The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  “We’ll go look,” Pris said, as they flew away. Staying angry at them was hard. They were always looking out for all of us. Perhaps not in a way we would have anticipated, but maybe that was a good thing.

  “We could travel through the overstory,” Ruta said, “But I am not sure that Tarla could make it.”

  Ruta was referring to the time we were trying to avoid being seen by the people driven mad by the Deadsweep thought-worms and the trees had assisted us moving through the very top of their branches.

  “No, we are going to have to walk it, and I am going to need help with my mother,” Aki said. Although Tarla was looking better, she was still dragging her leg. She would need support on both sides.

  Teddy took over the instructions. “Garth and Anne, could you please help Tarla? Aki, we are going to need your ability to come and go unseen to help the Priscillas in tracking the Raiders. Kara, are you ready with your bracelet? And of course your fireballs,” he added with a chuckle.

  Teddy loved it when I shot lightning out of my hands. True, it is a spectacular sight, but also dangerous for other things and I need to be careful not to catch a tree on fire or harm any innocent beings. The bracelet might be a better choice. I had been practicing with it, and Teddy knew that. He had seen Niko take me out time and time again to try to use it effectively.

  The bracelet had been my mother’s. She left it with Professor Link before going to Ruta’s village and then dying there with the rest of the town when the Shrieks and Shatterskin attacked. She had told him to give it to me. I still didn’t understand why she didn’t take it with her in the first place. Perhaps she could have stopped the Shrieks and Shatterskin with it, or at least held them off while they escaped. I would never know the answer to that question, but I was grateful to have the bracelet

  If I used it correctly, I could send a beam, or wall, of energy that stopped anything from moving. Although my intention was always to stun, if I didn’t control the energy correctly I knew that it could kill. I didn’t mind killing the machines or the mechanical thought-worms, but I didn’t think that I could kill any living thing, even the Raiders.

  Maybe especially the Raiders. If these were men taken from villages, how did they turn into heartless, vicious Raiders? Could we reverse the process?

  Even before we had left the cave, Cil flew back in a frenzy and said, “They are all around you.”

  “Do they know we are here?” Teddy asked.

  “We don’t think so. They are walking through the woods just looking around. They don’t appear to be looking for anything specific, like you …”

  Cil’s voice trailed off as her face grew pale. She cleared her throat, gathered herself, and added, “There is a tiny corridor between the teams of Raiders. If you are very quiet, we think we can lead you through it. Just follow me.”

  Cil glanced at me and pointed to her wrist and then her throat. I knew what she meant. I might need the bracelet, and I might also need to use the star to see 4D. I nodded in acknowledgment. I could sometimes see 4D without pressing the blue star necklace given to me by Liza, the young girl who lived in Kinver. But I couldn’t control it. And when I felt stressed it was harder. I was definitely stressed.

  We moved out behind Cil. Teddy led the way. Aki and I kept to the outside of the line, continually scanning, using 360 degree vision to see all around us. Ruta was behind Garth, Anne, and Tarla, and Pita was in front of them.

  The Priscillas kept us up to date as to where we were going, and we were doing well moving quietly through the woods. Then Tarla coughed.

  Abbadon Thirty-Seven

  The woods erupted with howls. It sounded as if hundreds of people were screaming at the top of their lungs. I had heard the phrase “screaming like bloody murder” but had never understood what that meant. Until that moment. The howls came from all directions, surrounding us completely. I had never heard anything like it before, and it sent cold chills up and down my spine and froze me in place.

  I wasn’t the only one frozen in place. Everyone looked as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown on them and the world had stopped. Even Teddy was frozen. What were we to do? The Priscillas flew back and jumped into the pocket of my tunic. So much for guidance from them.

  I turned towards, Ruta. “Ruta, travel with the trees. Get to the circles. Aki, you go too since you can appear anywhere you need to. We’ll try and also get there. But we can’t all be trapped here.”

  “Wait,” Pita said. “I have a better idea.” He looked at Teddy who had snapped out of being frozen in fear and nodded at him. Teddy reached into his backpack and pulled out a package of netting.

  I recognized it. It was the net they had used to throw over the infected with the thought-worms to trap them.

  “That’s not going to work,” I said. “There will be too many of them.”

  By then the howls were almost on top of us. We could hear the Raiders crashing through the brush, howling, grunting, screaming mindlessly.

  “Everybody crouch down and be quiet,” Pita said, as he and Teddy unfurled the net. We did what we were told even though I was sure we were soon to be trampled or captured or maybe killed by maniacs. But it was too late to do something else.

  “Get out here and help,” Teddy hissed at the Priscillas. Within seconds the Priscillas were holding the edges of the net and were dragging it over the top of us. As it passed over each person, they disappeared. Zut, it was making them invisible.

  As the last of the net dropped over Ruta, we didn’t need to be told to make sure that we were all covered. Not even the tiniest bit of our clothing could be sticking outside. We were invisible from the outside, but under the net, we could see each other. All our eyes were wide in terror. Would it work? I don’t think any of us were breathing.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. What if the Raiders stepped on us? Pita and Teddy shook their head at me, a tiny movement. I hoped that meant that the net also blocked anyone from coming into our space. When I thought that, Pita winked at me, his huge golden eyes half closed. Sometimes he reminded me of an owl. It was a random thought, but I needed something to keep from thinking about what was happening all around us.

  The howls were right on top of us. They circled us and screamed louder and then I heard what sounded like a shout and they moved off towards the sound. We waited until everything was quiet, and then La crawled out from under the net and looked around. She crooked her finger at her sisters, and all three of them moved out, motioning for the rest of us to stay in place.

  A few minutes later they were back, all smiles. How could they be smiling at a time like this? In fact, they were smiling at me. Why?

  Pita and Teddy started pulling the net off of us and folding it into an impossibly small square. But my attention wasn’t on them. It was on a movement near one of the trees. I grabbed Garth’s arm and pointed to the tree, but Cil landed on my hand and shook her head.

  “Not dangerous?” I asked.

  I heard a low growl and looked again at the tree. Coming towards me was a wolf who looked exactly like Cahir. My mouth flew open, and I looked at the Priscillas who were dancing happily in the air. I looked back at the wolf and asked, “Cahir?”

  “Yes,” was the answer. I burst into tears and ran to embrace him. “You are Cahir from this timeline?”

  He just shook his head. Did he not know what I meant, or he wasn’t going to tell me? “You are the one who made that noise and pulled them away, weren’t you?”

  His answer was to nuzzle his head down into my lap. I hadn’t realized how much I needed Cahir nearby. Until that moment I had told myself that it was okay, but it hadn’t been. Now it was.

  “Lovely to see you, Cahir, or not Cahir,” Teddy said, “But we need to get a move on before the Raiders return.”

  Now that the raiders were gone we quickly moved to the
circles. I knew Cahir wouldn’t come with me into the tunnels. He didn’t like being underground or in the air at all. I hugged him and said I would meet him later. He bowed and trotted off into the brush. Pita did something, and within seconds we were down into the familiar tunnels, in a transportation room that looked like all the other ones we had used in the future.

  It wasn’t surprising. The art of tunnel building had been passed down from these Whistle Pigs and Ginete.

  That’s the first thing we saw. A room filled with Whistle Pigs and Ginete we didn’t know. But it didn’t take long for us to feel comfortable.

  The first thing they did was take us to their dining room where all the food we could eat was waiting for us. For the second time that day I burst into tears. I wished that I would grow out of that compulsion to cry at the drop of a hat because it was so embarrassing.

  “It’s not embarrassing, Princess,” Aki said. “It shows us all how much you care.”

  I gave her a grateful look and then hugged Pita and Teddy who were standing beside us. “Once again, you two have saved us.”

  They both bowed and said with a laugh, “Our pleasure.”

  For a moment, all was right with the world. I would take that moment, because I knew what was coming next. Or at least I thought I did.

  Abbadon Thirty-Eight

  I watched Tarla as she took in her surroundings. I could almost imagine how she felt. This morning she was in her village, among friends and family that she had known her whole life, and now she was surrounded by people and beings she had never seen before, and who spoke a different language.

  Raiders had attacked her village, her children were kidnapped, and the daughter she knew as a little girl was now standing in front of her as a grown woman.

  In spite of all that, I watched as she smiled and laughed at the people sitting near to her at the table. She kept one hand firmly on Aki’s arm, perhaps trying to convince herself that all of this was real, and she wasn’t dreaming. What would she remember when we were gone?

  What would any of these people remember when we were gone? Would we be a story that they told, and did they expect to see us again and again? Did time loop around? Or would we finish what we came to do and never return?

  “You’ll make yourself crazy asking all those questions, Kara,” Anne said, sliding into the seat beside me. “We’ve learned not to try and conjecture too much about the ‘what if’ of dimension travel. Time travel is different, I know, but the not questioning too much part is probably the best way to complete what needs to be done.

  “Even in one dimension, and in a single time frame, choices change everything. Things we can’t control. Every choice we make here is going to change something. But what if it is those choices that made the future that we all remember?”

  “Okay, you know that you just made my point, don’t you?” I smiled at her.

  “Yes, and I also made mine. We were told to do what is the right thing to do. Do it the best that we can. The outcome is not up to us.”

  “Even though we are going to have to live with the consequences?”

  “We always have to live with the consequences. Yes, once again, making my point and yours at the same time. As for right now, I say we enjoy this banquet of food supplied by people that knew we were coming, even though we hadn’t been here before, but in this timeline we have.”

  Anne delivered that last line while smiling at me, knowing that she was driving me crazy. I started laughing and nodded. “You’re right. Let’s eat.”

  She was right. All we could do was our best, based on the knowledge that we had. I had to trust our intention to stop Abbadon from destroying the sentient beings that lived in the Erda dimension, and if we kept our focus on that, we would end up doing the right thing.

  The future we left was already in disarray. Half the continent of what I knew as the United States in the Earth Realm had been uprooted and destroyed. If we pulled off our mission when we returned it wouldn’t have happened. Whatever else we changed we would have to accept. Even the possibility that our friends and family wouldn’t be there.

  “Did you ever think that other people would be there?” Ruta asked me inside my head. “Like your mother and my family? If we stop Abbadon, he won’t have destroyed my village. Perhaps that means we both find people in the future that we have already lost. It can work both ways. Maybe it will work in our favor.”

  Ruta was looking at me across the table, his face more serious than I had ever seen it. It’s hard to tell what Ruta is thinking on the outside. I didn’t call him Mr. Block Head for no reason. But inside that exterior was a huge heart, filled with love for his family and friends. I knew that. I wasn’t sure everyone did.

  Ruta and I talking alone like this was new. But I was grateful that we were helping each other as we missed our mutual friend, Beru.

  I had been thinking of the answer to this question for a long time. “I hope that is what we find, Ruta. I want your village returned to you, and my mother returned to me. But I am afraid of who might not be there as much as I am hoping for those that might return.”

  Ruta wiggled his fingers at me, and I returned the sign. It was an abbreviated version of the handshake the three of us shared as our special handshake. I knew that both of us wanted more than anything that Beru would be waiting for us when we returned and we could do our full handshake together.

  When everyone had eaten their fill—and in my case, more than my fill—Teddy cleared his throat and stood up. “We are grateful to our fellow Whistle Pigs and Ginete for this warm welcome. Thank you for preparing this space for us to stay as we prepare for the next part of the plan.”

  Garth raised his hand. Teddy acknowledged him. “As much as I am grateful for this lovely food, and a safe place to stay, don’t we need to talk about the plan? Especially, the Priscillas’ idea to capture Abbadon. And if we are going to do that, don’t we have to get a move on if we are going to do it during his reaction to Anne’s saying no to him?”

  A general murmur of agreement went around the room.

  “Yes. And yet, plans made without sleep, and without listening are not plans that tend to work well. So we are all going to take advantage of the rooms prepared for us and get some rest. We’ll meet in the meeting room in six hours.”

  As much as I wanted to get moving, I had to agree with Teddy, and apparently so did everyone else because we all rose from our chairs and followed our hosts to our rooms without a hint of complaint.

  Even the Priscillas were tired. By the time I made it to my room they were fast asleep inside the pockets of my tunic. Within minutes, I too was asleep.

  It happened so quickly I wondered if there had been something in the tea that was helping us all sleep. I wouldn’t put it past Teddy. If so, I forgave him. In fact, I was grateful. Without it, I would have spent the entire night tossing and turning worrying about Zeid and Niko. And the future. Whatever we did, it would change it.

  But as Anne had said, that was true no matter what timeline or dimension we were in. It was always about saving the future.

  Abbadon Thirty-Nine

  Six hours later our team met in the planning room. We all looked better. Once again clean clothes were waiting for me when I got up, and a shower had felt wonderful. I was sure everyone had the same experience because for people who were planning to take over a dictator, we looked surprisingly good.

  Aki had left her mother in the capable hands of the Whistle Pigs. If all went well, Tarla would remain there until our mission was over. Once it was safe, she could return home to her village. Part of our plan had always been to rescue the people living in Abbadon’s Castle, along with those imprisoned in his manufacturing plants or wherever else he had prisoners within his Keep, and return them to their homes. That would mean that Niko and Aki, as the small children of Tarla, would
return to the village, too. What we didn’t know was what that would mean to the adult Niko and Aki. Would they be the same ones we knew now?

  But that future “what if” question was never going to be something we would know until it happened. We had to take a bigger view and stop the destruction of Erda.

  Once again Teddy stood up at the front of the room to run the meeting. “I can tell you,” Teddy said, “that I can’t wait to turn this job back over to Niko. So the sooner we accomplish our mission, the sooner we can all go back to the lives we love.”

  “Here, here!” We all shouted as if we were English men in a bar. Then we laughed. We laughed for so many reasons. For what we said, for thinking our lives would be the same when we finished messing with the past, and because we were a long way from pulling anything off.

  Teddy continued, “In the past, we had John with us questioning everything about our plans. It made us think them through carefully. Since he is not here, and Princess Pumpkin Seeds loves to ask questions, I think we should have her voice the questions in her head that are probably in ours too. Because in order to have good answers, we need good questions.”

  Everyone at the table nodded their heads in agreement. Even the Priscillas nodded. As I looked around the table, it struck me how small of a team we were. It was Teddy, Pita, Aki, Garth, Anne, and Ruta. Only seven of us. Of course, Niko and Zeid were somewhere within Abbadon’s Keep. But back in our own timeline, we had left Professor Link, Beru, Sarah, Suzanne, Leif, Earl, and Ariel. Plus the four men from Kinver.

  I sighed. “Yes, I have questions. I guess the first one is, can the seven of us pull this off? But since we are going to try anyway, I have other questions.

  “First, I have more general questions that I think we should discuss, and then specific ones.”

  Aki broke in, “You’re right Kara Beth. We are going to have to say yes to the first question. Can we pull this off? Yes, we can. And to the part of the question you didn’t ask, ‘Are Zeid and Niko going to be able to do their part?’ Yes, they can, and will. Now that’s settled, let’s get on with the other questions.”