The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  Still, we weren’t out of danger. Our communication with Professor Link was still down, and I still didn’t have any connection to my magic.

  “Guess Zeid made it back to the Castle,” I said, to break the silence that threatened to pull us down into despair. “He must have been able to communicate with Coro and the dragons, but they still don’t seem to be able to talk to us.”

  Ruta hummed at me. It reminded me of the first time I had heard Ruta talk in what I thought might have been his native language. I hadn’t understood a word as he and Beru had talked together. So when he started humming I realized that perhaps he wasn’t humming to me, maybe he was talking to someone else. And then it occurred to me. The tree. He was talking to the tree.

  Niko and I looked at each other, and back to Ruta who seemed to be getting more excited. Knowing Ruta as someone who didn’t display any emotions, I wasn’t sure if he was getting excited happy or excited scared.

  I was both. I was excited happy and I was scared. I was warm and dry and protected in the tree, but where was everyone else?

  We were missing a whole village. People I knew and had come to love were gone. People that we all had come to love. My heart broke a little for Ruta because I realized he was missing his best friend, Beru. They were inseparable, and she was gone too.

  Ruta stopped humming and turned to Niko and me and said, “I know where the town is.”

  The fact that Ruta was not smiling was terrifying. What did he know that made him tremble? Were we going to be able to do anything about it, or were they gone forever?

  I almost didn’t want to know, because once I did, it might be something final with no hope left.

  Deadsweep Fifty-Two

  After saying he knew where the townspeople had gone, Ruta stopped talking. Niko and I waited. And waited.

  “Aren’t you going to tell us?” I finally asked. My head didn’t want to know, but my heart did.

  “No,” Ruta said, and then leaned back onto the tree trunk and closed his eyes.

  I looked at Niko who shrugged and leaned back onto the tree trunk that was holding him up and closed his eyes, too.

  “Are you both crazy,” I hissed. “What good is this?”

  Neither one moved. If anything, the two of them snuggled closer into the tree trunk. I’m dense, I know. It’s crazy how long it took me to get the message. Neither Niko or Ruta ever did anything by chance. They both had laid their lives on the line over and over again to save the Kingdom from Abbadon. Whatever they were doing at that moment was not because they were apathetic. They were telling me something.

  I wiggled around to get more comfortable and leaned back against my tree trunk and closed my eyes. Nothing. In fact, so much nothing I fell asleep. Or I fell somewhere because I knew I was still in the tree, and at the same time, I was standing in the middle of Kinver. But I wasn’t alone. It was as if I had pressed my star, or shifted my focus to see the 4D world because not only could I see the homes and gardens, but the rainbow of colors that made up everything from the rocks in the road, to the earth in the garden.

  Everything was intertwined. This was a view that I had seen before, but never quite like this, and never because I fell asleep in a tree.

  Someone called out, “Hannah,” and I turned to see James standing with his daughter, Liza. James looked as if he was frozen, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing. It was Liza who had called out. Liza, who has the gift of seeing 4D whenever she wants to. Liza smiled with her eyes but didn’t move. She was frozen too, which meant she couldn’t move her mouth to talk. Instead, she sent me words. They floated out of her and landed on my hand.

  “We are here. Frozen and invisible to regular sight.”

  I turned around and around, and everywhere I looked people were frozen within what looked like a web of black threads. Abbadon. I knew it was him. Only Abbadon would be this cruel. Freeze a whole town. Locked between life and death, knowing neither, and no way out. Or was there?

  Words from Liza drifted over to me again, but my vision was fading, so I only caught one word until the whole scene was gone. The word I heard was “portal.”

  All three of us opened our eyes at the same time, and Niko and Ruta looked at me expectantly.

  “You’re right, Ruta. We do know where the town is. Do you have any ideas on how to rescue them?”

  Ruta shook his head. “Not a clue. Do you?”

  I shook my head no. We needed help figuring it out, which meant we needed to get back to the Castle. At that moment I heard the most beautiful sound in the world as the hundreds of notes hummed in harmony getting louder and louder until it was directly over us. I looked up and saw Zeid. Tears poured down my face. He made it, and he had come for us.

  We would find a way. We had to.

  What I didn’t tell Ruta was that right before the vision faded I had seen Beru, hanging in the air, tangled in the black threads. Beru looked like a flower trapped in a weed. That weed could be destroyed. I was positive. It had something to do with portals.

  *******

  There was chaos back at the Castle. It seemed as if everyone who had been brought to the Castle for protection was running through the atrium going somewhere. It was so crazy, the bubble had to land inside the practice yard so we wouldn’t get trampled.

  “What the ziffer is going on,” I asked Leif as soon as the bubble landed. The short ride over, I had enfolded myself in Zeid’s arms which I thought was a place I wanted to stay. But the chaos below and the bubble landing had interrupted that.

  Zeid laughed, “Well, I think they are happy.”

  “Happy? Why?” I asked and then realized that the people in the Castle didn’t know about the frozen people caught within the black web. “Did something happen with the thought-worms?”

  “Yep!” Pita said, coming up and shaking all our hands as if we had done something. “Come see,” he said, stepping on one of the circles outlined in blue that had appeared in the yard. We dropped down into the transportation room filled with people. I recognized some of them from the village of Dalry. They were taking turns being transported up into the Castle. No wonder people were happy.

  “You got the worms out! How?”

  Instead of answering, Pita led us back to their lab where Teddy was standing looking as pleased as I had ever seen him.

  “Turtle Toes,” he yelled coming over to hug me. Who could stay unhappy after being called Turtle Toes by a giant Whistle Pig? Not me. For a moment I forgot everything and let myself feel the joy that was vibrating throughout the tunnels.

  “Once we figured it out, it was easy. Although there were a few moments that we thought it didn’t work and that we were killing them because at first everyone had what looked like a seizure. But then the worms fell out of their ears. We were afraid that the thought-worms had permanently damaged their brains, but Leif did something, and everyone stood up and was fine. Weak, but fine.”

  When I turned to Leif to ask him what he did, he shook his head, and I understood that he wasn’t going to tell us yet what he had done. We had a bigger problem to solve right now. The worms were out of the infected, but Abbadon was controlling the village of Kinver, and I suspected, Eiddwen too which is why we hadn’t heard from Aki and Suzanne. The thought-worms were still out there, and people were frozen in time and space. We could celebrate this victory later.

  Leif thanked Pita and Teddy and directed the four of us back up to the surface and into a quiet room where Earl, Ariel, and Sarah were waiting. I told them the story of what I had seen and what Liza had tried to say to me.

  “Portal? What did she mean by that?” Zeid asked.

  “That is what we are going to find out,” Leif answered.

  I hoped that Abbadon felt the rumble of our determination. I prayed that it scared the ziffer out of him. I wanted him to be terr
ified. I was tired of being terrified of him. We would figure it out, and then I was going after him, even if I had to go after him on my own.

  There have been times when I haven’t wanted everyone in my head, but this was not one of them. In unison, they had all answered, “You won’t be on your own.”

  Yes, we were coming after him. But first, we had a few towns to unfreeze, and a million worms to destroy.

  Deadsweep Fifty-Three

  Leif had asked us all to meet him in the planning room after we got cleaned up. The three of us definitely did not smell good. That worm smell was all over us. I took the fact that Zeid hugged me anyway to mean either he had lost his ability to smell things, or maybe he really loved me.

  “Of course, I do, Kara,” Zeid said stopping in the middle of a hallway. He had stayed by my side since I had stepped into the bubble.

  “Have you ever doubted it?”

  It was time to tell him the truth. “I can’t remember how we came to be a couple, Zeid. Did we choose each other or did someone choose for us?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. It does to me,” I answered.

  “Would it mean that I loved you less if someone chose for us, Kara? What if they knew who we were to each other—who we always were to each other—and made sure that we found each other? Made sure that we didn’t make a mistake and forget our destinies together?”

  I had to think about that. Did it matter? Then I realized I had missed the essential parts of what Zeid had said.

  “We have a destiny together?” Slapping my forehead, I added, “I’m incredibly dense aren’t I? It’s what we have been doing since I came through the portal, isn’t it?”

  Zeid lowered his forehead to mine and whispered, “And Kara, destiny or not, chosen for us, or by us, you must feel that I have always loved you.

  “And you can’t keep it a secret anymore can you, because I heard you tell me that you love me. Isn’t it time you just accepted it?”

  I lifted my face to his, and we were seconds away from our first kiss, or at least the first one I remembered, when the Priscillas came flying down the hall. True to form they didn’t stop but landed on both our heads. Pris pulled my hair, and Cil pulled Zeid’s.

  “Not now, people,” Pris said. “Stuff to do. Move it.”

  Zeid and I gave each other one last look and then let ourselves be pulled away into the direction of our rooms. But this time I took with me the certain knowledge that Zeid and I were meant to be together and there was no more room for wondering about it.

  Because Pris was right, we had too much to do to spend time mooning around at each other. There would be plenty of time for that later after we completed our mission.

  Pris continued to push me down the hall towards my room. I wasn’t surprised when she came into my room with me, too. I knew Pris planned to keep my mind off the fact that Beru wasn’t there with me.

  Pris didn’t look, or even often act, as if she cared about anyone’s feelings. But like Ruta, Pris was intensely aware of everything that was going on, including all our emotions. To do that, I knew that she had a deep well of love and compassion inside of her. She just showed it differently.

  Less than an hour later we were all in the planning room, the three of us smelling much better. Leif was at the head of the table, with his staff resting once more in the corner of the room. I knew that he could summon it by thinking about it, that he had powers most of us didn’t know about, but sitting there he gave none of that away.

  It was Professor Link who asked the first question. It was to me. I was expecting it. He held up the button that I had pressed on to Zeid and said, “I gave this to you to use, not to stick on someone else.”

  I started to respond, but he held up his hand, “However, in this case, this was probably the wisest choice. You knew that Zeid could tell us what was going on and if necessary transport back there to help. So it was a wise tactical choice. But next time, you push it to get yourself home. Am I clear about that?”

  I nodded and took the button and returned it to the spot where I had ripped it off. I hoped never to use it again. And even though I agreed, I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t do the same thing again.

  When I saw Link’s eyes darken and squint at me, I knew he knew what I was thinking. But he moved on. As Pris said, we had quite a few things to address and fighting with me about what I would do was wasting time. Besides, I had questions.

  “How did Abbadon stop us from using our magical powers? He must have done the same thing to the others before he trapped them.”

  I didn’t want to mention that I was worried that he had used the thought-worms on them first. On the other hand, now that they knew how to get the worms out of people’s heads, perhaps it wouldn’t be fatal for them.

  “Well, first he stopped us being able to communicate, so perhaps we should start there. How did he do it?” Link asked.

  Pita looked at Teddy who waved his hand at him to continue. “It’s probably the same thing. It’s actually what we were going to use to jam the signals of the thought-worms.”

  “A disrupter like the ones you made for us?” I asked, probably a little too loudly. Okay, it was loud. I yelled it, and I kept on yelling. “How did that happen? Is there a spy like you thought before? How could he possibly be making the same thing? And then, zut it, he used it first!”

  I stamped my foot, under the table. I didn’t know what else to do with the anger that surged inside of me.

  Everyone waited for me to calm down, then Pita added, “It won’t happen again. We’ve developed a system that can’t be hacked or disabled.”

  “How do you know it hasn’t been stolen again? Have you caught the traitor?”

  Leif stepped in, “Could we answer those questions for you later, Kara? Right now we need to rescue our people. All I can promise you is that all of you will have your powers and Link will be able to communicate with all of you without any disruption.”

  The fact that I didn’t know how that was going to work bothered me, but I knew it was my need to control everything that made me upset. It was stupid. The people around the table were far more skilled than me. I needed to learn how to be quiet and do what I was told.

  When I heard Zeid laughing beside me, I wanted to pinch his leg the way Beru pinched mine, but he was too quick for me. He grabbed my hand and held it while we listened to the rest of how we were going to rescue the villagers and our people.

  Didn’t sound too hard. Kidding. It scared the pants off of me.

  Deadsweep Fifty-Four

  Before the meeting broke up, we all thanked Earl and Ariel for the wall of water they had dumped on us. Earl explained that as soon as Zeid returned and they learned what was happening, they didn’t waste any time. They knew that water was a disruption that Abbadon couldn’t counter. Abbadon doesn’t have nature on his side.

  The rain stopped the worm’s sensors from finding us. As we had seen when the dragons pulled us away, the thought-worms became disoriented, and the worm trees toppled over.

  “What happened after that? What happened to the worms?”

  “The Priscillas’ friends happened to the worms,” Earl responded, laughing his big booming laugh.

  “What friends? What did they do to the worms?”

  “They ate them,” La said, almost tripping over her feet as she spun around in delight.

  “What could possibly eat them?” I asked, thinking of the rubbery surface and the computer parts inside.

  “Goats!” La yelled. “Goats! They said they could and they would. And they did. It was awesome.”

  “Yup!” Cil added. “We have goat teams all over Zerenity looking for those ugly buggers. By the time they’re done, there won’t be any thought-worms left anywhere. Of course, we can’t leave them unsupervised otherw
ise they would eat other stuff that perhaps the villagers would prefer them not to eat, like gardens.”

  “And furniture and clothes,” La added still laughing.

  I stared at the three of them, and couldn’t believe they had come up with such a simple solution. “But are you going to tell me that you move the goats to different places using Sound Bubbles?”

  “Oh that would be silly, wouldn’t it?” La said. “All those little goat feet flying over Zerenity.”

  “Well then, how are you getting them there?” I asked, almost pouting because I thought they were teasing me and this was no time to be teasing.

  Teddy held up his hand. I stared at him like he was crazy. “What are you holding your hand up for, Teddy?”

  “I have the answer!”

  “Zounds, is everyone wacko today? How? Just tell me!”

  “Goat tunnels. Well, not tunnels so much as something that moves a subway in the Earth Realm.”

  “You are moving goats through subways underground? Goat trains?”

  “Oh, that’s a good one. Yes. Goat trains. Moves them fast, keeps them contained.”

  I put my forehead down on the table. This was too much. Goat trains. But then I started thinking about what that would look like—goats popping up and down in the countryside like whack-a-moles—and I started laughing too. Soon we were all laughing so hard the cups of water and coffee on the table almost fell off from the vibrations.