It snorted, and Billy tore himself away from the happy reunion long enough to say, “Mrs. Russet?”
Vester hurried over to the seahorse, and tenderly took Mrs. Russet’s limp form from the seahorse’s back. That seahorse, too, disappeared in a shower of sea foam as Vester turned back to the group of friends.
He lay Mrs. Russet down tenderly—or as tenderly as he could considering her bed was the wet, cracked ground of this mountain peak. “What happened to her?” Billy asked in a quiet voice.
“We don’t know,” said Ivy. “She wasn’t with us in the prison. Or at least, none of us saw her there.”
“Bah,” said Tempus, his familiar combination of gruffness and absent-mindedness a welcome treat to Billy’s ears. “They wouldn’t dare put the likes of her in something like our measly ‘prison.’ Why, Lumilla could have escaped that thing with both eyes closed and one leg tied behind her back. No, they weren’t even going to try ‘re-educating’ her, of that I’m sure.”
“Then why did they keep her alive?” asked Billy.
Before the friends could answer, Billy heard Blue speak his name. He turned, and saw her still there in the ocean, her head poking out of the water. He also noticed that, just as she had said, the ocean level was already dropping back to its former place. Soon Dark Isle would be above water again. Who knew how many Darksiders or Dawnwalkers had survived the tidal wave, but whatever Darksiders were left were sure to return. They had limited time here.
But that didn’t matter to Blue, Billy knew. “Remember,” she said. “Remember our deal.”
“I will,” Billy said. He felt both grateful for his friends’ lives and sick at heart that the deal he had struck had been followed in such a way that countless others might have been lost.
“The sword,” said Blue. “When you find it, it is mine.”
“It’s yours,” Billy agreed. Blue did not, he knew, have any interests but her own at heart. She had met the letter of their deal, but had violated its spirit. But in spite of that, Billy would keep his word. “As soon as I find it.”
Blue nodded, and her eyes became even deeper blue for a moment. Billy felt an arc of power pass between them, sealing the deal. The promise made had magic behind it, he knew, and he could not break it, even if he wanted to.
Blue nodded again, and then with a flick of her coralline tail she disappeared below the surf.
Billy turned back to his friends and saw them staring at him oddly.
“What?” he asked.
“Uh…,” began Tempus, the old Gray Power clearly unsure how to say this. “What was…what was that all about, Billy?”
“She saved you,” was all Billy could think to say. “She was the one who saved you all.”
The confusion on Tempus’s, Vester’s, and Ivy’s faces didn’t go away. In fact, their confusion appeared to grow even worse. “How could that…thing…have saved us?” asked Ivy.
“I don’t know,” admitted Billy. “But she did.”
“And how do you even know it was a ‘she’?” asked Vester, the fireman’s face still visibly concerned.
Billy rolled his eyes in the universal “Well, duh,” he had recently seen a small fish do. “You can tell it’s a girl by looking at her, Vester.”
Vester blinked, confused. “You can tell a girl dolphin from a boy dolphin?”
Dolphin? thought Billy. Then, out loud, he said, “What the heck are you talking about?”
“You,” said Ivy. “We rode up here, found you with a big starfish, and then we got Mrs. Russet down, and then there was this dolphin in the ocean.”
“And you were clicking at it,” said Tempus.
“Clicking at it?” said Billy dumbly.
“Clicking at it,” affirmed Tempus. “And it clicked back at you, and then it swam away.”
“But it wasn’t a dolphin,” said Billy. Why hadn’t his friends seen Blue as she was? “It was a mermaid.”
Ivy, Tempus, and Vester all looked at one another for a moment. Then the three burst out laughing.
Billy felt himself get a bit upset. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“There’s no such thing as mermaids,” said Ivy with a weary giggle. Billy could see now that much of his friends’ apparent humor wasn’t really directed at him: they were just happy to be alive after their captivity and the tidal wave, so they were letting that happiness out in semi-appropriate bursts of laughter. But it still stung Billy.
“How can you say that?” he asked. “How can you say there are no mermaids, or that the Unicorn wasn’t real, or anything else? You all live in a world where rock giants box, and there’s a magic room for hot chocolate, and hot dogs want to be eaten. So why not a mermaid? Why not a Unicorn? Why not believe in me?”
Hot tears started to drip down his cheeks. He was ashamed of himself; he had cried twice now in less than a few minutes. But he didn’t try to hide the tears or even wipe them away. Let them make fun if they wanted. He knew he wasn’t really crying about their apparent lack of faith in him, anyway. Not really. He was crying about Blythe being a Darksider, and about the huge wave that had washed everyone away, and about the fact that he was hungry, and tired, and had no idea what to do next. He was crying about the fact that only a few short months ago he had thought the end of the world was being stuffed in a locker, and now he knew that the end of the world might actually mean the world literally coming to an end. He was crying because Mrs. Russet, the first teacher who had ever taken much interest in him, was lying here, unconscious on a cliff on Dark Isle.
He was, in short, crying for himself. For the world he had once had, and should have enjoyed, that was gone forever. The world where he had not been the Messenger, just Billy.
Now he wiped away his tears, sniffling and trying to get himself back under control. Tempus laid a bony hand on his shoulder and Ivy said, “We’re sorry, Billy. We didn’t mean anything.” Now she began to cry, too. “I think it was just because we’ve been in there so long.”
“What do you mean?” asked Billy. “How long has it been?”
“My boy,” said Tempus, “it’s been several weeks since we last saw you at the Accounting Room.”
Billy’s jaw gaped open like a bass fish. “How is that possible?” he asked. “I just left you guys a little while ago….” But then he realized that he had no idea how long he had been unconscious when the zombies had touched him, or how long he had been asleep after blacking out in the mouth of the whale.
But weeks?
He shook off the thought. It didn’t matter now. What mattered now was getting off Dark Isle, and figuring out what to do next.
“What now?” asked Tempus, apparently thinking along the same lines as Billy.
“I don’t know,” said Vester in response. The fireman looked haggard and worn, and Billy’s friend had the beginnings of a beard on his sweat- and sea-drenched face. He looked like he had lost a few pounds, too, and Billy wondered if the Dawnwalkers would have simply been allowed to dwindle and die in their cages if Billy—and Blue—had not intervened.
“I think we should get out of here,” said Ivy.
“That goes without saying,” said Tempus shortly. “But where to, my dear? I mean, it’s one thing to say, ‘I think we should get out of here,’ and it’s quite another thing to have a plan, a method, a—”
A noise sounded close by, and all of them looked over to see a gnarled, motley green hand reach up from somewhere below the edge of the cliff. The hand pulled, and it was immediately followed by an equally motley arm. Then a head with two huge eyes peered up at them. A zombie!
“I really think,” Ivy said again, “we should get out of here. Like, now.”
There was another sound, a crunching and crackling, as another zombie started to pull itself up onto the small plateau where Billy and his friends now stood. Clearly a few the zombies had been less affected by the tidal wave than had the living inhabitants of the island. Soon, a half-dozen or so of the creatures stood nearby, looking at Bil
ly and his four friends with their faceted, insectile eyes.
“What are they going to do?” whispered Ivy.
“I don’t know,” whispered Tempus. “But don’t let them give you a hug, no matter how friendly they seem.”
Vester rolled his eyes. “I don’t think they know what they’re supposed to do.”
Sure enough, the zombies continued just looking at the group, and Billy thought Vester was probably right. Still, it was uncomfortable being so close to such nasty creatures.
“Can we just get out of here?” whispered Billy.
“Don’t know,” said Vester. “They took away all my fire when they put me in that dratted prison box, so I’m pretty much useless until I get my hands on a lighter or I find a spark somewhere.”
“Same boat I’m in,” said Ivy. “All I have left is my blouse-plants,” she said, gesturing at the vines that were wrapped around her. “And I’m too tired to do much more than maintain my current state of apparel. Certainly can’t fight off any zombies like this.”
“That leaves you, Tempus,” said Vester. “Can you blow these jokers off the cliff or something?”
“Well,” harrumphed Tempus. “You see, Vester? You see? Another reason why air is far superior to fire. Air is always around, so I don’t rely on a lighter or any kind of sparking device to maintain control over my Element.”
With that, the old man turned to look squarely at the zombies, which in turn regarded him with something that Billy might have described as a bemused expression…if the undead soldiers could be capable of something so light and unimposing as a “bemused expression.”
Tempus rolled up the sleeves of his Hawaiian shirt so high that his bony shoulders stuck out of them. As before, his shirt was animated, seeming to show an image of a real Hawaiian shoreline. And now, as Billy watched Tempus prepare to cast some kind of really devastating spell, he could see that the Hawaiian coast on the shirt was now being hit by a typhoon.
Tempus clapped his hands together with the sound of thunder. Then, he screamed, “Putrid creatures of the grave, begone!” He pointed his fingers at the monsters, and Billy fully expected shards of hard air to shoot out of his fingernails and skewer the undead soldiers before sending them over the cliff side to their re-deaths.
Instead, there was a small breeze, and the zombies looked at each other in what, again, would have been bemusement if zombies could be capable of that kind of an expression.
Tempus tried again. Once more, there was a tiny ripple of air, and then nothing.
Tempus looked at his fingers like he was looking down the barrels of loaded shotguns that must have misfired, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
“Huh,” he said. Then, with an apologetic shrug, continued, “I guess that fight in the Accounting Room and my time in the magic-canceling field of my cell must have dampened my spells.”
“Ya think?” said Ivy sarcastically.
The zombies, meanwhile, had apparently decided that, ineffectual though his attack had been, Tempus—and by extension, everyone else on the top of the cliff—was guilty of some kind of crime against the Darksiders. So they immediately began to step forward, reaching out their hands to touch Billy and his friends. Soon, Billy, Vester, Ivy, and Tempus were all standing back to back in a rough square, Mrs. Russet at the middle, trying to keep her safe.
It was hopeless, Billy knew. Two Powers who were out of power, one who thought he was a superhero in exile but who couldn’t generate enough wind to blow his nose, and the unconscious Mrs. Russet. At their best, all of them but Mrs. Russet might have fallen prey to half a dozen zombies. And they were far from being at their best.
Billy felt Ivy’s hand, reaching for his, clutching him reassuringly for a moment. “You tried,” she whispered. “No matter how this turns out, you tried your best.”
“I’ll remember that,” he whispered back sourly. Somehow, just having tried his best didn’t seem to count for much right at the moment.
As the six zombies slowly approached, there were scrabbling noises as more zombies clambered up onto the top of the mountain, crowding in close to Billy and his friends. It was only a matter of time before the zombies touched them, and all would be lost once more. Because as Blue had said, the waters would recede, and there would be nothing then to stop the Darksiders from reconverging on this place, finding Billy and his friends, and incarcerating them anew.
Suddenly, though, the zombies stopped. Those nearest to Billy looked terribly confused, though Billy couldn’t see anything that might confuse them. They held their hands to their faces, as though inspecting them. And then, with a whoosh of air, the zombies just… exploded. The turned into piles of ash in an instant, and the next second the ash itself disintegrated. Billy winced at the sudden, tremendous heat he could feel.
“To arms!” he heard someone say, and looked up in the sky.
It was Fulgora! The beautiful Red Lady, the Red Councilor, the woman whom Vester had saved, and the person Vester loved. She was riding what looked like a burning tiger, soaring through the air on crimson wings of flame. She held up her hands, and more of the zombies near to Billy and his friends turned to ash and then vanished in a puff of smoke.
“Fulgora!” shouted Vester. Then, abashed, he said, “I mean, My Lady!”
But Fulgora paid no attention to his shout. She was intent on the zombies that had made it to the top of the mountains. “Venomous fiends!” she shouted, and with one hand clenched in the flaming fur of the tiger, she used the other to hurl bolt after bolt of fire at the zombies on the mountain. Each one that was hit burned instantly to ash, as though it was made of kindling and kerosene.
Soon, the mesa was cleared of the undead. Fulgora’s fiery mount dropped toward Billy and his friends, and as it touched down it turned into a sheet of flame that wrapped itself around the beautiful woman like a bright dress.
“How did you get here?” asked Ivy, clearly amazed at the Red Lady’s sudden appearance.
“I’ve been looking for you for weeks,” she responded. “After….” She paused a moment, then went on. “After what happened to me during Napalm’s Challenge, I went to my home to see if I could find out how it happened. Then I returned to Powers Island, only to discover that the Darksiders had attacked.”
“But how did you escape the zombies? And how did you find us?” asked Ivy again.
Fulgora looked at Ivy with a look that clearly conveyed the fact that the answer to both questions should have been obvious. “I am not just any Power. I am the Red Councilor.” Then Fulgora looked at Mrs. Russet’s still form. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked.
Vester couldn’t speak. Billy saw that his friend was still love-struck, and completely unable to communicate when Fulgora was near. “Uhhh…,” said Vester.
Fulgora looked at him for a moment, clearly waiting for something a bit more conclusive to be said. “Uhhh…,” Vester repeated.
Fulgora looked a bit disgusted. She turned to Billy. “You,” she said, “unDetermined one. What has happened here?”
“Uhhh…,” Billy said. He wasn’t love struck, he just didn’t know what to say. It seemed like a really broad question, and he just wasn’t sure what the proper place to begin his answer might be.
Fulgora rolled her eyes. “Men,” she muttered, and turned to Ivy. “Ivy, what’s wrong with Lumilla?”
“Well,” said Ivy, wringing her hands, “I don’t know. She wasn’t being kept with us. But I think,” she held her hands even tighter, the tendrils that clung to her winding tightly around her as well, mirroring her concern. “I think that she might have been tortured.”
“Tortured?” said Billy. “But there’s not a mark on her.”
“There are some tortures that leave marks we can see, and others that leave no marks but are far, far worse,” said Fulgora. Tempus nodded in agreement, his hands unconsciously dropping to feel at his own battle-scars under the folds of his Hawaiian shirt.
Ivy nodded. “I suspect that someone has
used the Dread on her for far too long.”
Fulgora touched Mrs. Russet’s cheek. “She’s cold,” said the Red Lady, seeming by those words to agree with Ivy’s assessment.
“What does that mean?” Billy asked Tempus.
“It could mean anything,” Tempus began in a falsely jovial and carefree tone. “It could mean they just went skiing with her and she didn’t have her long underwear on. Or maybe they took her swimming and the pool wasn’t heated. Or maybe….” The Gray Power stopped, and Billy could see now that the old fellow was trying hard not to let tears come.
“It means that they wanted her to talk, to tell them something,” said Vester. “And she wouldn’t. So they kept at her with the Dread, until she couldn’t take any more. And after a while, there was nothing left of her but fear. Nothing left to hang onto.”
“So what are you saying?” said Billy. “That she’s gone? That she’s dead?”
“No,” said Fulgora. “Death is a natural part of Life. It comes to us all in time. What is here,” she said, motioning at Mrs. Russet’s motionless form, “is much worse. It’s not death, it’s not life. It’s an existence that is bounded on all sides by bars of fear and chains of terror. It is literally a personal hell.”
“What do we do?” asked Billy.
“There is nothing to be done,” said Lumilla. Then she touched her dress of fire. She peeled away a thin slice of it, and the fire writhed and reformed in her hands, quickly hardening into the shape of a slim rapier. She brought the weapon high over her head, directly over Mrs. Russet’s unmoving shape. “The only thing that is left for her is mercy.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH
In Which Billy braves the Dread, and Falls…
Billy acted without thinking.
He threw himself at Fulgora, locking his arms around her waist and driving her to the ground. At the same time, he shouted, “Are you nuts?”
Luckily, the Red Lady was a petite woman and unprepared for Billy’s outburst, and so even Billy’s small frame was enough to knock her down. They hit the craggy rock of the cliff top with a bone-jarring thud, and Billy felt his breath jerk loose from his lungs in a whoosh.
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 38
