Whirlwind

by Liparulo, Robert

  “Xander,” David said, breathless. “It’s . . .”

  “Beautiful,” Xander said. “Incredible.”

  “Let’s get over there,” David said.

  “Yeah . . . no! ” Xander said. “We’re not here for that.”

  Of course not, David thought. But eyeing the glittering gold and polished stone, the fantastic buildings and flawless . . . bushes—for crying out loud!—he wanted to be there. He ached to experience it, to walk in the parks, taste the food, and listen to the music, which he was certain would change his idea of what music could be.

  “No, I . . . wow,” David said. “I’ve never heard of a place like this. Where . . . when . . . are we?”

  “Come on,” Xander said. He led David off the side of the terrace, where a cobblestone path led around the house and down a steep hill, in the other direction from the grassy slope to the river. The path had been carved into the earth, forming vine-covered cliffs that rose on either side.

  “I can smell the ocean,” David said. “Salty.”

  Xander crinkled his nose. “And something not so nice.”

  “I thought that was you,” David said and laughed.

  Xander gave him a shove. He said, “When we get to wherever this path leads, keep your eyes open for Phemus.”

  They rounded a bend, and David saw that the path ended at a tall metal gate. It was intricately designed, with swooping curls of iron and ornamental flowers, petals, and leaves. At its center, framed by two concentric circles, a crown rested on a smaller circle, as though on a faceless head. A few feet beyond the gate, a wall of leaves showed that the carved-out path hooked sharply to the right.

  Xander fiddled with a lever and sprang the gate open.

  Stepping through, David took in the gate’s beautiful craftsmanship. He shook his head. “I can’t imagine him coming from a place like this.”

  But that impression ended when they turned with the path and stepped into a large town square.

  CHAPTER

  fifty - seven

  Keal crashed down onto hard, uneven ground. Stretching out before him, illuminated by light pouring in from the portal behind him, was a tunnel. The irregular angles of its walls made him think it was naturally formed, by a stream or water that had once cut through the earth around him.

  The portal door slammed shut, plunging him into darkness. The door’s sound echoed down the tunnel, as though scurrying to get away.

  “Xander?” he called. “David?” His voice bounced against the walls and faded away. He sat in the darkness, thinking.

  The items from the antechamber. They always had something to do with the world beyond the portal. He set the straw and stone down and reached his hand into the pouch. It was full of round stones that made him think of marbles. What he needed were matches.

  Of course . . .

  He got to his knees and picked up the straw and stone. He pushed the straw into the stone floor of the cave and hammered the stone down. It sparked against the floor. He did it again and again, until an orange dot appeared on a piece of straw. It flared into a flame, igniting the straw around it. He raised the burning bundle by one end, which had been wrapped tightly with a strip of leather.

  A torch instead of a flashlight. A piece of flint instead of matches. He had a feeling the portal had sent him back in time a long, long way.

  The fire cast a weak yellow glow that showed him only the tunnel walls nearest him. He turned on his knees and saw blackness in both directions.

  He laid his hand over his throbbing head and rubbed it.

  “Xander?” he called again. “David?”

  He spotted something on the ground next to the curving wall. A spear. He picked it up and stood.

  “Xander! David!”

  The tunnel mocked him, repeating and swallowing his words: “David . . . David . . . David . . .”

  He stared into the nothingness in each direction. Which way? Something on the wall caught his eye, and he waved the flame in front of it: a cave painting. It depicted two men fighting a bear-like creature as big as an elephant. Unlike the cave paintings he’d seen in history books, it wasn’t faded or chipped. This one was new.

  Oh, please, he thought. Don’t tell me I’m in prehistoric times. Don’t tell me that!

  He began walking, calling the boys’ names.

  A noise stopped him. It was an echo weaving through the echo of his own voice. He stood perfectly still and listened.

  Like music through the walls of a house, the sound reached him, a slow, pulsating whisper: breathing.

  “Xander?” he said. “David?” But he knew this deep, heavy breathing didn’t come from one of them. The echoing made it impossible to guess how near it was, the source of this sound.

  He couldn’t even be sure from which direction it came.

  Then something in the darkness ahead scraped against stone, and the breathing grew louder. The thing snorted, loud as a train shooting out a quick blast of steam.

  Keal lifted the spear and started backing away.

  CHAPTER

  fifty - eight

  David gaped at the barbaric chaos splayed out in front of him and Xander.

  The open-front stalls of tradesmen and vendors formed a crescent around the square, broken here and there to accommodate animal corrals. As much as the mountain-city was dazzling and alluring, the marketplace spread out before them was ugly and repulsive.

  To their immediate right, a blacksmith pounded on metal, setting the teeth-grinding tone of the place: Clang! Clang!

  Clang! In front of the smith, burly men examined knives and swords, spiked clubs and spears. They swung them at each other and at passersby, laughing and shouting. David could not understand their language, but by their sneers and the sharp sounds of their words, he guessed their talk was vulgar and abusive. Similar words rang out throughout the square.

  He pushed the hair off his forehead and kept his palm pressed against his head. The assault on his senses made his brain ache.

  In one stall a man cut the heads off fish, sliced into their bellies, and yanked out their guts. He slung the stuff onto the square’s cobblestones, where people clomped over the bloody piles. Another vendor butchered chickens, letting their headless bodies run around until they fell over. The market appeared to be dedicated to food, drink, weapons, and armor.

  At the center of the square, two bare-chested men battered each other, while others cheered them on. One swung his fist into the face of the other, who staggered back, spewing blood.

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smiled a toothless grin, and retaliated with a frenzy of wild punches.

  As though sprayed into this bedlam as some psycho artist’s final touch, an odor wafted over David—a offensive fusion of manure, raw meat, sweat, and things David didn’t want to think about.

  “Xander?” David said, gripping the hem of his brother’s T-shirt. He looked back at the path. The house that had admitted them into this world appeared to be situated on a hill that marked this side of the square. To their left, a wide street cut into the same hill. Past that, buildings sprung up and arched around, making a huge circle out of what he had thought of as a “town square.”

  Xander said, “See anything that indicates where we are?”

  “Hell?” David suggested.

  His brother nodded. “The road continues on the other side,” he said. “Maybe it leads to someplace . . . more sane.”

  “What about that way?” David said. He pointed left, where a wide opening between the nearest buildings revealed more structures on the other side of the square.

  “Docks, I think,” Xander said. “See the masts?”

  And then David did. Tall poles rose behind the buildings and stalls. Crossbeams held gathered folds of canvas sails.

  They started walking, giving wide berth to rowdy men. As they went deeper into the square, they could see more of the ships to their left: at least two of them docked in a line.

  “David,” Xander s
aid. He was looking into one of the corrals coming up on their right.

  First David saw the men, sitting on the top rails of the fence, whooping and hollering with excitement. Next, he saw what captured their attention: boys younger than himself were going at each other with more ferocity than the men in the center of the square. A dozen or more of them punched, kicked, clawed, and bit. One tumbled away from the melee, staggered to his feet, shook his head, and dived back in.

  David was accustomed to roughhousing with friends, even little skirmishes with school bullies—this was something completely different. Unless he misread their expressions and the force of their fighting, these kids wanted to kill each other.

  As if to confirm this, one of the men pitched a club onto the ground near the boys. Another tossed something that glinted as it spun in the air. A boy spotted the club and went for it.

  David turned away and walked faster. He laid a hand over his stomach, afraid he would puke on the spot, not that anyone would notice or that the mess would make the square any fouler than it was.

  “How can this place be so close to that beautiful mountain?” he said. “I don’t get it.”

  “Just keep walking,” Xander said.

  A commotion drew David’s eyes to the dock road. Men walked into the square, presumably from one of the ships.

  They were dressed like soldiers with thick leather vests, arm guards, and greaves covering their knees and shins. Using swords, spears, and whips, they herded a large group of prisoners, the sight of which froze David’s breath. They were nearly identical to Phemus: massive, dressed only in pelts, crazy eyes flashing around. Each was bound in a wooden stock that clamped around his neck and projected beyond his shoulders, where his wrists were also locked in place. Chains looped from stock to stock, keeping them all together. They shuffled, tripped, and lurched along under the constant bite of the soldiers’ weapons.

  David backed into his brother.

  The soldiers prodded their prisoners toward another corral. Inside were more of the Phemus-like brutes, all in stocks, bumping into each other, glancing around with glazed expressions. A few were more animated than the others, bouncing, chattering like hyenas. David focused on one of them and elbowed Xander in the ribs.

  “Hey . . .” Xander said.

  “That one closest to us, in the corral!” David said. “Isn’t that—?”

  “Monkey Man,” Xander finished. He was one of the two other men who had come out of the portal with Phemus while Xander was putting up the camera in the third-floor hallway. Smaller than the rest, he seemed to make up for his puniness with a fidgety aggression that had scared the tar out of David back in the house. The creature had balanced like a gargoyle on Phemus’s shoulder, then hurled himself down the staircase at the boys. David could make out the man’s bruised and battered face now—evidence that he was indeed the one who’d slammed into the door as they tried to close it, the one David had smacked on the head with the butt of the toy rifle.

  A deep voice came from behind them: “He’s a little worse for wear, isn’t he?”

  The boys spun and found themselves facing Taksidian.

  CHAPTER

  fifty - nine

  Taksidian glared at them, a sly smile playing on his lips. His kinky black hair vibrated in the light breeze, dancing against the collar of his black trench coat.

  David quickly checked the man’s hands for weapons, but they were empty. After all, what did the guy need one for? His deadliest weapon hovered behind him: Phemus. The brute stared pure hatred into David. His shoulders pumped up and down with the bellows of his lungs. The beard around his mouth parted to show a snarling mouth of canted and broken teeth.

  Xander slapped his hand into David’s chest, seizing his tunic. He turned and started to run.

  Taksidian sidestepped, and Phemus lurched in. He grabbed each boy by a wrist and hoisted them into the air. David kicked him in the ribs, over and over, all the while squirming and wiggling to get free. But Phemus’s flanks were rock solid and his hand like a vise that embraced most of David’s forearm.

  Xander hissed and spat like a wild animal. He clawed at Phemus’s arm. The man merely grinned.

  “Let go!” David wailed. He looked into Taksidian’s passive face and said, “You can’t do this!”

  But of course David knew he could, especially in a place like this. A quick glance around revealed no concerned faces; hardly anyone at all was watching, and those who were seemed to enjoy the entertainment.

  Taksidian raised his hand and called out. “Froyres, edo parakalo! ”

  Three of the soldiers broke away from the group of prisoners and trotted toward them.

  “This seems like your kind of place,” Xander said. “Why don’t you just stay here and leave us alone?”

  “Oh, I would,” Taksidian said. “But you know it isn’t going to be around much longer. It—”

  Something he saw in Xander’s expression made him stop.

  He turned to David and smiled at the bewilderment David knew his face reflected.

  Taksidian laughed. “You mean, you haven’t figured out where you are?” He held his arm wide and looked around at the square. “Gentlemen, welcome to Atlantis!”

  Xander scowled in disbelief. “What?” he said. “The lost continent?”

  “That’s a myth,” David said.

  Taksidian’s eyebrows went up. “So is time travel, right? Now you know better.” He smiled. “So you see why I wouldn’t want to make this my permanent home. As Plato reported, a tidal wave wipes it out in a single day and night.” He examined his wrist, as if checking a watch that wasn’t there. “And that time is fast approaching. Besides, Atlantis already has enough kings, a consortium of them, in fact. I could never be one of them. I could never have the power and wealth here that I can in your time. No matter how much wisdom I bring them, how many slaves, how many women.”

  “Women?” Xander said, kicking and jerking around with renewed vigor. “Our mother? You brought her here? For what? To sell her off, to use her to bargain with?”

  His foot made contact with Phemus’s stomach, and the big man flinched. Phemus gave Xander’s arm a quick snap that made him yelp in pain. Taksidian retrieved something from his pocket and slipped it into Phemus’s mouth, as though rewarding an obedient dog with a treat. Phemus chewed happily.

  “Her . . . removal from your house served multiple purposes,” Taksidian said with a shrug. “But I have to say, I do find useful the benefits awarded to me for such offerings. A private residence, which you saw; my own slave”—he patted Phemus on the back, as a father would—“and the use of others as I need them; an occasional invitation to a party at the palace. Very entertaining.”

  “Where is she?” David said. “Let us see her!”

  “Ah, I’m afraid some things are beyond even me,” Taksidian said, waving a hand dismissively. “Prizes like her go right to the palace. Something about the American language, as spoken by females, fascinates the Atlantian royalty. Go figure.”

  David looked in the direction of the mountaintop castle, but hills on this side of the river blocked it. He said, “The castle, she’s at the castle?”

  Taksidian scowled. He used his nails to flip the hair off his face and said, “Feisty woman, your mother. I heard she disappeared, got away.”

  “Got away?” David said. “To where?”

  “That’s the problem with bringing women from other times,” Taksidian said. “If they wander too close to a por-tal—” He whistled sharply and snapped his fingers open like a magician making a scarf disappear.

  “But,” David said, “how do you know she’s not still here?”

  “No place to hide in Atlantis,” he said. “And no one goes against the royals. Anyone who saw her would catch her and bring her back.” He shrugged. “Besides, outside of the castle, the portals tends to take people who don’t belong in this time, whether they want to go or not. If I knew which world got her, I wouldn’t be looking for a replacemen
t.”

  David thought of the other night, when Toria heard Mom calling to her from the third-floor hallway. Someone had been using Wuzzy to lure her up there. “Leave my sister alone!” he screamed. “You . . . you . . . !”