“I see,” said Abraham. “So why did he never teach you?”
“Because they don’t use them anymore. They use firearms now,” Andrew explained. “He says he knows how to use these, and there’s an antique bow on display in his living room, but he uses firearms when he goes hunting.”
“Ah,” said Abraham, nodding as though he understood. “Well, we don’t have fire-arms here, so your education can no longer be delayed. It’s actually not hard. Just fit the arrow to the string, pull back, and let go. For the most part, training in archery consists of shooting over and over again, building up your strength and improving your aim.”
Andrew was no better with the bow than he was with the sword. He fired six arrows, none of them making it very far, and he didn’t even try to aim. Then he threw down the bow, and, tossing a defiant look that dared Abraham to tell him to come back, stormed back to the camp.
The men were milling about, preparing supper, and Andrew decided not to get involved. Instead, he found an out-of-the-way stump that he hoped no one would notice and sat down. Apparently, they all assumed that he was still practicing with Abraham, and he was therefore left alone.
A small part of Andrew regretted walking away and letting himself look like a failure, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to be here, to be molded into the Fire Prince he wasn’t. And why? Because the last king and queen of this world didn’t have the sense to stay alive, and some prophecy declared that a Fire Prince would follow them.
Abraham, with all his pretense of accepting Andrew just as he was, was just as guilty as the rest of the men of clinging to his preconceived notion of Fire Prince. However, while the rest of the men held Andrew up to the Fire Prince standard and tossed him aside because he didn’t fit, Abraham was trying to stretch Andrew so that he did.
And Andrew didn’t like it. He was comfortable in his life, demanding though it was. He was used to being a mom to his younger brothers, and he was willing to do it because he knew that his brothers needed it. There wasn’t anyone else who could fill the role, and as much as they griped about it, they did appreciate him, on some level.
Did these Klaranders need him more than his brothers? Andrew couldn’t see how. Surely, another person would rise another day to rule over them much better than Andrew ever could. Appreciate him? They never would. Andrew wasn’t what they wanted, so why force himself upon them? He didn’t want them any more than they wanted him.
“Oh, there you are, Fire Prince, how’d your lesson with Dad go?”
He looked up, and there was his old buddy Karlos, with a grin as bright and cheerful as ever.
Andrew shrugged, not wanting to admit that he’d done terribly, mostly because he wasn’t willing to learn.
“You said you’d never held a sword before in your life,” Karlos continued, seemingly oblivious to Andrew’s foul mood, so much like Parker it almost hurt. “I can’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t have a sword, but I suppose you get used to it.”
“You can’t get used to something if you’ve never experienced anything different,” Andrew pointed out. “You’re just used to it.”
Karlos had to think about that one a few seconds, but then he shook his head. “So, was it any different than you expected it to be?”
“The sword was heavier,” Andrew admitted.
“Did father give you one of the big ones – I wish he’d give me a big one, but he says I’m not old enough yet. Did he?”
“No,” Andrew admitted. “It’s just that I didn’t realize how heavy a sword was.”
Chapter 6
Despite Andrew’s hope that this was all nothing more than a bad dream where he was facing some serious responsibility issues (he had those occasionally), days and weeks rolled by and Klarand remained his reality. No doors had appeared to take him back home, and he hadn’t woken up.
So against all logic, Andrew had to admit that this wasn’t a dream. He was stuck in a world where leaves were any color besides green, and he was a Fire Prince about to receive the weight of a country on his shoulders. He didn’t want it, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it, at least not until he reached the Kastle and could protest to a higher authority if there was one to be found.
Andrew didn’t have any issues with the whole hunting affair since that actually made sense – people had to eat, after all. For the most part, his job was to tag along with Karlos, keep him out of trouble, and help the boy with his jobs. Since Andrew was good at keeping kids out of trouble, it wasn’t a problem.
What did bother him was the fact that Abraham insisted on lessons with both the sword and bow every evening. Despite every excuse and protest he could come up with, Andrew still found himself being drilled with yet another technique, yet another stance, yet another target to hit every single night.
Every muscle in his body hurt, including ones he had previously not known existed. Part of that was doing exercise he wasn’t used to, and part of it was the fact that Abraham knocked him to the ground no fewer than twelve times a night.
With no ability to protest, Andrew had to resort to desperate measures – refusing to learn. A great plan in theory, but not so great in practice, thanks to Abraham’s method of teaching – knock you down if you can’t hold your own.
The worst part was that Abraham never got angry with Andrew for not taking the lessons seriously. Instead, the man just seemed disappointed.
But Andrew would rather stubbornly take the bruises than comply with Abraham’s wishes and become the Fire Prince he was expected to be. He didn’t see how swordplay could ever help him in his own world, so he didn’t see the point of learning it.
He much preferred the part of the day he spent with Karlos.
One day, as they were collecting firewood, they passed a cave and Andrew naturally asked if there were any stories about that cave. After all, it seemed almost everything had a story here in Klarand. Karlos just shook his head and said that he didn’t know any. He’d seen the men go in there a few times, including his father, though he had no idea what they did in there.
“They don’t tell me everything,” he admitted.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, that’s adults for you,” said Andrew, rumpling the boy’s hair. “Do you think we have time to check it out?”
Karlos shook his head. “We haven’t gotten enough sticks yet,” he said. “Besides, Father says I’m not to go up there. I think they keep something dangerous in there.”
“Ah,” said Andrew. “Then it’s best to leave it alone.”
Andrew didn’t say another word about it as they continued to collect firewood. However, once they had it all collected and he’d helped with the kill the men brought in, Andrew slipped away before Abraham could suggest the sword lesson.
Andrew did feel guilty for sneaking into a place that was clearly off-limits, but as he reasoned, he was a Fire Prince who was apparently going to be ruling the whole island eventually. That ought to give him some sort of freedom to go where he wanted, even if the title didn’t get him out of sword lessons.
He made his way carefully, trying to leave as little a trail as possible. These men were fairly good trackers, so he had to make sure they wouldn’t find him easily.
It didn’t take him long to find the cave, right where he and Karlos had left it, and to scale the bit of rock face and slip inside. The first half was empty and looked like any normal cave. Just where the shadows began, however, there were shelves filled with all sorts of strange objects.
“What sort of secret storage place is this?” he muttered, squinting into the darkness, goosebumps forming on his arms. He was just about to leave and look for a torch when his eyes fell on something that wasn’t completely concealed in shadow. His backpack?
He rushed forward and picked it up. Sure enough, it was the very same backpack he had packed that fateful morning before he had fallen into Klarand, the map he’d been looking at still in the pocket. Unzipping it, he pulled out a flashlight and flicked it
on.
The room was a weapons cache – but not for swords and bows like the men used. Stacked on the shelves and lining the walls were guns, grenades, and switchblades. They represented all levels of technology, from a few crossbows to a sort of black tube that extended a red laser when Andrew pushed a button.
“No wonder Karlos isn’t allowed in here,” he muttered, shining his flashlight over a pair of machine guns.
These weren’t the weapons of the Klaranders. Indeed, many of the weapons, like the staff with the blue orb at the top of it glowing dimly in a back corner, were things Andrew had never seen before in his life. It was like they collected weapons from other worlds here or something…
“People aren’t the only ones to fall through doors, not always.”
Andrew spun around, waving his flashlight’s beam violently until it fell on a girl seated on a rock, dressed in a tank top and jeans, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her hand went up to shield her eyes.
“Didn’t your parents teach you not to shine those things in people’s eyes?” she protested.
Andrew lowered the flashlight, frowning. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked.
“The name’s Laura, though most people call me the Doorkeeper,” she answered. “As for what I’m doing here – well, it’s a room full of powerful weapons from all sorts of worlds. I sorta belong here.”
Andrew blinked. “So these are weapons from other worlds?”
“Of course, Andrew,” she replied. “You’ve seen the majority of the weapons that Rizkaland has to offer already, so I would have thought you’d figured it out. However, there are doors all over the place, and Rizkaland is a receiving world – meaning that there are a lot of doors that open into it, and not so many going out. So, since the Klaranders don’t know what to do with most of the stuff they’re given, they stash it all in rooms like this, where they can’t hurt anything with them.”
“Ah, right, I guess that makes sense,” Andrew admitted. “Wait, did you just call me…”
“I am not constrained by the same temporal laws as the Rizkans, Fire Prince,” she explained, “Rizkaland, though it’s one of my favorite worlds to visit, is not my home. Besides, I’ve met you before in your own world, though I don’t know that I’ve visited you yet according to your timeline. That’s the thing about world traveling, time never lines up right.”
“I heard someone mention that…” Andrew admitted, still trying to make sense out of this girl.
She nodded. “Oh, yes, that’s right,” she declared. “You’re worried about your brothers right now. Well, you don’t have to be. They’ll be taken care of in your absence – if you’re gone long enough for your absence to be noticed.”
Andrew swallowed. “Is that supposed to be a good thing?”
“Oh, certainly! Now, I really must be going, I promised Silver that I wouldn’t be gone too long, the poor dear, but I was just getting so stir-crazy. I’m glad I happened upon you, though. Twa!” And with that, she took a step backward and disappeared from sight, though, for a moment, he thought he glimpsed a thick green forest behind her.
Andrew shook his head, wondering if this was a continued case of his going crazy. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
He decided that it wasn’t important and turned back to the weaponry to examine what all these people had collected.
“All these powerful weapons and the Klaranders just hide them out of sight,” he observed with a shake of his head. “And Abraham thought us the peaceful ones. Back home, if we found strange weapons beyond our technology, we’d study it until we knew how to duplicate it, and then we’d use it against our fellow man.”
There weren’t only weapons in the cave, though they were predominant. There were also all sorts of armor, some packages of dried food, and a few first aid kits. Andrew grabbed the two fullest of the first aid kits and stuffed them in his backpack with his own. Who knew when he might need one?
He also grabbed any food that he recognized from his own world. Several packages of hot chocolate, a bag of marshmallows, some nondescript army issue stuff that had U.S or some other Earthen country on it, a package of chili flavoring, and a package of beef jerky. There were a few canteens, and a few plastic bottles of water – normal clear water, rather than the blue stuff that one drank here.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in there, gathering items he thought might be useful, before he heard voices. The men were looking for him. Glancing towards the cave’s opening, he saw that it was now dark outside.
Hey, that meant that he’d missed out on his sword and archery lessons for the day!
“Fire Prince? Are you in here?”
Andrew took a deep breath, then swung the flashlight towards the entrance. Abraham was standing there.
“Yeah,” he admitted, suddenly feeling a bit guilty. “I was curious.”
And before the man could say anything else, Andrew zipped up his backpack and marched out of the room, past him, and back outside.
“What is that light?”
“A flashlight,” Andrew explained, flicking it off and putting it back into a pocket in his backpack. Abraham had a torch, so there was no point in Andrew wasting batteries that he would have no chance of replacing anytime soon. “And it’s my backpack, from my own world. I’m glad I found it.”
“We were worried about you.”
Andrew shrugged, but didn’t answer. He hated how this man could draw guilt out of him faster than anything.
“But I suppose it’s just as well,” the man continued. “Since it seems that you found something of yours there.”
Andrew swallowed, then decided to change the subject. “While I was in there, a girl appeared.”
“A girl?”
“Not the Water Princess,” Andrew hastily added, before Abraham could make that assumption. “Her name was Laura. She said she’s called the Doorkeeper.”
“Ah, her.” Abraham nodded as though this made sense.
“You know her?”
“No, I’ve never met her in my life,” Abraham admitted, “but she’s in the legends. She can control the doors between the worlds and travels through them all. Not much is known about her though, even in the legends where she is important.”
“Oh.”
Nothing more was said between them as they made their way back to camp, where Karlos was waiting for them. The boy ran up and threw his arms around Andrew’s waist, demanding to know where he’d been.
Andrew admitted that he’d been exploring, though he didn’t say where, not wanting the boy to follow, after all. When asked about the backpack, he did admit that he’d found it, that it was his from his own world, and that he had no idea how it had gotten here. It was the truth, after all. He didn’t have any idea – unless that Laura person had something to do with it.
The rest of the men who had gone in search of Andrew were recalled, and with the excitement over, everyone went to bed.
Chapter 7
The days of Rizkaland’s week were named for the original eight kings and queens of the mainland. On the eighth day of each week, Violet’s Day, the men took the day off from their hunting and did other things. Some of the men repaired their weapons and traps, others took long walks through the forest, and yet others played a sort of dice-based game that Andrew didn’t understand at all.
Abraham’s favorite activity for this day was to take Andrew and Karlos aside and teach them history: how this world came to be, who Alphego was, and how the politics worked. Apparently, Rizkaland wasn’t a very old world, only about a thousand years from its creation, and Alphego was their deity. According to Abraham, He existed in every world, though He often went by other names. Andrew wasn’t sure what to think about that.
The politics were just complicated.
This Violet’s Day, however, Karlos got into Andrew’s backpack. Andrew had tried to keep the boy’s attention off of it and had succeeded for some time. T
oday, without the distraction of work to be done, the boy had naturally found the backpack. He had everything out of it before Andrew had a chance to realize what he’d done.
To say the least, Andrew wasn’t happy when he came across the boy seated in front of the lean-to, and all of Andrew’s stuff spread around the fire.
“I thought I told you to stay out of that!”
Karlos seemed oblivious as he held up a red package. “What are these cards, Fire Prince?”
Andrew took a deep breath to calm himself down as he marched around to Karlos’ side of the fire. “Uno,” he said, taking the cards away from the boy and putting them back into his backpack. “It’s a game that my brothers and I enjoy playing.”
“Oh? So, can we play it?”
“Maybe later; now I told you—”
“And what’s this?” Karlos held up a small box.
“Matches, and they’re not toys, they start fires,” Andrew took this from him as well and put them back into a pocket of the backpack.
“Is that why you’re the Fire Prince? Because you have these magic things?”
“No, I’m the Fire Prince because I fell through the Firefall and survived it,” Andrew explained, gathering up his clothes and stuffing them into the main pocket before Karlos had a chance to ask questions about them. “Pretty much everyone has them back in my world, unless they use lighters. And they’re not magic, they start fires using friction.”
“Friction?”
“Whenever you rub things together, it creates heat and slows them down,” Andrew explained, gathering up the food and first aid kits. “It’s called friction in my world. Matches use friction to create enough heat to start a fire.”
“Oh,” Karlos nodded. “I guess that makes sense. You have a pretty cool world, Fire Prince.” He picked up something else. “And what’s this?”
“A compass,” Andrew said, taking that from him. “That’s funny…”
“What’s funny?” asked Karlos.
Andrew tilted the compass, sending the needle spinning. “A compass is supposed to point north at all times. It’s attracted to the magnetic field of the earth.”
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