by Tony Abbott
As they hurried across the frozen water, the moon began to set, and the sky turned black.
Once they were on the island, Urik moved his hands over the purple gates. The doors creaked once, twice, then popped open. Inside, the entryway was dark.
Urik peered into the gloom. “Looks like a maze inside.”
“Saba has given us a puzzle,” said Neal.
“Add it to the list,” said Julie. She turned to Urik. “I hope we know what we’re doing.”
The wizard smiled. “Me, too. Me, too.”
Neal and Julie followed Urik into the palace of purple stones. Its passages were narrow and winding. The air was as purple as the stone, and it smelled thickly of smoke.
“What a place,” said Neal, waving the heavy air from his face. “Of course, it’s just the sort of place Saba would go for. Smelly.”
The floor beneath them rumbled suddenly.
“That probably isn’t anything good,” said Julie. “We’d better find the Medallion before this place vanishes — and we vanish with it.”
As the little group dashed from hallway to passage to tunnel, they saw no one, yet felt that eyes were on them every moment.
Soon they arrived in the palace’s central courtyard. From there, they could see what looked like the main palace hall.
Urik turned. “It could be dangerous in there. Everyone up for it?”
“It’s why I’m here,” said Julie.
“Ditto,” added Neal.
Together the friends made their way into a tall, columned room whose walls of white stone glowed with light from torch flames.
The center of the room contained not a throne, as they expected, but a pool ten feet from its outer rim to its center. It was filled with something that bubbled, but wasn’t water.
“What is that?” said Urik, waving the air in front of his face.
The pool was brimming with smoke. It drifted and moved about, coiling and furling from somewhere far below.
“That’s Saba’s way to Droon,” said Julie. “That’s how he’ll take the Medallion to Ko.”
Holding his nose and peering in, Neal saw that there was no bottom to the pool, and though the smoke was very dark, he could see the skies of none other than Droon’s Dark Lands below.
“So I was actually right?” he whispered. “This pool does lead right to Ko’s hideout? We can’t let Saba take the Medallion down there.”
All at once, there came a sound like the rushing of wind through the palace hallways.
“Saba,” hissed Neal.
“Hide!” said Urik.
The three friends slid into the shadows of the room. When Saba strode in, his frightening face glowed silver from the Medallion in his hands.
The phantom stood at the edge of the smoky pool. He raised the Medallion over the pool. Then he began to chant. The children recognized the words as being from Goll, the ancient kingdom of Emperor Ko.
All at once, Saba’s chanting ceased, and the smoke began to whirl around in the pool as if stirred quickly by a giant, invisible spoon.
The same thing happened to the room itself.
“The palace — the whole city — is starting to vanish!” hissed Julie.
Saba howled once, then stepped onto the rim of the pool. He closed his three eyes.
“Now!” cried Urik. The three friends burst out from the shadows. Julie shot like an arrow at Saba, pushing him off the pool’s rim. Urik lunged for the Medallion and snatched it away from Saba.
Already the phantom had begun to dissolve into the smoke of the pool.
“Oh, too bad!” said Neal. “Can’t stop your own spell, can you? That’s a shame.”
But the phantom’s chant had another effect, too. While it made Saba turn to smoke, the smoke coiling up from the pool assumed another shape. Many other shapes.
And the room filled with a swarm of snarling wingsnakes.
“Holy cow!” cried Julie. “Ko sent his friends! He really wants this Medallion!”
Sssss! the wingsnakes hissed angrily.
“I guess that’s our cue to bolt!” said Urik.
“I’m already gone!” said Neal.
Julie, Neal, and Urik raced through the halls of the dissolving palace with a pack of snarling wingsnakes on their heels. The three friends dashed out the gates.
Neal looked up at the sky. It was dark and getting darker quickly. Wind whirled over Zara’s forest.
“My genie sense tells me that the Portal is only a few minutes away,” he said. “We’d better hurry or we’ll miss it!”
No sooner had they charged back across the ice bridge than the palace dissolved and the island vanished.
“We did it!” said Julie.
“Uh, not quite,” said Urik. “Those wingsnakes don’t know that they’re not supposed to be here!”
“Run!” said Neal. “And keep running!”
They ran all the way back to the forest.
The storm of wind was getting closer every moment. Julie and Neal sped ahead, trying to get under it, when they noticed that Urik had stopped.
“What is it?” Julie asked. “We have to hurry to the safety of your mother’s grove.”
Urik shook his head. “I see it.”
“You see what?” asked Neal.
“A part of the Medallion,” said Urik. “I think … I think I need to make it. I need to make my piece of the Medallion.”
Neal felt his heart skip a beat. “Now?”
“Right now,” said Urik. “I need to make it to keep the Medallion’s magic powerful.”
Neal looked behind them. “The wingsnakes are coming. Can you make it while you run really, really fast? Those wingsnakes’ eyes see everything. Especially food. And I think they think we’re food!”
“Food?” said Urik. He smiled suddenly. “Neal, thanks for the idea —”
“Oh, not you, too!” cried Julie. “The snakes!”
Still smiling, Urik pulled the two children through a thicket of vines and into a grove of apple trees. He looked up at the branches, which were heavy with red fruit.
“I’ve had a vision that hasn’t been clear to me until this moment,” he said. “Now it is.”
He plucked an apple from a low branch and shined it on his sleeve.
“I love apples,” he said.
“Me, too,” said Neal. “Especially the pie kind. But the wingsnakes —”
“Neal, shhh!” said Julie, spellbound.
Urik moved the apple into a shaft of moonlight, and it began to change. In the bright glow of the moon, the apple turned from red to silver. Then Urik rolled the silver fruit over in his hands until it became a small, round stone.
It shone silvery white under the moon.
“It’s a stone whose heart moves within it like the motion of waves,” explained the young wizard. “It’s sometimes cloudy, like our own lives. It’s sometimes clear, like the ocean at night, all silver with moonlight. I think I will call it the Stone of Waves.”
Neal frowned. “Or maybe the Pearl Sea.”
Urik scratched his chin. “I don’t know … maybe Ocean Ball? Or how about Water Globe? I like that —”
“Believe me,” said Julie. “It’s called the Pearl Sea!”
Urik laughed. “Well, it does have a certain ring to it. The Pearl Sea it is.” He looked up at the silver moon above their heads. “Neal, Julie, my mother’s Moon Medallion is very powerful. It contains all my mother’s mystical knowledge. But now I know that its greatest power can only be released when all its parts are brought together.”
“Like a family,” said Julie.
Urik laughed. “Exactly. When it’s all together, a word like ‘magic’ is too small to describe what the Medallion will be able to do.”
The children tried to imagine what magic the Medallion held.
“Wow,” said Neal.
The young wizard smiled. “You can say that again.”
“Wow,” Neal repeated.
All at once, the wingsnakes spotted
them and swarmed into the grove. There were hundreds of them now. They hissed and snarled and prepared to pounce.
“I think we’ve waited too long,” said Urik.
The bushes rustled suddenly, and a boy in a blue tunic with a sparkling staff bounded in.
“Galen!” said Neal.
“We found Sparr safe and sound, shooting baby-blue sparks at the wingsnake. But I see that snake brought some brothers and sisters!”
Urik nodded. “Who don’t like us much.”
“The feeling is mutual,” said Galen. “Wait a second. I think I’ll have to add another chapter to the Galen Chronicles. I’ll call this one ‘The Defeat of the Flying Snakes.’ ”
“Cool,” said Neal. “But let’s be sure there’s no sequel called ‘The Revenge of the Flying Snakes’!”
Galen laughed. “I like how you think.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking of my own,” said Urik. “And I think it’s time for you kids to enter that Portal. Take the Medallion and the Pearly Ocean with you —”
“The Pearl Sea,” said Neal.
“That’s the one,” said Urik. “You need them more than we do right now.”
“Until then, we fight!” said Galen.
“Rock on!” said Neal.
“Ditto!” added Julie.
Together the two wizard brothers waded into the swarm of hissing wing- snakes, blasting away and hacking with their blazing staffs.
Neal and Julie knew that the wizard family would stand side by side for only a little longer before they were broken up forever. It was amazing to see them together. But as the roar of battle grew louder, the Portal of Ages screamed and howled, too.
Hand in hand, Julie and Neal ran toward the spinning storm.
“Ayeeee!” Julie cried as the storm of wind sucked her in.
The second-to-last thought Neal had before everything turned black around him was of the magnificent Medallion and the shining pearl that Urik had fashioned out of next to nothing.
The last thought he had was of a bowl of macaroni and cheese.
“Mmm,” he murmured.
A moment later, he and Julie were lost in the Portal, hurtling through time.
Eric and Keeah flew quickly from the Underworld to Droon while the Twilight Star’s silvery beams guided their way.
The passage between the worlds coiled and zigzagged. Eric felt as if his mind was doing the same thing.
Was Sparr actually … gone?
How could he not perish in that fall?
Would they really never see him again?
“Keep reminding yourself,” said Keeah as they flew higher, “it’s a long time in the future now. There’s no telling what we’ll find.”
Eric felt Keeah press his hand harder. “I think I’m ready.”
“For anything?” she asked.
“Well, for some things.”
But as ready as he was, Eric was not prepared for what they saw the moment they left the Underworld and flew out over Droon.
“Oh, no,” said Keeah. “No … no.”
As they swept up into the air, then drifted over the Droon Sea, they were stunned at what stood on the far coast.
It was Jaffa City.
Or what was left of it.
The tall pink towers and golden dome of the great royal capital of Droon were charred black, toppled, and fallen. The burning embers of great buildings smoldered in every quarter of the city. All around the crumbling walls were encampments of every type and description of beast.
Worst of all, a giant black flag emblazoned with Ko’s terrifying symbol flew over the city’s once-proud gates.
“Oh …” Keeah faltered. “Is this what happened after we entered the Portal fifty years ago? Did Ko win? Does Ko rule over all of Droon now?”
Eric didn’t know what to say. What could he say? “We’d better find a place to land.”
“Yes … yes …” she said.
Choking as much on her own tears as from the smoke, Keeah veered away from the city toward the only patch of green they could see.
Eric recognized it as the very northern edge of the Farne Woods. Much of the forest had been destroyed, cut down, or burned black.
“Down there,” said Eric, pointing to the trees. “Smoke. White smoke. The good kind.”
Through the thick canopy of branches, Keeah spied the source of the smoke.
It was a small, rustic cabin.
Her heart trembled as she recognized her birthplace, the king and queen’s tiny cottage where they were first married.
Eric remembered it as the place where Keeah had found her long-lost magic harp.
“It’s still standing,” she said. “I wonder if my parents are there.”
“At least some Ninns are,” said Eric. Near the cottage sat a half dozen large, red-faced warriors around a campfire. “Let’s land.”
The two children circled the woods and touched down among the trees. The moment they approached the cabin, the startled Ninns glanced up, screamed, then fled into the woods, leaving their campfires sputtering.
“What’s wrong?” asked Eric. “They look like they’ve seen a couple of ghosts.”
Keeah gulped. “Maybe they have. This is a new, dark future, remember? Maybe we’re much older now. Maybe we’re even … even …”
“Don’t say it!” said Eric, suddenly imagining a future without Keeah or him in it.
“Who’s there?” said a voice.
The front door of the cottage creaked open. In the doorway stood an old man. His hair and beard were very long and as white as snow.
“Galen?” whispered Keeah, taking a step toward him. “Oh, no …”
It was Galen. The great wizard tottered on the steps and squinted at the two children, his hands gripping his long, curved staff as if he needed it to stand.
When his dim eyes made them out, he yelped excitedly. “Keeah! Eric! Oh, my!”
He hobbled to them and hugged them with arms that were still strong. “You have no idea what it means to see you! I long suspected it would happen just this way!”
The children shared a look.
“What do you mean?” asked Keeah.
Galen smiled as he led them toward the cottage. “You see,” he said, “no sooner had you children vanished into the Portal of Ages than you returned.”
“We did?” said Eric.
“Yes, but it was already too late,” said Galen. “Ko attacked Jaffa City, stole the Moon Medallion, and defeated us. Over the years — the many years! — we survivors have lived in the hope that this dark future did not have to happen. Now the fact that you have returned — young again — has given me hope and has frightened the poor Ninns. Captain Bludge! See who has come!”
When Lord Sparr’s former warriors returned slowly and hesitantly from the woods, the children saw that their pointed ears drooped, their plump cheeks were sunken, and their battle swords — never far from their sides — were dented and battle-worn.
“For a long time we believed you might return as children. Then we stopped believing,” said a large warrior. “Is it true, then, after all these years? Are you really … you?”
Eric remembered Bludge as the captain of a friendly group of Ninns they had met before. “We’ve come from fifty years in the past,” he said.
“The Portal took us from the eve of the battle for Jaffa City to now,” said Keeah.
“The war you saw begin has continued to this day,” said Bludge, speaking in a manner neither child had ever heard before. “One by one, all the forces of good in Droon have fallen. Only we are left.”
A faint cough came from behind Galen. He stood aside, and there stood Max, the spider troll. Keeah ran to him and hugged him.
Max’s wild orange hair had turned nearly completely gray, and what remained was thin. His eyes were dim, but he smiled when he saw his old friends.
“Many things have happened in the time since we have seen you this way,” he said. “Jaffa City is home to Ko now. No one has seen
you children — as children — since the city fell so many years ago.”
Max and Galen shared a quick look.
To Eric it seemed as if they knew something they did not want to tell. “Go on,” he said.
Max wiped his moist cheeks. “After Salamandra sent you all into the Portal, my master, Galen, and I raced back on our flying carpet to stop Ko’s attack.”
“I remember,” said Keeah. “It’s the last thing we saw before the storm took us away.”
“The battle was terrible. It was only the first of many,” said Max. “When the great city finally fell, those who survived hid here in the forest.”
“Alas, my charms have aged with me,” said Galen. “I had thought to retrieve my mother’s Moon Medallion from my tower. I sought to use its power to battle Ko, but I failed. We cannot resist his armies any longer. Our battle, my friends, is over, and we have lost.”
Keeah grew suddenly alarmed. “Where are my mother and father?”
Galen took a deep breath and looked back through the trees toward the city. “The first battle lasted seven years. The king and queen did not live to fight the second battle, nor the eighth, nor the tenth.”
Keeah buried her face in her hands and sank to the ground. Max hobbled to her and wrapped his thin arms around her.
“Ah, child,” said Galen, placing his hand on her shoulder. “My child … my dear …”
Eric’s heart heaved into his throat. His legs trembled. Keeah’s parents! Queen Relna and King Zello! Gone. Gone! He had often thought of them as his Droon parents. Of course it was the future, and time had passed, but still. How did it happen? Why did it happen?
Keeah wept and wept, and as she wept, Eric felt his mind begin to race until one thought came to him and refused to budge. Galen was right. A single hope remained. The only way to save Jaffa City from Ko’s devastating attack was to make certain that the attack never took place. This wasn’t how the future should turn out. It shouldn’t be this way. And if he had anything to say about it, it wouldn’t be this way.
“Galen, what can we do?” he asked. “Keeah and I believe that Salamandra sent us on a quest into the future for a reason. I think she wanted us to stop this. She must have thought it was possible. We’ll do anything. I’ll do anything.”