by Linda McNabb
Trianna looked shaken by Aldren’s words, and for once had nothing to say. Guyan walked up to Zaine and grabbed him by the arm. She started to walk towards the trees with urgency in her step that puzzled Zaine. Davyn and Maata followed a few steps behind, but Trianna and the others stayed to examine the Circle of Dreams.
“I want you to free Jelena,” she said as they reached the trees.
Zaine stopped, forcing Guyan to stop also. His heart skipped a beat and he stared at the rune-marked girl to see if he had heard properly. “Pardon me?”
“If Jelena can never go home anyway, she might as well live a life here. Anything would be better than being stuck in that time-loop forever.” Guyan looked as if she had made up her mind. “I miss my sister.”
“What if I get it wrong?” Zaine said in the tiniest squeak of a voice. He couldn’t bear to think how he would feel if he harmed Guyan’s little sister.
“You won’t,” Guyan said confidently, and then pulled him on towards her wooden castle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN - REVERSING A TIME-LOOP
By the time they reached the carved doors of the castle, Zaine was convinced that this was a very bad idea. Guyan hurried him on through the rooms until they reached the one where Jelena sat playing endlessly with her blocks.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” Zaine said, feeling the words sticking in his throat. He wanted to help, but was terrified of getting it wrong.
Guyan looked worried for a second, and then picked up the golden runebook. “I’ve been studying this for a long time and I doubt I could have woven a better time-loop than the one you did a short while ago. I am confident you will free Jelena.”
Zaine cast a worried glance at Davyn and Maata, who had stopped just inside the door, but they smiled their encouragement. He walked over to the rune circle which surrounded Guyan’s little sister and examined it. After walking around it five times he felt no more confident than he had when he walked in. He wished Aldren had not told him how much could go wrong.
“I want her to see her mother one last time,” Guyan said quietly. “And to do that, you must release her before the starlink fades.”
Zaine looked over at the rune-marked girl and saw a single tear trickle down her cheek. He nodded, knowing that he had to try. His fears were nothing compared to what Guyan had gone through. He moved to where the circle began and crouched low to the ground.
“I will need some quiet,” he said. He knew that nobody would have interrupted anyway, but he felt he needed to say something to let them know that he was about to start. He placed his finger above the first rune and was about to begin when the wind suddenly blew in the windows and stirred up a little dust. A glance at the window told him what he had already guessed. The white, fluffy storm dragons were huddled together so they could all fit into the window frame, but they did not attempt to come any closer. They fell still, and the breeze vanished as they watched with misty eyes.
“The storm dragons want to watch,” Guyan said with a small smile. “They love Jelena.”
Zaine drew in a deep breath to settle his nerves. It was hard enough already, but now he had the wrath of the storm dragons to deal with if he got it wrong.
“You can do it, Zaine,” Maata encouraged softly.
Zaine squared his shoulders and turned back to the rune circle. He knew he had to actually trace these runes to reverse the time-loop. Just saying them would not be enough to free the little girl, as the rune circle had been drawn when the time-loop was first created. Drawing the runes was a much stronger spell than spoken words.
He placed his finger firmly on the beginning of the spell and then lifted his finger quickly. He had almost forgotten that he had to do the runes in reverse. His heart began to beat a little faster as he repositioned himself so that he was ready to trace the last rune.
He forced his breathing to slow down, and then focused his entire mind on the runes and began to trace them. He had thought it would be slightly easier with the runes right there in front of him, but he was wrong. He almost faltered after speaking the first one when the rune vanished as he finished tracing it. With an effort of concentration that he hadn’t know he possessed, he ignored the vanishing rune and continued. The circle hadn’t seemed very big when he started, but now it felt like it was going on forever. He followed around the runes, ignoring the sweat that dripped into his eyes, stinging and almost blinding him. He blinked madly, trying to focus on the runes through eyes blurred with tears.
He traced the final rune with a stroke so firm that it hurt his finger, and the tears that ran down his cheeks were not from the sting of sweat. He had done it – the last rune faded away. He sank back on his heels and rubbed his eyes with his sleeve, then looked for confirmation that the time-loop was gone.
“Did it work?” Maata was whispering to Davyn.
Jelena, the storm dragons hissed excitedly.
Guyan was standing motionless, and Zaine stood up and went to stand beside her. The blue haze which had surrounded Jelena had gone, but she still played with her blocks. The familiar pattern of a block falling and the little girl giggling made Zaine’s heart drop to his feet. Had it worked?
“Guyan, come play!” The little girl looked up and grinned at her big sister. Then she noticed the rest of the people in the room and put down her blocks. “Do they want to play too?”
“Maybe later,” Guyan replied, then rushed up and hugged the young girl who looked astonished at receiving such a big hug. The storm dragons raced into the room and zoomed around the two of them, humming a tune that filled Zaine with joy.
How can we thank you? One of the storm dragons sighed as it wove around Zaine at a speed that made him feel dizzy.
Zaine hadn’t expected thanks and he stared blankly at the cloudy dragon for a few seconds before an idea came to him. “Could you change the runebooks at Willow Castle back into weavers and anyone else who was struck down? It was all my fault and they should not be punished for my mistake.”
The dragon seemed to consider this request and flew back to the other dragons. It returned within seconds.
It will be done. Two of the storm dragons raced out the window and up into the sky. The sky darkened and a loud crack of thunder rumbled through the wooden castle. The rumble seemed to fade off into the distance very slowly as if it were travelling across the land. Zaine hoped that that meant that everyone back at Willow Castle would soon be restored to their normal state. The two storm dragons did not return and Zaine wondered how long it would take them to make the journey there and back.
“We should leave Guyan and Jelena alone for a while.” Davyn’s voice right next to him, made Zaine jump in surprise.
Zaine nodded, and he, Maata and Dayvn backed out of the room, leaving the sisters to get reacquainted.
By the time they had all reached the base of the tree, they could hear footsteps coming down behind them.
“I want to see Mama!” Jelena’s excited voice drifted down to them, and a few seconds later the blonde-haired child came almost tumbling down the steps in her slightly oversized leather shoes. She wriggled past Zaine and Maata and ran towards the Circle of Dreams.
Trianna, Calard and Tercel were further around, looking closely at the runes, but Jelena did not even notice them. Instead she ran right up to the invisible barrier at the edge of the circle and leaned on it, pressing her nose right into it.
“Mama!” she called, as if expecting the weeping woman beyond to hear her. “Mama!”
Guyan came down the steps at a much slower pace and looked sadly at the child pressed against the Circle of Dreams.
“This is why I put her in a time-loop. She was so upset; it seemed cruel to let her suffer. I was sure I would find a way to send her home,” Guyan said quietly. “I was wrong.”
The vision beyond the runes flickered and darkened.
Jelena turned and looked at Guyan with horror and shock. “Where did Mama go?”
Guyan did not reply, but walked over to join her sis
ter and put a comforting arm around the little girl. The view into Guyan’s world shimmered back into view. The air was as still as Zaine had ever known it – even the trees were motionless as Guyan’s voice carried clearly back to them. “The starlink is broken.”
For a moment Jelena looked puzzled, then turned back to look at the forlorn figure weeping by the circle of stones. She threw herself at the circle and beat her hands against the unforgiving barrier. “Mama, I want to come home!”
Zaine gulped back a lump, knowing he was partly at fault for the destruction of yet another circle. This time, though, it wasn’t going to help anyone. Jelena had sunk to the ground and was sobbing loudly.
“I have to find a way to send her home,” Zaine muttered to himself, but Maata overheard and nodded in agreement.
After several long minutes, Jelena stopped crying and sat staring at the vision that faded in and out of view with a look of resignation that Zaine had seen before when he had first met Guyan. It was a look that did not seem right on the face of such a young girl.
Zaine walked around the perimeter of the starlink. He said the runes silently in his head as he went, and after only a dozen runes he stopped and looked over at Maata and Guyan.
“These are the same as the runes on the Circle of Dreams back at Willow Castle,” he told them.
“Aldren copied them and cast the runes exactly as they are here – but it did not create a starlink that led home,” Guyan explained.
Zaine turned back and continued to pace around the runes, hoping that a solution would come to him as he walked. He came to where Trianna, Calard and Tercel stood talking. They were holding the small wooden crown from Guyan’s castle.
“Who said it had to be a golden crown?” Trianna was saying, examining the smooth surface of the inside of the crown. “I remember the first few runes on the crown.”
“And I remember some of the ones at the end,” Calard added.
“Surely we can work out the ones in the middle,” Trianna said with a slight snort. “How hard can it be?”
“So we can bind the dragons to a wooden crown?” Tercel seemed less convinced than the others. “And it will sing?”
They fell silent as they noticed Zaine walking the edge of the rune circle, and they watched him as he walked past. Zaine was willing to bet they hadn’t even noticed Jelena yet. They were so wrapped up in their desire to create a crown that they saw nothing else. He wondered if he should be trying to stop them attempting to trap the storm dragons.
“Then I will name the successor,” Trianna said as Zaine walked off.
“No, I will,” Calard argued quickly.
“Maata is the only contender close enough to crown,” Trianna reminded Calard. “We don’t have time to go back to see if any of the others survived the storm. She may be the only one left.”
“We will take the crown back to Willow Castle,” Calard said with a scowl.
“Then I will not help you bind the dragons.” Trianna stormed off with the wooden crown, Calard and Tercel following only a step behind.
Zaine knew there would be no runes cast on the wooden crown any time soon, as the two weavers would not be able to agree on who to crown. He turned his attention back to the circle and completed a lap of it without seeing anything that would help. It was the same as the circle back at Willow Castle, except for the stone pillars that mirrored those inside the circle.
Guyan and Maata were taking Jelena back to the castle and the others were resting a short distance away, so Zaine began another trip around the runes. Perhaps he had missed something. The view of Guyan and Jelena’s world faded for a dozen heartbeats, and Zaine stared into the black hole of nothingness, wondering if it had gone.
The green grass and golden dragons on stones flickered back into view and Zaine breathed a sigh of relief. He leaned on one of the tall stones, soothed by the coolness that seeped into his hands. He ran his hands down the stone and then froze and frowned. He moved his hands back up and then down. Runes. There were runes marked on the stones themselves.
Zaine knelt to look at the stones and saw very faint markings running down the back of the stone. It wasn’t a complete circle, though, it ran up one side to the top and then back down the other.
“No wonder Aldren’s circle didn’t work,” Zaine whispered as he examined the runes. “He missed a whole section out.”
“What have you found?” Davyn asked. Aldren followed and Zaine pointed out the runes on the stones.
“That makes a big difference,” Aldren said as he ran his hand down the runes. “But some of these are ones I’ve never seen before. I would not have been able to create a circle like this anyway.”
“Where does the rune circle begin and end?” Zaine asked. An idea was forming in his mind, but he wasn’t sure what it was just yet.
“Over here.” Aldren pointed at a spot in between two of the tall stones. It was marked by a red rock dug into the ground next to it. “It took me years to work out that spot. I put that rock there so I could find it easily while I was learning the runes.”
Zaine put his fingers under the rock and pried it loose. He picked up the smooth red rock and turned it over in his hands. Aldren stared at him with a confused look, and Davyn leaned closer to see what he was doing.
“There’s nothing special about that rock,” Aldren assured Zaine. “I took it from the stream. I needed something small enough not to disturb the circle, but big enough to find the same spot again.”
Zaine looked at the red, flat stone again and then leaned forward and placed it right between the first and last runes of the circle. It fitted perfectly, touching both runes but not covering either one.
“What are you planning to do?” Davyn asked.
“I can’t fix the circle,” Zaine said slowly, looking over where the runes had been almost obliterated by the storm dragons’ lightning, “but I might be able to add to it.”
“Add what?” Aldren asked, looking very interested.
“A door to allow Guyan and Jelena to go home,” Zaine replied and couldn’t help but grin. He knew it was possible. He picked up the stone and scratched at it, but when he couldn’t even dent the hard-baked surface, his joy dimmed.
Then he looked up at the wispy clouds that drifted in circles above the castle. “But I think I’ll need help from the storm dragons.”
CHAPTER TWELVE - GOING HOME
“Who’s going to ask them?” Aldren asked. The shake in his voice indicated it wasn’t going to be him. “I don’t think they’ll want to have anything to do with a starlink again.”
“I will,” Zaine answered with more confidence than he felt. He knew he couldn’t sit around and wait for the right time to go and ask them. Time had all but run out.
“I’ll come with you,” Davyn offered.
Zaine nodded his acceptance of his father’s offer, and the three weavers headed out into the field where the storm had confronted them a short time ago. Two white cloudy dragons were streaking across the sky from the direction of Willow Castle, and they re-joined their kin and began racing around making shapes and chasing one another.
Aldren, Davyn and Zaine stopped in the middle of the field, and Zaine looked up at the clouds and began to yell.
“I need your help!” he called out, not knowing if he should be using any formal titles or forms of greeting. The storm dragons paused in their play for a few seconds and stared down at the three weavers. “I need your help to send Jelena and Guyan home.”
That got an immediate response – the wispy clouds formed into almost-solid white dragons and dived down towards the weavers at a rate that made Zaine want to make a run for it. The storm dragons came to an abrupt halt an inch from Zaine’s face, and all of them crowded together to stare at him.
Guyan cannot go. She must stay here, they whispered in unison. It is her duty to stay away.
You can send the little one home, though, one hissed softly, blowing Zaine’s hair back and making the young weaver squint into the
gust of wind. Are you able to?
“I think so,” Zaine replied a little hesitantly. He still hadn’t worked out the details of his plan, but he couldn’t see a reason why it wouldn’t work.
How can we help? Another dragon asked, bobbing up and down in eagerness at the thought of helping Jelena return to her own world.
“The runes in your circle, your starlink, are damaged. The link to your world will be lost in a very short time.” Zaine pointed back to the circle.
We do not wish to be trapped in another rune circle, the largest dragon hissed, so strongly that Zaine had to take a step backwards to avoid falling over. Even if it means we are stuck here forever – we will not mend the circle.
Zaine brought out the small, flat, red stone and cradled it in his palm. He held it out for the dragons to see. “I could change the circle to let Jelena return home. I need to create part of the circle on this stone. Creating it myself would take a long time. Your lightning will be much faster and we don’t have much time.”
We will not create a circle again, the dragon hissed angrily and the clouds darkened a little.
“This stone is not a full circle. It is only a few simple runes,” Zaine assured them quickly. “Nobody will be trapped.”
Zaine watched the expressions on the cloudy faces. They clearly didn’t trust him, but the temptation to help the tiny blonde child return home was holding their attention.
We must discuss this with Guyan, came a gentle whisper as the dragons faded away and shot up into the sky. They spun around in a circle then shot straight at the trees which held the wooden castle.
A minute later Guyan came hurrying down from the castle, with Jelena and Maata close behind. Trianna, Calard and Tercel had finally seen that something was going on and were heading towards Zaine to find out what it was. The storm dragons arrived long before any of the others, and they hovered impatiently for a few seconds before taking off to push Guyan along, carrying her almost effortlessly across the field. They dropped her a few paces away and returned to their restless hovering.