by Meg Ripley
“Well, the last time I saw you, there was an evil wizard about to ruin the world. I hope you’re not coming to me now for the same reason.” Varhan raised a thin eyebrow.
Julian laughed. “No, nothing of the kind—at least, not as far as I know. Oh, I’m sorry; where are my manners? This is my daughter, Kaylee.”
Varhan turned to her, and as soon as their eyes met, Kaylee felt a distinct peace settle over her. The minor inconveniences she’d noticed on the trip—aching shoulders from carrying her luggage, a patch of skin on her ankle that always itched, a slightly upset stomach from the foreign food—all seemed to completely disappear.
“It’s, um, very nice to meet you.” Kaylee held out one shaking hand.
The wizard grasped it, his fingers warm and dry. “And you. My goodness. I never would’ve thought.”
“Thought what?”
You’re really something, my child. So much more than I ever realized you’d grow up to be.
Kaylee didn’t understand what his mind was transmitting to hers. I’m not really anything but a student.
A student of the universe, perhaps. Varhan smiled benevolently. There are great things in store for you, indeed. I can tell, and I think you can, too.
“Are you two all right?” Julian asked, his head swiveling from one to the other. “What’s going on here?”
Varhan let go of her hand and waved them into his home, chuckling to himself. It was a tiny house, consisting of only one room that served as kitchen, bedroom, and living area all in the one. The back wall was nothing more than the side of the mountain itself, and the floor was simply clean-swept rock. It was dark and cozy inside, if a bit cluttered. “I’m sorry, Julian; that was quite rude of me. But I haven’t been able to talk to anyone that way in a very long time. Kaylee is quite gifted.” He gestured to two crude wooden chairs near a low fire.
Kaylee was grateful for them, because it was at that moment she’d fully realized they’d been talking without using their voices at all. The experience had left her drained, but not necessarily in a bad way. She sank down onto the chair, taking comfort in the solidity of it beneath her. “Did that really just happen?”
The wizard busied himself with putting a kettle of water on to heat. “Oh, indeed. Sit down, Julian, and stop staring at me like that. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I know this little hovel isn’t much, but I haven’t had company in at least five years or so.”
Julian sat, but he still looked stunned. “I’m afraid I don’t quite know what’s going on here.”
“Neither do I,” Kaylee admitted, but she certainly wanted to know. Everything was just happening so quickly.
“Kaylee is a star child,” Varhan explained as he rooted through a nearby cabinet, speaking as though they weren’t talking about anything more important than the weather. “Or at least, that’s the human term for it. Not quite accurate, but it’s the best I can do.”
“What does that mean?” Kaylee breathed.
He turned to her with yet another smile as he set two mugs on the little table near their chairs and crumbled some leaves into each one. “You have a connection to the universe, one that very few people have. I can’t exactly explain the science of it to you, but you’re very special indeed.”
“How do you know this?” Julian demanded. He suddenly didn’t seem as excited to see his old friend again.
“Because I’m one, too,” Varhan explained simply, brushing his hands on his raggedy robes and retrieving the kettle. “It’s how I knew I was doing the right thing by sending you to Earth, and how I knew to perform the spell in the first place. As a matter of fact, that’s how I was able to send myself to Earth as well. That part was a little trickier, mind you. But clearly, I made it happen!” He chuckled as he filled each mug with water.
“I’m very confused,” Kaylee admitted weakly.
Varhan slammed the kettle down onto the table, causing the mugs to slosh dangerously. He gave a hard look to Julian. “Doesn’t she know?”
“Know what?” Kaylee demanded.
“Of course she knows,” Julian argued, his face coloring deeply. “I’ve told her all about how you sent her and I over here when she was just an egg to avoid the War. I’ve had to raise her to be as human as possible in this world, but I’ve never hidden Charok from her.”
The wizard’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the dragon. “I see.”
“Well, I don’t!” Kaylee would’ve stood up if she didn’t think the effort would knock her right back down again. “There’s been very little that’s made sense to me since I walked through this door!”
Varhan picked up one of the mugs and placed it in her hand. “Drink this. You’ll feel much better.”
“What is it?” she asked suspiciously. She’d been so happy to come here with Julian, but her life was suddenly being turned on its head.
“Chamomile.” Varhan pulled up a low stool and parked it on the other side of the table where he could face his guests. “You should drink, too, Julian. I grew it myself.”
Kaylee sipped her tea, surprised to find that the flavor was much stronger than the commercial stuff they had back home. She forced a deep breath in and out of her lungs. “Maybe we should start at the beginning. Why was I able to do that?” Now that it was over, the idea of telepathy seemed discomforting. But when it had happened, she had barely even noticed it.
“Star children often recognize each other, and usually they can communicate in ways the outside world can’t even fathom. Think of it like a gift. I imagine it’s not the only one you have?” Varhan’s voice was calm and patient.
“For languages,” Kaylee admitted. “At least when it comes to reading them. I can translate almost anything.”
Varhan nodded. “Fascinating. Anything else?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of. Where did all this come from? Why can I do this?”
“As I said, I don’t really know. Perhaps your heritage?” He looked to Julian.
Her father cleared his throat. “Not that I know of. This is going to take some time to get used to, so perhaps we should get back around to why we’re really here. Varhan, we hoped you’d come back to the States with us.”
“And leave my glorious castle?” He gestured at the tiny hut and laughed. “I’m just kidding. You know I’ve always lived minimally. It doesn’t matter to me where I live. But why would you want me to come back with you?”
Julian seemed to have recovered somewhat. Perhaps it was the tea. He set his mug down and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I want your help. I’ve been trying to find a way to get back to Charok for the last twenty years. If there’s anyone who can do it, I know you can.”
Varhan chuckled again. “If that’s so, then why did you wait so long to find me?”
“I didn’t know you were here. And I could ask you the same thing. You knew I was on Earth, because you sent me yourself. Couldn’t you have just come to the same place?”
The wizard tipped his head from one side to the other, a smile playing on his lips. “It doesn’t always work that way. In any case, it wasn’t my role. I’m not sure it was yours, either. But Kaylee is a different matter.” He turned to her, his eyes alight. “You’re a completely different matter.”
“Once again, I have to ask what that means.” She was growing impatient with these constant riddles and partial truths. She still didn’t quite understand what a star child was, and yet according to this man, she was supposedly one.
“I mean that we’re not all sitting here because of me, and we’re not all sitting here because of your father. We’re sitting here because of you.” He touched the tip of his finger to her nose.
Kaylee scowled at him. “Okay, I admit this was my idea.”
“No, no. It’s much more than that. But I don’t have all the answers, and I wouldn’t even try to give them to you. If I were you, I would worry more about understanding the questions than finding the answers.”
“But what abo
ut your answer?” Julian pressed. “Will you come back with us?”
Varhan looked from Julian to Kaylee and back again. “Let me just pack my things.”
5
Six Months Later
Kaylee breathed in the stiff night air, sensing the energy that crackled through it. They had been working so hard for so long, and she wasn’t sure she’d hardly slept at all over the last few months. Between school and this, her life was completely taken up. She didn’t really mind, though. She knew they were working toward something big.
“I think we’re ready,” Varhan said, his voice a mix of joy and anticipation. “The stars are all aligned correctly, at least as far as I can tell. I’ve spent far too much time studying the constellations on Charok, and I’ve had a lot to catch up on.”
“Seems to me that you’ve done very well.” Julian clapped his old friend on the back. “You’ve come here and done a lot more in a short time than I’ve been able to accomplish in twenty years or more. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this.”
The wizard leaned on the railing that surrounded the balcony along the back side of the house. “Don’t get too excited. Remember what I said: this is only a glimpse into the old world. If all goes right, we’ll be able to see what things are like on Charok. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to talk to anyone—provided anyone is still there, of course—or even that it will work.”
“Varhan, you’re too hard on yourself. You were the one who got us all here in the first place.” Julian’s grin took up his entire face. It was a welcome look, considering how tired he’d seemed lately.
The wizard’s grip tightened on the railing. “Still, I’m concerned.”
“But we’ve been over everything about a million times!” Kaylee enthused. She could feel how close they were to making this happen. Even though it wasn’t exactly a portal to Charok, it was something so much bigger than they were. She needed this. She knew it had something to do with the way she’d felt her entire life, and ever since she’d started working with Varhan and Julian, she’d no longer felt as though she was searching for something that could never be found. She’d long dismissed the ‘star child’ talk as crazy, old man nonsense, but she knew they were finally working toward something. “We’ve mapped all the stars and traced the energy between them. We’ve gone over the spell so much that I’m pretty sure I’ve been saying it in my sleep. We have all the ingredients we need. What more can we possibly do?”
Varhan sighed and took one of her hands between his. He was like an uncle to her already, and his kind gaze meant the world to her. “My dear child, I can’t tell you how proud I am that you have such talent. I only wish that I knew as much as you when I was your age. But you have to understand that magic works differently here on Earth. Your scientists say that physics is the same on any planet, but that’s not so with magic. I can’t predict what kind of side effects there might be. I couldn’t forgive myself if one of you got hurt.”
“We both know the risks,” Kaylee assured him with a glance at her father, who nodded his assent. “We’re doing this. We’ve got to.”
The small smile that cross Varhan’s lips was enough to let her know that he wanted this, too. “I guess I’m just used to being the only one involved. It’s been wonderful having research partners, though, especially ones like the two of you. But there’s one more thing that’s been weighing heavily on my mind.”
“Go on,” Julian encouraged.
“Let’s say everything goes according to plan, and we can see what Charok is like now. There’s a good chance we’ll see nothing but wilderness and ruins, but what happens if you see there is still life there? Dragons, even? You know we won’t be able to bring them over here, at least not yet. I have no reason to believe that the spell that brought you here would work in reverse to send you back.”
Julian tipped his head back to the stars. “I know, but it would be something else for us to work on. And it would give me a lot of hope. All these years, I’ve been devastated to know that I made it out alive when so many others perished. I have my loved ones, and I’m very grateful for that, but I’m far too lucky. I’d like to think there are still others out there like us who managed to survive.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
The three of them went back inside and to the library. They’d debated for the last several weeks on the best location for the performance of the spell. While they didn’t want anything to happen to the library if something should go wrong, it had quite a bit of open floor space to give them room to move about. All of their research was close at hand, as well. The idea of doing it outside had been kicked around some, but there was too much risk that they might be seen. It would only take one person who happened to be flying a drone overhead or going for a late-night walk on the trail through the woods and they would be found out.
“All right. Here we go.” Kaylee began shoving furniture up against the walls, requiring her father’s help to lift the heavy leather sofa and the coffee table. The area rug was easily rolled up and placed on the back of the couch, and Julian retrieved a broom to sweep the floor beneath it clean. They’d already traced a large circle on the wooden floor, taking care to make it as perfect as possible.
“I know we all know this very well, but I’m going to check our work as we go along.” Varhan picked up the ballpoint pen and notebook he’d been writing with. He’d been fascinated with the modern writing tools, and while he often commented that an old-fashioned quill was more stimulating, he liked the fact that he almost never an out of ink. “First, the salt.”
Kaylee fetched the canister of salt from a nearby shelf. She now knew that it would absorb extra psychic energy that didn’t belong there, serving as a bit of protection for them. She carefully sprinkled it all along the circumference of the circle on the floor.
“Next, the citrine.”
Since her aunts ran a New Age store, it had been easy to find the crushed citrine that aided in communication. The stone glittered beautifully in her hands as she spread it over the salt.
“The silver bowl.”
Julian handed this to Kaylee. It was already filled with celery seeds and coltsfoot, and she set it in the very center of the circle. Her father then handed her three smooth stones, their black surfaces marked with brilliant splotches of white. Kaylee had fallen in love with the snowflake obsidian as soon as her father had brought it home, and she placed them at equal intervals around the silver bowl.
“I think we’re ready to go.” Kaylee stepped out of the circle to pick up a box of matches.
“No, no. I want you to say it. I’ll light the herbs,” Varhan insisted.
Kaylee paused, one foot inside the circle and the other outside. “But you’re the wizard. You’re the one who knows how to do these things.”
He smiled and bobbed his head. “In the past, yes. But there’s no doubt that among the three of us, you’re the one who’s gifted with words. They roll off your tongue like they were made for you, and it would be a shame to let one of us old geezers stumble over them.”
“Well, all right.” She took the notebook from Varhan and stood near the silver bowl. Her eyes drifted down to the words on the page, written carefully in the wizard’s Charokian script. She didn’t need to read them. She knew exactly what they said, and in her heart, she knew what they meant. Most of it couldn’t quite be translated to English, but the general idea was one of reaching out to the past and over distance to reunite two things that belonged together. It thrilled her heart to think she might soon be seeing the place where she’d come from.
“Julian, you know your role?” Varhan asked.
He stepped inside the circle, and the three of them crouched down so that their toes were between the obsidian stones. He laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “Yes, but I’m still not sure I’m the right one for the job. I mean, my sister-in-law is a psychic. It seems to me that she would be far better at stabilizing the two of you.”
&
nbsp; “You keep saying that, but I keep telling you that she wouldn’t. She only knows what’s here on Earth, and it’s much better if we’re all natives of the land we’re trying to reach.” Varhan braced the match in his hand against the outside of the box. “Are we ready?”
The other two nodded, and he struck the match. The small flame fizzled brightly, and Varhan made sure the stick had completely caught before dropping it into the dried herbs. They blazed up, and Kaylee knew it was time.
She closed her eyes and recited the words in a language far more suited to dragon tongues than human ones. It sounded like nothing more than a series of clicks and growls with a few vowels thrown in, but the meaning was clear. Kaylee let the words take over her mind as she felt the warmth of the flame on her face and the steadiness of her father’s hand on her shoulder. Though she couldn’t see him, she knew Varhan was tracing delicate patterns in the air with a tiny wand made from an ancient tree that had grown near his home in New Zealand. She lost herself in the tranquility of it all, her lips moving on their own, and she felt that she could drift off to sleep right where she was.
It was only when she heard the gasp from Julian that she opened her eyes again. Her lids were heavy, but she forced them back wide when she saw that the floor beneath them had completely disappeared. They were hovering over a red mountain, the boulders and precipitous cliffs clear beneath their feet. The vision wobbled slightly, as though they were on a tall tower that wasn’t quite balanced, leaning out over the forest at the base of the mountain and then floating to the other side of it completely.
“That’s it,” Julian choked. “That’s Mount Rokalo, where the royal caves are.”
Kaylee didn’t recognize any of it, but she craned her neck in an attempt to see it all more clearly. She’d never seen anything as beautiful as the contrast between the ruddy stone and the deep emerald of the trees that surrounded it. The mountain itself looked as though it belonged in the desert, yet the forest was thick and deep.