White Tree Sound

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White Tree Sound Page 22

by Lizzy Ford


  The ship has a dark hole in the side onto which it lists. It’s sitting on top of a rocky outcrop, as if it ran into the rocks and couldn’t free itself. If that’s the case, then where did it come from?

  I’m not able to see past the darkness behind it.

  When I’ve completed my circuit of the perimeter, I return to the point in front of the ship. There’s no entrance or exit. I’m not sure how it got here, and I know one way to reach it.

  My eyes drop to the water. Fear bubbles within me.

  Do I have much of a choice?

  I sink down against the wall. Even if I work up the courage to potentially cross paths with the shark, I need a minute to gather my strength.

  Something nudges my arm. I jump away.

  A smurf is standing beside me, holding out a blue sandwich and can of blue soda.

  “Thanks.” I accept both.

  He leaves and disappears into the darkness.

  I eat my food. It helps some, but it’s not going to help me grow a backbone any time soon.

  I stand again and pace the perimeter of the cavern. There’s absolutely no other way.

  “What would Jared do?” I murmur. If I want to outsmart the labyrinth, then I’d try to do something other than what seems possible. Which is … what? Walk across water?

  I dip one foot into the water and snatch it back immediately. There’s definitely not an invisible air bridge this time.

  I walk the perimeter a third time, reach my starting point, and then pause.

  Is it just me, or am I about ten feet closer?

  I pace the perimeter another time. I can’t tell if I’m getting closer or not. If so, one revolution isn’t much of a difference.

  But three revolutions are enough for me to confirm I’m definitely getting closer.

  I begin running around the cavern, thrilled that I’m gradually moving closer to the pirate ship at its center. I pause when I’m out of breath and then start again. Around and around and around. I have to stop every revolution, but I don’t care. I’m outsmarting the game. I might also be playing into its hands. As long as this is working, and I’m closing in on the ship I hope contains the ring, I’m not going to question it.

  I’m ready for an extended break by the time I reach the pirate ship. I leap onto its wooden deck and catch my balance against the railing. When I look back towards the cavern’s walls, they’re so far away, I can’t see them.

  I sit down to rest. If there are vicious pirates on board, I’m screwed, but I want some semblance of a fighting chance. I catch my breath. I’m so tired from all this insanity.

  The ship is quiet. I’m praying that means I’m not going to have to fight a pirate or something like that.

  When I feel somewhat ready, I stand. Warm light from candles and lanterns spills out of a doorway leading into the belly of the ship. I’m too exhausted to care if I should wander into the interior and trot down the stairs. A long, narrow, wooden corridor is lit by lanterns. Of all the doors, only one is open, beckoning me into what will probably be another terrible quest.

  I reach the doorway and peer into the room. It’s an extensive cargo bay, filled with more gold and jewels than I’ve ever imagined. I recognize it immediately from Goonies, down to the skeleton pirates seated around a table overladen with gems and gold.

  But it’s not the splendor that catches my attention.

  There’s a door at the center of the treasure.

  The door to my apartment.

  I can go home. I start forward eagerly and trip over a string of pearls. Landing on my knees, I spot what’s at the other side of the bay.

  I stand, start to laugh, stop and start again. I’m beyond the point where I can rationalize anything in this world.

  I approach Sleeping Beauty’s glass casket. I loved Sleeping Beauty when I was little. I was an Aurora girl until Beauty and the Beast came along.

  It’s not a princess inside the glass casket.

  “How the hell did you wind up here?” I ask.

  Jared is inside. He’s no longer dressed in his space uniform but in the clothing befitting the Red Knight of White Tree Sound, with one exception. In place of a sword, he’s clutching my favorite koala bear from when I was little.

  My eyes sweep over him. Is he real? He’s not breathing, and he’s pale. He could be a mirage. I rest my hands on the cool glass. It doesn’t budge when I try to open it, and I drop my hands, frowning.

  It doesn’t make sense that he’s really inside there. But nothing about this place has made much sense.

  I study him. Warmth unfurls within me. I can’t help thinking it shouldn’t. I don’t want to grow attached to anything in this world, and I definitely don’t want to compromise the safety of an entire galaxy if I end up falling for a future dictator.

  Yet … I like him. The labyrinth has changed us both in ways that leave me reeling. I don’t know if I can see us as friends necessarily.

  I can see us as more.

  A movement from my peripheral draws my attention away from him. Three pacballs have popped up on the treasure side of the room, in front of the door home.

  A lone crystal materializes over Jared’s glass coffin.

  “Oh, what a rotten, dirty trick,” I snap, gaze lingering on the crystal. “So I have to choose between him and home.”

  I feel sick.

  Three pacballs is six crystals, exactly what I need to enter the castle. But why would I need to enter the castle at all, if I can go home?

  I want to think the decision is simple. The planet is giving me the chance to leave this nonsense. I should claim the pacballs, ditch Jared, and go home to my Wookie and life.

  So why am I stuck in front of the glass coffin?

  Another pacball appears with the others near the door.

  At the same time, a sword materializes, leaning against the coffin. I snort, recalling the Disney movie. “He gets to take a nap and I have to what? Fight a dragon?”

  I have absolutely no way of knowing. On one hand, I can pick up a sword and attempt to fight a dragon for the sake of the villain of this story. On the other, I can claim the crystals I need and go home.

  Jared or home?

  “Why would I need crystals if I choose to go home?” I ask myself aloud. Something about all this is very wrong. To start off with, I should feel more conflicted.

  I want Jared.

  I shouldn’t, especially since there’s no guarantee I’ll ever have another chance to go home. My journey can end right here, right now. I could sleep in my bed tonight without worrying about Freddy or waking up to smurfs or any other awful surprise.

  Without Jared. He wouldn’t be on the other side of this equation, if he was meant to go with me.

  I don’t know what to do.

  As the Red Knight stood in furious silence, the scent of pine trees filled and branches shifted in a cool wind. The forest put him at ease. It always had.

  The movement of branches in the breeze revealed one of the turrets belonging to the castle. His anger turned to resolve. The castle was the missing piece, had always been the missing piece, to a puzzle he didn’t know existed.

  He slid the sword into its scabbard and fastened the scabbard to his back before he began to climb down the tree trunk. He reached the ground and vaulted over a mass of fluff and pink blood.

  The Red Knight strode through the quiet goblin encampment and to the moat. He dived in without hesitation. If a shark ate him, it might take him to Elf. If not, he’d head towards the castle.

  No shark fin appeared, and he hauled himself out of the water on the other side of the moat. Drenched and pissed, the Red Knight trotted towards the castle. Its drawbridge yawned open, and one crystal hung in the air at the center of the open space.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  He froze at the familiar voice.

  “Have you forgotten all I’ve taught you?”

  The Red Knight turned slowly to face his hooded mentor, the most powerful man in
the galaxy.

  “I have not,” he said. “I have not failed you, either. The Ring lies within the castle.”

  “I’ve sent someone else to fetch it. It will take him but half a day. And how long have you been here?” his master asked.

  “That’s not possible, unless he has –”

  “A unicorn?”

  The Red Knight swallowed hard.

  “He does,” his master confirmed. “Had you pursued the Skyscraper siblings, you would’ve had the Ring by now.”

  The Red Knight’s surroundings morphed as they had the day he entered the labyrinth, returning him to the torture chamber with the three aliens waiting to punish him.

  “I didn’t fail,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “He’s yours,” his master told the aliens, as he had before.

  The Red Knight reached for the sword at his back.

  “I will give you one more chance,” his master said.

  The Red Knight dropped his hand. “I will obtain the Ring. I am almost there,” he stated.

  “My offer to spare you this time comes with an additional condition.”

  “Have I ever disobeyed your orders?” That he was planning to was not something the Red Knight would ever reveal.

  “Not once,” his master said in approval. “Which is why I know you won’t fail me in this additional task.”

  The Red Knight could think of no task he wouldn’t agree with, given his circumstances and the chance to escape the dungeon.

  “You must kill the Power User thwarting your attempts to find the Ring,” his master said.

  The Red Knight’s mouth was suddenly dry. The protective instinct he’d struggled to ignore reared to life within him. It was as much a part of him as the air in his lungs and the blue of Elf’s eyes. Many years ago, a little girl had brought him to a castle where he could never die. He didn’t have to remember that day to feel in the deepest parts of him that it was true. His fate lay with Elf and the castle, at the beginning and the end, in one of the many worlds he’d never before visited but which he recalled from time to time.

  He had never been anyone except Dark Invader, a space knight of the Red Order. But that wasn’t who he was, either. He was a puzzle made up of pieces that – upon first assessment – didn’t seem to fit.

  He had to believe that, somehow, someday, they would.

  The aliens moved closer to him, and he breathed in the familiar scent of desperation and fear that always lingered in the torture chamber, even after the men punished there were long dead.

  “I will not stay here. I will not obey you.” He spoke the words firmly and with none of the reverence with which he normally addressed his master.

  “You dare challenge me?” his master demanded.

  “I will slaughter anyone that comes near her.” The Red Knight drew his sword. “Even you, Master.”

  “Kill him!” his master bellowed.

  The Red Knight whirled and slashed his sword through the nearest alien.

  The creature disappeared in a puff of smoke, as did the torture chamber.

  The Red Knight stood where he was, ready to fight anyone who came near him, until certain the hallucination was over. He had done what was right, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t rattled by the idea he’d just defied the strongest man in the galaxy, a man he’d looked up to his entire life.

  A pacball appeared in front of him, hovering.

  He straightened and sheathed the sword. Passing his hand through the pacball to collect his crystals, he then faced the castle.

  “The beginning and the end,” he murmured.

  He walked to the wooden drawbridge and paused. A shiver went through him. The idea of crossing the threshold, of discovering who he had been and would be again, filled him with emotions he couldn’t identify, except that there were a lot of them. He had felt this way with Elf since learning her secret.

  I can’t go back, he thought. Uncertainty made him hesitate. He’d made the choice long before he defied his master. He wasn’t a space knight, even if that was all he had ever believed himself to be. What parts of him would remain once he discarded all he thought he knew?

  His heart raced, and he clenched his teeth. He had feared the physical dangers of the labyrinth. Standing in front of the castle, he experienced a different kind of fear. It left his insides as cold as the snow world had his skin.

  Elf, the sword, the castle, the Ring. The answer was in front of him.

  The Red Knight walked down the drawbridge, collected his crystal, and crossed the threshold into outer walls of the castle. The breeze swept over him, through him. He shifted his weight, for his clothing had grown unusually heavy. He no longer wore his space uniform but clothes he knew to be his without recalling he’d ever worn them before. Chainmail hung under an overtunic that bore the symbol of his kingdom: a white tree. He was dressed in comfortable leggings and boots that fit him like second skin, or like he’d worn them enough to break them in. The sword remained at his back.

  “There’s no going back,” he whispered, experiencing the fear again. It was accompanied by resolve.

  He had no idea what awaited him.

  He walked through the vacant bailey and the second set of walls toward the hold at the center. He claimed the crystal hovering in the entrance between two tall, wide, open wooden doors and stepped cautiously into the hold itself.

  It was quiet and missing the people and furnishings he recalled from a dream. The great rooms on either side of the foyer were silent and their doors shuttered. The faint scent of basil and mint reached him, as if the great hall had recently hosted a banquet. Light came from a door opened far down the grand hallway in front of him. Cobwebs hung from massive buttresses forty feet above his head. He remembered the tapestries that should have hung on the walls, and how bright and cheerful this dark corridor could be, when its lanterns and wrought iron chandeliers were lit.

  His steps were the only ones to disrupt the coat of dust on the smooth, stone floor. At one time, there had been rugs brighter than the tapestries from far off lands covering the floors.

  The farther he walked down the hallway, the more he felt he belonged here. Perhaps not in this planet’s version of the castle, but in White Tree Sound proper. The brush of his chainmail against his wool tunic was the only sound in the castle.

  As he neared the open doorway awaiting him, he began to make out the shapes of a large courtyard with a garden and a well at its center.

  That’s when he glimpsed it. The tree his kingdom was named after.

  His step quickened, until he was sprinting. The answer was here – everywhere – but especially in the courtyard.

  The Red Knight burst into the vacant courtyard and stopped, staring in awe at the tree with a white trunk and white leaves that graced the center of the garden. It was understated and easy to miss, if someone wasn’t looking for it.

  But he was. The simple tree was reminder of where he’d come from, a memory frozen in wood the color of snow and ice.

  He couldn’t move or breathe or think for a long moment. Instead, he could only experience the euphoric sense of familiarity, of belonging, that swept through his being. It no longer distressed him that he couldn’t recall the childhood he spent here. By the miracle of Elf and the curse of the labyrinth, he’d gradually remembered enough to know to return home. Here was where he was meant to be, in this life and every life.

  He walked with great care through the garden. Everything here was precious, even the life of an ant. He made no sound and left no scuffmarks on the stone pathway.

  The Red Knight paused at the tree that stood no taller than he. Its beauty was simple and elegant, its branches stretched towards the sky gracefully.

  A glint of moons’ light caught his eye, and he curiously walked around a wall of bushes, expecting to discover a pond or source of water.

  The smile he didn’t realize was on his features slid away.

  A crystal casket sat on the ground. Elf lay on the bed, c
lad in a She-Ra t-shirt, puffy tulle skirt, mismatched, knee-high socks and shoes and her hair in pigtails.

  He rushed to the casket and shoved his might against it, trying to dislodge the crystal cover. It didn’t budge.

  “Elf!” he shouted and banged on the glass. “Elf, can you hear me?”

  She didn’t move or respond. She wasn’t breathing, either, and he scrutinized her closely. Was this really Elf? Or a hallucination similar to the one he’d confronted before entering the castle?

  He circled the casket, seeking some means of opening it, when he spotted the door that had magically appeared on the other side.

  It was the door to his quarters on the spaceship.

  A thrill shot through him. The labyrinth was offering him a way out.

  The Red Knight went to it. Three orbs – pacballs – sprang to life above it.

  Simultaneously, a crystal appeared over Elf’s casket.

  He paused between the two, looking back and forth. He innately understood there was a decision to be made. Elf and a crystal, or a way home and many crystals.

  Why the uneven awarding of crystals?

  The Red Knight shifted his weight to one leg and rested his hands on his hips.

  The way this choice was presented left him thinking, if he chose to go to his ship, Elf was somehow gone. Forever.

  Likewise, if he chose Elf, his ship was also gone.

  If that were the case, then why did the planet bother to designate crystals for such a decision that would, in theory, end his quest right here?

  Because there’s more to it, he answered his own question. This was a trial like any other, which meant it was possible that the door to his quarters or Elf – or both – was fake.

  If he disregarded the crystals, he could pretend this experience was real and choose who or what he was destined to choose.

  His eyes went to the door. What good was it to escape this planet without Elf and the Ring? Would she then go back to her world and he return to space and face a lifetime of fleeing from his master, or would he return to the real White Tree Sound? Wasn’t it possible he could find Elf in whichever world she dwelt and bring her back?

 

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