Mica turned his head toward Kazza, then reached for the cat he adored.
"Bryta, why were you screaming?" Nimri kept her tone calm, so she would not upset Mica.
Instead of an answer, Bryta sobbed harder.
"Surely you aren't upset by the skull?"
Bryta turned toward her so fast that one of the braids, she wore meticulously positioned around her head, like a halo, whipped free. "You don't think there is a problem with your brother being in the Skull of Doom?"
"Why do you call it that?"
"It represents death." Bryta began to sob harder.
"Did Rolf tell you that?"
"Everyone knew."
"Except me."
Bryta mopped her face with her apron. "Those who are seen there are gone, never to be seen, again."
"Really?" Bryta nodded. Nimri knelt next to her. "Thunder and I believe it is a communication device. We've both seen each other in there."
Bryta's face went white. "It cursed both of you?"
"I don't think so." Nimri glanced back at the skull. "Now, more than ever, I think it is some sort of communication device, and I wonder if Thunder brought his own skull when he came, last night." Nimri stood up. "I am going to prove this thing is not an evil death device. Would you like to come with me?"
Bryta blinked at her.
"Or not. In fact, it would probably be more helpful if you stayed here. In about five or ten minutes, look at this skull and see if I am in it."
Bryta gasped.
Nimri grabbed her arm. "I am serious, this is not some crazy death curse. I am almost positive Thunder is using his skull to somehow put his face in this one. "And I figure I can prove it. So, please, just watch this skull."
Bryta shook her head. Kazza wrapped his tail around Nimri's waist and winked. "Okay, then Kazza will do it."
With that, Nimri settled Mica back in his basket, then headed down the stairs, out the door and on to the path down to the swimming hole, at the base of the waterfall.
She found Raine and Thunder sitting on a wide, flat sunbaked boulder near the pale sand, staring into Thunder's crystal skull. "I thought I'd find you here."
Thunder glanced back at her. "For some reason, today, the skull shows Kazza."
"Because he is staring into the one in my bedchamber."
"Seriously?"
Nimri nodded. "Bryta screamed loud enough to wake the dead and in fact, she seems to think anyone whose image shows up in the skull is doomed."
"I never heard her," Raine said.
"How could you, with the drumming of the falls?" Nimri asked.
"The falls are why I chose this place," Thunder said.
"That makes sense," Nimri said. "I've always felt this was a place of power. Your image is much clearer than it was, before."
Thunder got up, "Tell you what, you take my place and I'll go up and look in your skull."
"Sounds like a plan. I just hope that Bryta doesn't faint or do anything dramatic."
Thunder laughed. "She wouldn't be Bryta if she didn't over-react." With that, he hopped off the rock and headed for the steep trail to the garden. As he began to climb the steep trail to the house, he called, "Prepare your myst energy."
With a nod, Nimri gracefully hopped onto the rock and sank into hatha position, next to Raine, where Thunder had just been.
Raine gave her a tentative smile. "So it was working?"
"It seems so."
"But you only saw Thunder in the other skull." Nimri shook her head. "You were there, but very dim."
Raine sighed. "I fear I am not capable of learning this myst thing you do."
"If you believe you can not, then you never will. If you believe that you can, it becomes possible."
"You say that because it is easy for you."
"I say that because I, too, thought I could never learn to use myst power, so I merely went through the motions of trying... And I could never grasp it, at least not as long as I believed I could not."
"What changed?"
"Larwin made me realize that my thoughts were wrong, so I changed what he calls 'my internal dialogue'."
"And that is?"
"My thoughts."
"How did you do that?"
"I needed to pay attention to what I was thinking and had to force myself to change wrong thinking to right thinking. Basically, I changed thinking 'I can't' to 'I can'."
"You're making this up."
Nimri shook her head. "It is the honest truth and someday I will tell you the whole story, but right now, I need to prepare to test this skull." With that, Nimri closed her eyes, relaxed her muscles and began the mantra. Before she zoned into myst, she heard Raine's voice join her in the mantra.
Though she knew the process of separating myst from body appeared nearly instantaneous to observers, from Nimri's perspective, the detachment process took hours. Thunder, who had more practice separating body and spirit, was already watching her from the back of the skull, when she released her myst-energy.
So, he had been correct, the skulls could be used for some form of communication. By why would the skulls only share visual? "Can you hear me?" She asked.
Thunder tapped his ear, while shaking his head.
Nimri sighed and shrugged.
Abruptly, Kazza nudged Thunder aside and she realized that she could hear him purring over the sound of the nearby waterfall. She frowned. How could she hear Kazza, if Thunder couldn't hear her? Before she could formulate an answer to that question, Kazza's myst-form leaped out of the back of the skull and landed behind her. Nimri whirled around so fast that she came face to face with her flesh and blood body.
With a gasp, she jumped backward. Suddenly, she was on her bedchamber's floor and Thunder was staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.
"How did you do that?" he asked.
"I have no idea," she admitted, "but Kazza seemed to just jump through." They both turned their attention back to the skull, where they could see Kazza's myst form standing close to Raine, whose image gave an occasional strong shimmer of myst-energy.
"I think we were wrong about this being for communication," Thunder said.
"Are you sure?" Nimri raised a brow, "Seems like you and I are doing exactly that and Kazza seems to be attempting to communicate with Raine." As if in response to her words, Raine shimmered strong and long.
"She's making progress," Thunder tilted his head toward Raine. "Do you think something like GEA-4 has myst-energy?"
"Larwin doesn't seem to think so, but he also admits that he doesn't know how androids are actually made."
"Tem-aki obviously does,"Thunder said.
Nimri nodded. "Larwin didn't understand her, when he came to us."
"True." Thunder's brow furrowed. "So how come we could see her in the skull?"
Nimri shrugged. "Perhaps for the same reason we can see Raine, but I don't know what that is." Nimri chewed her lower lip. "If we see her in there, again, do you think we can jump to wherever she is?"
"It's probably the best chance we have of finding her." Thunder looked from her to the skull. "But before I do that, it is probably wise to test this jump thing." With that, Thunder raised his arms, as if to dive into water, and plunged into the skull. Less than a blink later, his body passed over Kazza and Raine and he landed in a rolling summersault on the sandy beach. Nimri suspected his jump was more dignified than her own had been.
A whimper came from behind her. Nimri looked over Thunder and Kazza's relaxed bodies to a tell-tale shimmer in Mica's basket. At less than a month old, was her son already learning to control his myst-energy? Nimri swallowed hard, as she rushed to him. Kneeling next to his basket, she recalled her great-grandfather's scornful tone, as he berated her for trying to learn to use her own myst-energy and telling her she was too young, when she had been at least two years older than Mica. How different might her life have been if she had been encouraged, when she felt those first tender stirrings of power, instead of being ridiculed?
; How much anguish had she endured over Rolf's words, which made her feel as if she could not learn things? Nimri vowed that she would teach Mica, as she had tried to teach Raine minutes before. Even as she made the vow, she realized that protecting and raising a myst- empowered-baby, would be a challenge. Still, it had to be easier than growing up with the fear that she was not capable of doing her born-duty and protect her tribe. Leaning close to Mica's basket, she whispered, "If you believe you can not, then you never will. If you believe that you can, it becomes possible." A shimmer of myst-energy answered her.
~o~
Though Tem-aki kept getting whiffs of the mild acid, which Cameron had insisted she soak her foot in, lunch tasted fabulous. The meat and herb mix topping the toasted bread made her want to keep eating and eating and eating. Unfortunately, since she had arrived late, the only food available was on the plate Cameron had kept for her.
She suspected that if he hadn't been kind enough to keep it, she would have had to settle for eating one of the eye-watering purple balls. Tem-aki shivered at the thought.
After her initial hunger abated, she took the time to aim her tricorder at the amazing taste-mixture and was surprised to learn that, except for the poison, the whitish bits matched the chemical structure of the spiny ball she had stepped on. How had they known those horrid things were food? Delicious food? She frowned and looked around the rustic room. Where did they get the technology to make a gourmet treat from something poisonous?
Perhaps there was more to these strange people than she suspected and the potential technologies of the skull were normal. Perhaps these people used natural power sources by choice, instead of necessity.
Most of them seemed happier than the average Guerreterre citizen. For certain, they ate better.
Chapter 19
Nimri. Larwin and Thunder silently ate their evening meal, while Raine cooed and giggled with Mica.
"How certain are you that jumping to wherever Tem-aki is would be safe?" Larwin asked.
Thunder shrugged.
Nimri swallowed before she spoke. "How can we ever be sure about anything?" She frowned at both Larwin and Thunder. "I mean did any of us know if the Star Bridge would be safe before we stepped in?"
"I didn't realize that was what I was doing," Larwin said. "I mean, how could I have?"
"Well, its good that you did," Thunder said. "Otherwise, I'm pretty sure you'd have died a long time ago."
Larwin nodded in agreement. "True, but this situation is different. In this one, we know we are making a choice and we aren't sure if we can backtrack."
"You're worried that if Bryta's theory that Tem-aki is dead is true, then a jump to wherever she is would be one way," Thunder said. Larwin nodded, again. "That is a valid fear, at least in some ways, but we already tested jumping between our own two skulls and had no problem. The fact that we see her in our skulls suggests that Tem-aki is also in possession of a skull and there is nothing to suggest that a jump to her location would be any different."
"My concerns aren't over the 'to part', they're over the 'and back again' potential." Larwin cracked his knuckles. "Don't get me wrong, I would love to see my sister alive and well, but not at the cost of losing one of you." He covered her hand. "Nimri, until I met you, I didn't really know what a lot of things meant." He cleared his throat. "I thought I knew what things like unconditional love, home and family meant, but I didn't. Not really."
The sincerity in his gaze was so overwhelming that her vision blurred. Nimri put her hand on top of his. "I understand how you feel. Believe me, I never got that from my great grand-father, either." She squeezed his hand. "You, Larwin, are the love of my life. You are my family and you are my home and I don't want to do anything to jeopardize that." She cleared her throat. "But Tem-aki is family, too, and if there is any way to bring her here, as Thunder started to do, I think its worth looking into."
He stared at her long and hard. "So you are determined."
Nimri nodded.
Thunder cleared his throat. "I will jump first and if I can' jump right back -" He shrugged.
Raine sobbed, then a moment later, Mica began wailing.
"No, I will go," Nimri said. "Since Larwin is my family, that means Tem-aki is, as well."
Thunder squared his shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. "By that definition, she is also my family." He cocked a thumb at Mica. "Now, you – we – have others to worry about, too. And don't forget I was the one who lost her. Plus you not only have responsibilities to family, you also need to protect your tribe. Trust me, if I thought there was any real danger, I would not go."
Nimri laughed. "Since when do you avoid dangerous situations?"
"As of when I lost Tem-aki." Not knowing what to say to that, Nimri swallowed hard. "I lost her. It is my responsibility to find her. End of subject."
Raine carefully settled the somewhat calmer Mica into his carry-basket, stood up, then sprinted toward the stairs.
Larwin's fingers tightened on her hand, so the only thing Nimri could do was watch her go.
~o~
As the sun set and the boys headed for their hammocks, Cameron watched Tem-aki and GEA-4 continue to hover over the skull.
What was their fascination with it?
Why did GEA-4 spend nearly all her waking hours next to it?
And had he actually seen shadowy figures in it, or had that been his imagination? He squinted at the skull, nearly certain that he saw more figures in it. Moving across the room, for a better look, he heard Tem-aki say, "Thunder."
GEA-4 said, "And Nimri."
Cameron wished they trusted him enough to speak the common language, but at least they had begun making a few comments. Nothing that he could predict the future on, but those few words were a beginning. As he had that thought, the larger figure inside the skull lay down on the floor, as if sleeping and he felt a chill pass over him.
Strange that he didn't feel a breeze, but then the weather this time of year could change in moments. He looked out the window to the cloudless sky and decided that he didn't need to secure the shutters against a storm, though it might be a good idea to have an extra blanket near his hammock, if the temperature dropped during the night.
~o~
Nimri kept half her attention on her skull because Thunder's myst form had just leaped to wherever Tem-aki and GEA-4 were. Turning, she looked at his corporal form. Seeing his chest rise and fall, she exhaled a breath she hadn't even known she was holding.
Had she expected him to die, as his myst passed?
Apparently so.
When Thunder moved out of sight, Nimri glanced back at Larwin, Mica and Raine, who had insisted on being present during the experiment. Larwin and Raine were seated on the floor, their backs to the bed, and pretending to show Mica her favorite fairytale book. The golden dragon on the cover twinkled as it passed through a stream of sunlight, but Mica was the only one whose attention was on the picture.
Raine touched Thunder's wrist, then visibly relaxed. Raine gave Larwin a genuine smile.
Larwin raised a brow. "The pulse is good?"
"Very strong, so I guess I should have trusted him instead of worry."
"It is almost impossible not to worry over a leap into the unknown."
Raine nodded in agreement, then turning her attention back to Mica and the book, she began telling him about how she used to be a Dragon Shepard.
Kazza strolled into the room and laid down next to Thunder.
Nimri, who had already heard the dragon-herder story, turned her attention back to the skull and was surprised to see GEA-4 hold up a smooth dark surface, with chalky words written on it. Tem-aki was staring at her, as if willing her to respond.
'Is Larwin there?'
She turned back in time to see Larwin hand Mica to Raine. A moment later, he was next to her, standing with his hand on her shoulder.
Tem-aki's smile turned radiant, then she quickly washed the words off the dark surface with the rag, grasped a chunky whit
ish cylinder and began writing down a meaningless series of letters and numbers.
Larwin grabbed the lumpy black box he kept on his belt and started poking it. A glance told Nimri that he was putting in the same strange phrase that Tem-aki had written, so obviously it meant something to him.
Once he had them recorded, he smiled at the skull and put both his thumbs up. Tem-aki jumped for joy, while GEA-4 calmly put down the gray board.
After what seemed forever, but was only about a half hour, Thunder's myst-energy returned.
Nimri said, "That's your idea of 'just hop over and right back'?"
"Sorry, I got distracted."
"Couldn't you have popped back, to assure me it wasn't a one-way trip before you 'got distracted'?"
"Sorry."
"Well, what 'distracted' you?"
"First it was the water running." Nimri blinked as he looked over her shoulder, then softly smiled "I don't think you're the only one who was concerned. Let's rejoin our bodies, so I only need to tell what I've seen once."
It was quicker to reconnect than disconnect. But what Nimri hadn't anticipated was Raine's reaction. Upon seeing Thunder sit up, she burst into tears, and a split second later threw her arms around him, as if she'd thought she would never see him, again.
Eyebrow raised, Larwin looked at her. Nimri shrugged, but knew they were both wondering if Thunder and Raine realized that their friendship seemed to be headed for a deeper level. But that wasn't the most important thing at the moment. Tem-aki was.
When Raine's sobbing quieted, Thunder continued to hold her close to his side, as he began to explain why he had taken so long. "First, thing I saw when I popped over was water running."
Larwin scowled. "Why did that distract you? We see that every day."
Thunder nodded in agreement, then said, "But this was coming out of a golden tube and pouring into a bowl, which never overflowed. It was magic I had't seen, before, except that when I looked closely, I realized it wasn't magic, because there was another tube in the bottom of the bowl that the water ran into."
"How long did it take you to figure that out?" Larwin asked.
"Not long, but when I turned back to the skull, I looked out the window and saw that there was only a bit of land before what looked like water that stretched as far as I could see."
Fire Island: Book 3 of The Chatterre Trilody (Chatterre Trilogy) Page 14