Flecks of Gold

by Buck, Alicia

  “What’s going on here?” Mom’s arms were full of grocery bags, so she didn’t even try to free herself from Kelson’s grip. She didn’t know to be afraid, but a glimmer of understanding quivered in her eyes. Break away, I thought at her. Run for help. But Kelson was already escorting her further inside, shutting the door and standing in the way of escape.

  “You’re just in time, Fiona. We were about to leave. I’d be delighted to take both of you. In fact, in some ways you may be more useful than your daughter. Take my hand, Mary.” It was a command, and now that Mom was there, I didn’t dare refuse. I walked to him slowly, trying to think of something I could do. Mom looked confused and alarmed. Her eyes brimmed with questions, but she remained silent. Be ready, I beamed at her as hard as I could. She nodded ever so slightly.

  I extended my arm, fist closed, to Kelson. He took my wrist as I hoped he would. In the moment his hand closed over my arm, I jerked down hard and struck up with my left hand. My palm connected with his nose, but I didn’t hear the hoped-for crunch that would’ve meant I’d broken it. He staggered back and let go of us. Mom dropped her bags, and we ran for the back door. My backpack bounced on my back.

  I didn’t see Mom stumble.

  “Mary,” she gasped. I turned and saw Kelson gripping Mom’s arm fiercely. “Go! Get help,” she said. Kelson tried to reach past her to grab me, but Mom twisted, hampering his movements.

  He grabbed her tightly around the waist, arms locked to her sides. “Fine, one then. I’ll be back for you later, Mary Margaret.” There was a flash of blue pattern, and then blinding light. I looked away, shielding my eyes. When I looked back, both Mom and Kelson were gone.

  Chapter 4

  Mom! I ran back through the hall. They couldn’t have just disappeared. Kelson must have dragged her through the front door. But when I reached it, the smashed eggs on the floor were undisturbed.

  When Kelson vanished, I’d seen another pattern flash in my head. This one had been far more complex. I hadn’t really been paying attention, but I thought, if I tried, I could reconstruct it. It was my fault that Mom was taken. I had to get her back. I didn’t care if I blasted myself into oblivion trying to mimic the pattern Kelson had used. I closed my eyes, trying to remember all the twists and curves of the blue pattern that had flashed through my head. There were one or two points I wasn’t sure about, but I pieced together the structure anyway. When the golden threads looked as good as I could get them, I twisted as before . . .

  . . . and found myself tumbling, crashing through golden light. It was too bright to open my eyes. It felt like going down a tube slide, but without the pull of gravity to keep you sliding on only the bottom. I tucked myself into a ball to lessen the effect of my painful bouncing back and forth, regretting the stupidity of trying to copy something I knew nothing about. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole, but without the reassurance that this sensation would ever cease.

  Just as I felt myself blacking out, the brilliance vanished. My body crashed one last time, and I slumped to my side. I took a deep breath, then coughed as I choked on disturbed dirt and the pungent smell of urine. A cacophony of sound assaulted me, but I was too dazed to make sense of it. I sat up and looked around.

  I was in a small hut of some sort. A few rays of sunlight filtered through a door at the far end. After my eyes adjusted I saw feathered bodies lining the sides of the structure, fluffing their feathers in perturbation—chickens. The squawking suddenly made sense and seemed far less sinister, but I was anything but calm. In fact, I felt swamped in fear, real fear unlike anything I’d ever felt before. My mind refused to accept what had happened.

  “I’ve knocked myself out,” I muttered. “I’m just having a really weird, smelly dream. I’m dreaming of chickens because I slipped on the broken eggs and knocked myself senseless. That’s it. It has to be.”

  I pinched myself hard, yelping as I realized I was already bruised there. The rest of my body protested as I tried to stand. “It isn’t real. This isn’t real,” I mumbled.

  I was having trouble breathing through the haze of dust, hay, and bird defecation floating in the air, so I limped for the door. I slammed the door shut behind me as fast as possible in case a pecking chicken was chasing me. The bright light outdoors shocked my senses all over again. I jerked my arm over my eyes, squinting.

  My vision cleared, but I kept blinking, trying to make the hallucination in front of me disappear. It didn’t. I’d traveled somewhere . . . else. I gazed stupidly toward a group of funny, square, flat-roofed houses that looked to be made of mud plaster. The problem wasn’t the houses, though they looked primitive. The problem was the fact that I was in a desert, only it didn’t look the same as Arizona’s desert. There were no saguaros, and the ground was a dun color rather than the nondescript Arizonan dirt. There were little, scraggly bushes here and there. The road leading to the village was hard-packed earth where nothing grew.

  There was no mistaking this place with the greenery of Michigan; the funny pattern thing had made me go somewhere, but it certainly didn’t look like the place I had wanted. I felt a sob build in my throat, and my backpack’s weight doubled. Landing in a chicken coop was a blatant clue that I’d most likely remembered Kelson’s pattern wrong. The barren landscape confirmed my suspicions. Where was I? Where was Mom?

  There was only one way to find out. The chicken coop was next to a house set apart from the main clump of squat buildings. I shuffled toward the dirty building with trepidation. There was a wooden door in the front, and I wondered where the wood had come from. I could see no trees. My thoughts dwelt on trivial things, shying from the deeper mystery of where I was.

  A timid rap on the door was all I could manage, and I stood back, almost hoping no one would be home. What could I say? Hi, I just dropped here from a golden vortex. Would you mind telling me where I am? That wouldn’t go over well in any country. If I still couldn’t believe this had happened, how could I expect anyone else to?

  I was still trying to think of a plausible story when the door opened and I saw the most amazing person I’d ever beheld. She had dark milk-chocolate skin that was accented by a thousand little wrinkles. Her hair was snow white, but the most startling thing were her eyes. They were pure emerald green. She wore loose white trousers and a long cotton shirt slit to her waist on each side. Over the shirt was a bright green vest with a diagonal neckline. A five-inch-wide length of green cloth began at the top of the neckline and hung down her back. The whole ensemble struck me as a cross between Indian and Arabic, but not distinctively like either. She studied me while I studied her, and then she bowed slightly.

  “Hello, um, my name is Mary and I was with ah . . . my tour group, but got lost awhile back. Could you tell me where I am and where the nearest phone would be? Because you see, I . . .”

  The woman held up her hand. “Eya coshim,” she said and gestured for me to enter. Oh no, I thought. It was worse than I’d feared. What language had she spoken? It hadn’t sounded familiar at all. I paused on the threshold, unsure if I should enter, but she was holding the door politely for me. I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  Inside, a wall divided the house into two rooms. The floor was covered with rugs of colorful and intricate circles and curlicues. I was again reminded of a mixture of Arabic and Indian design. The woman gestured to me to sit, so I dropped to the floor since there were no chairs anywhere. I was tense, ready to jump up again if I needed to. She sat down across from me, her mouth curving in an easy smile, and I felt the muscles in the back of my neck beginning to loosen. There was something about the smile combined with the crow’s feet around her eyes that seemed wholesome and unassuming.

  I flashed a tentative smile back and looked into her eyes instead of keeping my gaze on her torso. Her head snapped back, and her smile wavered, so I quickly dropped my head, watching her thin frame closely for any aggressive signals. For all I knew, this land could have stories about demons with golden eyes.

  She to
uched my hand, and I darted a glance up to see her smiling again with an apologetic look on her face. She pointed to her chest.

  “Ismaha,” she said.

  “Mary.” I pointed to my own chest.

  She nodded and pointed to a large bowl full of water. “Eshin?” She mimicked washing her face. I flushed in embarrassment. I probably looked like a wreck. Landing in a chicken coop was not good for my clothes, I thought, looking down at my dropping-spattered jeans. My T-shirt had a big splotch on the right side where I’d landed on the floor of the coop. I put my hands up to feel my hair, and discovered a big rat’s nest where hair should’ve been. My face went hot. Why hadn’t I thought to check what I looked like before knocking on the door?

  I crouched over the basin, my sore body protesting the awkward stance, and scrubbed my hands vigorously before washing my face. I also tried running my fingers through my hair, but my fingers caught in snarls, and I gave up after a few strokes. As I washed, Ismaha sat in silence, looking slightly away from me as if to grant me some dignity. When I was done, she looked back at me and smiled more broadly.

  “Dora.” She nodded once. I guessed that meant good or better, but I couldn’t be sure. This was going to be one heck of a communication challenge. How could I get her to understand what I needed? It seemed impossible, but I took a deep breath. “Where am I?” I gestured all around me, trying to indicate more than just the house.

  She looked a little confused, then I think she understood what my strange motions meant. “Iban ou Iberloah.”

  My mouth dropped. Iberloah? Then I was in the right place. Except, where was Mom? I jumped up. “Have you seen my mother? She’s about five-two with long blonde hair. She’s probably being held by a man with dark brown hair and blue eyes.” I tried to indicate Mom’s height, then I tugged my own hair and pointed to a blondish part of the rug to show the color. The woman looked at me curiously, but I don’t think she understood what I was trying to convey. I gave up and started for the door, determined to search for Mom if I had to knock down every door in the village.

  Before I reached the door, however, Ismaha gently took hold of my arm. I looked at her. “I have to go. I have to find my mother.” She held up a hand in a motion that clearly stated, “Wait.” She then pointed at her mouth, then at me.

  “I don’t have time to learn how to speak your language. I have to find my mother now, before Kelson goes somewhere else with her, and it’s too late.” I wanted to leap out the door and start my search, but I didn’t want to be rude after her kindness to me. Ismaha pointed to my hair and the blonde part of the rug, and then gestured to indicate her village. She shook her head.

  “But she has to be here. She just came not long ago. How would you know if she isn’t here?” It was so frustrating that she couldn’t understand.

  She shook her head again sadly, and I suddenly knew that she had understood. Mom wasn’t in this village. Landing in a chicken coop rather than exactly where Kelson and Mom were was indication enough that even though I was in Iberloah, I still wasn’t where Kelson was. I’d gotten the pattern wrong. But Kelson had mentioned living in a desert his whole life before contradicting that by saying he was from Michigan. He’d also said he lured Mom and me to a desert because of similarities. I wasn’t in the exact place, but I felt cheered at hearing the name Iberloah. Ismaha had said it was Iban ou Iberloah. Did that mean Iban was near Iberloah, not in it? My head bowed. “I have to find her,” I whispered.

  Ismaha raised my head and again pointed to her mouth, then to me. Her brows were wrinkled in sympathy, and I felt tightness in my throat that was perilously close to becoming a sob. But I swallowed it and squared my shoulders.

  “Yes, let’s get started.” My mouth pressed to a determined line. I would learn the rudiments of this language as fast as I could so that I could find Mom. I was still confused about where I was, though. If Iberloah wasn’t really in Michigan as Kelson had said, then what country was I in? It was definitely a third world country, but which one? I would have to ask Ismaha as soon as I learned a few words.

  Ismaha and I sat across from each other in the middle of the main room. She lifted and lowered her hand palm down in a gesture that seemed to say, “Don’t worry. Stay calm.” She then stared at the space between us, and I noticed green threads forming in the air. I recognized it at once as the same kind of pattern magic that Kelson had done. I tensed, but Ismaha continued to sit calmly, placing each strand in the air with exactness, glancing to me to make sure that I noted where they fell into place. When she was done, she looked at me and indicated that I should study the pattern. I did so, but I already had the pattern memorized. It was complicated, but not nearly as complex as the pattern that had dropped me in her village.

  She waved at me to imitate her. It took me only a second to figure out how she’d made the pattern appear in the air rather than just in her mind. My golden pattern jumped to life next to her green one the next instant. She looked a little surprised. Next, she pointed to the part of the pattern that I could sense was the nexus of the whole. It shifted, and the pattern flashed for an instant, slightly different than before.

  She indicated that I should copy her. I twisted in the spot she had shown, and this time I felt more in control than when I’d copied Kelson’s blue pattern, for I could see and feel where I was pulling, rather than just using my intuition. I waited for something to happen. Nothing did, and I was afraid that this time I’d done something wrong.

  “That is our language’s lacing. It is often used during negotiations with other countries,” she said. It was the oddest thing. I understood what she said to me, but the words weren’t English. They sounded strange, yet familiar at the same time, and the different sentence structure felt awkward. I noticed my mouth was hanging open, and I shut it with a small snap. Ismaha grinned.

  “How is that possible?” I asked. The words coming from my mouth felt off, but Ismaha seemed to understand them.

  “Many things are possible if you know how to see them,” she said. “My language makes a pattern just as everything does. When those patterns are discovered, we can change them, which then changes the properties of objects.”

  “I think I understand,” I said, not really sure if I did. I was slightly distracted from the flow of my thoughts by my voice producing previously unknown words.

  “Now, why don’t you explain to me what you were so emphatic about before. You seemed to be looking for someone, but I’m sorry to say no one has come to our village today other than you.”

  “I’m trying to find my mother. She was taken by this boy—I mean, man. I mean, I think he’s really an older man, not the teenager he seemed to be. He has the same kind of magic you showed me, and he wanted to take me too, but Mom stopped him. He did this huge, complicated pattern when he disappeared with my mother so I tried to copy it and follow him, but I must have gotten it wrong because I ended up in your chicken coop instead, and now I don’t know what to do. You said that this is Iberloah—or is this just near Iberloah?—which is where he said he wanted to take me, but he said it was in Michigan, and this is definitely not Michigan. Where are we, anyway?” I sucked in a huge breath, having hardly breathed during my ramble.

  “I do not know this Michigan you speak of. This is the country of Iberloah.”

  “Country? I’ve never heard of a country called Iberloah. Is it a really small one in Africa or something?”

  “I am sorry, I do not know Africa either, but Iberloah is not small. It is the largest country on the continent,” she said.

  I didn’t want to be rude by refuting her, even though she was obviously wrong. Since we weren’t really getting anywhere, I tried a different tactic. “Okay, so about how many miles wide is Iberloah, and where are we located on a map?” Oddly enough, when I said “miles” it sounded like the English word. I had expected “Michigan” and “Africa” to sound the same as English, but not “miles.”

  “I do not know what you mean when you say ‘miles.’ We
measure our distances by kenars. One kenar is about 1,000 paces of a normal-sized man. Iberloah is 950 kenars wide at its shortest point.”

  That explained why the word “miles” hadn’t translated, and I wondered how many other English words wouldn’t translate. I calculated the differences of measurement quickly. Her description of Iberloah’s size didn’t make sense. There were several countries as small as that in Africa, but the name Iberloah didn’t even sound familiar. “Do you have a map?” I asked. I knew once I saw a map, everything would make sense.

  “You’re lucky. Not many people in this village have maps. They are too valuable. But I’ve saved one from my days of travel. I will get it for you.” She went into the other room and came back holding a thick rolled-up parchment. I helped hold the edges while she carefully unrolled it. What emerged confused me more than her earlier statements about Iberloah.

  The map showed a continent unlike any on Earth. I had seen some of those old-looking maps that weren’t exactly accurate. This one looked like an impressionist painting of those really old maps. The land mass was an unfamiliar blob of strange proportions and was much smaller than Africa. Different countries were outlined, Iberloah being the biggest country shown on the land mass. A huge river flowed through the middle of Iberloah southwest to the sea, and Ismaha pointed out that the capital, Ismar, was located where the river met the sea. She pointed to the squiggly marks that made the word “Iban” and told me that we were north of Ismar by about 500 kenars. I had a horrible sinking feeling that I would have to get to the capital before I’d find anything like an airport, and though I wasn’t a whiz at calculating distances in my head, I figured that even though 500 kenars was less than 500 miles, it was still a long way to hike. I hadn’t seen any cars, and I doubted that I would.

  I must have looked really troubled because Ismaha asked, “What is wrong, Mary? You seem displeased by my map.”