“How do you know?”
“Because I’m older than you. Wiser.”
“Oh right, a wise old thirteen,” I said, forgetting the promise I’d made to myself to humor Fiona for the sake of uncovering the truth.
“Actually, I’m fourteen now,” she said.
“What?”
“Let’s go to the park. To the swing sets. No one will bother us there. You need to hear more. Things get complicated.”
THE LEGEND OF FIONA LOOMIS, PART II
Fiona Loomis returned to Aquavania many times throughout her childhood. Only at night, though, and only when everyone in her family was sleeping. The radiators would call to her, and she’d creep down to the liquid portal in her basement and enter a world she was growing to love.
Toby was always waiting, and so too were all the creatures and landscapes Fiona had dreamed up. Life went on without her, on its own time line. Fiona could be away from Aquavania for a week, only to return and find that ten years had passed. Or she could be away for a month and find that only ten minutes had passed. There was no way of predicting the time gap, but whenever she was gone, the palm trees and vines and ferns would climb and twist and grow. The animals would form couples and have babies and become families. When things got old, they wilted. Things passed away.
To say it was always harmonious would be a lie. Sometimes Fiona would introduce a new creature and anarchy would ensue. Take, for example, the levitating bandicoots. The problem with levitating bandicoots was that they could eat almost anything in Fiona’s world, but they preferred to eat the highest flowers of the orangeberry spruce. Those flowers were the staple of the paisley giraffes’ diet. Without them, the giraffes starved.
So once when Fiona returned after some time away, she found bandicoots so chubby that they could hardly levitate and paisley giraffe carcasses strewn everywhere. It horrified her, but it also taught her that her powers weren’t perfect. Sure, she could create more rules—she could make the bandicoots hate orangeberry spruce flowers or make the giraffes less finicky—but she also had to let this world figure itself out. It was as real a place as any.
“Am I God here?” Fiona once asked Toby.
“In a manner of speaking,” Toby told her.
“Everything else grows old here, but I don’t, do I?”
“Your body doesn’t,” Toby explained. “But your mind does. Your body only grows old in the Solid World.”
“The Solid World?”
“The place you come from. Home.”
By home, Toby meant Thessaly—Fiona’s house, her family. But to Fiona, Aquavania was starting to feel like home as well. Every time she visited, she made the island bigger. She gave it levels. Her mind conjured up enormous trees with intertwined limbs that served as walkways through the canopies. Smaller branches wove together like tangles of fingers and formed tunnels.
Below the canopies, Fiona created an aviary so thick with birds that it looked like layers of undulating feathery quilts. Whenever she jumped from the treetops, wings cushioned her. For fun, she would summon the rain and ride the feathers like a waterslide.
When she dug into the ground, she unearthed mint chocolate chip ice cream. When she called out into the wind, a giant flying squirrel would scoop Fiona up and let her ride on his neck and survey her creations.
Sometimes while soaring, Fiona would look into the distance, over the ocean as far as the light reached, and she would see a haze. At first, she thought little of it, assumed that when she built a bigger world, the haze would move farther away, like the skin of an expanding balloon.
But that didn’t happen. As her world got bigger, the haze got closer, and by the time Fiona was ten years old, she began to worry about these unknown hinterlands. One day, she called out for the squirrel, and it scooped her and Toby up. And as the squirrel dipped and barrel-rolled, Fiona pointed out past the ocean and commanded, “Fly us into that haze!”
The squirrel refused. It flew no farther than the coastline. This was beyond shocking, because it was the first time that the squirrel hadn’t followed her instructions. It was the first time that anything in Aquavania hadn’t followed her instructions.
Rightfully upset, Fiona decided to solve the problem the way she solved all her problems: by thinking the answer into existence.
The flying squirrel could speak, and it could tell Fiona why it refused to fly into the haze.
“I don’t know why I can’t fly there,” the squirrel said. “It’s simply beyond my abilities.”
The squirrel continued to glide along the coastline as Fiona pondered the mystery.
“Is it the edge of Aquavania?” she asked Toby.
“It is an edge,” Toby replied.
“I should have known better than to ask you. Why do you always speak in riddles?”
“I speak all that I know. I have never been there. I have only been here.”
“If you weren’t so darn cute, I’d throw you off this squirrel,” Fiona said, and then she had a thought that would open her world up in a way she could never have imagined.
There was a bridge that was as long as a bridge could be, and it reached from the island into the haze and to what lay beyond the haze.
A gleaming spout of water shot out from the island as if it were a fountain, and the spout stretched all the way into the haze. It froze in place, a gentle translucent arch with a pathway wide enough for a girl and her bush baby. Fiona asked the squirrel to set them down, and the two began their hike toward the haze.
Hours later, they weren’t even a fraction of the way there.
“Am I an idiot, Toby?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
The bridge had a conveyer belt so that Toby and Fiona didn’t have to walk anymore.
A conveyer belt made of milky quartz started churning and moving them forward, but the haze was still a long way off. Fiona knew that it didn’t matter how much time it took, how many days she stayed in Aquavania; she would always return home to the basement at the exact moment she left. She was ten years old and had already spent six weeks of her life in Aquavania, six weeks that didn’t exist back in the Solid World.
Still, the journey to the haze was taking far too long.
And the conveyer went faster, and faster, and faster …
The world blurred. The only thing she could see was Toby’s face, which shuddered from the g-force like a fighter jet pilot’s. Any faster and she would have made herself sick. For all the things she could create, Fiona could not change herself. That was one of the restrictions of Aquavania. She couldn’t make herself prettier or taller or more accustomed to Mach 2 speeds.
For three days Fiona and Toby zoomed along the conveyer belt, holding hands and surviving off of ice cream.
“You told me I can’t age here,” Fiona said to Toby. “But can I die here?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Can you … die here too, Toby?” Fiona could hardly get the question out.
“I will die only when you need me to die,” Toby explained. “I am your first creation. I am not like the others.”
Fiona turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at him. “What happens to us here?” she asked. “I mean, when we die?”
Toby’s voice was weak. It had a tremble to it. “I don’t know.”
When they weren’t definitive, Toby’s answers were usually playfully and frustratingly vague. He almost never said I don’t know. As soon as he did, the conveyer belt stopped, and they were confronted with the edge of the haze.
There was no seeing through it, so Fiona reached out to touch it. It slapped her back like she was an insolent dog.
The haze let Fiona touch it.
She reached for it again, and again it slapped her away.
“I think this is something beyond your control,” Toby said.
“But I need to know what’s behind it.”
“Remember how I told you that Aquavania is where stories are born?”
“Yes.”
/>
“There are many stories to tell. Yours is not the only one. Maybe this is the end of yours.”
“Mine ends when I decide it ends!” Fiona barked as she tried to step into the haze. It knocked her onto her rear.
“I’m only saying what you already know,” Toby said.
This was true. Fiona was not so arrogant as to think she was the only person who’d ever come to Aquavania. Toby had already told her as much. But then, she had never wished to meet anyone else here. This was a place to be alone with her creations.
Just as she thought this, there came a whisper through the haze.
The girl named Chua needed nothing more than to meet someone smart and new so that she could share her story.
This wasn’t Fiona’s thought. It was someone else’s, and as it emerged, it brought with it a wave of water that snatched Fiona from the bridge and pulled her through the haze.
That fuzzy feeling—the bubbles in her body that accompanied trips to and from Aquavania—tricked Fiona into thinking she was returning to the Solid World, but instead of emerging next to the boiler in her basement, she emerged in the center of an ice cavern.
The cavern was as large as a football stadium. Its roof was at least one hundred feet high and covered not only in icicles but in numerous polar bears that hung upside down by their feet like bats. A few other polar bears were flying through the air, aided by fleshy and furry propellers that grew out of their backs.
Not far from Fiona, a girl wearing a parka with a woolly hood sat on a throne made of ice.
“Hot chocolate!” the girl hooted. “Success!”
“Hello?” Fiona surveyed the cavern. Toby was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t recognize this place.
“Welcome welcome welcome!” The girl pushed herself off from the throne and slid with a surfer’s stance across the ice to Fiona’s side. She stuck out a hand. “Name is Chua.”
“Mine’s … Fiona.”
As she shook Chua’s hand, Fiona took in more of the surroundings. The walls of the cavern were covered in tiny lights that were constantly changing colors. The changes appeared random at first, until Fiona realized they were broadcasting messages about her.
SHE’S SCARED.
SHE’S COLD.
“You’ll catch your death,” Chua said. “How about a walrus skin coat?”
“That would be”—before she finished speaking, Fiona felt the warmth of animal fur on her skin and looked down to see that she was now wearing a perfectly tailored coat—“fine.”
Fiona needed Toby to be there with her, to tell her what was going on.
It didn’t work.
Fiona needed to go back to her world, to a safe place, a place where she was in control.
This wish didn’t work either. No matter what Fiona thought, it didn’t come true.
“First time crossing over?” Chua asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t sweat it,” Chua said. “You’re a guest. Relax. Enjoy your visit.”
Chua stomped the icy ground, producing a ripple of cracks. From the cracks, a small beak poked up like a bud. A head followed the beak, and suddenly there was a penguin in front of them, shaking wet ice from his velvety coat.
“Greetings and salutations,” the penguin said with a bow.
“This is Baxter,” Chua explained.
“And who is this lovely young lady?” Baxter asked.
Fiona was too dumbfounded to respond.
“I know it’s ludicrous,” Baxter said. “Penguins and polar bears existing in the same geographical region. Yet it’s how our Chua likes it.”
“This is Fiona,” Chua told Baxter. “She crossed over for the first time. I was lonely and I wished for a new friend, and she must have been near the folds.”
“The folds?” Fiona asked.
“That’s what we call them. The borders of our worlds.”
“So I’m in your world now?”
“She learns quickly,” Baxter said.
“Yes,” Chua said. “But don’t worry. Anytime you want to go home, go ahead and tell me and I’ll wish you back.”
“How many worlds are there?” Fiona asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Chua said. “Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?”
Baxter tilted his head and held out his wings like two open hands. He didn’t have the vaguest idea.
“I’ve met six other kids here,” Chua went on. “I’ve been to four other worlds. But they know other kids, who know other kids, and blah blah blah. So I suppose there could be countless worlds.”
“Are the other worlds like this?” Fiona asked. “Icy and strange?”
“Oh, no no no,” Chua said.
“Are all minds the same?” Baxter asked Fiona.
Fiona shook her head. “In my world I have a bush baby and miles of vines that you can swing on and braid into just about anything.”
Nodding, Chua seemed mildly impressed. “I have this.”
She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. The ground softened and sagged like elastic. And like elastic, it held their weight for a moment and then snapped back, sending Chua, Fiona, and Baxter rocketing into the air. As they went up, the polar bears went down, fluttering past them like a snowfall of fur. When it looked like Fiona would strike the icy roof, Chua whistled again and the roof burst into a glittering cloud.
At the apex of their flight, the two girls and the penguin hung in the air for a moment, and Fiona looked down to see that the polar bears had never hit the ground. They were hovering and swarming together like bees to a hive. Gravity took hold again and pulled the three back toward the bears.
As they fell, Chua whistled twice more. With the first whistle, the ground exploded exactly as the roof had, leaving nothing but a dusty sparkle. With the second, the walls of the cavern exploded too, but not before broadcasting a final message.
PLANET POLAR BEAR IS COMPLETE!
When they touched down, Fiona, Chua, and Baxter landed on white fur. The polar bears were no longer individuals. They had merged into one enormous ball of fur that was pulsing and floating in the open air like a miniature planet. The dusty particles left over from the walls and roof and ground were now stars in the endless sky that surrounded them.
“Holy moly,” was about all Fiona could say.
Chua winked and said, “Baxter, be a good li’l bird and fetch us some potato chips.”
Baxter nodded and jumped in the air, his pointy wings poised like a diver’s hands. There was no water anywhere, so Baxter dove straight into the furry ground. It swallowed him completely, and he was gone before Fiona could make sense of what had happened.
It didn’t faze Chua one bit. “Stay the night if you like. Sleepover?” she asked.
“I … I…” Fiona was rarely one to stutter, but she was also rarely one to attend sleepovers, let alone ones in magical lands. There were occasional birthday party invitations back home in Thessaly, and her friend Kendra had her over on a few Saturday nights to hang out and watch videos, but that was it.
Chua clearly sensed Fiona’s apprehension. “If you’d rather return to your world, I can wish you back,” she said. “But I think we can have some fun here, don’t you?”
“I think … I might like that,” Fiona finally replied. Why not, right? Chua was obviously a girl of great talents and knowledge. There was no telling what she could teach Fiona about Aquavania.
Chua stepped forward and put an arm around Fiona. It felt nice to have a new friend.
“You know there’s only one thing left to do, then?”
“What’s that?” Fiona asked.
Chua’s dark hair brushed against Fiona’s face as she leaned in and whispered, “Riverman, Riverman, blood to ice.”
The words reeked of menace, and Fiona’s body felt like it was split in half. She looked down to see a bright blue icicle embedded in her chest and Chua’s hand pulling away. Falling backward, Fiona clawed at the icicle to try to get a grip, but it was burning cold and far too s
lippery.
“What did you do?” Fiona cried.
“Riverman, Riverman, blood to ice. Riverman, Riverman, blood to ice.”
Fiona arched her back and planted her shoulders in the fuzzy ground and tried to dislodge the icicle. It was no use. The icicle was melting, and the liquid was seeping into her as if her body were a sponge.
Chua loomed, arms out and eyes wide, as if in a trance. “Riverman, Riverman, blood to ice. Riverman, Riverman, blood to ice.”
“Why are you saying that? What have you done to me?”
Fiona closed her eyes and began whimpering, and she didn’t stop whimpering until she realized that she wasn’t in pain. She had been stabbed in the chest—she had felt the icicle tear into her!—and yet it didn’t hurt anymore. Not one bit.
Opening her eyes, she saw that the icicle was no longer there and there was no injury. She wasn’t even wet. Chua was standing above her, smiling.
“I’m sorry,” Chua said. “I didn’t think you were him, but I had to know for sure.”
“You didn’t think I was who?”
“The Riverman,” Chua said.
This is where I stopped Fiona. It had taken her almost three hours, but she had finally mentioned the name that had haunted me for nearly a week. I blurted out the inevitable question. “Who the heck is the Riverman?”
Fiona sighed. “He’s the one who’s coming for us. All the kids in Aquavania.”
Headlights swept over the backstop behind the swings and splashed our shadows onto it. In the empty lot, a truck engine rumbled.
“Fi!” someone yelled. The voice had teeth.
“Crap,” I said. “It’s late, isn’t it? Is that your dad?”
“Uncle.”
A cigarette torpedoed out of the truck window and hit the lot with a flurry of sparks.
“Well past dinner,” her uncle called out from the cab. “Been sent to find ya.”
Fiona stood from her swing as I turned myself in a circle, twisting and tightening the chains like the rubber band on a balsa plane.
The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Page 6