Clash of the Worlds

by Chris Columbus

  Eleanor wanted to run away. She wanted to run right toward the approaching UWOs and let herself be melted down into a steaming puddle of Eleanor. But something stopped her. She didn’t understand why or how, but part of her was secretly happy to see the Wind Witch. Part of her wanted to stay with the Wind Witch—it would certainly be better than being left completely alone again. The realization made her want to puke. Had her stomach not been so empty, she might have.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” the Wind Witch asked with a crooked smile. “You feel the pull of family, of our connection.”

  Eleanor nodded weakly.

  “That’s because I chose you, Nell,” the Wind Witch said. “You’re the most reasonable, the smartest Walker. You’ve always been my favorite. Even though you’re the youngest, wasn’t it you who was clever enough to wish away The Book of Doom and Desire forever so I couldn’t get my hands on it? And yet, what thanks did that get you? Your brother and sister stranded you here on the most dangerous planet, with a murderous outlaw. They left you all alone. To die. How is that fair?”

  Eleanor shook her head. She didn’t have an answer, because there wasn’t one. The Wind Witch was right; her siblings did treat her badly. They never gave her any credit and assumed she was useless. Even when they first got here and she saved them from the Wind Witch’s onslaught, they hadn’t believed her. They were nice to her, sure, but they didn’t truly respect her intelligence. They didn’t respect her as an equal. Cordelia was just a smug know-it-all and Brendan a glory hog.

  “I respect you, Nell,” the Wind Witch said. “To me, you are my equal, maybe even destined to be greater than I am. We both know it was you who blasted me out of the fireplace a few days ago. Now is the time for you to fulfill your destiny, to become as powerful as we both know you are. Help rule the book world with me, and I promise I can even bring your dear friend Fat Jagger back to life. I can make all your wishes and dreams come true.”

  The Wind Witch held out her gnarled old hand.

  Eleanor looked at it and hesitated. But she knew that she was pointlessly fighting the inevitable. The Wind Witch had been right about everything. She may as well give in and stop worrying so much.

  It could be argued that there were many reasons why Eleanor did what she did next. Insecurity. The fear of being alone. An attempt to get closer to her enemy only to betray her in the end. But none of those would be accurate. The reality was that much of what the Wind Witch had said was, indeed, true. And perhaps with a complete soul, Eleanor still could have resisted. But, as her brother Brendan had already suspected after reading much of Denver’s Journal, Eleanor’s soul was not complete. It had been severely corrupted. Such was the power of The Book of Doom and Desire.

  And so Eleanor reached out and grabbed the Wind Witch’s hand.

  Just a few miles away, a clear submarine drifted listlessly through a seemingly endless ocean, its two occupants wholly unaware of Eleanor’s transformation and new allegiance. The only thing on their minds was the bleak reality of their current situation.

  “What are we going to do?” Adie asked as tears streamed down her face.

  She was normally so calm and optimistic, but Cordelia had messed up so badly now that even Adie couldn’t put a positive spin on it.

  Adie was so upset that she didn’t even notice that Cordelia’s eyes had turned icy blue. It didn’t even occur to Adie to use the black scarf Brendan had given them to prevent the Wind Witch from seeing what was happening to them.

  They had drifted so far away from Atlantis that the massive city was nothing but a small, hazy dot of blue light somewhere in the distance behind them. Cordelia still hadn’t figured out where the Eternal Abyss was located. And she couldn’t navigate the submarine. They were basically drifting away into the depths of the ocean to die a slow death in a tomb of darkness.

  “I was hoping we’d see some sign of the Eternal Abyss, or the Forbidden Zone, but . . . ,” Cordelia said, putting her face into her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  She was just about ready to let the dam break and start bawling, when movement outside caught her eye. Adie saw it too, and they both stepped closer to the rear of the clear vessel to get a better look.

  There was a second light off in the distance, back toward Atlantis. But this light was growing larger. It was getting closer to them.

  “They sent someone to save us!” Adie said, wiping away tears.

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Cordelia said, the icy blue once again fading from her eyes.

  She had seen the look on Democritus’s face pretty clearly: She was going to allow them to leave. But that was all. From then on, their friendship would be severed. Cordelia had understood that, but had followed through anyway, like a fool.

  “Then who is it?” Adie asked. “Or . . . what is it?”

  Cordelia didn’t have an answer, so they just stood there and waited for the approaching light to reach them.

  It didn’t take long to figure out that it was another ship from Atlantis. It pulled up alongside them. The pilot was a young woman in her late teens or early twenties (at least in human years—Cordelia had no idea how time worked down there).

  The Atlantisan waved at them.

  The two ships drifted together. Instead of a collision, they linked up, as if each one had been slathered in waterproof superglue. A doorway appeared, officially merging the two vessels together as one.

  “You look like you need help,” the girl said as she crossed over into their vessel.

  “We’re saved!” Adie said.

  The visitor smiled at Adie. For a moment her expression faltered, almost as if she recognized the small girl from somewhere. But then the smile returned in full and she faced Cordelia.

  “My name is Anapos,” she said.

  “I’m Adie.” Adie waved. “This is Cordelia. She’s a little speechless, I guess.”

  Anapos laughed. It sounded almost musical to Cordelia, and it caused the worry and uneasiness of their visitor’s sudden appearance to drain out of her and into the floor like liquid.

  “I know who you are!” Anapos said. “I’ve been watching you very closely. Everyone in Atlantis was—we don’t get many visitors there, believe it or not. But I sensed something unique about you right away. And when I heard that you stole a ship and drifted out into the ocean to find the Eternal Abyss, I knew that my instincts were correct. There was something very special about you, Cordelia.”

  “So you’ve come to stop us?” Cordelia asked.

  “No,” Anapos said. “I’ve come to take you to the Eternal Abyss.”

  “Really?” Cordelia asked. “Why are you helping us? Democritus said it was a horrible place where nobody ever leaves alive. Why would you risk your life for strangers? Aren’t you afraid like everyone else?”

  Anapos grinned.

  “Is everyone where you’re from exactly the same as one another?” Anapos asked, before stepping back into her own submarine.

  Adie and Cordelia exchanged a glance before following her. They watched the door close behind them, and then they detached from the submarine they’d stolen and it drifted away into the darkness.

  “The truth is, I’m helping you because I relate to you,” Anapos said as she pressed several buttons. The vessel began accelerating through the black water. “My people, they’ve become too comfortable. We live in what is arguably one of the most beautiful places in the universe. But we don’t aspire to become anything greater. We just live our lives trapped in the beauty of our surroundings, but it holds us back! I have spent my entire life yearning for something more. And I see that you aspire to do great things as well, Cordelia. That’s why I want to help you; I want to get out of here. I want to go on and explore the world.”

  There was a long pause before Cordelia responded. The accuracy of Anapos’s response nearly knocked Cordelia off her feet. Hearing someone tell her exactly how she’d always felt about the world was as eye-opening as a whiff of smelling salts . . . or Brendan’s dirty
lacrosse socks. It was true, back at school she was teased and taunted for being a know-it-all, for trying too hard. For being an overachiever and teacher’s pet. She’d even been called arrogant in class by her own seventh-grade history teacher because she’d corrected his mistakes several times during his lectures. But if she didn’t believe in herself and demand more, then how would she ever get to where she wanted in life—to be a great scientist, or a world leader, or one of the preeminent academics of her time? She wouldn’t, and Anapos totally understood that.

  “That’s how I’ve always felt,” Cordelia said. “But it’s rare that I meet other people who feel the same way.”

  “I know, me too,” Anapos said. “But, I do need to ask you this: Why in the holy name of his greatness, Poseidon himself, do you want to go to the Eternal Abyss?”

  “We’re searching for something,” Adie said.

  “What?” Anapos asked, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. Or maybe it was just reflecting water from the hull lights?

  “Something called a Worldkeeper,” Cordelia said slowly. “Have you heard of it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Anapos said. “But it sounds important.”

  “It is,” Cordelia said. “It has the ability to save my world, my home. My family.”

  “Then I shall help you find it,” Anapos said.

  “Have you ever been to the Eternal Abyss?” Adie asked.

  “No, no one is allowed to go since it’s in the Forbidden Zone,” Anapos said. “Nobody has ever returned from there alive. But I’ve always wanted to go. To me, a Forbidden Zone is exactly where I want to be. Because it’s certain to be exciting and adventurous.”

  Cordelia looked out into the dark sea where the ship’s lights illuminated only about twenty feet of visibility. The water contained more silt than ever. She soon realized she could see the ocean floor.

  “Are we there?” Adie asked.

  “No, but we’re getting very close,” Anapos said quietly, fear genuinely creeping into her voice now.

  “How deep are we?” Cordelia asked.

  “Eight thousand four hundred sixty meters,” Anapos said.

  There wasn’t an appropriate reply so the three of them remained silent, their eyes scanning the flat seafloor in front of them. There were no signs of life. Then the sandy seabed was gone and they were hovering over a vast ravine with rocky sides that plunged down into nothingness.

  Anapos hit a few buttons on the console and then they were descending into the depths of the Eternal Abyss. It widened slightly as they got deeper, and Cordelia could barely make out the walls of the canyon on either side of them.

  “How will we find it?” Adie asked, pulling out the papers Brendan had given them. They just said that the Worldkeeper was somewhere within the Eternal Abyss. Nothing else. No other clues.

  Cordelia shook her head.

  “I’m less worried about that, and more concerned with the Iku-Turso,” Anapos said quietly.

  Adie’s sudden scream caused all three of them to jump.

  “It’s okay,” Anapos said, holding a hand over her heart. “It’s just a nine-gill shark.”

  “That’s a shark?” Cordelia asked.

  “Yes, and they’re perfectly harmless,” Anapos said. “As long as we stay inside the vessel.”

  Harmless? Cordelia and Adie thought, as they nervously watched the large shark, larger than any great white Cordelia had seen on Shark Week before, pass lazily over their submarine. It had a rounded head, nine gills, and a long, swishing tail fin. It passed them slowly and was maybe fifteen feet ahead when a huge pair of jaws containing hundreds of razor-sharp teeth, each as large as Adie, shot up from the black depths below them and clamped down onto the shark’s midsection.

  The jaws were gnarled and bare and belonged to a massive creature that resembled a crocodile—a crocodile the size of two city buses. It held on to the shark and began shaking it from side to side, sending blood spiraling away in all directions.

  Anapos stopped the vessel, as Adie’s screams became weak whimpers. They could see the entire creature now, and it looked remarkably like a crocodile with fins instead of feet.

  “Is that the Iku-Turso?” Cordelia asked.

  “No,” Anapos said.

  As if on cue, a third creature, this one larger than any animal Cordelia had ever seen before, zoomed up from the depths of the abyss. It was large enough to swallow their entire submarine like a piece of popcorn. It looked like a spiky-finned whale with a human head full of jagged and long black teeth, a massive rack of antlers, and a beard made of electrified blue tentacles. It was the most horrific and bizarre creature she’d ever seen, and it was so massive that she was convinced it could have easily gobbled up a colossus like Fat Jagger in just a few bites. As if to prove the point, it gracefully and swiftly swooped in and bit off the entire lower half of the giant swimming crocodile in one quick chomp.

  “That’s the Iku-Turso,” Anapos said.

  Deep within a hillside just outside of Aswan, Egypt, Brendan struggled to free himself from a mummy’s death hug.

  “A mummy!” Brendan shouted, fighting against the dead skeleton’s surprisingly strong arms. “And he smells like my sister’s gym socks!”

  “Why would you know what your sister’s socks smell like?” Jumbo asked as he rushed over to help, Sir Ed right behind him.

  Brendan didn’t have time to answer. Instead he took a step back and tried to crush the mummy against the wall, but the mummy didn’t budge. For something that weighed probably eighty pounds of literal skin and bones, it felt like pressing up against a semitruck.

  Jumbo pulled at the mummy’s arms, but couldn’t dislodge them. It was squeezing so hard that Brendan couldn’t breathe at all, rendering him unable to cry out for help or even wheeze. He was silently suffocating.

  That’s when he saw the knife. Sir Ed pulled a sharp dagger from his bag and plunged it deep into the middle of the mummy’s face, causing its head to explode into a shower of dust, bone, and tattered scraps of cloth. The mummy’s grip went limp, and the body crumpled to the ground.

  Brendan screamed in pain and covered his right ear with his hand, dropping to the ground next to the mummy’s body. The dagger had grazed Brendan’s ear. He pulled back his hand and saw blood on his fingertips.

  And the bottom of his severed earlobe, which he had already lost once before during their previous adventures.

  “Not again!” he shouted, climbing to his feet.

  Blood dripped onto his shirt. Sir Ed and Jumbo stepped in front of him. They were shouting but Brendan couldn’t hear anything since he was in shock. Their faces were panicked and they pulled at his arm.

  All of the sarcophaguses were open and black and gray and brown mummies started staggering toward them from all directions. The tomb in the center slid open and another mummy sat up, wearing an ornate gold-and-jade mask. The eyes glowed red, and it pointed a long, bony finger right at them.

  It was King Wazner. And he wanted his revenge. For what, Brendan wasn’t sure. But he doubted that the undead pharaoh would take the time to sort out who was actually responsible for whatever it was he was so angry about.

  So when Sir Ed and Jumbo took off running, Brendan followed them.

  Sir Ed pulled out a pistol and shot several mummies as he ran. One was hit in the torso. It didn’t even slow it down. The other took a hit to the neck, blasting it to pieces. The head rolled off and landed at Brendan’s feet. He hurtled it easily and followed Sir Ed and Jumbo through an opening adjacent to the one they’d entered.

  The mummies were in close pursuit behind them in the corridor. Wazner was among them, the eyes of the mask still glowing in the darkness beyond the reach of Sir Ed’s torch. Brendan heard muffled shouting and looked forward again.

  A mummy had seemingly come out of nowhere and grabbed Jumbo’s shirt. He screamed for help as the mummy pulled him closer. It raised its other arm, but Sir Ed pounded the mummy over the head with his torch, knocking the creature away.


  In his panic and rush to save Jumbo, Brendan stumbled and fell, tripping over a mummified cat which was now trying to claw his ankle to shreds through its wrapping, which tickled more than hurt.

  The mummy that had grabbed Jumbo was now in flames and stumbling down an adjacent corridor ablaze, lighting the path like a moving torch.

  Another mummy suddenly grabbed Brendan’s head with two strong hands, stopping him from climbing to his feet. It began to twist Brendan’s head violently.

  “Heeeelp!” Brendan screamed, desperately trying to keep his head attached to his body.

  Sir Ed narrowed his eyes and fired off several rounds into the mummy’s face, decimating its dusty and ancient head. The mummy fell to the ground, its lifeless arms releasing the grip on Brendan’s skull.

  A hand grabbed Brendan’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. He was vaguely aware that Sir Ed seemed to be growing increasingly annoyed with his total incompetence. And Brendan supposed he had a right to be—he was embarrassed. He had portrayed himself as this great leader, yet some dandy college professor kept rescuing him. Sir Ed was the real hero. This was how you were supposed to take charge. Brendan was like a double-A pinch runner compared to Sir Ed’s major league ace of the pitching staff.

  But there wasn’t really time to mope about it right then, since countless more mummies were still coming after them, now running like Olympic sprinters, and screaming in high-pitched, unearthly voices. They were out for revenge and blood. And they were gaining on them quickly.

  Sir Ed shoved Brendan down the hall toward Jumbo, who was already sprinting ahead and diving out of the grasp of a passing mummy. Determined to finally rise up and be the hero he knew he could be, Brendan shoulder-checked it into the wall. The ancient mummy practically disintegrated on impact. It was more satisfying than any lacrosse hit he’d ever delivered.

  At the end of a passageway, Sir Ed began kicking a loosened stone in the wall. Brendan and Jumbo joined him until a small opening was created. They clambered through it, seconds ahead of the mummies. As the mummies tried to make their way through, Sir Ed rolled a huge stone in front of it, keeping the undead Egyptians out. For now.