Ignoring this immense wealth, they walked down to the end of the hallway to a single door.
“An elevator?” Carl recognized the door.
There was only one button next to the door, so Karen pushed it. “This place gets weirder and weirder.”
The door swooshed open with a rush of air, allowing the twins to enter. When it closed again, the car began to move, carrying them high up into the Mountain. Music played from a small speaker near the top of the car, and it was a familiar popular song the twins liked to listen to.
“I wonder how high this thing goes,” Carl commented. There was no indicator panel that registered floors. The panel that existed showed only three stops: the ground floor where the twins entered, the “penthouse” at the top of the Mountain where the Lord of Power lived, and a mysterious label that had been mostly rubbed out, showing only “u-d--g----d.”
Finally, the car stopped. The doors swooshed open and remained open. The twins were not really sure they wanted to exit the car, but it appeared like they had no other choice. Absently, they held each other’s hand and stepped across the threshold as one into an awaiting hallway. Then only did the elevator doors ominously close behind them.
There was nowhere to go now except forward. Retreat had been denied them.
“We have one wish remaining,” Karen reminded her brother. “Let’s make sure that we are really, really going to need that wish.”
“I hear you,” Carl breathed. He did not like his sister reminding him of the obvious, but he had to admit that he had been careless before. And in a situation where one needed to use all of one’s wits, he did not want to make a mistake that could cost them everything. Not now, when they were just within reach of going home.
At the same time, the twins felt some hesitancy in finishing this adventure. Not because they were frightened, which they naturally were. They wanted their journey to end, of course. Even after all their trials and tribulations, they had enjoyed this time of “getting away from it all.” They had made new and wonderful friends. And, after all the dangers and problems they had experienced, they actually had a lot of fun.
The hallway was paneled with beautiful and exotic woods from all over the world—very expensive and rare woods. They shone with a light of their own, having been lacquered and polished to reflect even the slightest light source. The hallway seemed to stretch forever in front of them, and at the very end of this hallway a solitary door stood closed. They began to walk the length of the hallway, but it seemed that with each step, the door remained a long ways off. Then suddenly, so fast that they did not realize it happened until they almost ran into the door, they stood in front of it, a huge and massive wooden barrier.
Thus, the greatest task of their trek lay before them, and they were more than a little scared now. After all, they were finally going to meet the Lord of Power. All they had to do was open the last remaining door (and barrier). So, with more trepidation than I can describe, the twins put their hands on the doorknob and tried to turn it.
But it was locked!
For a few seconds, they looked at each other in surprise. Now what?
“The password?” Karen suggested.
Carl thought a minute. Something in the back of his mind was nagging him. He knew the answer, but it just would not come to him.
“Should we try using our last wish?” Karen asked.
Carl shook his head with a frown. But then that frown turned into a smile. He was staring at a beautiful, crystal clear orb set in the middle of the door. Before his sister could stop him, he reached out and placed his hand on the orb. “Jordbaer,” he spoke to the door after a long minute of silence passed.
He was rewarded with a click, and the door swung open.
“What happened?” Karen wanted to know.
I know that you are dying to know what the Lord of Power’s home looked like. But before I describe it, you probably have noted by now how primitive or simple all the peoples of Potlendh lived. We have visited castles, tree houses, caves and tunnels, and very simple buildings. The different peoples also seemed to be very happy without the things we take for granted in life, such as electricity, radios and televisions, microwaves, stoves, cell phones, and computers. (Of course, the Machines had some of these things, but the other peoples did not.)
The Lord of Power, in contrast, lived a more modern life, one that we would be very comfortable and at home with. He also lived in what we call a lap of luxury, with all kinds of expensive furniture, paintings, and electrical gadgets.
The first thing that the twins noticed was that the apartment was huge. I would bet that your whole house could fit in this initial open space. A teak dining table, stained dark, sat in the middle of this room. Twenty place settings sat on this table, and there were a lot of different kinds of food sitting on the table, piping hot and chilling cold (depending on the type of food). It looked like the Lord of Power was expecting a party!
Behind the table was an open balcony with a huge widow that overlooked the northern part of the Island. (This was the very same balcony where the twins first saw the Lord of Power observing them as they crossed the great mountain barrier. To the far right of the table, a huge fireplace with a roaring fire surrounded by lush, leather easy chairs looked very cozy and appealing. To the far left of the table, the largest television screen you can imagine hung on the wall, and more easy chairs made a semi-circle for easy viewing. Doors on either side of the room led to even more rooms, and the twins suspected that one of them might have been the Lord of Power’s bedroom.
Even so, all of this opulence did not really register on the twins, for they were not really interested in them. Instead, they focused on a very old, diminutive man sitting at the head of the dining table. He rested his head in his right hand—I know, you are not supposed to put your elbows on the table—and seemed to be either very bored or very angry. He also appeared very familiar to them.
“Mr. Who?” Carl gasped in surprise.
“Yes.” His tone was irritable.
“Mr. Who I am?”
“No.” His voice seemed to rise an octave. “Do I look like Who I Am?” He seemed now to be offended.
“Yes,” Karen said tentatively.
“Well, I’m not.” Mr. Who said decisively.
“Who Am I,” Carl rejoined.
“I know who you are Carl King,” the old man stated crankily as he straightened himself up. “And you, Karen King. As for me, that’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Karen and Carl looked at each other and blinked several times. They were not sure what to do next. They felt like they kind of missed the joke here. “Who am I?” can also be a question that you are supposed to give an answer to. But then, the Lord of Power was also telling them that exactly who and what he was would be a secret.
“What do you children want, anyway?” Mr. Who rose slowly from his chair, stood up, and began to thump down the side of the large table, leaning heavily on his cane, towards them.
“We want you to help us,” Karen responded.
The old man paused in his gait. “Help you?” Mr. Who repeated disdainfully, as if had tasted something awful. “Everyone wants me to help them. Does anyone ever think of helping me?” He resumed his approach. “Why should I help you?”
“Mr. Who I Am told us that you would help us get home,” Carl explained.
“Oh, he did, did he?” By this time the Lord of Power had reached the end of the table and was looking at the twins eyeball-to-eyeball. “I guess I’ll have to talk to him about that. He should stop sticking his nose into my business.” He started thumping his way down the other side of the table.
“You don’t want to help us?” Karen asked in a small voice.
“Why should I help you?” he thundered. “You kids have been a menace and a bother ever since you arrived. Everything was fine until you showed up!”
“Everything was broken!” Carl shot back angrily, forgetting for the moment that he was talking to the
most powerful person on the Island.
“So?” he responded in a very loud voice, paused again and looked back at the children. “I liked it that way!” When he had reached the far end of the table he began thumping his way back towards them again. His thumping up and down the length of the table had the desired effect, as the children were ready to abandon all hope and run out of the room. When he came up to the children, he poked his nose close to Carl’s. “Everyone was minding their own business!”
“People were dying!” Karen protested.
“People were dying,” the Lord of Power echoed mockingly. “They could have fixed things if they wanted. But, no-o-o-o. They conned you two into doing their work for them.
“That fool of a Colonel now has a tail! Next thing you know, he’ll be wanting to start another war!” More to himself, he added: “They didn’t learn the first time!”
He turned his attention to Karen. “That meddling Unicorn healed Kurt! Didn’t you know that as long as he was hurting he’d never start trouble on this Island again?
“You gave ideas to those fools in the village that they can leave, and then they’ll be going back to empty, unfulfilled lives again. Or, they will be pestering me to help them just like you two brats!”
He turned away and started thumping down the side of the table again.
“The portals are fixed. Before you can say Jack Robinson, these idiots will be traveling all over the Island, making new trouble. The Submarians will be using their magic again. And, speaking of magic, you gave the Bats back their Crystal of Life! They’ll be making new peoples, and this Island is crowded enough as it is!”
He reached his chair and bowed his head. “I knew this was going to happen. I’ve been trying to get you kids to leave this Island ever since you arrived, but you wouldn’t go!”
“We can’t leave,” Karen declared. “Not without your help.”
The Lord of Power stopped and turned around to face the twins. “You could have left any time you wanted.”
“Huh?” the twins chorused.
“All you had to do was give up. But no-o-o-o! Not you two. Never in my wildest imagination did I believe two snotty children would never give up. Everyone who has come to this Island before you gave up.” He punctuated these words, which means to say each word with emphasis: “And, we all were a whole lot happier!”
“You never told us we could leave!” Carl challenged.
“Didn’t you see my warning: the red light? Don’t you know what red means?” the Lord of Power bellowed even louder. “IT MEANS STOP!”
“You know what?” Carl began, his temper beginning to rise as his patience grew thin. “For a Lord of Power, you have the worst way of communicating with your peoples. Not only are they afraid of you, they think you have abandoned them.”
“They abandoned me, you snot-nosed brat!” the Lord of Power shot back. “Why should I talk to them? They never listened to me in the first place!”
“They still love you,” Karen butted in a quieter voice. This caused the Lord to pause in his tirade. The twins started moving closer to him.
“Love me?” he repeated. He was unsure of what he had heard. Plus, I do not believe that he believed the Islanders loved him. “Bah! That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard in hundreds of years.”
“It’s true,” Karen insisted. “Just about everyone helped us try to find you and come to see you.”
“Give me a break! No one does anything for anyone without a reason: a favor in return is always expected. If you help someone and not expect something back, then you are just plain stupid.”
When Carl was very close to the Lord, he withdrew the opal from his pocket and placed it on the table in front of the old man.
The Lord of Power stared at it. “What’s this?”
“We were told to give this to you. It is our gift to you,” Carl told him.
The Lord of Power was very suspicious. “And what do you want in return?”
“Nothing,” Karen said, looking at the tiny old man rather defiantly. She had had enough of being yelled at and was ready for a fight.
“You don’t want to trade this for your return home?” He eyed them suspiciously.
“We’d like to go home, yes. We also want to help our friends,” Karen answered. “But not—”
“Look!” Carl interrupted his sister. “If you don’t want it—” he reached out for the opal, but the Lord of Power quickly snatched it from the table and turned his back on the children.
“It’s mine! You said it was a gift!” He turned his back on the children to examine the gem. In a much softer tone, he muttered: “Precious. Very precious.”
He whirled back around to face the children, but he was no longer an angry old man.
In fact, his features had softened considerably. I suppose you could say that he looked like one of those crinkled apple Santa Claus dolls, the kind made from dried up apples and carved into faces. “You children might be worth saving after all.”
He gestured to the dining table and to the twins. All of his former nastiness was gone. “Sit. Karen to my right. Carl to my left.” He then seated himself at the head of the table and waited for the children to do likewise.
Have you ever met anyone who was really nasty one moment and then really nice the next? I have certainly met people who were really nice at first but then turned really nasty quickly thereafter. It is called “a trap.” People sometimes like to lure you into feeling safe; then they pounce on you like a cat on a mouse.
That was certainly how Karen and Carl felt. They looked at each other bewildered, wondering what new game the Lord of Power playing now? With much hesitation they took the offered seats and stared apprehensively at the old man.
“Do you know how much this is worth?” the Lord of Power asked, his eyebrows raised, as he set the opal on the table before him.
“Well—” Carl began.
“A million dollars?” Karen quickly suggested.
The Lord of Power waved his hands dismissively over the opal. “No, no, no,” he laughed. “I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about something much more important.
“The value of a gift—no matter how great or small—is the intention, not the price tag. You did not expect something back. You gave this to me from your heart.”
“Sparky said we should give it to you,” Carl told him honestly.
“Yes, he did!” the Lord of Power agreed knowingly. “But he did not tell you why you should give it to me,” he emphasized.
“You could have used it as a bargaining chip, but you didn’t. You could have blackmailed me with it, but you didn’t. You could have used its power against me, but you didn’t.”
Power? The twins looked at each other for answers, but, again, they did not understand what the old man was talking about. No one had told them that the opal had any special power attached to it.
“No,” the Lord of Power continued. “You gave this precious stone to me from your hearts. You could say that you gave it to me out of love, although I see no reason why you should love me. Love is funny that way. You don’t have to like someone to show love to a person. And, it is what made you children do all the nice things for the inhabitants of my Island.”
Then the Lord of Power did a strange thing. He grabbed the opal with both hands, one on each side of the gem. He gently pulled the opal apart until there were two identical opal gems lying side by side on the table.
“Now, I will give these back to you out of love.” He passed the left gem to Carl and the right gem to Karen. “Keep these gems with you at all times. Not only will they remind you of this Island, they will be your ticket to come back here some day.
“You see, I am going to hide this Island from the world from now on. No one will ever come here by accident again, only by fortune or design. When you return to your world, your adventures here will seem like a dream. You will not believe that you ever came here. These opals will be your reminders that this was not a dream.”
“Who Am I? Sir?” Carl added quickly out of respect.
“Do you not know yet who you are?” the Lord of Power interjected. Perceiving the uncomprehending look on both of the twins’ faces, he expounded. “A name given to a baby is the first selfish act on the part of the parents. Most people do not understand the significance of giving a name to a child. Carl, your name means “free man” or “just man.” Karen, your name means “pure.” Yet, are you a “just man?” Are you “pure?” Time will tell. My name is an enigma, and it invites people from all backgrounds to question who I am, that they might better understand themselves.”
“Well, what I was going to say,” Carl ventured somewhat hesitantly, not sure why the Lord of Power chose this tact, “is to question why you want to completely hide this Island from the outside. From what we have learned, the Island has benefited in more ways than one from an occasional visit by an outsider.”
“Right,” Karen added. “Is there any way we can convince you not to hide the Island?”
The Lord of Power allowed a faint smile to cross his ancient features. “If there are just people or pure people of heart in the world, I will reconsider.
“But for now, we are finished.”
Epilogue
The children woke up in the back of the seaplane with a start, meaning that something kind of shocked them awake. They were surprised to find themselves in the seaplane. It was not that they were totally convinced that they were, one moment, sitting at this fine dinner table, being lectured by an old man, the Lord of Power himself, but the shock that all this would disappear in a blink of an eye—or ever faster—completely depressed them. Had their adventures really just been a dream?
“Did you—” they both began. “Was there a—” “Were we just—” They realized that they had shared the same dream. But then, how could they both have dreamed the same thing? Was such a thing possible?
Potlendh Page 37