by Beca Lewis
However, there is much more to Niko than his martial arts skill and his looks.
I remember him lying in the tree branches looking like a snake. I had wondered if he was a chameleon or shapeshifter, and I still don’t know the answer. There was also the time that the dragons picked us up by the shoulders and lifted us away from the danger we were in from the thought-worm tree. Ruta covered his eyes, and I held my breath. But Niko spread his arms and pretended to be flying. Yes, there is much more to Niko than meets the eye.
After our sparring session, we stayed in the practice yard to do some magic training, which is often harder than the physical exercise. Niko had Zeid make all of us invisible and hold it longer than his previous record. Then he had Zeid teleport both of us back and forth across the yard until he ran out of energy.
Then it was my turn. I had to practice shooting lightning from both my hands. After that, it was my turn to go back and forth across the practice field, but I had to fly.
To finish off my training for the day, I had to practice using my bracelet to stun some poor rabbits that Niko had collected. He said that they volunteered, but I still hated doing it.
However, they weren’t hurt and afterward I sat on the ground petting them and giving them the treats that Beru had brought out. After thanking the rabbits for their participation, we opened the small door between the practice field wall and the outside grounds, and they went scampering off as happy as can be.
I suppose they knew the same way that we did that it was vital for me to learn to adjust how much force field to put out without hurting anyone, just enough to stop them.
My bracelet came from my mother who had left it with Professor Link to give to me when I returned to Erda. I am still not sure why she left it for me. Did she know she was going to die at Ruta’s village? And if she had it with her, would she have lived? I added those questions to the running list I have that may never have an answer.
Sarah had explained to me how the bracelet worked, and I had used it for the first time to stun the villagers who had been infected with the Deadsweep thought-worms. Thankfully, the worms are dead and gone, and everyone who was infected has been restored to full health. But not before almost the entire population of Dalry, the village near the Castle, died.
Only forty-two people survived, including the wife and daughters of the first man to die in Dalry. We had harbored the survivors within the Castle walls until Deadsweep was over. Then they returned to their homes to bury the dead, mourn the loss of their families and friends, and attempt to recover.
I knew that Mayor Tom would do everything in his power to make it so. However, we all understood that it would leave a scar that would last all our lifetimes. The two little girls had gone from being light and carefree to withdrawn and sullen. I wanted more than anything to return their father to them. It was impossible, of course.
It wasn’t just Dalry that was affected by this horrible thing Abbadon had released. There were thousands of people who died throughout the Kingdom of Zerenity. What made it even more tragic is that they died at the hands of friends and family. The thought-worms had bored into the heads of the victims causing their brains to malfunction. I’ll never get the pictures out of my head of what people had done to each other.
Once Abbadon discovered that we knew how to stop the thought-worms, remove them, and heal the damaged parts of the brain, he moved on to other forms of death and destruction.
First, he burned down the entire village of Eiddwen, my father’s hometown and the town where I grew up when we were not living in the Castle. If Suzanne and Aki had not been there, the entire village would have perished.
That was Abbadon’s intention after all. He wanted to kill the King along with everyone else and erase all our memories from the face of the planet. It would have devastated the entire Kingdom and broken all of our hearts if he had succeeded. I’m sure that’s what he wanted.
Instead, Suzanne and Aki managed to open a portal door and usher everyone in the village inside, saving them from the fire. But the entire town was trapped inside the portal for days. Suzanne didn’t want to open the back portal door to another dimension and wasn’t sure when it would be safe to open the door to the Erda dimension. She and Berta had trusted that eventually we would arrive and let them know it was safe to exit. Berta had left a clue to tell me where they were, and that’s how we found them.
Abbadon had done the opposite with Beru’s village of Kinver. He left the town alone. Instead, he threw everyone into a portal and then froze them there.
Although I could see them by using the blue star necklace to see 4D, I couldn’t do anything to save them. I could see Beru, Liza, and the brothers frozen in what looked like a block of ice. But in reality, Abbadon had frozen them in time and space.
Liza was able to send me a thought picture with the word “portal,” and that’s how we knew what he had done to them. However, it took the dimension-traveling abilities of Garth, Anne, and Suzanne to step into the portal and release them.
Whatever Abbadon was planning next would be even more frightening. We had to stop him before that happened.
Abbadon Seven
The session with Niko had lasted well into the afternoon. By the time we had fed the rabbits, Zeid and I were thoroughly wrung out and ready for food for ourselves. We were halfway down the hall to the atrium when I heard the words “Pumpkin Toes,” and I started running. I didn’t need to see who had yelled those words. There was only one person who called me silly names like Pumpkin Toes.
It was Teddy the Whistle Pig. I knew that Teddy was a Whistle Pig. However, except for the two front teeth that gave him away, he looked more like a big giant teddy bear, unlike the whistle pigs, otherwise known as groundhogs in the Earth dimension. That meant his name, Teddy, suited him perfectly. I figured if Teddy was there, then at least one of the Ginete brothers was with them, and I was right.
Walking beside him was Pita, the oldest of the five brothers. Pita and Teddy looked nothing alike, and yet I knew that Whistle Pigs and Ginete are related.
Someday I would have to find out how. The only thing they have in common is they both live underground, and they are brilliant at figuring out solutions for defeating Abbadon’s monsters.
They are also both pacifists, and will not fight in a battle. Instead, as we worked to stop Abbadon’s monsters, they supplied everything we needed. It was in their underground homes that we took refuge in when we were under attack, and it was in their laboratories that the solution was found for stopping the thought-worms. We couldn’t have won any of the battles against Abbadon’s monsters without them.
But where Teddy is big, loud, and effusive, the five Ginete brothers are small and quiet. Most of the time. Their huge golden eyes are always taking in everything going on around them. When I first met them, I thought they were dwarfs, but was told never to call them that. There must be a story in there somewhere.
When I finished hugging Teddy, I turned to Pita and smiled, and we winked at each other. That was an excellent greeting by Ginete standards. “You two must be here for a reason. Has a solution been found?”
“We are in the dark as much as you are,” Teddy said. “We were invited to the Castle for dinner. There must be more going on than that, but you know we wouldn’t miss a chance to come to see you.”
“And have dinner,” Zeid finished for him, with a twinkle in his eye.
“That, too,” Teddy responded.
“Did you come through the tunnels?” I asked. The Whistle Pigs and Ginete have tunnels that traverse every area of the Kingdom of Zerenity, and they are always making more as needed. They travel up to the surface and back down using some kind of technology that always reminds me of Star Trek and the transporter room. Except since it only works from the surface to the tunnels and back, it is more like an elevator that makes the journey in a
split second.
To use it, you stand on a circle of blue light and before you can blink you are either on the surface or back in the tunnels. The first time it happened to me, it scared the ziffer out of me. Now I love it. There is no other way to get into the tunnels, which makes them very secure because no one can see the circles unless the Whistle Pigs intend for them to be seen.
If Shatterskin had not shattered all of the landscape across his Kingdom, we could travel to him by tunnel. But the damage that Shatterskin caused didn’t just happen on the surface. It shattered everything below for hundreds of feet. Every home of the Ginete and Whistle Pigs near Abbadon was destroyed at the very beginning of the fight against him, before I had been brought back from the Earth Realm and returned to Erda.
At first, no one could accept that the destruction was happening. Abbadon was destroying his own lands, the trees, and the animals that sustained the air and the environment. Why would he do that? In the end, it would mean his own destruction. It seemed insane, and the people of the Kingdom of Zerenity couldn’t wrap their heads around that kind of crazy. Crazy behavior or not, he is still doing it. If we can’t stop him, Abbadon will end up alone and on a barren planet, and he doesn’t seem to care.
What could have possibly triggered this horrible behavior? What he is doing is inconceivable to all of us.
It would be easy to brush off what he is doing as the workings of a mad-man. His actions certainly appear that way. But everyone who met him as he lived undercover within the Kingdom of Zerenity said he gave off the appearance of a kind, well-mannered man.
For the most part, it has become impossible to convince most of the people that met him that he is a mass-murderer. But by selling the walking sticks infused with the deadly thought-worms, he had destroyed the lives of countless people. Thousands are dead.
He is always ahead of us. He always knows what we are doing. This is not the workings of a crazy man. Abbadon is deliberate and careful. To stop Abbadon, we have to out-think him and outmaneuver him.
So far we hadn’t found a way to do that, and all of us are well aware that time is running out.
Abbadon Eight
I could hear Earl’s raucous laughter long before we reached the atrium. Sometimes I can smell rain when Earl is around, even when he is only Earl, not Coro, the commander of the storms. I suppose Earl’s essence is the same as Coro’s. In a way, it’s like being a shapeshifter. Earl’s wife, Ariel, commands the winds. I had never met them during the time they were in the Earth dimension, but my mother and father did. It had been a brief visit before Earl and Ariel returned permanently to Erda.
When I first met Earl and Ariel in Erda, Suzanne had introduced them as her mother and father. Since then I have heard rumors that they acted as mother and father when her birth parents took her sister, Meg, to another dimension, or maybe it was another planet, to keep her out of trouble.
The story was that Meg was too wild and free with her shapeshifter’s abilities.
I never think of Suzanne as being lonely, she is always so busy taking care of all of us, but perhaps she misses them. I would understand that. I miss my Earth parents too. But both of us belong in Erda.
The fact that Earl and Ariel were at dinner meant something was up. But I knew that we never talked about problems while eating, so I tabled my urge to ask why they were there. Sooner or later I would find out. I was happy to wait because I knew it could end up being something that I wished I didn’t know.
When Beru, Teddy, Pita and I had seated ourselves at the table, the metal toadstools hadn’t delivered the food yet, and there were still four empty seats. I hoped that meant that Garth, Anne, Leif, and Sarah would be joining us. Even if we didn’t talk about Abbadon at dinner, with Garth and Anne there, we might be treated to some interesting tales about dimension traveling.
It was Ruta who had brought Garth and Anne to our attention. Something to do with drinking in taverns and hearing them tell stories. I had seen what happened to Ruta when he drank. His drink of choice was some syrupy thing, and if he drank enough of it, he became a dancing block of wood. Admittedly, more than once, some of us had joined him as he danced on top of a table.
Leif and Sarah were another matter altogether. I had known the two of them in the Earth dimension. Both of them had been living there to keep an eye on me. The funny thing is, they hadn’t remembered who they were any more than I did. But instinct took over, and they watched over me anyway. Now that both of them had also returned to Erda, they had also returned to their true selves.
Sarah is the oracle. She teaches, guides, and answers questions. Pretty much what she did in the Earth Realm, but in Erda she uses more magic. Leif is a wizard, and he looks exactly how I used to think wizards would look when I imagined them as a child. Except he dresses like the rest of us: no flowing robes or long gray beard. If we were in the Earth dimension, he could walk down the street and easily blend into the crowd.
However, he does have a magical staff which he sometimes uses. Once I asked him if he needed a staff to do magic, or was it just theater. Typically, Leif just smiled and asked me what I thought, which makes me believe that it’s theater. It’s what people expect for a wizard—a magical staff. I admit I like seeing it too.
Sometimes Leif and Sarah aren’t people at all. Leif appears as a blue haze and Sarah as a blue light. They also appear when and where they want to, seemingly just by thinking about it. Tonight they walked into the atrium looking just like the people I knew back in Earth. Anne and Garth were with them looking a little confused, but our happiness at seeing them was evident and it didn’t take long for them to join in the conversation.
I was right. We heard some interesting stories from them about other dimensions. When I asked them if they were always dimension travelers they looked at each other before answering.
“It’s not that we don’t want to answer you,” Anne said, “It’s that we don’t know.”
When everyone started asking them all at once why they didn’t know, Garth held up his hand to stop the questioning.
“We would love answers, too. But we don’t have them. We don’t have a memory of ourselves as anything but this. I know Anne is my sister. I know we travel to different dimensions and gather stories. We try to keep out of trouble and remain as invisible as possible when we do so. But how we came to be this, we don’t remember.”
“Do you think you forgot when you were in another dimension, or someone or something made you forget?” Aki asked.
“That’s something we have considered. Maybe we don’t even belong in this one, and we have forgotten where we come from,” Anne said.
“We both decided to live as much in the present as possible. At least as much as dimension traveling can be in the present.”
Everyone laughed at that, because we all understood, to some small degree, that dimension traveling is also time traveling.
After that, the talk turned to things like the weather, or what new flower was blooming in the atrium garden. As I listened and looked around the table, I marveled at the diversity. No one thought anything of it.
My eyes stopped at Anne and Garth, the newcomers at our table. If they were living in the Earth Realm, they looked like they could have come from Ireland with their red hair and blue eyes. I caught Aki looking at me, and back to them. I wondered if she was thinking that too.
The table was full of beautiful beings, all so different, enjoying each other without any hint of separation or animosity. Sure, we teased each other, and sometimes I stamped my foot in frustration, but my heart was full of love for everyone there.
I embraced that feeling within every pore of my being because I knew that since all of us were there, it was almost time to leave. How we were going was a mystery, but I was sure this was one of those last suppers before everything changed.
Zeid reached
under the table and held my hand. Just as I knew Earl and Ariel, Leif and Sarah, and I suspected Professor Link and Aki were doing. We were memorizing this moment, just in case we never had one like it again.
Abbadon Nine
No one was surprised when Earl told us all to get some sleep and meet in the planning room the next morning at sunrise. He suggested that we keep our conjectures as to what we were doing to a minimum.
Both Beru and Zeid walked me to my room. Beru slipped off while Zeid paused with me outside my door. We had an unspoken agreement to keep our romantic feelings in the background until the battle with Abbadon was over, but that didn’t stop us taking that extra moment to reassure each other that everything would work out.
We leaned into each other for a moment, and then I backed away and slipped into my room. After I closed the door, I stood there for a moment wishing I could reopen the door and invite Zeid in, but everything told me it would be unwise and selfish. I needed to be thinking of the mission and the good of the team, not myself.
A few hours later I was still struggling, trying to sleep, when I heard a familiar voice in my head, I was delighted. It only took me a few minutes to slip on my shoes. I hadn’t undressed. Perhaps somewhere inside of me I knew that he would be coming to see me.
The Castle was quiet, but the hallways were lit with soft light so I could see where I was going. It was still a marvel to me that the trees provided everything that the people of Erda needed for energy. The roots of the trees were the source of the light that emanated from the walls. There was no need for light fixtures. The light was everywhere when we needed it.