancient, polished stone, which had lost some of its lustre in the intervening two millennia, but none of its smoothness.
He looked across the breadth of the room and saw a ball of blue light against the far wall, the tiny figure of Io at its centre. The even tinier figure of the Archaeopteryx waddled along behind her, half-hidden in her shadow. Jasper found himself staring at Io – her scales were shining, her feathers glistening. They’d been together for so long now it seemed, it was strange to be apart – even if only by a hundred metres or so. Jasper felt an attachment to her he couldn’t quite understand. Maybe it had something to do with her saving his life on multiple occasions. Maybe it had to do with his parents being gone and him being all alone in the world.
It didn’t make any sense. He knew it didn’t. He couldn’t call her a human any more than he could call himself a Precursor, but still – there it was. Jasper recalled that even through the shock of their first meeting, he had sensed there was something distinctly human about her. Some distant link between their two peoples.
Despite her scales, despite her feathers. Despite her yellow, slit-pupiled eyes.
But maybe it wasn’t despite them – maybe it was because of them. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his people had inherited this planet from them. Maybe they had evolved out of Precursor DNA somehow, and adapted to a different world than the one Io’s people had left behind.
He didn’t know.
All he knew was that he wanted nothing more than to reach the far wall so they could find their way back to one other. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing about him.
Distracted as he was, the wall snuck up on Jasper so that he almost slammed into it. Luckily, he caught himself at the last second and pulled up, changed direction. He saw Io already coming towards him and he went out to meet her, feeling his way along the smooth stone wall until, abruptly, it came to an end.
On the other side, Io had noticed the same thing – the wall simply ending, cutting back into another room or tunnel. An immense doorway opened up between them, twenty metres wide at least.
Slowly, Jasper edged his glowing hand around the corner and, when it wasn’t punctured with a two-thousand-year-old arrow, his head followed. He peered through the doorway and saw another infinite black abyss stretching away forever.
Another chamber.
He nodded to Io that it was safe and she poked her glove around also, then her head. When they were sure the coast was clear, the two of them stepped out from the cover of the far wall and into the open space between chambers.
“We’ll do the same thing, yeah?” Jasper called, his voice booming in the stillness of the crypt. “Go around either side and meet at the end.”
Io nodded and called back, “Okay.”
But just as Jasper was about to head around to the other side of the giant wall, he noticed something.
Something metal and rusted, bolted to the inside of the stone doorframe at about his eye level. It was rectangular in shape, or it used to be before corrosion set in, and it took Jasper a moment to realise what it was.
A hinge.
A great, rusted door hinge.
Jasper lifted his glowing hand to see as far up the wall as he could. He guessed there were one or more hinges on his side of the frame, but he couldn’t make any of them out.
Where on earth was the door? he thought.
With a sinking feeling, Jasper suddenly realised why the hinges were there. He turned and bolted to the other side of the doorway.
“Io!” he called. “Stop!”
She had already started down the left-hand wall and spun around when he called her name, a confused expression on her face.
“Come back!”
But it was too late.
Io’s foot had landed on a particular tile which, as she stood on it, began to slide into the ground with the grating of stone on stone.
Out of the darkness came a heavy thunk, then a high, thin, whistling sound...
The arrow struck her in the chest and knocked her back into the wall.
“Io!” Jasper yelled, pumping his legs harder now, running as fast as he could.
Dia was squawking loudly through his muzzle and Io was slumped against the wall inside her blue sphere, waving at him to get back but unable to speak. Jasper only hoped the arrow hadn’t punctured her lungs.
He reached her side and bent down to grab her. As he did, he felt the stone beneath his own foot begin to lower, and he heard another thunk from somewhere out in the dark.
A second arrow slammed into the wall where his head had been only a moment ago. There was a loud crack, and fragments of rock sprayed outwards from the point of impact.
Jasper looked up at the thing that almost killed him – a long metal bolt, embedded in the stone. He snapped out of it as he realised another one would shortly be on its way, grabbing Io by the arms and dragging her back through the opening just as a third arrow whistled past them into the blackness. They collapsed within the safety of the first chamber, and Jasper heard the thud of the arrow driving itself into the far wall.
He turned his attention to Io, who was staring down at the gleaming metal bolt protruding from her chest. Blood was pooling around the wound and trickling down her ribcage through the furrows between scales. She was taking short, sharp breaths and Jasper was doing the same, panicking. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do.
He tried to remember a first aid lesson he had at school once, but the only thing that came back to him was a paramedic demonstrating CPR. He couldn’t recall the ratio for compressions to breaths and doubted it would help anyway. Oddly enough, the lesson hadn’t covered arrow wounds.
Dia had scurried in after them and was now staring at his wounded master with big, wet eyes. Terrified, he glanced up at Jasper, imploring him to do something, anything, to save her.
“What do I do?” he said.
“You need to...pull it out.” Io’s voice was shaky with pain, but she was bearing it well.
“I can’t pull it out,” Jasper said. “It’ll start bleeding.”
“I would do it myself, but...I cannot get a good angle.”
“What if...”
“I will seal it off stra
ight away. Please, Jasper...”
He relented and took hold of the shaft with his bare hand. She winced with pain. Jasper pulled, wanting to get it over with as quickly as he could. Io gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, turning her head away. But the arrow stayed firm – it was lodged in there good and tight.
Feeling nauseous, Jasper pressed his glowing palm to the scales around the wound and pushed against her as he pulled the arrow with all the strength he could muster. Io began to scream. At first, the arrow didn’t budge. Then, slowly, it began to give way, and a second later, Jasper yanked it out whole. He tossed the thing behind him into the dark and heard it clatter on the ground.
When he turned back to Io, she was staring, wide-eyed, at her chest. For a moment, he thought she was in pain, but then his eyes fell to where hers were and his heart stopped. He lifted his glowing hand and saw nothing.
No blood, no wound. Nothing.
Just a faint, green glowing in the scales where the arrow had hit.
Jasper couldn’t believe it. He had healed her – just like she had healed him. Only he’d had no idea he was doing it.
Dia looked from the glove to Jasper to the glove again, panic giving way to disbelief. Io’s expression wasn’t much different.
“How did you...?”
“I don’t know,” Jasper said. “I just wanted to help you.”
Io looked up, her eyes brimming with gratitude. “Thank you.”
Jasper shrugged. “You saved my life like a dozen times already. I figured I owed you at least one.”
She laughed, despite their situation – despite how close she had just come to being killed.
He helped her up, and they walked out into the middle of the doorway. In the light of their gloves, they could see that the floor beyond the opening was covered with trigger-stones, identical to the ones they had just set off. Any step out there was likely to set off another one.
Jasper swallowed as he scanned the floor. “I guess the crossbows do work in the present day, after all.”
“I guess they do. But...how did you know? You called out to me before the arrow had even been fired.”
“The hinges,” Jasper said. “There was this big hinge on my side of the door, so there must have been a gate here at some point.”
