The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  “What’s going on? Why are the three of you so glum? Your wings aren’t even sparkling.”

  I gathered the three of them and put them in my lap where they sat looking like Tinkerbell when no one believed in her. I didn’t think that clapping my hands together was going to help them.

  “What can I do?”

  They just sat there shaking their heads, wings drooping. Pris was even missing a bow from her pigtails.

  “Okay, you don’t have to talk, but you are coming with me to the meeting.”

  Tucking the three of them in the crook of my arm, I stooped to pick up the tiny bow I had spotted on the floor. I put that in my pocket. I knew Pris would perk up soon. The three of them were some of the happiest beings I had ever met. They were courageous and loyal. Whatever was bothering them would not keep them down, and Pris would want to be looking perfect when we headed off to stop the Deadsweep.

  *******

  The atmosphere in Link’s classroom was almost as downbeat as the Priscillas mood. Almost. Because standing at the front of the room was Pita looking as upbeat as he had ever looked.

  That’s not to say that knowing how a Ginete is feeling is an easy tell. But his eyes were a bright gold, and he winked at me when I came in the room, causing me to stumble over a chair.

  Had Pita ever winked at me? Do Ginete wink? Did I imagine it? I straightened up and headed to my seat amidst titters of laughter over my stumble. Didn’t I say I would be known as the Clumsy Princess?

  In the middle of the stumble, I looked at Pita’s face again. Yep. He winked at me. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had noticed. However, the laughter at my expense did seem to have lightened up the mood a bit.

  If that is what it took to brighten people’s days, I could stumble around all the time. I could include it as one of my magical skills.

  I sat in the empty chair beside Beru. She reached over and slid her hand across the top of mine, and we wiggled our fingers at each other, reminding me once again how much she meant to me. If I had a sister, I would have wanted her to be just like Beru.

  Beru leaned over, and whispered, “Me, too.”

  “Well, then,” I whispered back, “Love you, sis.”

  We laughed together, and although a few faces turned to look at us, they weren’t angry at our laughing. They were curious about what could be joyful in the middle of this crisis, and they wanted in on it. Beru and I wiggled our fingers at everyone, and a few smiles broke out.

  Zeid slid into the seat beside me and whispered, “That’s my girl. Sparking joy. I’ll take that in a Clumsy Princess any day.”

  The face I turned towards him must have been beaming because a bolt of happiness had shot up inside of me so hard that I almost levitated out of my chair. I was Zeid’s girl. Sure I had been told that I was. But this time I felt it. He chose me.

  Pita cleared his throat to get our attention. He was standing on a platform so that we could all see him.

  “I know some of you are wondering why I am here since I had stayed behind to get some answers. I know you are hoping that I have some.”

  “Do you?” John asked. “I know we are ready for some. So if you do, could you get on with it? All I can think about is what you told us last time. It’s not an infection in the same way that a virus is an infection. That was good news. But what you told us was even scarier. So are you planning to scare us again and have no answers?”

  Although John’s way of speaking was often harsh, he brought up things people were thinking, so a wave of agreement went around the room. It didn’t faze Pita at all. Instead, he waited until it passed and then Pita said, “We have more answers. And we have some ideas on how to stop it. How does that sound to you?”

  He glanced over at me, and I winked at him. Now I understood the message.

  Deadsweep Thirty-Five

  Pita had hope. That’s what I knew Pita was telling me. And he wanted me to support his message.

  Once he had everyone’s attention, Pita began his story. The Ginete and the Whistle Pigs had an idea they thought would work. First Pita went over what they had discovered the day before while Zeid and I had been in the village talking to the dead man’s family.

  Using the suits, breathers, and goggles as protection, they had taken samples from all three men. None of them showed a viral infection, which led them back to what in the Earth dimension might have been called a mental illness.

  What made this different is that they knew that this mental illness was something that Abbadon had caused. It had turned three loving and happy men into what we had seen. They became killers, almost overnight.

  But how did they become infected? The answer was so creepy that all of us had nightmares since Pita had shown us. They had discovered the culprit by accident.

  The body of the dead man had been left in the sub-zero room to preserve it until they knew more. The morning Zeid and I were in the village, Pita had just happened to glance in the window to the room, and saw something crawl out of the dead man’s ear.

  It was lucky timing, because if Pita hadn’t seen it crawl out it might have disappeared forever. Pita captured it and then he and Teddy studied it. They concluded that the little worm had been living in the man’s brain and had probably done all that damage.

  Just hearing Pita talk about it again made my skin crawl. Pita had brought along the worm inside of a bottle. It was about an inch long and looked like an ordinary earthworm. Except on closer inspection, the skin was rubber, and there was a tiny red spot on the top of his head.

  Perhaps Abbadon made them with the red dots so he could easily tell the difference between his worms and a regular worm.

  “Ear-worms are what people call those songs that get stuck in your head, so a thought-worm is the perfect name for these worms. They live in your head, and they manipulate your thoughts,” Pita said.

  Pita opened the jar and held the worm in his hand. Even though we knew it was dead, we all had a moment of fear. The idea that that thing would crawl into your ear and make you crazy was terrifying.

  But this worm was most definitely dead. Not that it had ever been alive, because as creepy as a real worm in your ear might be, this worm beat that.

  Pita laid the worm down and then lifted the top half of its body off. Inside was a tiny computer.

  “This is what makes this worm work.” Pita pointed to a small round thing near the top of its head, and said, “This is how it sees where it is going.

  “We think that once it gets inside someone’s head, it is programmed so well it finds the nerves and amygdala that control thinking and start messing with them using various signals.

  “It also appears to have the ability to manipulate the thyroid gland which begins to upset the balance of emotions. The body becomes flooded with hormones and testosterone, and everything goes crazy.

  “Even though we usually don’t think of ourselves as a machine, our bodies do function like one. We aren’t consciously running it, but its functions are easily disrupted.”

  Niko stepped in and said, “It makes sense that Abbadon would once again try to disrupt the body. First, he used sound waves. Now he is more refined.

  “He has found something that directly upsets the body’s system. No more noise necessary. Can’t see this little bugger coming. Makes it so much harder to destroy. We might have thought that the Shrieks and Shatterskin were hard, but at least we knew where they were.

  “Once he realized that we had figured out how to disrupt his machines, he built something small enough and unexpected enough to be silently effective. But he is still using devices. This time, though, his machines are causing people to go after each other. He just sets the destruction in motion, and then enjoys the result.

  “I don’t think he believed we would figure this out this quickly. If the body had not been i
n that room, and the room hadn’t been that cold, and Pita wouldn’t have looked in the window at that time, we would still not know.

  “We don’t think it occurred to him that we would freeze a body. That’s most likely why he waited until warmer weather. Plus, he probably figured everyone would be too afraid to get near each other, especially those that were infected. That meant the worm would remain undetected, maybe forever.”

  “So you are saying that the worm would usually stay inside of a dead body? Wouldn’t they want that worm to crawl back out and infect someone else?” Zeid asked.

  “We don’t think so,” Pita answered. “This worm doesn’t appear to have a working signal anymore. We think it ‘dies’ when its host dies. We think Abbadon was more interested in keeping it a secret then infecting someone else. Besides, he can probably manufacture as many as he wants.

  “Abbadon likes machines. He knows how they work, and probably does see the body as nothing more than a machine. It would answer the question as to why he finds it so easy to kill.”

  “But then wouldn’t he see himself as a machine?” I asked.

  “It’s very possible that he does. And that is why he doesn’t need anything else to live. If he can design machines that keep his machine—his body—running, then he might be perfectly happy. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s on his bucket list,” Niko answered.

  We all snickered. A bucket list with two things on it: kill every living thing and find a way to live forever—alone.

  After the laughter died down, Niko said. “Since we think we might have the upper hand here because now we know what is causing this mental illness, and Abbadon doesn’t know that we know, this information cannot leave our team. For any reason.

  “We can’t talk about it in the atrium or the halls. Pick one of the safe rooms to speak together, or don’t talk about this at all. We have no idea if Abbadon has ways of finding out what we know.”

  “At one point, you thought perhaps we had a traitor among us. Do you still think so?” I asked. It might have been a pretty dumb question to ask, but I needed to know.

  Professor Link answered my question, “No. Not in this room. Not with the Ginete, or the Whistle Pigs that we are working with. Otherwise, we would not be having this meeting. But somehow Abbadon finds things out. We don’t know how. I will be switching channels to speak with you often. I’ll find you though, so don’t panic.”

  “Okay,” John said. We all smiled. Here goes John, asking the question we all wanted to know.

  “I see you clarified a few things. And those zonking worms are disgusting. But is there a plan, or not, to get rid of this invasion of Deadsweep?”

  “There is,” Pita said.

  Deadsweep Thirty-Six

  “Let me get this straight,” John said. No one missed his sarcastic tone of voice. “You have figured out how to stop these disgusting thought-worms from crawling into people’s ears and making them crazy?

  “Really? How are we supposed to do that? We don’t know where they come from. We don’t have a clue how they choose who to infect. Is it targeted, or is it random?

  “We don’t know ziffer. At least we don’t, but you do? Are you guys some kind of freaks or what? Or are you holding out on us, so you have all the control? Maybe you guys make the thought-worms and are blaming it on Abbadon.”

  James put a comforting hand on John’s shoulder, but John shook it off and turned to glare at him and the other three men in the village.

  We had all seen John upset, but had we seen him this upset before? Then I had a terrible thought. I started wondering if he was angrier than necessary. Was he irrational? Was he infected? If he was, was anyone else?

  Everyone else must have had a version of the same thought because the room became deadly silent. John looked at everyone staring at him and stood up so quickly his chair fell over.

  “Oh, zut no. You’re not going to say I’m infected. I’m rational, while you all are delusional.”

  When no one said anything in response, John turned to Pita who was still standing on the platform at the front of the room and said, “Please tell me that I am not infected.”

  Pita smiled at him, and said, “John, your questions are valid, and we’ll go through them together. I’ll tell you what we have answers to and what we don’t. And yes, we do have the beginnings of a plan for moving forward.

  “As I said, we have the upper hand. It’s doubtful that Abbadon knows we understand how Deadsweep works. It’s obvious the first thing to do is to keep him in the dark as long as possible.

  “As far as you being infected, I have good news for you. We have a way to find out. In fact, Teddy has set up a room for everyone to be checked.”

  The room erupted as we all realized what he had said. Some of us might be infected, but instead of it being a mystery until we violently acted out, we could now tell.

  Pita held up his hand. “That’s the good news. The bad news? We don’t know how to get the worm out without freezing your brain. Obviously, that’s not the answer. But we can isolate you until we find a ‘cure.’”

  Niko stood. “Perhaps the best thing to do is have everyone checked before we continue this meeting. That way anyone can disagree without everyone else worrying that they are infected. I’ll get us started. I’ll go first.”

  A murmur of agreement went around the room. Teddy must have been waiting outside the door for Pita to let us know about the testing because as Niko said those words, Teddy came into the room.

  He looked exhausted. No wonder. The Ginete and Whistle Pigs had been working nonstop, and then they still had to travel to the Castle and set up while the rest of us ate and slept.

  I raised my hand. I hadn’t been brought up in Earth schools for nothing. At Pita’s nod, I asked, “What about other beings? Are they infected the same way? Like the birds and animals? And …” my voice faltered as I looked down at the Priscillas hiding in my pocket.

  Niko reassured me. “As far as we know, birds and animals are not infected. There would have to be very tiny worms and specially designed for their brains. I am not saying that Abbadon hasn’t thought of this, or will. And we don’t know how it would affect different beings. Perhaps they wouldn’t be angry; maybe something else would happen.”

  I stood there trying not to give away what I was afraid of, but Beru understood immediately and said, “May Kara Beth go first and take her friends in with her?”

  The light dawned on Teddy, and he put his arm around me. “I’ll take Flower Girl and Miss Princess and her friends with me first. Then perhaps you could all file in one at a time after that.”

  “One more thing,” Niko said. “What happens if one of us is infected? Will we voluntarily go to be locked away until the cure is found? Or is there something in place to help us make that decision?”

  The horror of what Niko was saying hit everyone at once. We might have to establish some kind of police force—unheard of in Erda. The police in Erda did things like rescue animals out of trees. They never used force or detained a criminal. Criminals hadn’t existed before in Erda. Well, other than the master criminal, Abbadon.

  Having come from the Earth Realm and witnessing what could happen when any group gains that kind of power, even with the best intentions in the world, fear ran down my spine.

  Deadsweep was a brilliant move on Abbadon’s part. He could systemically destroy the Kingdom of Zerenity without any danger to himself. We would become the danger. One infected person in charge and everything went to hell in a hand basket, as my father used to say jokingly.

  I knew how fast evil could spread this way. It could quickly reach a tipping point that we could never turn back from. I wasn’t sure that the people in the room understood how deadly dangerous Deadsweep could be within a very short period of time.

  Suzanne looked a
t me across the room. She knew. She had traveled to Earth. She had seen how quickly retribution, revenge, control, and greed could spread. Once another creature was perceived as not as important, or different, it was possible to kill them or destroy their life without remorse.

  Erda was not prepared for this. They wouldn’t know what had happened to them.

  I stood by the door paralyzed by the fear of what could happen. It was Suzanne that broke the spell by reminding me of something I had heard over and over again in the Earth dimension—heard and seen proven time and time again.

  “Good is always stronger than evil, Hannah,” Suzanne said.

  She wanted me to remember what Hannah knew, and Kara Beth had to live by, too.

  “So say we all,” I said.

  “So say we all,” responded everyone in the room, including John. We were going to be okay.

  Deadsweep Thirty-Seven

  “Why did you set this room up in the Castle, Teddy,” I asked as we walked. “Why not leave us all down under and set it up there?”

  “We do have one set up—down under, as you call it—however, we need some here too.” He nodded at one of the people working in the Castle, and I understood.

  “You need to check everyone, don’t you?”

  “We do. We need to know there is no one in trouble here. The Castle must be a completely safe space. Once the team leaves, we will be bringing more people into the Castle. But first, we need to make sure they are not ill. If they are, we’ll isolate them.

  “We have already checked all the Ginete and Whistle Pigs that work with you. Not sure those thought-worms will work on us, but of course we have to check, anyway.”

  By then we had reached the room where the Whistle Pigs had set up a testing room. It was odd seeing so many Whistle Pigs in the Castle. Usually, they were off in the tunnels working on one thing or another. I smiled at them all, and they waved their massive hands in response. I was proud of myself. I was beginning to be able to tell them apart.