by Perrin Briar
In the distance they made out the roiling bubbling magma flows where they had lost contact with their parents. Cassie felt like they were leaving Mordor. There was no way back. Not now. Cassie promised herself they would find a way out of wherever the birds would put them, no matter where it was. Even in their gullets.
They entered a thin patch of cloud. Cassie felt the dapples of icy water on her face. The birds rocked side to side, using Aaron and Cassie to shift their body weight, keeping their bodies stiff, like the arm of a pendulum.
“Aaron,” Cassie said. “What’s going on?”
“How should I know?” Aaron said. “I’m a tourist too.”
“You’re the nerd here,” Cassie said. “Out of the two of us, you’re the one most likely to be into something like birdwatching.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Aaron said.
He wasn’t the only one. Cassie felt her stomach travel behind her like she was riding a rollercoaster. The birds threw their weight in an arc, letting their legs hang as they tumbled through the air. How many times they spun end over end, Cassie didn’t know. She didn’t care. The ground swept past several times, and then was lost as the cloud got thicker. Finally, they stopped spinning and the birds became still. They floated, flapping their wings to maintain altitude.
“What was that?” Cassie said after waiting a minute to make sure she could speak without throwing up.
The clouds began to dissipate, revealing Aaron holding his insides and hanging his head. The birds pumped their wings and took the kids higher. The air was thinner here and made breathing difficult. After a few breaths, they acclimatized.
They rose above the clouds to find a huge landmass jutting into the sky. It was a mountain, big, black and carved from some kind of glassy volcanic rock. It was like something from a nightmare. There was little sign of life, save a sprinkling of trees.
It was the tallest mountain in the world. The birds flapped their wings lazily and rose up its enormous peak. There was another strata of cloud, this one thick, damp and chill. The birds breached it, the mist clinging to their feathers, trailing them as they arched higher, approaching the cold tip of the mountain.
They came to an enormous nest, the biggest the world had ever seen. A platform large enough for a full size house to rest on. Rocks and tree branches decorated its base.
It had been assembled from every corner of the world. There were lumps of wood from old buildings, crossbeams and walls of removable units, and charred rocks from the blasted lands, and plants and flowers harvested from cracks in the walls.
The Humungo birds flapped their wings and extended their legs, tossing their charges into the nest. Their flaps sent up powerful gusts of wind that snapped and encircled Aaron and Cassie.
“I think we’re about to be lunch,” Cassie said.
Aaron gibbered.
The two large birds peered down at them with their beady eyes, turning their heads to one side to peer at them more closely. They hissed and hawked, and then shuffled their feathers, like henchmen preparing to fight. They hopped on the spot and jumped into the nest, chasing after Aaron and Cassie, who stood up and backed away.
The birds never got very close to them. Clearly that wasn’t their intention, only to frighten and cajole. Then, just as quickly as their aggressive stance had started, they stood up, flapped their wings, and rose into the air.
Cassie and Aaron, panting and out of breath, both from the fear and lack of oxygen, got shakily to their feet. The birds shrank into the distance, flying away rapidly.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Aaron said.
“Only if you don’t mind becoming an aperitif,” Cassie said.
Aaron turned to peer at their surroundings. The nest walls were four feet high and encircled them on every side. The coarse wood had been bent into shape with brute strength. Aaron’s eyes widened at what he saw lined up along one side.
He reached for Cassie without taking his eyes off the sight. He tapped Cassie on the arm.
“What?” Cassie said.
Aaron pointed.
“Oh,” Cassie said.
Standing before them, almost as tall as they were high, were half a dozen giant bird eggs.
6.
BRYAN BENT over double and braced his knees on his hands. He could not take another step. Not if he didn’t want to collapse flat on his face, anyway.
“Bryan, what’s up?” Zoe said, jogging over to him.
The fact she could speak without gasping for air only went to further show the disparity between them regarding their athletic prowess.
“We can’t just sit here,” Zoe said. “Not while they’re still out there, alone.”
“They’re… not alone…” Bryan gasped. “They have…”
“Each other,” Zoe completed. “You really should get into shape, Bryan.”
“I will,” Bryan said, puffing. “As soon as…”
“We get back,” Zoe said, rolling her eyes. “That’s if we ever get back.”
“We… We will,” Bryan said. “Just… give me… give me a minute…”
They’d been running ever since the kids had been taken from them, what must have been an hour or more. They hadn’t taken a rest nor a break. Bryan was sure he’d already had three heart attacks. He had never been the best long distance runner.
“We don’t have a minute,” Zoe said. “Get up. Come on.”
“At least… the landscape… is giving us… a bit of… a break,” Bryan said.
The magma landscape had begun breaking about a mile back, gradually fading out and replaced by dense brown scrubland. It was hardly a national park, but it was better than where they’d started.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Bryan said.
“What’s that?” Zoe said
“There are people here,” Bryan said.
“What makes you say that?” Zoe said.
“The roads,” Bryan said, nodding. “They were caused by people, horses and carts. These kinds of double row tracks don’t exist elsewhere in nature.”
Zoe supposed he was right. But the tracks looked more than a little overgrown with lack of use.
“We could follow the tracks,” Bryan said. “That way we can ask them if they know where the birds usually go.”
“They were taken by birds,” Zoe said. “They’re unlikely to be underground.”
“They’re alien birds,” Bryan said. “There’s no way we can know where they went, what they eat, their habits…”
Zoe shook her head.
“We’re never going to find them,” she said.
“We will,” Bryan said. “You’ll see.”
“You don’t know that,” Zoe said. “You can’t know that.”
“I do know that,” Bryan said. “Because we’re a family and we stick together, no matter what. We will find them, or they will find us. Because that’s what families do. We’ve been through a lot, and they know how to take care of themselves.”
“I know,” Zoe said, leaning her head against Bryan’s chest. “But I still don’t feel good about them being alone.”
“Of course you don’t,” Bryan said, wrapping his arm around Zoe’s shoulders. “I don’t either. That’s what makes you a great parent.”
“A great parent wouldn’t have lost them in the first place,” Zoe said.
“We didn’t lose them,” Bryan said. “Birds took them away. How were we to know a bird of that size a, existed, and b, would sweep down on us from nowhere?”
“You’re right,” Zoe said. “But they’re still our babies.”
Bryan shook his head.
“But they’re not our babies anymore,” he said. “They’re not children. I know we think of them like that, but that doesn’t make it right. Eventually we have to let them go and do these kinds of things by themselves. That’s our real responsibility—preparing our kids for the hardships they’ll face out in the world.”
“I know,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “I don’t re
call ever seeing pictures of giant birds taking kids away in the Parenting Handbook. Which chapter was that under?”
“I guess it must have been removed in later editions,” Bryan said.
Zoe smiled, but it was distracted. She was too concerned with the kids’ disappearance to think clearly.
“Come on,” Zoe said. “We have to keep going if we’re going to stand a chance of finding them.”
Bryan puffed through his lips and set off at a trot. He immediately had to double it as Zoe tore off ahead of him. He wished the birds had taken him instead of the kids. At least then he wouldn’t need to be tortured like this.
Rosetta #2
“WHERE ARE they?” Rosetta said.
“They left,” Admiral said. “What would you be looking to do with them if you did find them?”
“I’m not looking to hurt them, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Rosetta said. “I got pulled under the earth by the sinkhole too. I was looking, digging for Bryan, when the ground opened up and swallowed me.”
Admiral didn’t look like he believed her. Rosetta didn’t much care if he did or not.
“Look, I let you capture me so I could get the information I needed,” Rosetta said. “I came here to find them, and that’s what I’m going to do. Instead, you’ve brought me here to a castle for God knows what reason.”
“You let us capture you?” Admiral said, shaking his head. “I wish we had you sooner. The pirates have a weak spot for anyone with a missing limb. You would have been a goddess amongst them.”
“A goddess?” Rosetta said, a look of distaste registering. “Thanks, but I’ve worn that hat, bought that T-shirt.”
“T-shirt?” Admiral said.
“Look,” Rosetta said, holding out her hands to get some control over her emotions. “I just want to know where they went. I work with Bryan. He’s my boss. I want to make sure they’re okay, to help them return to the surface any way I can.”
Admiral looked her up and down.
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you.”
Finally.
“So, where are they?” Rosetta said.
“No idea,” Admiral said.
Rosetta’s shoulders slumped.
“But I know where they left this world,” Admiral said with a grin. “Before we go there, I need to take you to see the king.”
7.
PEERING OVER the side was akin to looking over the precipice of a rollercoaster at a theme park. The world seemed to turn on the spot and revolve, spinning. The mist was thirty feet away, swirling thickly. Aaron couldn’t see much through it, save the distant rolling landscape beyond.
“How high do you think we are?” Cassie said.
“Above the clouds?” Aaron said. “Pretty high, I’d say.”
He pick up a rock and tossed it over the side. It disappeared into the mist, clacked, and then rolled down the mountainside. They had no idea how far it had traveled, but it was clearly a long way.
“It’s not so bad up here,” Aaron said. “We’ve got some food, a way to make a fire. We can survive up here until our parents come find us.”
“If you think I’m staying up here till then, you’ve got another thing coming,” Cassie said.
“What do you want to do?” Aaron said. “We’re miles up a mountain and there’s no way down but to climb. And we don’t have any of the tools we need.”
“Then we’ll have to make do with what we can get our hands on,” Cassie said.
She bent down to begin picking up items the birds had used to build their nest with. A great deal of it was too large for them to maneuver easily. Some items they could use to climb down the mountain, including tough vines to fashion into harnesses, and sharp rocks as sharpened tools.
Cassie picked up a sharpened length of metal and handed another to Aaron. He tucked it in his pants.
The eggs didn’t move. They were giant monoliths, undisturbed, strange objects, but there was nothing dangerous about them. The parent birds hadn’t returned from wherever it was they had gone yet. As large as they were, they probably ranged for miles around.
“The birds left us alive,” Aaron said. “Maybe they want us to play with the chicks when they hatch, or something.”
Cassie tugged on a line, checking its strength.
“Are you so naive?” she said. “Haven’t you ever seen the Discovery Channel? Birds put things like us in their nest so their chicks can eat them.”
“I think that’s spiders,” Aaron said.
“That puts me at ease,” Cassie said, rolling her eyes.
“But they haven’t hatched yet,” Aaron said.
“Yet,” Cassie said. “Once they do, we’re dead.”
“But they’re only little chicks,” Aaron said. “What harm can they do us?”
“Little chicks?” Cassie said. “Have you even seen these eggs? Look at them. Do you think you could pick one of these up at the local grocery store?”
“It’d make a great omelette,” Aaron said.
“These things aren’t normal,” Cassie said. “This is a monster. A chicken’s egg can do us no harm, a duck’s egg can do us no harm, a giganotosaurus egg—or whatever this thing is—will tear us to pieces.”
“Most birds don’t eat meat,” Aaron said, resorting to his final argument. “These birds have beaks, not sharp pointy teeth.”
“Again, I draw your attention to the sheer size of these creatures,” Cassie said. “They could bludgeon us to death. And once they hatch there will be no escaping them. We’ll be trapped in this nest with them. I don’t know about you, but my hide and seek skills are a little rusty. I doubt if I could escape them for long in a place like this. That’s why we have to get out of here. Fast.”
8.
BRYAN WAS looking at a giant crater in the wall. It looked like a chunk of the earth had been torn out by a huge monstrous beast. It hadn’t been the first they had seen, but the seventh. After every half mile they ran, they came across another one, just as big and ominous as the last. Red hot lava seeped from the edges like bleeding wounds, dribbling across the landscape.
“What do you think caused these fissures?” Bryan said.
“Looks like it could be some kind of explosion,” Zoe said.
“Explosion?” Bryan said. “Like with dynamite?”
“Natural gas would be my guess,” Zoe said. “All it would take is for a stray spark, and the gas would ignite. That would be enough to rent huge holes in the walls like this.”
“My God,” Bryan said.
“And look,” Zoe said. “They carry on all the way down the wall, like a chain. I just hope we’ll be out of here before the whole world ends up this way.”
“What do you mean?” Bryan said.
“Look at the walls,” Zoe said. “See there, were the fissure is especially deep? That’s like getting a wound in your body, and it’s so deep there is internal damage and bleeding.”
“So what are you saying?” Bryan said. “That this world is going to bleed to death?”
“In essence, yes,” Zoe said. “The magma is the blood, and it will choke this world. We’ve already seen it take one part of the world—the blasted lands, the area where we first arrived. That is what will happen to the rest of this world, only on a much larger scale.”
“Wow,” Bryan said.
“How many more of these worlds are there, do you think?” Zoe said.
“Who knows,” Bryan said. “But they can’t be infinite. There is only so much space in the Earth’s crust.”
“That’s a reassuring thought,” Zoe said.
“You know me,” Bryan said. “Mr. Positive.”
“Dante wrote about seven hells,” Zoe said. “Maybe he came down here too.”
“Seven?” Bryan said. “I sure hope not. I’m not sure I could survive seven of these places.”
Zoe drew to a stop and stood staring at something in the middle of the clearing.
She was looking at an assortment of rocks, one on top
of another like gorgeous natural wind-blown pieces of art where the rocks are wide at the bottom and small at the top.
But with one exception.
These rocks had gaps between them. They were floating, like a child’s mobile, without the strings. The pieces moved around in a circle, never touching, coming close, and then gently pushing off one another.
“What is this?” Bryan said. “Some kind of art installation?”
“In the middle of nowhere?” Zoe said. “Do you think that’s very likely?”
“I guess not,” Bryan said. “It’s only the middle of nowhere at the moment. In the past it may have been the center of a metropolis.”
“That’s very philosophical of you,” Zoe said.
Bryan reached out and tentatively touched one of the rocks. There was something like an electrical charge that made the hairs rise on the back of his hand. The rock spun in the air and began to revolve around the other rocks.
“Setting it on a new path,” Zoe said.
“Now who’s being philosophical?” Bryan said.
“Only stating the facts,” Zoe said.
Bryan wrapped his arms around her and watched the eternal piece of artwork before them. The rock Bryan had touched was still spinning in its own little orbit. It came close to the other rocks and got kicked aside. It spun and struck another rock, which in turn was spat out of its delicate orbit and almost struck Bryan and Zoe in the chest.
They dived aside, taking refuge behind a large boulder. The rocks smacked the ground and bounced over their shield.
They sat stock still for a moment.
“You had to touch it,” Zoe said.
Bryan shrugged.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he said.
“Try,” Zoe said.
She put her face slowly around the boulder. The piece of artwork was no more. It filled Zoe with dread to see that, the fact they had come and had a powerful influence, making something disappear from this world.