Earthly Worlds

by Billy Wright

  The time he’d watched two high school boys beat up a Navajo kid who wanted to go to school off the reservation, and he had not stopped them. He still remembered the shame of not knowing what to do in that moment, so shocked by the sudden violence that it had frozen him in place on the sidewalk. He was twelve. They were seniors. He should have done something. He never saw the Navajo kid again.

  The facets were filled with Stewart’s failures. Everything that confirmed he had never been anything but a Bad Seed, a thief, a coward, a bully.

  There was no way for him to get inside. He wasn’t good enough.

  But the noises of pursuit were drawing closer. He didn’t have much longer.

  He pulled out the key and tried pressing it against the obsidian surface. He tried hitting the surface with the key. He tried using magic to create a keyhole, but without effect.

  He plopped down onto the ground, beaten.

  The dragon sounded just outside the chamber, flanked by untold swarms of vicious dark elves and angry dwarves. Yeah, those dwarves might be pretty ticked off at him for killing a bunch of their buddies.

  What was he thinking? Why would he have ever thought he could succeed? Him. The Bad Kid. Staring into the obsidian mirrors before him, he had seen only truth.

  It was time to give it up, accept his nature, say “hi” to the Dark Lord. He was through running. He was done struggling to force the world to accept him, to believe in him. What was the point anyway? The only people who’d ever believed in him were dead. For once, it might be nice to be on the winning side. The good guys never won. All around him, all over the world, the absolute worst people were the ones in charge. Liars, cheaters, bullies, they were the ones running the show. Maybe there was a good reason for that.

  His decision settled upon his shoulders like lead anvils, bowing his back.

  A voice like the deepest thunder, deeper even than the roar of the dragon, because it carried with the voice of the cosmos, reverberated through nearby lava chambers. “Find him. He must be close. I can smell his blood.”

  He gazed into the obsidian mirrors and waited for the Dark Lord to find him.

  A smear of light swam up out of the dark and coalesced into Liz’s face, as if she were looking at him through a smudged window. “Hey, babe.”

  “Hey,” he said.

  “You’ve been through a lot.”

  The sight of her face, the most beautiful he’d ever seen, full of concern and kindness, brought a lump into his throat.

  “You’re in so much pain, I can see that,” she said. “I wish I could be there to touch you. I want to help you.”

  “I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m done. It’s over. I’m sorry. For everything.”

  He wished he could kiss her goodbye, stroke her face.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve done enough. It’s okay to rest for a while.”

  But at those words, he blinked and leaped out of his despairing stupor. His shoulders and fists clenched.

  “No.” It was a garbled croak of a syllable.

  Liz would never have said such a thing to him. Not now, at a time like this. She’d have been yelling at him to get up, to never give up.

  He rose to his feet, rage boiling up in him like a volcano.

  “No more lies!” he roared.

  An immense raking gust of Dark essence whooshed into him like a hurricane. His fist became a hammer of diamond, and he struck the face of the obsidian barrier.

  A spider-web of cracks sprang the impact across the surface.

  Movement behind him caught the corner of his eye. On the far side of the cavern, in the shadows of a broad entrance, a pair of orange-glowing orbs appeared, and then a metallic snout, and then the razor-tipped claw at the knuckle of a wing.

  The cyber-dragon spotted him and growled.

  But then beside the dragon appeared an austere figure, impossibly tall and thin, clad in robes of black and scarlet. Its face was parchment stretched over a skull, its eyes glowing coals of spite and greed. It raised a spindly talon and pointed at Stewart. The Dark Lord.

  He was out of time.

  He drew back his fist and slammed it into the barrier again with all his augmented might. The blow dislodged grit from the ceiling, and spread the cracks even further.

  He gasped, breathless.

  The dragon leaped fully into the chamber, stretching its leathery wings, heedless of its limbs that dipped into the rivulets of lava or broke through the crust into hidden pockets.

  Stewart had strength enough for one more blow. He drew in another draught of Dark essence.

  “No!” roared the Dark Lord.

  Stewart’s blow shattered fully a third of the immense obsidian sphere. Razor-sharp shards exploded in all directions, painlessly slicing across his body in a score of places.

  Within the shattered globe lay a cage of dark, twisted metal. And within the cage, a small creature glowing with its own light, a light flickering like a faulty fluorescent bulb.

  From inside the globe, Stewart couldn’t see the dragon, but the noise of it lurching toward him rattled loose more shards of volcanic glass.

  He pulled out the key, thrust it into the keyhole and twisted. The lock spun as if recently oiled, but instead of the cage opening, it dissolved into a cloud of black flakes.

  Before him, on a stone pedestal, sat the most abused, disheveled, filthy child he could have imagined. Her limbs were rail thin, her face gaunt and haggard, her pale hair ratty and disheveled. Dressed in a grungy shift of coarse brown burlap, she looked as if she had shrunk within it. But even the grime could not hide the porcelain purity of her cheeks, or dim the brightness in her eyes, which flared anew with azure light. And her features brooked no doubt that she was the daughter of the Queen.

  Freed of her bonds, she was already growing indistinct, her edges fuzzy.

  But she took one look at her savior, and her expression of sympathy, empathy, and gratitude bespoke her heart breaking in that very moment. A tear like a shard of glittering diamond slid down her cheek.

  The dragon’s head reared above the globe on its serpentine neck, glaring down at him.

  The Princess threw herself into Stewart’s arms. Her eyes met his. And she smiled.

  The dragon’s jaws darted toward them, then slammed shut on empty air.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The evening breeze wafted the smell of flowers and greenery through the window as Hunter sat on a stool beside his mom’s bed. Cassie lay in the bed with her, asleep, snuggled up along her side.

  Jaclyn and Jazlyn sat against the side of the bed, motionless, as if they were only dolls.

  Hunter had never been so tired. He’d caught himself nodding twice. The journey back to the City had been grueling, and his backside and thighs were chapped from riding on unicorn-back for so many hours.

  His unicorn’s name was Ainyr, and Ainyr resembled a horse, but did not move like a horse. The horse’s gait Hunter had grown accustomed to on the journey to the Tortoise’s mouth was not what Ainyr possessed. It was smoother, but with a different undulation.

  On the return trip, they had ridden many more hours at a time to get Mom back to the City as soon as possible. It had been a journey as fevered as it was sad. The bright elves had lost half of their number in fighting the goblins and the possessed Pooh.

  When Pooh finally awakened, having returned to his senses, he saw the destruction he had wrought, and how everyone was terrified of him, and the horror, guilt, and despair were so plain on his features he could have been human. He disappeared into the forest, and no one had seen him since.

  Fortunately, they had arrived at the City in time, and the Queen had worked her magic to remove the poison the giant badger-wolverine had left in Mom’s wound. She would heal normally now, they said, with a scar across her belly.

  She had been asleep for hours, though, so Hunter couldn’t help but be worried. Seeing her brought down like this frightened him, especially with Dad gone.

 
Hunter and Cassie could have become orphans. He didn’t want to be an orphan. He wanted his parents alive and whole.

  But would Dad ever come back? If something happened to him in the Dark Realm, how would they ever know?

  Hunter walked to the window to admire the sunset painting the City with more vibrant colors than he imagined existed on Earth. The array of twinkling lights and sparkling lake and verdant forest was so beautiful. But still, he missed his own bed, his room, their house, the desert. He missed the raccoons, and the javelinas, and even the scorpions and tarantulas. He felt like he hadn’t been home in years.

  Their room in the Queen’s mansion was three tiers up from the floor of the banquet hall where they had first dined. Their door opened onto a mezzanine with a stairway leading down to the floor. The place smelled like the inside of a living tree, fresh and green and alive.

  Maybe he was just getting restless. Or maybe he was hungry. It had been a while since he’d eaten, so worried about Mom his stomach felt queasy most of the time.

  He stepped onto the balcony overlooking the banquet hall. Golden-orange light poured brilliant shapes across the polished parquet floor. The hall was empty right now, the dining table and chairs pushed to one side.

  Then he felt the entire room, maybe even the entire tree, shudder. A noise hit his eardrums, but he couldn’t characterize it as a pop or a whoosh or a wham.

  But something had appeared in the middle of the banquet-hall floor, a creature with two enormous, black-feathered wings, curled up into a ball as if in pain or terror. A single loose feather the length of Hunter’s leg spun a lazy spiral toward the floor.

  An alarm bell clanged furiously.

  Voices rose throughout the mansion. Running feet pounded up and down corridors and stairways.

  The winged creature unfurled its wings and rolled onto its back. It was a man with a little girl in his arms.

  Hunter rubbed his eyes.

  “Dad?” he whispered. He had tried to shout, but the sound choked off. His chest filled with emotion. “Dad!”

  He bolted down the nearest staircase.

  Royal Guards burst into the hall, weapons brandished, running with that super-human elven speed to circle the motionless, winged entity in the center of the room.

  “Dad!” Hunter called.

  He shoved between the guards and writhed free of their attempts to stop him. But now that he had a better look, he couldn’t be sure this was his father. “Dad?”

  The man’s clothes were scorched, and he stank of old sweat, burned feathers, soot, and something like rotten eggs. His skin was swollen, torn, bleeding, his face puffy, his lips cracked. And those wings... The tips twitched and flexed.

  An emaciated little girl clung to the man’s chest. She looked mostly starved, disheveled and filthy in a shapeless shift that looked like a gunny sack. But her eyes shone like stars and they were full of tears for the winged man.

  Bob’s voice called, “Hunter, get back, lad!”

  Hunter took another step toward the man. “Dad? Is it you?”

  Mom’s voice called down from above, “Hunter! What are you doing?” She and Cassie were coming down the staircase, holding hands. She moved slowly and painfully, but he was happy to see her standing up and moving.

  “I think it’s Dad!” Hunter called back.

  The Royal Guard edged closer, ready to act at the slightest warning.

  The winged man’s eyelids fluttered, and he stirred.

  The Queen swept into the circle of Royal Guards, shining so brightly Hunter could barely stand to look at her. “Is it you, my daughter?” Her voice echoed as if from across the cosmos.

  The little girl sobbed with joy and nodded, but kept hold of the winged man.

  “Come away from him, child,” the Queen said. “He reeks of Darkness.”

  “I cannot, Mummy!” the Princess said, in a voice higher-pitched than the Queen’s, with the same ring of power. “If I let him go, he will fall back into the Dark Lord’s clutches.”

  The Queen looked deep into the winged man. “Perhaps that is for the best.”

  “No!” Hunter and the Princess yelled at the same moment.

  The Princess gave Hunter a look of such gratitude that it stopped up his throat. Then she said, “He saved me, Mummy.”

  “He saved all of us!” Bob said, standing at the edge of the circle, stamping his cane against the floor defiantly.

  The circle parted to allow Mom and Cassie through. “Oh, sweet sagebrush, Stewart!” she cried as she stumbled to his side and sank to her knees. One of his wings twitched.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Dad!” Hunter breathed.

  Emotions cascaded through his father’s eyes, looking at Mom, looking at Hunter and Cassie. First joy, but then disbelief that flared into rage.

  He struggled to get up, but his purpose wasn’t to hug anybody. “No! Another lie!” he roared, more like a gorilla than a man.

  Instantly, flashes of light engulfed him, and when they faded, his hands, arms, and legs were encircled by sparkling bands of starlight.

  “Alas,” the Queen said, “I fear he is more beast now than man. A beast with incredible magical powers.”

  “That’s the Dark side!” Mom cried. “You have to save him! He did what you asked!”

  “And this is the cost,” the Queen said. “He paid it willingly.”

  Mom got to her feet and faced the Queen, eyes blazing, fists clenched. “You. Fix. Him.”

  A hush fell over the hall. No one moved. The Queen raised an eyebrow, clearly unaccustomed to being ordered around. Hunter gulped. Uh-oh.

  But Mom didn’t back down. “You got your daughter back. You give me back my husband.”

  “Mummy,” the Princess said, “if the two of us work together, we can draw the Darkness out of him.”

  “He stinks of it,” the Queen said distastefully. “It will contaminate us all.”

  “You know there is a way,” the Princess said grimly.

  ***

  Stewart awoke to a sensation like a thousand fishhooks tugging at his flesh.

  A deep, thunderous, feminine voice said, “The Dark essence is deeply embedded. It will take great power to extract it. And at great cost to him.”

  “Do it!” came another female voice, a human one.

  “Please, Mummy, we must try!” said a child’s voice, very close to him.

  His eyes snapped open, and there was Liz. And Hunter. And Cassie. All looking wide-eyed straight at him. The Princess held one of his hands in hers.

  Hadn’t he dreamed them? He couldn’t believe they were here. They were dead.

  But if they weren’t dead, if they were really here right now, that meant they could see him now, in his horrid state, a croaking, lurching thing, bound by chains of starlight that burned his skin like branding irons. He was a monster.

  “No!” he cried, a choked, ragged sound.

  “Oh, Stewart,” Liz said, her eyes full of tears. She knelt beside him and squeezed his hand, clutching her belly with the other.

  “You’re dead!” he said.

  She smiled and stroked his hand with her thumb. “Almost. But they brought me back here in time for the Queen to save me.”

  His breath came in desperate gasps. “He told me...”

  “Whoever told you I was dead lied to you, baby.” Her voice was soft and soothing as a rose petal. And he was nothing more than a chunk of scorched lava rock.

  “You’re all supposed to be dead!” he shouted.

  Cassie gasped.

  Hunter crossed his arms. “Dad! Snap out of it! You’re scaring Cassie.”

  “It is the Darkness in him, child,” the Queen said. “It has poisoned his mind. He cannot see the truth of his eyes.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to come back!” Stewart croaked, his head sagging to the floor, his heart wanting to burst at the expressions of everyone staring at him. So much pain and fear, and all because of him. Especially Liz. Liz should never have seen him thi
s way.

  He struggled against his bonds. “Send me back.”

  “Elizabeth, children,” the Queen said, “you must hold your father in the Light Realm. You must not let him frighten you. We can save him, but you must be strong. This is going to cause him a great deal of pain.”

  “Can’t you put him to sleep?” Cassie said. “Like an operation?”

  The Queen shook her head. “I am sorry, child, but no.”

  Small hands grabbed his shins, holding on tight.

  His great wings flapped once, slamming against the floor, then they were bound, too.

  “We’re ready,” Hunter said to the Queen.

  The Queen reached toward Stewart with an open hand, and then made a fist as if seizing a handful of something. Then she pulled.

  His bonds held him to the floor as a thousand fishhooks ripped a scream out of him. She pulled, the smooth muscles of her over-sized arms flexing, straining as if in a tug-of-war. He screamed and screamed. Then she relented.

  “His Darkness is strong,” she said, panting slightly. “It will not come willingly.”

  “I can help, Mummy,” the Princess said.

  The Queen gathered herself, then reached with both hands. The moment they made fists, Stewart gasped in pain. She pulled. Stewart screamed, tears streaming into his hair.

  Hunter and Cassie were crying.

  The Princess’s glittering fingers began to work across one of his arms, gently touching, squeezing, kneading, plucking, and wherever she touched him, an invisible barb came loose with a sudden, vicious pop, immediately soothed by the Princess’s gentle touch. One by one, they came loose, and each one left him gasping. She slowly, methodically moved her touch across his entire body while the Queen maintained the tension on her invisible ropes.

  Eyes squeezed shut, he focused his attention on the touch of Liz’s hand, that gentle but unyielding grip, the warmth of it, the softness of it.

  Then with a great wrench, like ripping off a body-sized bandage made of barbed wire, the Queen tore something out of him.

  Something...alive?

  Not living, not exactly, but aware, sentient, scheming.

  His wings were gone.

  They belonged to the thing hovering above him trapped in chains of starlight. A vaguely human-shaped shadow with broad, black vulture’s wings and a single eye that burned like lava. Its arms ended in hooks rather than hands. It struggled ferociously, its gaping black maw screaming its rage soundlessly.