by T. S. Graham
Sophina brushed herself off and eyed her next obstacle. Maybe, if she aimed just a touch higher . . .
Whoosh. Sophina landed upright upon the crown of roots. Mrs. Tanner nodded her approval from the next ridge before dropping into the subsequent basin.
Sophina then followed the three cloaked figures through the peaks and valleys of the forest, picking up speed as her confidence grew. She fell just once more, when her foot snagged in a divot in the bark.
Just as she’d begun to master her newfound skill, she landed beside the others at the edge of a dirt road that had been cut straight through the roots.
“We’re safe now,” Mrs. Tanner said. “The sun will shine on this road until it sets.”
Sophina was quite sure the second part was true, given that there wasn’t a hint of shade to shield them from the sun’s sweltering rays. Why that made them safe she didn’t know, but it certainly made it hot beneath her vinyl raincoat.
Clouds of minute pink insects rose up from the hard-packed earth at their feet as the older man led them off down the road. Sophina tried to study these strange new life forms, but her eyes were constantly drawn to the surrounding forest out of fear that some horrific carnivore might charge out at them from the undergrowth.
Without warning, the tan-and-black beast leapt off the young man’s shoulder and landed at her feet. It sniffed her legs with its flexible nose as she stumbled backwards in a comical attempt to keep it at bay.
“He is curious about you,” said the young man with a boyish grin. “He will not bite, so long as you do not give him reason.”
Sophina stiffened as the inquisitive animal scaled her body using the three grasping toes on each of its four feet. It arrived on her shoulder in the blink of an eye and snuffled her ears and neck, eliciting a nervous giggle.
“He is pleased by you,” said the young man, his eyes looking less scary now that he had spoken. Sophina guessed that he was at most three years older than her, if people in his world aged the same way they did in hers.
“What’s his name?”
“His name is Tahra.”
“Tahra,” Sophina repeated. She touched the animal’s velvety fur. There was a hypnotic beauty in his blazing eyes. And the way he climbed with such ease—without the aid of claws—was unequaled by any animal she had seen or heard of.
“What’s your name?” she asked the young man, trying to put her fears aside.
“My name is Jantu. In your language, it means ‘son of leaders.’ ”
“Sounds important . . . and who is he?” She nodded to the older man, who looked far enough ahead to be out of earshot.
“His name is Talfore, and he is my father.”
“I thought so. You look like him, except for the tattoo on his neck.”
“You speak of his shahkam,” said Jantu with pride. “I will earn mine soon, when I prove myself to be a man.”
“You have to prove that?” Sophina asked. “Doesn’t that just . . . happen?”
Jantu seemed perplexed by the question but didn’t get a chance to respond, for Sophina had just yelped on account of Tahra lapping at her ear with his wet, anteater-style tongue.
“Tahra, geetah!” he commanded.
Tahra licked Sophina one last time and then sat still as a statue on her shoulder.
“Wow, he listened to you. What did you say to him?”
“I said ‘stop,’ ” Jantu explained, looking puzzled that she needed to ask.
“Of course you did,” Sophina said, more to herself than to him. “Do all of your people speak my language?”
“To my people, your world is not real,” responded Jantu. “The Elders allow only the Protectors to know of it. The Elders know every language of your world, and have taught much of your English to the Protectors.”
“I don’t understand,” Sophina admitted. “How can your Elders know every language? It doesn’t seem possible.”
Before Jantu could answer, a white blur shot past Sophina’s eyes. She turned to find a swarm of winged creatures streaking up toward the forest canopy. She couldn’t be sure from such a distance, but the appendages that dangled from their torpedo-shaped bodies looked very much like human arms and legs.
“—Graw!—”
Tahra’s yelp jolted Sophina, who quickly zeroed in on the cause of his excitement. Up ahead, a herd of massive animals with black-and-gray-striped fur foraged in a field of swaying grass. Each one had a crest of bone jutting from the top of its head, and a trunk, which was long like an elephant’s and wide like a tapir’s, and split at the end like a snake’s tongue.
She watched, awestruck, as the great beasts grasped huge clumps of the grass with their cloven trunks and yanked them up, roots and all. As stunning a sight as these animals were, it was the grass that garnered most of her attention. The blades were in constant motion, even without a hint of wind to propel them.
As they drew closer, Sophina realized that the blades were moving under their own power, writhing like worms as they were stuffed into gaping mouths. What she was looking at wasn’t grass at all. Each shoot was an individual animal! At least, she thought they were.
She watched with morbid fascination as the squirming plantimals were mashed into green paste by textbook-sized teeth. She marveled at the sheer bulk of the grazing creatures. Their eyes were as big as her head, with elliptical irises glowing red in the shadows of their protruding brows.
The largest goliath saw them coming and trumpeted a warning call, prompting the others to drop their writhing food and lower their heads in a threatening manner. Sophina was so alarmed that she backed straight into Mrs. Tanner.
“Do not fear the vacharos,” said Talfore with confidence. “They kill only when threatened. Many of them are friends to my people.” He nodded to a mass of orange insects that hovered around the vacharos’ legs. They were shaped like peanut shells, with wings twice the length of their bodies. “But the tey-teys—if one bites you, your eyes will shrivel and die . . . if fate is kind to you.”
Several tey-teys bumbled toward them as they skirted the agitated herd, but they flew far too slowly to pose a threat. One by one the vacharos returned to grazing as Mrs. Tanner arrived at Sophina’s side.
“Sophina, I have to ask you something: How did you know how to follow me?”
“There was a crack in your basement window. I saw everything.”
“I should’ve known.”
“Should’ve known what?”
“That all my attempts to protect you would backfire. I thought I could keep this place a secret by shunning everyone I was close to, but all I did was give you reason to suspect me when things went wrong.” She looked ahead to a place where the forest ended and the road sloped down out of view. “We’re nearing the edge of the valley. You should prepare yourself for what you’re about to see.”
After all that had already transpired, Sophina doubted there was much left that could shock her. But when they arrived at the point where the forest ended, she discovered she was mistaken about that.
“Sophina of Thomasville, welcome to Trellah,” said Talfore, as her breath was stolen away.
Straight ahead, at the base of a gentle slope, was a towering city of wood and stone. Boulder-fortified watchtowers rose above a thick perimeter wall that encircled scores of high-rise buildings—some reaching thirty stories or higher—and countless shorter, thatch-roofed structures. Huge stone-block pyramids with flattened peaks sat atop each of the dozen sections of wall that ran between the watchtowers. In turn, each pyramid supported a black metal cauldron the size of a backyard swimming pool.
The streets teemed with activity. Countless people dressed in earthy garments mingled amid vendors who displayed a dizzying array of goods in wooden carts.
Sophina’s eyes were drawn beyond the city, where a snowcapped mountain rose to staggering heights at the far shore of a steel-blue lake. A waterfall curved with the wind as it cascaded down the left side of the gray stone cliff that dominated the mountain�
�s face. To the right of the lake stood another forest of giant trees, but they looked like mere twigs in relation to the cliff. Even farther to the right was a glistening bay dotted with jagged islands, each a small mountain unto itself.
Sophina had never seen anyplace like it. Yet, somehow, the landscape seemed familiar. The scale of the topography was vastly different, yet it still reminded her of a place she knew better than any other.
“Mrs. Tanner? The mountain, and the lake . . . It looks like—”
“Home,” said Mrs. Tanner, finishing Sophina’s sentence. “I’ll explain why later. Right now we have to stay out of sight while Talfore and Jantu go to the city and retrieve a cloak for you. Our clothes should remain covered, but it’s our eyes that would cause the biggest stir if seen.”
“What are those things over their eyes?” Sophina asked as Talfore and Jantu descended the slope.
“All inhabitants of this world have fins of bone over their eyes,” Mrs. Tanner explained. “They say the gods provided the ridges to protect their eyes from the sun.”
Tahra chattered at Sophina from Jantu’s shoulder as the men continued toward the bustling metropolis, clearly upset that she was staying behind. She watched with amusement as he circled Jantu’s neck, but her attention wandered when she sensed movement out of the corner of her eye.
A pink, oval fruit swayed on a low hanging branch nearby. Deep in its core, behind translucent skin, was a pulsing red heart. Her surroundings faded to a blur as she walked toward the fruit, lost in the rhythmic motion of the heart. She reached out to pick it, but it moved beyond her grasp.
The pink beauty floated away, and Sophina followed. She swiped at it again, but the object of her desire slipped from her fingertips. She vaguely recalled someone telling her not to wander off, that it was too dangerous. But how could that be true when everything here was so peaceful? Unless . . .
Unless they wanted it for themselves, she thought. That’s what was happening, of course. Someone was trying to trick her into staying away from the fruit so they wouldn’t have to share it. But she had seen through their deception, and now she was just a few steps away from having everything that she had ever hoped for.
The fruit vanished—and Sophina’s trance was broken. She found herself standing before a giant hole burrowed into a hillside. Before she could blink, a vast mouth lined with hooked teeth lunged out from the hole. She felt her body being pulled backwards as two saliva-sodden flaps drew open like stage curtains at the back of a cavernous throat and a bulbous tongue shot through the gap, missing her face by mere inches.
When Sophina’s feet touched the ground they finally received the impulse from her brain to run. Her boots dug into the earth, but the hands that pulled her out of harm’s way continued to hold her tight.
“There’s no need to run,” Mrs. Tanner said in her ear. “You’re safe now.”
Sophina turned to face the cylindrical monstrosity that had somehow drawn her in. It was sprawled out on the ground, flaccid as a sack of jelly. Thousands of protrusions on its belly rowed like tiny oars against the earth to drag its hulking mass back into the tunnel, while the muscular appendages it used to launch itself forward hung useless at its sides. Its globular-tipped tongue lay in the dirt, retracting inch by inch into a mouth that was built for shearing flesh, and the pulsing lure that had hijacked her mind drooped at the end of a ropey tentacle that sprouted from its forehead, much like the decoy of a deep-sea anglerfish. This creature was built for a single burst of speed. Since its efforts had failed to secure a meal, it had to conserve its energy until the next target wandered by.
“I’ve seen many creatures get dragged into that mouth,” said Mrs. Tanner. “The resin on its tongue is stickier than any substance in our world. Had it hit you, I would’ve been powerless to stop it.”
Sophina shuddered at the thought of being dragged toward those dagger-like incisors, knowing that her death would have been slow and merciless.
“I allowed you to wander to prove a point. Animals are attracted to its lure because it smells irresistible to them. You, however, were drawn to it by a heavy concentration of this substance.” Mrs. Tanner removed a vial of glittering powder from her cloak and held it up for Sophina to see. “It’s called drahtuah, and just being near it can make you forget who you are; the greater its density, the stronger its effect.”
“Is it . . . magic?”
“I asked myself that same question at first, but after studying it, I realized that there’s nothing magical about it. The effects you’re feeling are actually chemical in nature. Come, I’ll explain as we walk. Talfore and Jantu will be back soon. I don’t want them to think that something happened to us.”
Sophina’s mind raced as they left the tubular beast behind. Countless questions formed in her mind at once, so many that she hadn’t a clue where to start.
“The elements of this world are virtually identical to those of our own,” Mrs. Tanner continued. “The only variance is the existence of drahtuah. Here, it’s everywhere. It’s in the atmosphere; it’s in the rocks and soil; and it’s being absorbed by the cells of your body as we speak.”
“That’s why your eyes are red,” Sophina reasoned, “because that stuff is inside them.”
“Your eyes have already begun to change,” Mrs. Tanner explained as she extracted a small plastic container from her cloak. “Soon, they’ll look no different from mine.” She opened the container and scooped a green contact lens from the liquid inside. “I wear these when I’m at home so I don’t scare anyone.”
“Is drahtuah dangerous?” Sophina asked, suddenly wishing she had a mirror.
“In its gaseous form, drahtuah is anything but,” Mrs. Tanner informed her. “It boosts the efficiency of our bodies at the cellular level—especially within the mitochondria, where a cell’s power is produced. That’s why you’re stronger now than you ever could’ve imagined. And your strength will continue to grow until the drahtuah in your body reaches equilibrium with what’s in the air.”
“But that’s its solid form, right?” Sophina reasoned as she again spotted the vial of powder in Mrs. Tanner’s hand. “How does it affect my mind when I haven’t even touched it?”
“Solid drahtuah is unspeakably dangerous,” Mrs. Tanner cautioned. “It emits a form of radiation that disrupts the nerve impulses in our brains, causing feelings of extreme euphoria. With time, you’ll develop a tolerance to this, as I have. I padded the lockbox that I stored the vials in with lead to contain the radiation, but clearly some slipped through the seams. I should have buried it from the start, because even a small amount of earth blocks all of the radiation.”
“The vrahkole I saw had a piece of drahtuah the size of my hand,” Sophina recalled. “No wonder Eliot wouldn’t listen to me; he couldn’t.”
“A concentration of that magnitude would have a profound effect on a child so young,” said Mrs. Tanner. “Nothing shy of physical restraint would’ve stopped him from following that vrahkole. The drahtuah in this vial is a scraping from a larger stone, so its effects are diminished. Luckily, solid drahtuah is rare. This valley and the surrounding mountains are some of the only places in this world it’s known to exist.”
“So, how does drahtuah make it possible for us to come here?”
“Do you remember our class on outer space, when we discussed how the vast distances between galaxies aren’t as empty as they first appear? Every inch is filled with strands of an almost-undetectable material left over from the Big Bang. Physicists refer to it as the fabric of space-time.”
“Sure,” replied Sophina. “You said it might be possible to punch a hole in the fabric, which could be used to travel through time, or even to another dimension. You called it a ‘wormhole.’ I never forget cool stuff like that.”
Mrs. Tanner’s eyes sparkled with satisfaction.
“It’s believed that the amount of energy required to create a wormhole would have to exceed the total output of the sun,” she said, sounding like th
e teacher Sophina used to love, “but it turns out that’s not true. It isn’t the volume of energy that’s important—it’s the type. When changing from a solid to a gas, drahtuah atoms repel each other like opposing sides of a magnet, and that makes it extremely volatile. So volatile, in fact, that all it takes to trigger a reaction is contact with moisture.”
“Water . . . So that’s what the liquid in the other vials was.”
“The reaction is perfectly coded to dissolve the fabric that separates our worlds—in much the same way that an enzyme breaks down food. It took me weeks to determine the least amount of powder needed to create a portal. And by using a glass vial to control the direction of its escape, I’ve greatly reduced the risk to myself and others.”
“But . . . that means there’s still a risk.”
“You’re fortunate to have arrived here in one piece,” Mrs. Tanner confirmed. “The reaction destroys anything organic it comes into contact with: flesh; the grass of your lawn; even the wooden support beams of my house, which nearly collapsed on me twice before I learned my lesson. I was lucky that the reaction dissolves wood rather than burns it. It would’ve been a heck of a thing to explain to the chief if my house had caught fire.”
“That’s why you built the lead doorway,” Sophina reasoned. “Lead isn’t organic, so the reaction doesn’t affect it.”
“I’m glad that you weren’t hurt,” said Mrs. Tanner as she took Sophina by the hand. “If you were, I never could’ve forgiven myself.”
Sophina would have been comforted by Mrs. Tanner’s words, but an embarrassing memory had reared its ugly head. She told her about the vial that she’d dropped in the basement, and how she had failed to retrieve it. To Sophina’s surprise, Mrs. Tanner didn’t seem angry at all.
“I assumed that you’d left at least one vial behind,” she said. “Your mother seemed to have no reaction at all to the radiation, which might explain why you have a high tolerance. Perhaps there’s a genetic link.”
“Chief Dresden sensed it, though,” Sophina pointed out. “I could see it in his eyes.”