by C. J. Farley
Nestuh’s mother continued: “Anancy told the creatures of Xamaica, When we pass from this world, we live our lives inside out. If you have sown hate, you will reap it. If you have loved, you will be loved. Truly, I say, you will find yourself in a web that you yourself have spun. Will you be as content as Nestuh in the heaven that you create?”
The gust took the cocoon off the cliff, over the water, twisting into the sky. Thus Nestuh, the spider who couldn’t weave a web, was borne spinning, at last, into the afterlife.
The kids had lost Nanni and Nestuh; Ines, despite a long search, found no traces of her dad. This all took some getting over. In fact, they were things you could never really get over. Xamaica was rebuilding after the fall of the Baron. The Golden Grove had collapsed, and the trees and their golden bark had turned to dust. The Green Cloud was gone, replaced by blue sky. The hummingbirds were constructing nests closer to the ground now, and getting jobs that required a little less gambling and a lot more talent. Dylan, his sister, and his friends lingered in Xamaica—Ines spent most of her time searching for traces of her father—but after months passed, and the time felt right, they decided to depart.
“I never thought I’d say it, but I’m feeling a little homesick,” Dylan confessed. “I miss the Professor. I even miss her birdcalls.”
“I know the feeling,” Eli agreed. “I’m dying for some carne asada.”
Dylan tucked Nanni’s book under his arm. “Are you guys sure? We only have one trip left.”
Ines and Eli answered together: “Let’s do this.”
And so Hope Road appeared one last time and took the children where they needed to go.
* * *
The children materialized in the game room in the Mee Mansion. They poured out of the portal and splashed onto the floor of the chamber, perfectly dry.
The black tablet, which had been door-sized, now shrank to the size of a book again. A single crack ran down it. Nobody would be crossing into Xamaica that way again.
The kids looked like their old selves. Eli was in his chair, Ines had her long glossy locks, Emma had her pirate doll back, and Dylan was Dylan. In terms of Earth-time, they had only been gone for one night. No doubt there were all sorts of folks looking for them.
Dylan noticed that Emma still had her cutlass. “You never know,” she shrugged.
Tears suddenly sprang into Ines’s dark eyes and she turned her face away.
“What’s the matter?” Eli asked.
Ines tried to choke back sobs. “I’m just thinking about my dad—”
An odd melody floated into the room. Someone was playing the piano.
Dylan cupped a hand to his ear. “That’s the tune that unlocked the game.”
Ines’s eyes opened wide. “The one my father used to hum!”
It was hard to tell where it was coming from. The Mee Mansion was a big place and the sound seemed to echo through every wall. The melody that they had played to launch the game was only a few notes. Whoever was playing now had turned it into something grander. The music was alternately melancholy and exuberant, moving along in gentle passages before bursting into celebrations of sound that seemed to shake the floors, rattle the walls, and jangle the ceiling.
“It’s coming from the piano room!” Eli said.
The kids were running now, and Eli was rolling as fast as he could. Ines made it there first and promptly screamed, “Dad?”
Dr. Mee was sitting at a piano in a room full of pianos. The other instruments had all been rigged to play what he was playing, and so the room, the whole mansion, was filled with music. Now a hundred pianos stopped playing all at once. Dr. Mee looked up from the keyboard and smiled. He stood up, raised his goggles, and adjusted his lab coat. Ines ran to him and they embraced for a long time as the echoes of the pianos gradually faded away into the far-off corners of the house.
“My little warrior,” Dr. Mee said, brushing back a lock of Ines’s hair. “That was the last song your mother ever wrote. How curious that it should bring you back to me!”
“I thought you were gone!” Ines cried.
“Part of me is gone. I can never go back to Xamaica—my shadow is destroyed, and without it my body would wither.”
Indeed, Dr. Mee wasn’t casting a shadow.
“I thought nobody could survive without a shadow,” Ines said.
“Only one thing could save me and you found it.”
“The Root of Xamaica?” Eli asked.
“Nanni said she was the Root,” Dylan said.
“And she was right.”
“I don’t get it,” Ines said.
“Nanni believed in herself,” Dr. Mee explained. “It was the source of her strength. But we can all be the Root. Belief is the Root of everything. Because you believed in me and kept searching for me even though my shadow was lost, I was able to return.”
“As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become,” Emma said. “Buddha said that.”
Dr. Mee hugged Ines again. “It’s time for me to show a little faith in you,” he said. “I’m stepping down from my position as chairman and CEO of Mee Corp. The company will be liquidated, and the assets, along with all my wealth, will be used to compensate shareholders and help our former employees find new jobs.” He turned to Eli. “Young man, I couldn’t be sorrier about my conflict with your father. The Baron tricked us both into thinking we were the rightful originators of the Xamaica software.”
“Thanks for saying that,” Eli replied, “but corporate America still sucks.”
“Business can be dirty,” Dr. Mee admitted. “That’s why I’m leaving it behind.”
“But what will you do?” Ines asked.
“What won’t I do? You gave me a second chance. There’s enough junk in this old mansion to fund my retirement. I want us to spend the next few years together. You’re my greatest invention! You’re going to get pretty sick of me.”
“What about Xamaica? What about the game?”
“What about it? The real Xamaica will go on. But the game is finished.” Dr. Mee said that the company had been bombarded with messages and calls from players in the last few hours. Xamaica had changed. There were no barriers—and no conflicts either. After the battle, avatars had suddenly found themselves free to roam the whole island—and were welcomed by the inhabitants. It was now an adventure game without much adventure.
“I’m glad the battle had an impact on the game,” Dylan said, “but I don’t think you have to cancel Xamaica. It’s probably an even cooler game now. Keeping the peace is way more challenging than war.”
Dr. Mee laughed. “Well, we shall see. We shall see.” With that, he sat back down at the piano and resumed playing.
It was time for the others to go home. Ines called her limo and they all got in.
“So, do you want it?” Dylan asked.
“What?” Eli replied.
“Nanni’s book. The wealth of the world. You still haven’t looked inside.”
“When the book was virtual, I thought it was a treasure. Now that it’s real, it’s virtually worthless. Who would believe me? You keep it. It should stay in your family.”
“No, I want you to have it.”
Eli took the book from Dylan. He looked at it closely. Its cover was made of steel, not silver. And its pages were just ordinary animal hide, not gold leaf or some precious material. Eli rubbed its spine and opened it up. Then he laughed.
“What does it say?” Ines asked.
“All the wealth of the world . . .” Eli giggled.
“What?” Dylan asked.
“I guess I should be outraged or something,” Eli sighed. “But I’m weirdly okay with this.”
“Cut the suspense,” Dylan blurted out. “Tell us what’s in the book! Jewels? Spells?”
“Gold leaf? Stock certificates?” Ines added.
“The book is blank,” Eli shrugged.
“Are you kidding me?” Ines exclaimed. “But we know Nanni wrote in that book!”
&
nbsp; “That must be its magic—it’s blank for each new owner,” Dylan reasoned.
“Give it a tap,” Ines suggested. “I’m always finding checks hidden in my birthday gifts. If it’s under a mil, it’ll still make a good bookmark.”
“No—it’s all good, I get it,” Eli explained. “I don’t need to look to hummingbirds or wishcoins or magic books for riches. I think this means I have to write my own story.”
Eli pulled out a pen and wrote in the book:
If wealth is all you seek, you will never find what you’re really looking for.
When they got to his stop, Ines, Emma, and Dylan helped him get his wheelchair to the doorway of his apartment.
“So I guess this is goodbye,” Eli said.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” Ines countered.
“What do you mean?”
“Why not work with me?”
“I thought Mee Corp. was bust. And my disgust for corporations hasn’t changed in the last thirty minutes.”
“We can start a new company. Your dad knows about start-ups—he can help. I have my own bank account. It should be enough to get things off the ground. I had this idea. Remember my global friends? We could launch a nonprofit foundation to help kids around the world. There’s something there, right?”
“So it would be totally noncommercial? No pop-ups, no billboards, and no sky-writing?”
Ines nodded.
“Well, in that case, let’s fast forward past me playing hard-to-get. When do I start?”
Ines smiled.
“Later, everyone.” Eli waved and began to wheel away.
“Buenas noches,” Emma called out after him. “And I know you were the one who planted a virus in that Pirate Girl video to get everyone to stop watching!”
Eli turned and winked. “Buenas noches, Viral Emma.” He rolled up the short walk to his house.
Next, the limo headed to Dylan and Emma’s house.
“Do you two want some private time?” Emma asked, grinning, before stepping out and running to the door, leaving Dylan and Ines alone.
Ines coughed and hacked up a wad of fuzz. “Hairball. I must still have a little Iron Lion in me.”
Dylan laughed. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
Dylan gave her a puzzled look.
“Did you ever think that maybe we have things turned around? Maybe Xamaica is the real world, and this is the game. Maybe that’s what life is about. If we do better here, become better people, we’ll move up a few levels—and we can go back.”
Dylan hugged Ines in response, then got out of the limo and waved as it drove away.
Right at that moment, a trumpet blast echoed down the street. Only it was no brass instrument and it brought with it a stinky smell.
He turned around only to face Chad and five of his goons right there in front of him.
“Been waiting for you for hours, Loopy,” growled Chad, who was holding Dylan’s black, gold, and green skateboard. “This time you can’t use your board to get away. I’ve been eating beans. Black beans, white beans, fava beans. Get ready for the gas.”
“What do you want?”
Chad’s eyes took on a haunted look. “I had this dream—this nightmare. You were in it. All of us were. Like we were in this big battle in Xamaica. All of us can remember it. Isn’t that weird—all of us remembering the same dream?”
“Yeah, that’s weird all right.”
Chad got right in Dylan’s face. Dylan could smell his too-familiar bubblegum breath. “You think it’s easy coming to a new school?” Chad whispered. “I have to fight, man. It’s kill or be killed.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Dylan said. “We’re all birds of a feather. There’s another way.”
Chad’s green eyes looked desperate—and then they turned mean again. He slammed Dylan’s skateboard into a parked vehicle—which just happened to be the Professor’s electric car. The board didn’t break, but a side window did.
“So what I was saying before—was it a game or a dream or what?” Chad tugged one of Dylan’s dreadlocks like he was trying to turn on a desk lamp. “Answer me, Loopy.”
Dylan shifted into the first position of Bangaran, the backward hummingbird. Chad, startled by his move, stumbled backward and fell, letting the skateboard flip into the air. Dylan did a somersault and landed on the skateboard as it hit the ground. He could feel his Duppy Defender abilities flowing through his body. He hadn’t left all his powers in Xamaica after all!
Chad leapt to his feet. “I am gonna end you!” He and his goons charged like bulls.
Dylan began to roll toward them, faster and faster, and just as they were about to collide, he steered his skateboard up above their heads.
The goons grabbed air. “H-h-how are you doing this?” Chad stammered.
Dylan flew off into the night sky, beyond the streets of New Rock, above the roofs of houses, over electric lines and treetops.
“Go ahead—run away!” Chad yelled after him. “You’re no hero!”
Dylan smiled. Riding the night winds, he turned his skateboard around and sped up. Now he was flying at the goons full throttle from the air.
Chad and his buddies began to run in the other direction. Dylan landed behind them, picked up his skateboard, and watched them retreat into the night.
What was that quote Emma said? Winning without fighting is the ultimate martial art.
“Game over,” Dylan whispered.
He headed up the walk to his apartment building. Emma had her pirate cutlass brandished as two other goons scampered away from her. She seemed taller, brighter, and bolder than ever. She pointed across the street at the Professor’s electric car and the crack in the window vanished.
Emma grinned. “I guess some of the Black Starr rubbed off on me.”
“I can see that,” Dylan laughed.
“So are we gonna get along better from now on?”
“Depends. Are you gonna go pirate on me?”
Emma sheathed her cutlass. “I might.”
“It’s funny—before all this happened, I wanted to know about Mom and Dad so I could feel like I had a real family.”
“And how do you feel now?”
Dylan smiled. “I miss Mom and Dad. But we’ve always had a family.”
They opened the front door of their home together. Strange. It was late but all the lights were blazing. Inside, the Professor was sitting in the kitchen. All around her, her birds were quacking, cawing, cuckooing, hooting, tweeting, gobble-gobbling, cock-a-doodle-dooing, and all the other things that feathered things do and a few things they don’t, or at least they shouldn’t. The Professor was weeping.
“It’s my fault,” she cried to herself. “I knew you were in danger. I knew something was after you. That something supernatural was afoot. I tried to watch the birds. I tried to protect you. I failed . . . I failed . . .”
Dylan thought of all the sacrifices the Professor had made, and the secrets she had kept—all for him. She needed some cheering up.
Dylan went up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Emma took one of the Professor’s hands in hers and smiled.
The Professor sat up in shock. “Where have you been?”
“Out,” Dylan said. “But I think we’re all going to stay here awhile.”
He took out something he had brought back from Xamaica. Evidence of where they had gone, and the proof she needed to get her job back. He laid on the table a handful of giant crimson feathers.
The Professor smiled through her tears and held up a half-full glass. “Lemonade anyone?”
Outside, three little birds peeked in the kitchen window.
The End
Glossary
Xamaicapedia:
The Gamer’s Guide to Saving the World
A publication of Fiercely Independent Booksellers Inc.
(A wholly owned subsidiary of Mee Corp. Enterprises.)
During my research into Xamaic
a, I’ve noted many parallels with real-life Caribbean history and myth. While my Xamaicapedia goes into exhaustive detail on much of what I found, I thought an excerpt—a brief glossary of terms—might be helpful to some readers. The entries that had parallels in history or real-life folktales, I’ve marked with an (R). I’ve also compiled a reading list that I think may help future explorers of this fascinating, dangerous, magical land.
—E.G.
Airavata (R): A white elephant with four tusks and seven trunks, from Hindu tradition.
Akbeth Akbar: The land ruled by the society of spiders.
Anancy (R): The trickster spider of Jamaican folk tales. The character—who has a lot in common with Br’er Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, and Spider-Man—has roots in African myth.
Arrowaks: In Xamaica, these are gentle plant people. Arawak was the name given to some of the original Indian inhabitants of the Caribbean region, many of whom were wiped out by European colonizers starting in the fifteenth century.
Babylon (R): The name Rastafarians give to the corrupt outside world; in Xamaica it’s what they call Earth.
Bangaran (R): Kind of like karate with a Jamaican twist.
Baron Zonip: The ruler of the hummingbird kingdom and much of Xamaica.
Black Starr (R): Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was a Jamaican-born political leader who later moved to America. He helped build a shipping fleet called the Black Star Line to transport passengers and goods and empower people of African heritage. In Xamaica, the Black Starr is an invisible ship that sails on the wind.
Crimson Vision: When Maruunz warriors come of age, their eyes turn red, their powers increase, and they get to take a real name.
Dead Yard (R): A funeral tradition where relatives and friends gather at the home of a recently passed loved one to share stories and memories. In Xamaica, it’s the name given to the wasteland created after the Baron stripped the countryside of magic.
Dlos (R): Part-snake, part-human, mostly trouble. These have parallels in African legends.
Duppy (R): A kind of Jamaican ghost. My grandmother used to tell me, “Egbert”—that’s my real first name—“if you don’t behave the duppy is going to get you!”