by Melissa Kuch
“I can’t hold on much longer,” he said, watching her head sinking beneath the crevice of the ground.
All of a sudden another shake caused his hand to loosen its grip, and they both tumbled beneath the bedroom floorboards, falling into the abyss.
urora fell through the black hole as if she was a dead weight with no control over her fate, no control over whether she lived or died. As she fell her mind was a blur of images replaying over and over as she tumbled through the dark abyss—of her father reading his magazine, her mother smiling in her dandelion dress. Aurora feared what her parents would say when they didn’t find her later that night. Would they miss her? Would they know how much she loved them? She clutched for anything to prevent her fall, reaching out into blind space and praying for something to materialize out of nothing. And then it felt as if she was standing still while the rest of the world was spinning out of control. She still held Boreas’s hand as they were free falling through the center of the earth. She spotted a light below her and knew that this was the end. She closed her eyes, expecting the impact to strike, but instead of her body plummeting against cement or gravel, she bounced on something soft and springy. She started bouncing again and again on the strange soft cushion, and her body levitated upward to start the bungee jumping motion over again. Her stomach retched and she felt queasy as she bounced once again into the air; her hand separated from Boreas’s grasp. She wondered if this was what death was like: bouncing up and down through eternity.
She opened her eyes, and her mouth dropped in disbelief as she beheld this parallel universe. They had been sucked into an identical replica of the ruby-red cottage bedroom, except this one was nearly three times the size of the first one. This dreamlike existence was euphoric, and she continued bouncing on the bed until she lost momentum and flung herself down, kissing the piece of furniture that had saved her life. She stood up and surveyed the large white mattress that stretched for fifty meters in each direction. She spotted Boreas, hunched on his side in the fetal position. She tried to run to him but found it more feasible to skip to him, attempting to maintain balance and not topple over. She reached his side and started shaking him wildly in an attempt to wake him up.
“Boreas, we’re alive!”
His eyelids fluttered open at the sound of her voice; his eyes appeared dazed and confused as they surveyed this world around them.
“This is all your fault.”
“My fault! Did you not hear what I said? We’re alive!”
He stood up on the giant mattress. “You call this being alive? We’re like in some messed up parallel universe!”
His sudden movements caused the mattress to start to sway, and she had to hop slightly as if trapped on a trampoline.
“What is this place?” she asked, surveying their surroundings. “I have never seen or read about anything like this in our history books or magazines.”
“Well, I can tell you that we are both completely insane. The school therapist would tell me I have lost all sense of reality and am schizophrenic. None of this is real. You are not even real.”
Aurora ignored him and started to explore the edge of the mattress. “I feel real,” she thought half humorously.
Suddenly their bodies fell victim to the vibrations of the conch shell sounding, causing the entire bed to shake and their eardrums to nearly burst. It was like another earthquake was shaking the mattress causing it to rise like the ebb and flow of oceanic waves. Boreas and Aurora plunged head first into the mattress and started to flip over, doing somersaults like two puppets on a string. Aurora sensed danger approaching, and fear seized her from the inside out. A large shadow inched over the white mattress, towering over them like a fast-approaching storm cloud. Aurora and Boreas strained their necks, following the shadow as they covered their ears as tight as they could as the cacophonous symphony continued to play.
Aurora screamed out, “Please stop!”
The conch shell immediately ceased playing. The two bodies flung face first in a downward dive and crashed against the mattress as the shadow lingered over them.
A deep voice bellowed, “Aurora? Boreas?”
Aurora was frozen in fear as she turned over onto her back and looked up into the eyes of an enormously tall giant! He stood over her at thirty feet tall, with gangling arms and a large, thick neck like a dinosaur. He wore old blue overalls with both pant legs too short, exposing feet the size of a tugboat. Though his body was gigantic in proportion to the two teenagers, his face was youthful with bright green eyes and large cheekbones. He had thick, furry eyebrows that arched down toward his rotund nose. He held the conch shell in his burly hand that could crush them both with one downward pulsating thrust.
Boreas and Aurora screamed as the giant hovered above them. The giant screamed back at them, horrified by their reaction, and fell backward onto the floor, hiding unsuccessfully behind the bed frame. Aurora turned to Boreas with a mixture of terror and curiosity, and then she cautiously leaned over the side of the bed to see the giant covering his face with his hands. His enormous green eye peeked out through the crevice between his giant middle and pointer fingers. He appeared more scared than she felt, despite being more than five times her size.
“Don’t be afraid,” she stammered. “I am Aurora. And this is my friend Boreas. You’re the one who played the conch shell, aren’t you?”
He nodded twice, his hair sweeping itself over his pale forehead, and his hands slid down his face and folded themselves over his broad chest.
“I am sorry. I didn’t know how else to get you down here. I hope I didn’t scare you.”
“You bet your life you scared us!” Boreas exclaimed, pulling a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and holding the blade up so that the giant could see it. From that perspective it must have appeared like a child’s toy. “Now you take us back to Earth this instant or else.”
“Put that away.” Aurora scolded, wondering why she was all of a sudden comfortable with this gigantic teenager.
“I knew you would come! I knew you would come save me after I heard your voice.” His thick, chubby finger pointed down at Aurora, who nodded slightly.
“Who are you?” she asked, again rising to her feet to get a better look at him.
“I am called Otus.”
Boreas snickered. “Who names their child Otus?”
“Who names one son Jonathan and the next son Boreas?”
“My dead mother, that’s who, so thank you for bringing up that painful memory.”
Aurora wanted to pull her hair out in aggravation. “I apologize, Otus, for my friend here. Actually, he’s not even my friend. We sort of just ran into each other.”
“After she destroyed my cell phone.”
Otus watched them mystified as they bantered back and forth, excitement evident in his face as these two visitors were squabbling before him. “Cell phones? What are they?”
Boreas pulled Aurora’s cell phone out of his pocket. “I forgot we had this. We might get reception down here, wherever we are.” He got up and bounced around the bed, trying to get reception. “Nothing. Not even a single bar. Where the hell are we?”
“Underneath the house, of course,” Otus laughed, watching Boreas. “Is that a magical communication device?”
Boreas bounded back over toward Otus and then sat with his legs suspended over the side of the bed. He suspiciously stared at Otus but then in a macho manner thrust the phone over in his direction without the nerve to hand it to him. “Here, giant. Maybe with your height you can get some reception.”
Otus cradled the cell phone in his palm like a fragile child. He tried to press the buttons, but his fingers were too thick, so he just slid his finger over the surface and admired the lights. “What an extraordinary invention. What does it do?”
“It is through satellite, and you can call people. Everyone has their own unique telephone number, and you can dial it and talk to them over the phone. You can also take pictures and text people.”
<
br /> Boreas continued to ramble on and on like a salesman, and Otus nodded, absorbing this information with delight written all over his face.
“I wish I could have this. I wish I could have a lot of things.” He handed the phone back to Aurora then eyed his two visitors. “Are you hungry? I have some rat stew that I made.”
Aurora and Boreas both made faces of complete disgust, but Otus didn’t notice and scampered off like an excited child about to do show and tell with the class.
“Let’s get out of here.” Boreas nudged Aurora hurriedly. “Quick, while he is in the other room.”
Aurora stood up and surveyed the bedroom around them. There was a large desk and chair as well as the humongous painting of the old woman, Mrs. Taboo; her eyes even more menacing as a larger adaptation.
“We fell through there,” she pointed upward toward the zenith, where there was a small black dot in the ceiling. “That’s the way we need to go.”
Boreas tried bouncing on the bed as high as he could but was not even anywhere close to the ceiling. “How are we going to get out of here?”
Aurora heard the giant’s footsteps approaching and grabbed Boreas so that they were both seated side by side again on the bed. “Just follow my lead,” she commanded.
Otus returned holding a large pot of some ghoulish rat stew that he stirred with a wooden spoon. The smell reminded Aurora of the old city subway, and she had to prevent herself from gagging.
“I am not much of a cook, but I had to learn on my own. I make such dishes as spider burgers, soufflé a la worm, maggot pie, and cockroach crunch cereal.”
He dished out three bowls’ worth of the rats stew with tails hanging over the edges of the bowls. Aurora had to bite her tongue as he placed the beach ball-sized bowls beside the visitors. They peered in as the steam caused them both to suffer from coughing fits. The rat’s tail as a garnish looked as if it would start swinging back and forth at any moment.
Aurora, though extremely hungry, did not have enough of an appetite to embark on trying this new dish. Boreas was waiting for her cue as Otus handed him a spoon and urged him to try first.
“You’re going to love it.”
Boreas dipped the spoon into the bowl and lifted a small amount of broth that sat swimming in the cylinder. Otus smiling wider and wider as Boreas tried to lift it. He then dropped it like a weight, dismissing it as too heavy for him.
Otus dipped it once again into the bubbling substance and lifted the spoon to Boreas’s lips, feeding him. Boreas’s eyes darted to Aurora, who had lost her train of thought, entranced by this feeding session happening as if she was at the zoo. Boreas opened his mouth a smidgeon and slurped the broth down, swallowing quickly and wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He started panting and spitting but then froze and looked up at the horrified face of Otus.
“Yum,” Boreas smiled sheepishly, licking his lips.
Otus threw the bowl against the wall, the dead rat flying out of the bowl and slithering down the wall.
“This was a mistake,” he scowled bitterly.
“You can’t take offense with Boreas. He liked the soup. Didn’t you, Boreas?” Aurora nudged Boreas, who quickly agreed.
Otus slumped down on the chair and pulled out the conch shell. Both teens cowered down, fearful he would blow it again and cause another earthquake. “The last time I had a visitor was the old woman.”
“Mrs. Taboo,” Aurora said, pointing to the picture.
“That’s the woman who hid me away. She tried to help me when no one else did. Her last gift was this conch shell. She didn’t tell me where she got it but said that whoever heard this sound would help me. I would find the Goddess of Dawn and the God of the North Wind, and together we would travel to the Aurora Borealis. Only through them would the spirits of the past rekindle hope for the future.”
“Aurora Borealis?” Boreas asked, perplexed.
“The northern lights,” Aurora said slowly. “My father told me about them once. You can see this natural phenomenon at the magnetic pole, and they illuminate the northern horizon as a greenish glow or even at times like a reddish color, emulating the sun rising. The auroras were commonly believed to be a sign from God and have had a number of names throughout history, but in the 1600s a man named Pierre Gassendi named the effect of these northern lights after the Roman Goddess of Dawn, Aurora, and the Greek God of the North Wind, Boreas.
“Aurora Borealis,” Otus repeated, listening intently to the history.
“Yeah, but today scientists have proven that they are caused mainly due to the collision of energetic, charged particles with atoms in the high atmosphere.”
Boreas stared at her like she had three heads. “Did you understand anything that came out of your mouth?”
Otus stood up, clutching the conch shell in his hands. “Do you know about a Geometric Storm?”
“I don’t know anything about a Geometric Storm,” Aurora replied faintly, watching him advancing toward her as if he was ready to crush her with his mighty fist. “I mean, we can find out. There are books at the library. Maybe there is a way that we can get in to find out more.”
Otus picked her up, and Aurora screamed at the top of her voice. Boreas kicked the monster with all his force, but the giant didn’t flinch. Otus lifted her up toward his mouth, salivating, and her body went numb in his hands. He then kissed her on the top of her hair and laughed outright. “I knew you were the right Aurora.”
“I am not the right Aurora. I just have the same name. I am no Goddess of Dawn. I am…” she felt the room spinning wildly around her, and he patted her on the head again.
“Soon you’ll know who you really are,” he smiled, putting her back down on the ground. “As for you Boreas, we will see about you. You did eat the soup. You must be braver than we think. And first impressions could be deceiving. Now let’s get out of here.”
He walked over to the picture of Mrs. Taboo and opened it, revealing a hidden dark tunnel within. He snatched up his two travelling companions and placed them into his overalls pocket near his heart, which was thumping like a loud metronome. They observed the tunnel, which led upward; a light was visible at the end like a beacon of hope. They were to travel through this secret underground tunnel leading them out of the giant realm and back into the town of Candlewick, which appeared to be five miles away. Otus proceeded to climb up the metal rods of the tunnel toward the beacon of light, slowly and steadily. Aurora continued to think about everything that they had just heard from the giant in order to get her mind off the impending doom that was in store for her or Boreas if they fell out of the pocket and tumbled to their demise.
“The Candlewick Library will probably have information about the Geometric Storm,” Aurora said thinking out loud, trying hard not to look down. “But there’s no way that we will be allowed in. The library has been forbidden to everyone except the Common Good government officials.”
“What’s so important about this Geometric Storm anyway?” Boreas asked, clasping the overall fabric even tighter as they were suspended facing the spiraling tunnel beneath them.
“That’s the storm that will cause cataclysmic damage to this planet. Mrs. Taboo said that it will be worse than a hundred nuclear bombs going off simultaneously.”
“When do you think the next one will be?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Where is Mrs. Taboo? Did she get captured by the Inspector?” Aurora asked, holding on for dear life and praying that the stitches of this overalls pocket would not rip.
“She had to return to help the people who built this underground room. They had built it to keep me safe until I found the two of you, Mrs. Taboo and her party.”
“Like the Common Good Party?” Boreas chimed in.
“No, more like the Spiritual Party. Mrs. Taboo believes that I am on this Earth at this time for a reason, that I am the answer to a prophecy, meant to save this world. They predicted that I would be found by the Goddess of Dawn and the God of
the North Wind…and here you are.”
“Um, I am not some God of the North Wind,” Boreas laughed and then held on tighter as Otus took a large leap from one ladder rung to the next. “Besides, why would you need two humans to stop this storm when you are a giant? Where are your other giant pals to help you?”
Otus took a deep sigh and said, “According to Mrs. Taboo, I am the last of my kind to actually help the human race. I did have a brother once, Ephialtes. But he thought giants were superior to humans and that he could force them to do his bidding. I had to stop him, and by doing so I had to destroy the only family I had left. Mrs. Taboo was the only human friend I had, and she helped me outwit him. Afterward she told me I am meant for a great quest, and then she brought me here to Candlewick.”
Boreas turned toward Aurora, mouthing to her that they were in big trouble. Aurora nodded feeling her heartbeat racing as all of this felt like some deranged dream that she was not waking up from. Once again curiosity was getting the best of her and she wanted to find out more about Otus and this Geometric Storm. If the answers were in the Candlewick Library then she could at least try to help Otus and still get home before curfew. Her parents were probably thinking that she was still at the fireworks show or at the barbeque. She fumbled for her cell phone and couldn’t believe it was almost the Sacred Hour. Time had seemed to stand still in the basement, but to her dismay it had sped up.
They reached the end of the tunnel, and Aurora feared that they would be exposed as soon as they were back in the real world.
“You’ll be seen!” she exclaimed, horrified. “You can’t just walk around Candlewick. This will cause a panic of catastrophic proportions.”
Otus laughed heartily and then put his hands on the circular door that resembled a metallic sewer cover.
“I’d have to be standing still for that to happen. Now at the count of three we all have to put our hands on the imprints on the metallic casing or else this journey will be cut short.”