by Lou Aronica
“Totally luck,” Becky said, grinning.
“Nice work,” said the kid who’d scowled at her on the previous play. “You can stop twirling now.”
Becky looked up at her pole and realized she was still keeping the disk aloft. She stopped twirling the pole and the disk dropped to the ground.
“Ready to try covering a receiver?” another kid said.
That sounded like fun and Becky thought it was nice that the kid was expressing confidence in her— even though the score she made was entirely accidental—but she wondered how much time she had left in Tamarisk tonight. It was probably best for her to get back on the waccasassa.
“Thanks, but I really have to go.”
“Where are you going?” the Caitlin Krieger girl said.
“My ride is waiting for me. Thanks again for letting me play.”
She said good-bye to the others, clicking poles with a couple before putting hers down on the sidelines, and then walked over the hill. By the time she got to the waccasassa, she could hear the sounds of the game resuming.
They were in the air again quickly. A few minutes into their flight, the gull swooped lower until it was maybe only a few dozen feet above the ground. It tilted to the left and Becky thought they were about to land, but the waccasassa continued on. The angle was a little uncomfortable for Becky and she shifted around to the degree she could. Doing so caused her to look down and she realized that the angle the bird was flying at gave her a clear view of the ground below.
And it was quite a view. Where much of the skyline near the palace and in the other places she’d visited today was blue with foliage and dotted with roads and villages, they traveled now over a huge expanse of water. Rolling waves of turquoise—a reflection of the Tamariskian sky—filled Becky’s entire field of vision. Occasionally, Becky spied islands that seemed to be made of undulating plastic billowing in the wind, as though huge garbage bags rose up in spots from under the surface. Becky knew, though, that they were neither plastic nor billowing.
The bloat marshes. The waccasassa was taking her to one of the most exotic of all of her Tamarisk creations.
The bird dipped again and now they were practically skimming the water. Becky saw the waves flutter under them, surely a reaction to the size of the waccasassa and its enormous wingspan. She could feel moisture on her face as they got closer. At last, the bird righted itself and stepped down into a landing, its footing surprisingly solid on the roiling surface.
Becky stood up and looked outward. The island was so small that she could see water on all sides of her. The water wasn’t the attraction here, though. She got down from the bird and took a few tentative steps forward. As she did, the smooth, glistening ground in front of her rippled first outward, then inward, and then sideways. A moment later, the earth swelled into a large bubble and the bubble rolled to the edge of the island before subsiding. As was true everywhere in Tamarisk, the sounds of nature were musical. Here, though, the sound was nearly entirely percussive—pings and chimes and snaps and booms.
Becky wasn’t sure where to walk. At any moment, something could come along and trip her or send her onto her butt. Still, she had to explore. She moved in the direction directly ahead of the waccasassa’s beak— was that north, south, some other direction entirely that only existed here?—and tried to anticipate the movement of the rolling ground. She wasn’t entirely successful, slipping after only a few steps and finding herself on one knee just a few steps after that. She put both hands on the ground to prop herself up. When she did, a tiny ripple ran under her and stopped about a foot away from her left hand. Out popped the head of a slim, gilled red lizard Becky had long ago named a coweeta. It shook its head back and forth so quickly that the motion seemed a blur, and then it stopped and looked straight at Becky. Its eyes narrowed and it began to rise out of its hole. For more than a minute, it continued to rise. The coweeta was less than an inch across, but its body was dozens of feet long. Becky didn’t move the entire time this was happening, watching as it stepped and stepped and stepped to her left. When the lizard’s stubby tail finally emerged from the hole, it turned and began to walk back toward Becky. It made one circuit on the ground beneath Becky’s arms and legs and then turned again and began to crawl up one of her arms.
Becky wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this. It was very cool to be interacting with Tamariskian wildlife this way, but this was a little like having a huge centipede crawling on you—a huge centipede with leathery skin and prickly little claws. Still, she didn’t move. The coweeta rose onto her shoulders. If this thing goes down the collar of my shirt, I’m gonna have to get it out of there. Then it walked to her right shoulder—of course some of it was still on the ground at this point— and then down her other arm. When its forelegs reached the other side, the coweeta made eye contact with Becky again and then skittered surprisingly quickly back down its hole. When it was gone, the hole disappeared as well. Becky felt a series of tiny pinpricks everywhere the coweeta had stepped on her. It was very bizarre, but also kind of refreshing in a strange way. Maybe this was what acupuncture was like.
Becky finally got to her feet. As soon as she did, another bubble emerged from the right and continued to roll all the way to an edge of the island. This time instead of subsiding, though, the thing that created the bubble—a jornada—rolled its gelatinous body onto the island. The jornada was translucent, maybe six feet in diameter. It looked a little bit like a jellyfish and a little bit like a huge glob of rubber cement. Becky had no idea where to look when she looked at it. She remembered that the amphibious creature “saw” with the outer layer of its skin but that its vision really only identified heat patterns. It was impossible to tell if the thing was looking at her, though she knew it had to be aware of her. In fact, it was likely that it had come to the surface because she was here.
Becky was fascinated with the thing, but she wasn’t entirely sure if she should approach it. She and her father had developed their creatures with a great deal of detail, but she couldn’t remember all of them and they never worked out every single thing. What if one of the characteristics they hadn’t worked out was that the jornada was highly poisonous or liked to attach itself to the bodies of humans and live there for several months? This made Becky hesitate for a moment or two, but ultimately the thing was just too interesting to ignore. She stepped forward, her footfalls of course challenged by the movement of coweetas, gwynedds, farallons, and whatever else lived under the surface.
She got within ten feet of the jornada when suddenly it melted. Its entire body liquefied and spread out, with some of the liquid pooling around her feet. We definitely didn’t think up that part. Then, just as quickly, it sucked itself together and rolled back under the surface. Its bubble skimmed the “plastic” for a few feet and then subsided.
Did I scare it?
Was that its way of saying “hello?”
Becky bent down again to run her hands along the ground. So smooth. So elastic. Yet if she stuck a finger-nail in it, it came up just like normal dirt. This was one of their more outrageous inventions.
She was about to explore further when the waccasassa trumpeted. This was the first sound she’d heard the bird make and at first, she didn’t realize where it was coming from. The gull very quickly repeated itself, though, and Becky stood and turned in that direction. The waccasassa’s beak pointed to the ground. When Becky didn’t move toward it right away, it trumpeted again and then moved its beak downward.
I guess he’s telling me we have to leave. Becky patted the dirt—which rippled outward—once more and then climbed back onto the waccasassa. The bird flew at much greater height this time and they seemed to be moving even faster than they had before. It was difficult to see much of anything at this altitude, so Becky closed her eyes and allowed herself simply to feel the sensation of flying. She felt the bird’s dips and curves and opened her eyes only once when the waccasassa hit some turbulence.
She opened them again when
she felt the bird descend, recognizing the outskirts of the palace, and then the palace itself. Her tour was obviously over. The bird landed gently in the same field from which they’d taken off. Sorbus was waiting for her and Becky wondered if he’d been standing there the entire time she was gone.
“Did you have a good flight?” he said when she stepped down.
“Amazing. Thank you so much for suggesting this.”
Sorbus nodded. “It was really Her Majesty who suggested it. She’s returned to her chambers, by the way. She has a few minutes before her next meeting.”
“Do you think I can see her?”
“I’m sure she would like that.”
Sorbus led Becky inside and into Miea’s chambers. It seemed a little strange to Becky that Miea would be here rather than her office with only a few minutes before her next meeting, but Becky was just happy to have the chance to say hi. When she got to her room, though, Miea’s expression seemed dark and her greeting just this side of polite.
“I’m disturbing you, aren’t I?” Becky said.
Miea offered a little smile. “No, of course not. Sorbus tells me that you went for a ride on our waccasassa. Did you enjoy that?”
“How could I not enjoy that? Everything about this place is incredible—the people, the wildlife, the landscapes . . .”
Miea uttered a huge sigh and muttered, “Yes, the landscapes.”
Becky hadn’t seen Miea like this before. She’d seen her tired and sad, but this was something else, something that made Becky feel a little frightened. “What’s wrong?”
Miea sighed again and gazed up at the ceiling. When she looked back down, she looked directly at Becky and it seemed to Becky that something had completely overwhelmed Miea.
“We may not have the landscape much longer,” the queen said.
The words chilled Becky. “What are you talking about?”
Miea shook her head sadly. “I didn’t want to burden you with this. I wanted your visits here to be joyful and carefree. However, I’m too upset to put up a façade today, Becky. I’ve just been through the single worst meeting of my entire life.” Miea sat up and leaned forward a little. She gestured for Becky to sit, which was good because at this point, Becky wasn’t sure she could stand much longer. “Tamarisk is experiencing a terrible blight. It has destroyed numerous fields already and the disease is eating away at more of our land daily. Today I learned that the blight wiped out the niwot, an insect native to Jonrae. A creature that has existed throughout time is gone because of this pestilence.”
Becky felt tears come to her eyes. “That’s awful.”
Miea closed her eyes and then opened them slowly. “It is awful. It is not, however, the most awful thing about this. The most awful thing is that the efforts of the most valued scientists in Tamarisk have brought us virtually no information about the blight. We have no idea what causes it. None.”
“And if you don’t know what causes it . . .”
“. . . then we don’t know how to cure it.”
Becky couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This gorgeous world, a world that had seemed so magical to her just minutes earlier, was in serious trouble. The blight had already killed one species here. Would it eventually kill all of Tamarisk?
“I think I saw a blighted field today.”
Miea’s eyebrows lowered. “You saw a blighted field? That certainly wasn’t on your agenda. Do you know where this was?”
Becky shrugged. “I don’t know where I was, but it was almost all gray.”
Miea nodded. “That’s what the plants look like in the final stages.”
“I’m so sorry, Miea.”
Miea reached out for Becky’s hand and squeezed it. “I know you are. You can only imagine how sorry I feel myself. Much deeper than my sorrow, though, is my sense of helplessness. I refuse to believe that there’s nothing to do about this. However, every day I get a little closer to believing just that.”
Becky held on to Miea’s hand. Her fingers seemed cold. “Is there anything I can do? I want to help.”
Miea tightened her grip. “Who knows? Maybe there is. Thank you for offering.”
“It’s my place, too.”
Miea’s expression brightened the tiniest bit. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Becky flashed on Rubus’s face in her memory. “There was a boy in the field with me. I’m pretty sure he came from Gunnthorn, though he didn’t exactly say it.”
Miea’s eyes opened wide. “A Thorn boy? What was he doing?”
“He was putting plants in a bag. He said he was doing research.”
“I knew it. I knew they were involved with this somehow. Becky, can you tell me anything else about the boy or about the field?”
“I don’t know where we were. The waccasassa flew really fast to get there, though. Do the birds have any, I don’t know, records you can access?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“The boy told me his name was Rubus. I didn’t get his last name.”
This information seemed to confuse the queen for a moment. “The vice chancellor’s son.”
“That guy was the son of the vice chancellor of Gunnthorn?”
Miea glowered. Becky had never seen her look this intense before. “I think so. And we’re going to confront him.”
Becky wasn’t sure what to say next. She looked up at Miea, but when she did, she felt a tug, as though someone was pulling at her from behind. She knew what this meant all too well. “I’ll be back soon,” she said quickly. She had no idea if Miea heard her, though, because she felt a strong jolt, then darkness, and then the firm presence of her mattress beneath her.
She was back in bed. The waccasassa, the bloat marshes, and all of Tamarisk were cut off from her for the night.
She thought about the blight and the boy she’d met who might have helped cause it. She knew the reality of that tragedy would stay with her.
She looked down at her fingers and noticed they were clean. The Tamariskian dirt was gone from them. It wasn’t gone from her heart, though. It would always be there.
Becky stared up at the ceiling and envisioned the queen’s sad expression. She needed to do something to help Miea and Tamarisk. They meant too much to her not to do everything she could.
She couldn’t lose this place now that she’d found it.
13
Becky was always beautiful to Chris. She had been beautiful when he’d held her a minute after she was born, even with a ruddy face and puffy eyes. She had been beautiful when she was a toddler with long wavy hair, an easy smile, and a permanently inquisitive expression. She had been beautiful when all of that hair was gone and her inquisitiveness had turned to worry. And she was beautiful now, walking into the living room at a little before ten on a Sunday morning. Still, Chris couldn’t help noticing that Becky looked worn out, as though she were awakening from a wild night on the town. She seemed more subject to gravity, more weighed down. It was as though sleep hadn’t refreshed her but rather debilitated her.
How much of this had to do with her “journeys” to Tamarisk? Was there something about this that was hurting her physically (even if she wasn’t really going there; Chris still couldn’t decide how to feel about this)? She definitely seemed more haggard in the mornings since she’d started talking about that world again.
“Hey, babe,” he said as she sat down at one of the chairs across from him, rubbing her eyes. “You feel okay?”
Becky took a deep breath and then drew herself up. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You look a little wasted.”
“Nah, I’m okay. I think I might be getting a cold or something.”
She gave him the faux smile he’d seen often the last few years and not at all in the past few weeks. How was he supposed to interpret that? Did it mean that there was something more than a cold going on here? Did it mean that she didn’t want him to worry about something? Did it mean that she didn’t feel comfortable talking to him about whatever was bothering her?
Since he didn’t want to press it, he decided to take another tack.
“How’s Miea doing?”
Becky’s response couldn’t have surprised him more if she had turned into the queen herself. Seemingly out of nowhere, her lips started quivering and her eyes filled with tears. One tear ran rapidly from her eyes to her chin. “Dad, something terrible is happening.”
“Becky, what’s wrong?”
She sniffled and then took another deep breath. Chris couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his daughter cry, and it unnerved him to watch her attempt to pull herself together.
“Becky, what is it?”
She closed her eyes, causing another tear to run down her face. “Tamarisk is in serious trouble. A blight is destroying everything. Species are dying. No one knows how to fix it.”
When Becky was three, Chris had come home one night to find her weeping because Chester, her stuffed purple basset hound, had gone to the hospital. It turned out that one of her preschool friends had broken her leg and was in traction, and Becky had transferred her anxiety and confusion over this to one of her favorite toys. Was something like that going on here? Back then, Chris warmed up a can of chicken noodle soup for Chester and the dog was better within the hour.
“What kind of blight is it?”
“No one knows! They can’t figure out anything. All Miea knows is that it’s destroying the kingdom. She thinks the Thorns might even be involved.”
“They’ll fix it, babe. I’m sure they have a lot of people working on it.”
“They have everyone working on it. But nothing’s helping.”
If Becky was imagining this, it was more vivid than any flight of fancy he’d ever known her to experience before. There was no doubt in Chris’s mind that this was entirely real to her. Even at their most creative moments of Tamarisk storytelling, he’d never seen her get this worked up over a dramatic turn of events.