by Erin Grey
Brianus grunted.
“Please?” I asked. “Will you just give it a go? For me?”
He heaved a sigh and very slightly nodded his head. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
The remnants of trees and vegetation gradually thinned and disappeared altogether. This was the salt pan. The thin white crust cracked and splintered beneath our feet with a satisfying crunch, crunch, crunch. It was even better than stomping over dried leaves. Emmy would have enjoyed it if she wasn’t exhausted.
With no cover to break the glare of the sun, we quickly became overheated.
“I’m sorry,” said Aidon. “If we can press on a little further, there’ll be water.”
“Good thing there’s so much salt around,” said Sandy. “We’re going to be extra crispy French fries soon.”
“That is not amusing,” responded Jasper.
“Firsty,” said Emmy.
I was melting. No, that term is too liquid. There wasn’t a drop of moisture left in my body. My blood had turned to iron sediment; my kidneys were shrivelled rubber; my brain had crumbled to dust. My legs only moved from momentum; soon they’d wither away, and I’d shatter like a kicked sand castle.
“There!” Aidon said. “Water up ahead.” Unbelievably, he broke into a sprint.
“What is this guy, a superhero or something?” said Sandy.
Brianus and I stumbled on. Within minutes, Aidon was walking back towards us, carefully cradling something in his hands.
Water. In an indigo-coloured leaf.
He let me drink first, barely two mouthfuls, then held the leaf out for Brianus. When the water finished, he ran back, shuttling another leaf-ful to us. The lukewarm liquid was brackish, and my tongue rebelled at the sickly saltiness, but my brain slapped it across the taste buds and insisted it was cool, sweet water. After Aidon had made three trips, we finally caught up with him at the edge of the salt pan.
We scrambled up the low bank to the bundle of rocks above. A tiny stream trickled between them and ran away from the pan, into the scrubland beyond. We collapsed next to it, scooping handfuls of water into our mouths.
“Can you see the sea?” asked Aidon, once we’d drunk our fill and flopped onto our backs in the shade of the boulders.
I sat up and squinted into the distance. “Is it that dark navy line on the horizon?”
“Yes,” said Aidon. “That’s where we’re headed.”
I balked. “But it’s so far.”
“It seems that way, but it should only take an hour or so to get there. We’ve a few hours of daylight left. Rest a bit.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Aidon was patting me awake before I knew I was asleep.
We drank our fill of water before heading out across the low scrub. The uneven terrain brought me close to twisting an ankle more than once, but at least there were no hills to climb, and a cool, salty breeze lured us towards the growing expanse of indigo up ahead. Terror of the sea temporarily set aside, I indulged in daydreams of throwing myself into the cold waves so the chill could suck out the heat from my core.
The landscape sloped downwards until we were striding across pure white sand with the hiss of lapping waves filling our ears. Small boats littered the shore to our left, overshadowed by stark, gargantuan cliffs, even whiter than the beach.
Aidon walked up to a flat-bottomed boat with a single mast and rolled-up sail and began dragging it to the water’s edge.
“We’re sailing somewhere?” I asked.
Aidon pointed across the ocean. “Can you see it?”
I could. A hazy lilac outline rose up out of the sea.
“An island,” I breathed.
31
The bit on the island
It was one of the most stunning spots I’d ever seen. Tall sinuous trees cast lazy shade over pink shores littered with shells. It was a bit uncomfortable to walk on with my thin-soled shoes, but I luxuriated in the beauty of it anyway.
There was no sign of civilization, except for two small boats dragged high up the beach, well beyond the water mark, and set between the trees.
“You said Ju and Quirinus would be here already?” I asked.
“If all went well, yes,” answered Aidon. “Let’s go see.”
Inside the tree line, we stepped onto a pebbled path. It led us to a beautiful big tree house.
“Well, aren’t we just your regular Swiss Family Robinson,” said Sandy.
“Why a tree house?” I asked.
“Safer to be up high,” said Aidon. “Because of the koboldi.”
“The what now?” screeched Gwendolyn.
“The what now?” I echoed.
Aidon laughed. “Don’t panic,” he chuckled. “They’re fond of stealing food, but not dangerous to us.” He paused. “Well, not the small ones anyway.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “And I suppose small Yewnikruns are harmless as long as you don’t harass them?”
I got another laugh in response.
Thankfully, no climbing was required as there was a pulley-lift system that spared my overworked limbs.
“Whee!” squealed Emmy as we ascended.
We drank from the small rainwater barrel that sat on the balcony encircling the house. Inside the bamboo-like walls, it was blessedly cool, but quiet. We flopped onto squashy beanbag chairs.
“I could’ve sworn that was Quirinus’ favourite boat on the shore,” muttered Aidon.
“I think I hear him,” croaked Brianus.
A voice called from outside, so we stepped onto the balcony. Quirinus, Ju, and Ric stood below. A brace of feathered, chicken-like creatures dangled from Quirinus’ hands.
“Hi, Aidon!” called Ju, waving. “We’ve been hunting!”
“I see that,” called back Aidon. “I’ll let down the lift for you.”
“You can help us pluck them,” bellowed Quirinus. “Good thing we got a decent haul. We thought you weren’t going to arrive until the Lententide13.”
“Pluck fowl?” whimpered Gwendolyn. “I don’t think I can stomach it!”
“Shouldn’t hurt animals,” said Mitch.
“You eat meat, therefore, you have no right to object to the death of such meat,” said Jasper.
“No choice,” said Mitch. “Still feels bad.”
I managed to escape the gruesome task by volunteering to help Ric collect water from the nearby stream. It was heavy work—we filled wooden barrels and rolled them up the hill, then sent them up in the lift—but worth the reprieve from poultry preparation.
By the time the meal was ready, I could barely keep my eyes open. At the table, I rested my head on my hand and swallowed a few mouthfuls, my jaw working with the efficiency of a retired sloth. Brianus, too, was exhausted. Understandable, as he’d annihilated a frightening amount of Yewnikruns just hours earlier.
“What’s the plan?” asked Quirinus.
“Sleep,” said Aidon as my head slipped off my hand for the third time.
“What about the Regulators?” asked Ric.
“They’ll still be there tomorrow,” said Aidon.
* * *
Ju and I being the only girls present, we got first dibs on the outdoor shower the following morning. I’d slept in my dirt, far too tired to do anything about it. No spare clothes were available, so we had to wrap up in the large bathing cloths we had brought and wash our clothes in the stream.
“I’m glad you arrived safe,” I said to Ju, uncomfortable with the silence as we sloshed our things through the water in between scrubbing them against the rocks. The cool spray of the shower had soothed my sunburned skin.
“Humph,” she replied.
“Have you been here before?” I tried.
“Of course,” she said with a disdainful glance. “I’ve been everywhere the group goes. Well, except Last Chance base. Only Aidon’s ever been there.” She flipped her hair. “I’ve been with TRAG a long time.”
“How long is that?”
She pondered. “At least 3 years.” She
threw me a disparaging look. “Much longer than you.”
“Oh!” A thought hit me. “What about the Professor? Who’s going to look after him if nobody’s there?”
“Ric put him out,” replied Ju. “He can catch his own dinner. He doesn’t need us.”
Deciding my clothes were as clean as they could get without soap or hot water, I wrung them out and laid them across the grass on the sunny bank.
“I wish Charis were here,” I said.
Ju humphed. “Family commitment and all that.” She wrung out her top with violent determination. “I don’t know why she’s even in the group. She never goes on any missions, doesn’t live at the base. She just talks a lot and tells Aidon what to do.” She flung the top onto a nearby rock. Splat.
“Ok, so she doesn’t like Charis then,” said Sandy.
“But Charis is so sweet,” objected Gwendolyn. “How can anyone not like her?”
“We do not possess all the facts,” said Jasper. “Perhaps Charis does not have a good work ethic.”
“Charis has been with the group longer than you, hasn’t she?” I felt miffed for Charis’ sake, and the reckless urge to push buttons overcame me.
“Humph,” was the unsurprising response.
“Looks like you also need to hear the story about how the camel got its hump,” I said.
“What’s a camel?” asked Ju.
“An animal from Earth that lives in the desert. The story goes that the camel was so lazy it never wanted to do anything. The horse asked it to trot, and the camel said, “humph!” Then the dog asked it to fetch and carry, and the camel said “humph!”. The ox asked it to plough, and the camel said—”
“Humph,” said Ju, momentarily getting into the story.
“Exactly. So the animals complained that the camel wouldn’t do any work or anything except ‘humph’, and they all had to work twice as hard. Then, a djinn—”
“What’s a djinn?”
“A powerful magical creature that can grant wishes.”
“Oh.”
“So the animals complained to the djinn, and the djinn gave the camel a hump so that it could work for three days without eating and make up all the time it had wasted doing nothing.”
Ju regarded me sceptically. “Your planet is very odd.”
“It’s just a fun story,” I said. “It’s not true.”
“You lied to me?” gasped Ju. “You think I’m a stupid little girl you can trick, don’t you?”
“That’s not why I—”
Ju flopped down into a cross-legged position and folded her arms. “Humph!”
I lay back on the grass and closed my eyes so that I could ignore Ju. I’d tried to be nice, but she was so difficult to engage. After everything that had happened over the last days and weeks, I was too tired to fight her resistance.
Once our clothes had dried to the point of no longer dripping, we walked back to the treehouse. Aidon called down to us. “About time you were back—Ric has news.”
I jumped into the lift as quickly as I could and activated the pulley system. Aidon waited at the top with a grin on his face.
“Did he find it?” I asked excitedly. “A way back to Earth?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I’ll let him explain.”
Ric sat at the kitchen table, scrolling through screens on his tablet. “Your information about Zhian’s scientific interests gave me an idea,” he said. “Took me a while to track him down, but I found him on the Dim Knit. He’s been active on the forums about ancient travel techniques for some time. I found threads going back as far as two annums.”
“Two annums?” I gasped. “Zhian was planning this for the past two years?”
“Bastard,” said Sandy.
“It really was very rude of him,” agreed Gwendolyn.
“Some of his older threads discuss the portals said to be found on Ley Lines around Eorthe,” continued Ric. “They haven’t been used for centuries, so their exact locations are not widely known. But Zhian got lucky; he got in touch with another user who claimed to have studied the Ley Lines and located most of them. Many are buried or completely inaccessible. And of course, once you find the line, you still have to locate the portal. That’s where things get tricky.”
He spun his tablet round to show me an incomprehensible graph of spikes in multiple colours. “This,” he said, pointing to some blue spikes, “is the baseline for energy found on average around Eorthe.” He pointed to a green section. “This is the kind of spike you find in cities or areas with direct access to the planet’s core. But this”—he tapped an orange section— “is a sign of something much more powerful. A Ley Line.
“Now, a portal would channel energy from both the Ley line it touches here on Eorthe, as well as the Ley Line it reaches on Earth. That’s a huge amount of energy, so you’d think you’d see a massive spike at that point. But, according to my good friend Goggles and our avid researchers on the Dim Knit, the opposite is true. A kind of black hole is formed, causing the energy to dip below the baseline.”
“So we need to find where those dips happen?” I asked. Even Jasper was struggling to keep up with the logic.
“Not exactly. That kind of dip happens all over Eorthe, usually at very high altitudes or in extremely cold climates.”
I drooped. “So, it would take a lifetime to find a portal, then.”
“You give up too easily,” laughed Ric. “Don’t forget that portals only occur on Ley lines. So, first we find the Ley Line” —he zoomed the image out to show 6 different graphs, side by side, all with large red sections— “then, we find the one little point on the line where the extreme dip happens.” He zoomed into one of the graphs until the entire screen was red.
With one tiny point of grey that dipped beneath the bottom of the graph.
“There she is,” said Ric with a satisfied smirk.
Scared to get too excited again, I asked, “But, didn’t you say that most of the Ley Lines are inaccessible?”
Ric nodded. “I did. Most of the lines are buried, not all of them. And you have to find one that connects to a line on Earth that’s not too far from where you need to be.”
I drooped. “That sounds impossible.”
“Well, it just so happens that I’ve located a line within a few days’ travel of here, one that connects with a line in South Africa.”
“And the portal?”
“Right here.” He tapped the grey dot on the crimson-flooded screen.
“That’s fantastic, Ric!” I threw my arms around his neck.
“So you’re a cuddler,” he laughed.
Embarrassed, I stepped back. “I’m really grateful.”
“Well, you might want to hold off on that for now, because there’s just one problem with this portal.”
My stomach dropped to my feet, leaving a cold, raw hole.
“It’s underneath the headquarters of the Regulators.”
13 Lententide: a celebration involving abstinence from all fish products and abstinence from abstinence in general. Greep, nine months after Lententide, is often fraught with birthdays.
32
The bit about the portal
“It can’t be a coincidence that they have their headquarters directly on top of it,” said Aidon. “The question is: do they know what they’re sitting on? Or were they just after a place of extremely low energy? And if so, why?”
“Or they’re using the portal,” said Quirinus. “My question is: does it only connect to Earth?”
Ric scratched his head. “Theoretically, a portal is a connection between two Ley Lines. I have no idea whether it’s possible to connect to more than one other Ley line.”
“Well then,” said Quirinus, “if they are only connecting Eorthe to Earth, why would the Regulators want access when travel to Earth is forbidden? What could they possibly gain from the connection?”
“I don’t like it,” said Aidon grimly. “Did you find any other portals?”
“Based on the in
formation I have, only one other that is accessible,” said Ric. “There might be more, but it would take some time to find them.”
“And where is this other portal?” asked Aidon.
Ric frowned. “At the bottom of Homer’s sea, next to Atlantis.”
Aidon groaned.
“Why is that bad?” I asked.
“First of all,” said Aidon, “the Atlanteans are a bunch of militant bastards who shoot anything that comes near their city. They make the Regulators look like little girls.”
“Hey!” said Ju, deeply offended.
Aidon smiled briefly before continuing. “Even if we could get past them, Homer’s sea is crawling with grants, Nessies, and norgs, and is fraught with treacherous currents. It’s a suicide mission.”
“That’s funny,” said Sandy. “I thought we were already on a suicide mission.”
“Mitch hasn’t mentioned that in quite a while, though,” Gwendolyn said thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s feeling better.”
“Death is always better,” said Mitch. “But right now, life not too bad.”
“The Regulators are the lesser of two evils,” Aidon went on. “Have you had a good look at their complex yet?” he asked Ric.
“Only a cursory glance,” said Ric, shaking his head. “There’s the usual security: cameras, guards, ID-controlled entrances. Once I unravel their surveillance system, I’ll be able to tell you more.”
“Keep Charis updated, too,” said Aidon. “She’ll find us a way in.”
I pulled Aidon aside, and he walked me out onto the balcony.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked nervously. “I mean … you’ve spent how long getting people away from the Regulators. If they catch you, you’re dead, or as good as.”
“It’s not as bad as you think.” He put his hand over mine where I clutched his arm. “Charis has gotten us in and out of worse spots. I wouldn’t risk it if I thought the danger was too high.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll take care of you, Jane.”
I flushed, even as Gwendolyn squealed.
“You already have taken care of me,” I said. “And all I’ve done is caused you more trouble. Maybe you’d be better off dropping me on the Regulator’s doorstep and getting on with your life.”
