Her chest constricted when she thought of being locked in longer. She rose to her feet. “Stop! I’ll go with you.” She wouldn’t find a way out if she was locked up.
“I don’t want you giving me any trouble.” He tossed the rock up in the air and caught it in his hand. “You have to be good.” He smiled as if he was enjoying having her fate in his hands.
Be good. She huffed. “Don’t forget you were the one who saved me from the mermaids.” She couldn’t believe she was arguing a point that involved mermaids, yet she continued. “You brought me here. I don’t have to obey you or your mom.”
He tossed the stone once more and shrugged.
“Are you always this big of a jerk?” She said that too because after three months of drawing him, his arrogance was just as unbelievable as the mermaids.
“Did you just call me a jerk?” He smiled, this time wide, so his full lips pulled back over his perfect teeth and a dimple marked his left cheek. “Well, like it or not, I’m your way out of here. Do you want to go or not?”
Still, not wanting to go anywhere with him, she marched from the cave anyway. What choice did she have? Her breath hitched when she stepped out. There was a long rock tunnel ahead of her. The only light was from the soft glow cast from the golden dust-lined ceiling. Several caves, like the one she had been held in, were dug into the walls. She could make out the shadows of people within each cave.
“It’s best not to look at them,” Dax whispered as he nudged her forward.
She bowed her head and walked, while peeking from beneath her hair. They passed a man lying on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling; a girl rocking back and forth tugging at her matted hair; and a small child who stood staring out at the corridor. When they walked past, she screamed out and ran toward them. Halen jumped back, but the girl stopped suddenly. The high-pitched squeal of the invisible barrier sang out, ready to strike. The girl’s black eyes dripped with onyx tears.
“Keep walking.” Dax shoved Halen.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. Halen glanced back. The girl slammed her hands to the barrier and was shocked to the ground.
This was not a prison, but a place for the mentally insane. Is this what he thought, that she was not only a thief but crazy? Is this why he had brought her here? That was why they were talking to her about mermaids. Halen started to put the pieces together. When they found her in the water, she must have been talking about the mermaids. She was hallucinating. She must have been attacked by something else entirely. They would have medicated her, that’s why she couldn’t move. It wasn’t a barrier at all, just a trick in her mind. Samira was a psychiatrist and Dax the orderly. That’s how they knew her name. They were playing along with her fantasy so she could cope with the trauma. She breathed with ease. Putting this together was a breakthrough.
“Is my mom here to see me?” She turned to Dax, now a little less fearful of him. She wondered what he really looked like, since her mind had made him into the boy from her sketchbook. She smiled, hoping by exhibiting good behaviour he would report back to the doctor, and they wouldn’t give her any more medication.
His eyebrows rose over a quizzical stare. “You are a weird one.”
This was not the way to talk to patients, but she wasn’t going to give him any more trouble. Without another word, she walked forward through the dark passageway and passed into the open light.
The bright light was like a spray of sour lemon. Her eyes puckered shut. Shielding her eyes with the back of her hand, she stepped ahead. Her toes squished into soft fabric. Though she couldn’t see, she knew they were walking on carpet now. They must be taking her to a room with counsellors. Yes, that’s what Samira had said; she was going to the council. Halen laughed to herself. “Counsellors,” she whispered under her breath.
“Excuse me?” Dax stopped walking.
“You’re taking me to see a counsellor? So I can be released?” She lowered her hand and blinked. His face was fuzzy in the bright light. She blinked a few more times until her eyes adjusted. The blurred outline of his jaw hardened as his face came into focus.
He was staring at her like she had just swallowed a frog. “I think maybe you need a detox.”
Detox, yes! That’s exactly what she needed to clear her mind, so all of this made sense. The back of her hair rustled, tugging and pulling as if something were caught in the strands. She reached back to remove whatever it was and her finger was pierced with pain.
“Ouch!” she screamed, shaking her hand.
Dax reached around her shoulder. “Hold still; you have a flitt in your hair.”
“A what?” Whatever a flitt was, it was stinging the back of her neck. “Get it off!” She hated bugs, especially biting ones.
“It likes your hair—they nest in kelp beds.”
“Nest?” She didn’t want anything nesting in her hair. Especially an insect.
With a sharp tug, he pulled the insect from her hair. Only when he released it, did Halen see. It wasn’t an insect at all. The tiny creature was no more than the size of her index finger. Its body was long and lean, with little arms and legs, coated in brilliant blue scales. Its wings were transparent like a dragonfly’s. The creature had a face like a human, with an upturned nose and round eyes. Its ears were sharp and pointy, and on the tip of one, she noticed blood.
The flitt, as Dax had called it, stuck its long sticky tongue out and snagged a strand of Halen’s hair.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Dax waved the creature off and it flew up and away until it perched on a spire of long rock springing up from the ground. The flitt peered down, studying her, as if deciding whether or not to dart for her hair again. But shaking its little head, it took off down the corridor until Halen couldn’t see it any longer.
Glancing around, Halen noticed she was standing in a vast cavern. Enormous spires, jutted from the ground like upside-down icicles. The stalagmites reached up to a brilliant rock ceiling, washed with a sparkling dust of rainbow colors. Tangerine, amethyst and indigo waves spread over her head.
“After you.” Dax held out his hand.
But her legs got that gelatin and cream feeling once again. Instead of moving forward, she crumpled to the ground. Her hands sank into a foamy soft cushion of lime green. Neon yellow bugs scattered between her fingers, dashing under the moss. This wasn’t carpet, or was it? The problem was she didn’t know what to believe. Had she imagined the carpet or was she imagining the moss? Wrapping her arms around her knees, she tucked her chin to her chest, and rocked back and forth. She was wrong. She wasn’t getting better—she was going insane.
Six
“Come on, you can’t stay on the ground forever,” Dax said, his tone now softer than before.
She didn’t want to get up. She didn’t want to face him. If she acknowledged that her surroundings were real, then so was he. The boy from her sketchbook existed along with the mermaids and whatever this place was. There was no sane explanation for any of this. “Where am I?” Halen brushed the tears from her eyes. She twisted the silver bracelet and tried to pry it off once more. Stupid bracelet.
Dax knelt down beside her.
“I don’t want it. It’s bad luck. I want it off.” She tugged again and her wrist turned red. Some birthday gift.
“Hey, just leave it. It will be okay.” He grasped her shoulder and when he did, a new kind of spark trickled down her arm. Over the years, and especially over the last few months, Halen had classified her tingly feelings, like the ones that pestered her to draw the boy, Dax. They were harmless and could easily be tamed with a pencil. Then there were warning sparks that heated, like the ones she felt in the presence of danger. And then there were the sparks that ignited, the kind that led to exploding windshields. But these sparks making her skin tingle, especially where Dax’s hand was on her shoulder, were a whole different species.
“Please Halen, just come with me.” He took his hand away and tucked it behind his back.
&
nbsp; “I’m crazy,” she whispered.
“Maybe you are. I don’t know you well enough.” He stood up.
She was about to tell him how rude he was when she looked up and saw he was smiling.
A joke. He was joking. Relax, she told herself. She knew she had to relax before the sparks took over. Once they did, she didn’t have control of what would happen. She imagined the rock spires crumbling around them. The ceiling raining rainbow shards.
“This is not a hallucination, is it?” she asked.
“You’re going to need some time.”
She didn’t want more time. She wanted to go home.
“Hey look, I’m sorry I called you a thief,” he said. “Things have been complicated lately. I’m a little stressed myself.”
“You?” she asked.
“I thought you were going to die. You were in rough shape. Throwing up and screaming through the fever.” He kicked the moss with his toes. His feet were bare, his nails the same opal color as his mother’s. “A girl I knew died several months ago. Seeing you wounded… it just made think of her.” He looked away. “You’re a fighter though. Not many have survived an attack by the mermaids. I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.”
Grief can make you act all kinds of weird. She understood that better than anyone. “Were you close to her?”
“We had a connection.” He started to walk. “We should go.”
Halen wanted to ask him more, but already he was striding up the long set of stairs before them. The stairs wound in a spiral and at the very top, she could make out a faint light, but it was still very far away. Already she was exhausted; she didn’t know how she would make it up. But when she glanced back there didn’t seem to be another way out. She would have to climb the endless staircase.
Her calves ached with each step. Halen had to drag both feet up onto one stair before she could take her next step. Dax ascended the stairs in long strides, stopping often to wait for her to catch up. She observed him as she followed him. He wore skin tight shorts, like swimmers, which stopped just above his knees. His loose navy shirt reminded Halen of a woven net. Underneath, she could make out the dark patches of several tattoos. Halen kept thinking about the girl who he had lost. We had a connection. What did that mean? Halen had a connection with Dax, only it went one way. How do you tell someone you’ve never seen before that day, that you’ve been drawing them for months? And that you knew every angle of their face and every expression. Halen couldn’t even explain it to herself.
“Almost there,” he said.
“Only one hundred more,” she mumbled under her breath.
“What was that?” Dax asked.
“How many stairs are there exactly?”
“Five hundred and four.” He climbed two more with ease.
“You’ve counted them?”
“When I was a kid my mom made me bring food down here for the cursed. I would count the stairs going down and then back up.”
“The cursed?”
“The others you saw in the caves. Nothing can get in or out.” He rapped on the wall with his knuckle. “No enchantments can get past these rock walls. Unfortunately, we can’t unbind some spells.”
“Spells—like magic spells?” Though she was growing faint as she tried to digest his explanation, she ran up the final few steps to catch up to him. He was now standing in the light of an opening. “Are you trying to tell me those people are under a sp—” Her train of thought snapped, like a key being broken off in a lock.
A breeze filled with floral scents laced with the salty brine of sea water filled her lungs. A river the color of lapis flowed at her feet, and Dax grabbed her elbow to keep her from tumbling in. He guided her to the side, onto a carpet of moss. A vibrant green canoe drifted by, with a girl steering the vessel with a stubby knotted oar. Reeds and strange plants budding with round, pink berries and pointed leaves were piled in the back. The girl had the same impish face as Samira. She waved when she saw Dax, but before she saw Halen, Dax stepped in front of her to block the girl’s view, and the canoe bobbed along the narrow river until it was out of sight.
Along the opposite side of the river stood towering stilt frameworks with huge, white bubble-like structures secured to the tops. The bubbles were connected by a series of tunnels. She wasn’t sure what the bubbles were constructed of, as rock would be too heavy to balance on the framework. Yet, they were smooth like polished stone. Some bubbles had small oval balconies, with plants trailing over the sides. Others simply had a singular round window. Halen turned to find a courtyard of inlaid rock. Slate benches lined the outer rims and five pathways spread out from the edges like the points of a star. An indigo sky swirled above, and every few minutes a drop of water fell like a giant tear seeping into the mossy ground. “You have got to be kidding. Is this some kind of joke? Where are we?” she asked.
“I told you, you’re going to need some time.” Dax said.
A plant skimmed her shoulder and she pressed a leaf between her fingers. The center popped and split. The inside was filled with a translucent jelly, like the inside of an Aloe Vera plant. Her fingers grew tacky, and she tried to shake the leaf from her fingers, but it was stuck.
“Quick, stick your hand in the water or it will start to burn.”
She thrust her hand in the river pulling the leaf from the plant and with the touch of water, the leave separated from her fingers and floated downstream.
“I’ve never seen a place like this before. Where on earth are we?”
He cleared his throat. “You’re not on Earth. You’re in Elosia.”
“I’m on another planet?” Her voice rose up shrill, and she grew dizzy as she tried to assimilate what he was telling her. “Now I know you’re joking. I don’t like it—stop.”
“This is not a trick, and you are not on another planet. Elosia is a realm. There are three: Earth, Elosia and Etlis.”
Halen wasn’t registering anything he was saying. It was crazy talk. “I don’t understand.” Her hand shook, and he reached down and took it in his, which only made her hand tremble even more.
“Your realm, Earth, has many portals, doorways, to the realms. You can only access Elosia through earth’s water. I brought you through one of those portals.” He smiled briefly, but his lips quickly smoothed to a thin, tight line when someone called his name. He glanced over her shoulder toward the courtyard. A boy and a girl waved from one of the pathways. They, too, were tiny compared to Dax. The boy’s shoulders, slender, as if his bones were composed of toothpicks, the girl a pixie.
“We should go.” He yanked her up.
“I can’t go with you,” she said. “This is not real. You’re not real.” She shook her hand free from his.
The pair called his name once more.
“Halen, we need to leave.” His eyes pleaded with her.
The boy and the girl were now crossing the courtyard. Obviously, Dax didn’t want her to meet them. What if they were dangerous? What if they didn’t want her in their realm? She didn’t know what to do.
“Halen please,” Dax stepped toward a bridge leading to the other side of the river. “I’ll explain more, if you just come with me.”
She nodded and before the pair reached them, Dax led her quickly over the bridge toward the bubbled domes. They passed under several of the stilted bubbles, until they came to an arched entranceway leading them indoors. He ushered her inside, and then darted up another set of stairs. This staircase was only a dozen steps and took them to a tunnel-like corridor that went up on a slant. He scanned the corridor, and when he saw no one, he let out a long breath.
“This is insane,” she said.
“I know.” He leaned against the curved wall. The center between his eyebrows pinched tight. This is how she had sketched him after her algebra test.
“Are you hiding me? From them?” She nodded toward the bottom of the stairs.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Then let me go home!” She ran her hand
along the white curved walls, still not able to identify what they were constructed of. He was right, she shouldn’t be here.
“It’s not that simple. You are…” He was cut off by the sound of voices echoing below. He glanced toward the stairs. “I’ll show you to your sphere.”
She wanted to know what he had been about to say, but he was already making his way up the white polished corridor. She followed, while grasping a railing. Whatever material the rail was constructed of, it squished when she touched it, so her hands indented the material. When she removed her hand, her handprint disappeared. She shook her head, not sure if she wanted to continue farther into this strange structure, but despite her trepidation she kept following Dax.
At the top of the incline, different tunnels stretched out in several directions. Dax chose the one on the right. They passed several closed doorways, each identical, each with a copper dial in the center. She wondered how anyone could tell them apart. Dax stopped in front of one door and placed his palm on the dial. He spun it, and the door slid apart like an elevator door, revealing a dome-shaped chamber; when they stepped inside the door slid shut.
The décor was simple. A hammock, with several over-stuffed pillows, hung along one curved wall. Alongside the opposite curved wall were shards of glass compiled to make a mirrored mosaic. Draped on shell hooks hung several colorful fabrics and a patina corset like Samira’s. Though the sphere was roomier than her cave cell, the round walls closed in around her. Her breath grew shallow as she tried to imagine more space, but really the sphere was smaller than what she had observed from the ground. The one window didn’t look like it had a way of opening either. She didn’t know if her claustrophobia would allow her to stay here.
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