by B. C. Harris
As the first light beam explodes into the earth beside me, I hear a shout above me. It’s Frank.
The kabingas are flying directly at the chromidians. Their attempt to divert the attacking creatures away from us is beyond belief.
The chromidians change the focus of their assault and begin to fire on the helpless kabingas.
I hear the extreme cries of pain as the kabingas are struck by multiple beams of searing light at a very close distance. Their agonizing cries pierce my soul as the kabingas are knocked out of the sky. I suspect that Frank and her new friends might not survive such an attack.
“Sixty seconds,” Michael says.
Although I want to help the injured kabingas, I know there’s nothing we can do for them. Before we could manage to find them and drag them back into the deep grass, we would be under attack again.
“Run!” I say fervently, feeling the pain of abandoning the injured kabingas. “We’ve got two minutes to reach the crevice in the side of the mountain.”
“Follow me,” Radwin says urgently as he flies ahead of us.
Adrenalin surges through my veins as I run for my life. Radwin is already flying towards the crevice. Taking a quick look above me, the chromidians are dropping towards us. If we don’t make the mountains before the next barrage of light beams, we will be killed.
“One minute!” Michael shouts.
As I race towards the crevice I think I will make it before the next light attack.
I’m almost there. I feel Squirt’s claws digging into my shoulders as the little zakabibble holds on for his dear life.
I’m steps away from the crevice when the first light beam explodes beside me. The force of the beam is so intense that I’m knocked off my feet even though it doesn’t directly hit me. As I tumble to the ground, in the same motion I roll back onto my feet and continue to run, almost tripping over the backpack I’m carrying.
Jamie and Michael are standing inside the mouth of the crevice.
Just as a massive storm of light beams explode beside me, I reach the crevice. Michael and Jamie pull me into the narrow opening. Drew and Jasmin are already there. I didn’t even notice that they had passed me.
“This way,” Radwin says. “Come, we’ve got to get deeper into the mountains.”
As we begin to run again, the crevice turns into a tunnel.
“Sixty seconds,” Michael says.
“Keep running,” I say.
Although the crevice has temporarily saved us from the chromidians, I suspect they will be able to redirect their deadly beams of light into the opening. We’ve got to get as far away from them as we can.
“There’s a door,” I hear Radwin shout enthusiastically.
As I turn a corner in the tunnel, before me is a large door. It’s dark and foreboding.
We look at each other as if we’re trying to decide who will touch it first when Jamie reaches out for it.
Instantly the door radiates a bright light. Although it’s difficult to see anything clearly on the door because of the dazzling light, there appear to be some numbers.
“One minute,” Michael says.
We have another minute to go before the attack starts again. I wonder if the chromidians will fire their beams into the tunnel where we are standing defencelessly.
“Hurry,” I say. “We don’t have very much time to open the door. If the chromidians fire into this tunnel, we’re trapped.”
“There are some numbers,” Jamie says as he begins to read them.
21, 34, 55, 89, 144, _
“One-hundred and ten seconds,” Michael announces.
“Ten more seconds,” I say to myself as much as anyone else.
“What is the missing number?” Jamie asks anxiously.
I hear the first beam of light explode at the mouth of crevice. Soon there are multiple explosions. Each explosion seems to be coming a little closer.
Then it happens.
An errant beam of light ricochets off one of the walls and hits the massive door as though a bomb has detonated.
As the smoke from the explosion disappears, I notice that the code on the door has vanished.
Oh no, I think. If the door is damaged, we’re in big trouble.
As I continue to look at the door, the code briefly reappears then flickers. I realize our frightening predicament. If any more beams of light hit the door, it might never open. We have to solve the code before the door is hit again.
“Two-hundred and thirty-three,” Michael says. “The answer for completing the code is two-hundred and thirty-three.”
Before I’m able to ask Michael how he solved the puzzle, a sharp explosion nearby followed by a cry of pain tells me that Jasmin has been hit. Another burst sends Drew tumbling to the ground.
Michael frantically touches the blank space on the door at the end of the series of numbers. As the rays of light from the chromidians bounce around us, the numbers on the door keep flashing.
The numbers in the blank space are rapidly increasing. At the exact moment when the number reaches two-hundred and thirty-three, Michael takes his finger away from the door.
Beams of light are exploding everywhere. Suddenly one of my legs buckles underneath me as a bolt of light strikes it.
The door is opening.
- 31 -
THE LAND OF SHADE
I try to focus on the voices around me. They’re hushed, distant, and full of fear. I feel like someone punched me in the head. Although I keep trying to open my eyes, it’s difficult for me to comprehend what I’m seeing. Everything is fuzzy.
“Emily, are you awake? Are you okay?”
Someone is talking to me, but I’m not sure who it is. I try to reply but I have trouble forming any words. Only a moaning sound comes out of my mouth.
“You hit your head when you fell last night. Are you alright? We’re in the Land of Shade.”
Hit my head? Land of Shade? Something about the word Shade jolts my brain.
“We made it safely into the Land of Shade. Jamie and Michael dragged you through the open door after you fell and struck your head. We’re safe.”
I keep opening and closing my eyes as I attempt to focus on the group of people that are huddled in front of me.
“You’ve been sleeping,” a girl’s voice who I know I should recognize says with concern. “We’ve been sleeping. Now it’s morning.”
I know that voice, I say to myself. Where am I? Who am I with? What is Shade?
“Emily,” a deep, gruff voice says, “we need you to wake up. We’ve got a big problem.”
Big problem? What’s this person talking about?
The deep voice continues, “We’re trapped in Shade. We have no way to escape. We need you to wake up.”
I blink again. The people in front of me are becoming a little clearer.
“Jasmin?” I say as I recognize my best friend sitting on the ground in front of me.
“Yes, it’s me. Last night you fell and hit your head. We kept waking you up during the night, but as soon as you woke up, you fell back asleep again.”
“My head,” I say. “It hurts. I’m having trouble seeing clearly.”
“We need you to wake up,” another voice says. “We have a big problem.”
It’s Jamie.
“Big problem? What big problem?”
“Last night when we reached the third door, we were attacked by the light beams from the chromidians.”
I recall the dangerous beams of light.
“Several of us were hit by the lights. We might have all been killed by them, except that Michael solved the code to open the door.”
“What was the code?” I ask as I begin to remember more about last night.
“The puzzle on the door,” Michael says, “is known as a Fibonacci sequence.”
“Fibonacci sequence?” I say. “What’s that?”
“A Fibonacci sequence,” Michael responds, “is a sequence of numbers where the next number in the sequence is found by add
ing the two previous numbers together. In this case, the last two numbers were eighty-nine and one-hundred and forty-four, so I added them together to get two-hundred and thirty-three.”
“Oh, I see,” I say tentatively as I look at each of my friends.
“Someone is missing,” I say.
“Yes,” Jamie replies. “Frank is not with us. We’re not sure what happened to her and the other kabingas, but they never made it to the door.”
Hopefully they escaped, I think.
The faces of my friends look much clearer to me now although the air around me is hazy. Drew is lying on the ground. He looks like he might be in pain.
“Drew?” I say. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t reply.
As I focus on our surroundings, there isn’t much to see except for rocks.
“Why is it so dark?” I ask. “Is it still night?”
“Emily,” Radwin answers, “we’re in the Land of Shade. I think that it’s always dark and gloomy here.”
As I continue to look at our desolate surroundings, I ask, “Can’t we use our first aid kit to help Drew?”
“Unfortunately,” Michael says, “our backpack is on the other side of the door. It has our food, water and first aid kit in it.”
“And our map of Shade,” Jasmin adds.
“In our haste to save everyone, we forgot the backpack on the other side of the door,” Jamie says.
“We’ll have to open the door again to retrieve it,” I say.
Silence greets my words. Instinctively, I know that something is wrong.
“After we got through the door,” Michael says, “a beam of light must have hit it and destroyed the system that controls it. Remember that Capurni told us that the door would be invisible once we were in Shade so we needed to mark its location.”
I nod.
“Unfortunately, no matter what we do, we can’t find the door.”
And if we can’t find it, I think, we might be trapped in Shade forever.
“Didn’t Capurni tell us that all we had to to do was touch any of the doors to return back through them? Something about recognizing our fingerprints?”
“Yes,” Jamie says. “He told us that when we wanted to return back through the three doors that all we had to do was touch each of them and they would remember our fingerprints.”
“We have been touching the area over and over again where we think the door is located, but nothing happens,” Jasmin says.
“We’re trapped,” I mumble. “We’re trapped in a horrible world with no way to escape. We’ll never be able to return back home again.”
After a brief pause in the conversation, I notice that my friends are looking at me as though I have some magical power to save them.
I gaze at each of my friends. I have brought them into this dangerous mess. Somehow, I will find a way to get them safely back home again.
Jasmin coughs; followed by Michael.
There is a foul taste in my throat.
Squirt, who is sitting on Michael’s lap, begins to cough as well.
“How could a world become so polluted?” Jasmin asks as she inspects the injury on Drew’s leg.
Jamie says, “Perhaps this is a world where people don’t care about their environment, although it’s also a world where any pollution would get trapped by the mountains surrounding it.”
Our situation appears hopeless. We’re stuck in a dark, dangerous, depressing world.
As I look at my friends, I see their tattered clothes. There’s no way we would be able to walk anywhere in Shade without being stopped by the authorities. We look like we have just returned from a war.
“What are we going to do?” Jasmin asks.
My first impulse is to say we should sit here and do nothing hoping that we can find a way to open the door, but I know we need food and water.
“We’ve got to start walking” I say, trying to inspire some confidence in our disillusioned group. “The first thing we need to do is find water.”
“If we get caught,” Jasmin quickly replies, “we might be tortured. Remember Capurni said this is a very dangerous world.”
Although I feel that the situation is hopeless, I know it will only get worse if we sit around and do nothing. I struggle to get on my feet even though my head throbs with pain.
“Let’s go,” I say with as much conviction as possible, although I’m only pretending to be strong. I wonder if my friends realize this.
“I’ll fly ahead to see if I can find some water,” Radwin says. “I can also look for any dangers that might be coming our way.”
“Good idea,” I say. “Be careful.”
Be careful? I think. Right now, that’s an understatement. What would happen to us if we’re caught by the inhabitants of Shade? I shudder to think of that possibility.
When we first started on our journey, I anticipated that we might be gone for a few hours. We’re now into our second day. My mother will be frantic wondering where I am. For that matter, the parents of my friends will also be distraught. Then again, maybe a few days here on Tamor are equivalent to only a few hours back home.
One thing for sure, at the moment I really miss my mother.
Soon, we’re slowly walking through the barren landscape as though we’re in a somber funeral procession. Drew is limping. There’s some irony in the reality that Jasmin is now trying to help him.
Squirt is sprawled across Michael’s shoulders as though he has lost all his energy.
Nobody is speaking.
Based on what I’m feeling, I suspect the others are too discouraged to speak. Although we have faced other dangers on our mission, we always found a way to overcome them. If the Shadites have lived here for a thousand years and haven’t been able to find a way to escape, we’re not likely to find one either.
After what seems like hours, but is probably only thirty minutes or so, Michael breaks the gloomy silence.
“I see someone in the distance approaching us.”
We’re about to meet an inhabitant of Shade.
- 32 -
CAPTURED
We pass the first resident of Shade without any confrontation. The being almost looks human, at least its face does, but the rest of its body reminds me of a scaly lizard. I avoid any contact with it, although I see that its ragged clothing is not much better than what we’re wearing.
Soon we’re passing strangers from the dismal world more frequently. They stare at the ground, making no attempt to look at us.
The inhabitants of Shade look like they’re carrying a great burden. Most of them are hunched over as though pain is crippling them. Their clothing is torn and dirty. It’s almost as though the thought of having contact with another creature is too hard for them to bear. While this is depressing to witness, it’s also a relief for us because it appears that we won’t have to worry about them bothering us.
After an hour or two of difficult walking on a hard stony path, without any food or water, and breathing the thick foul air, we’re beginning to resemble the inhabitants of Shade.
We’re hunched over from the difficulty of breathing. My eyes are burning from the polluted air. It’s as though Shade has sucked any optimism from us.
“Look,” Jamie mutters as though it’s painful for him to talk, “Over there,” he points. “I think it’s a city.”
Through the heavy haze there are some indistinct structures. It appears to be a city. As we continue to walk towards it, I realize it is closer than I originally thought.
There are some buildings, but they are not as big as those back home. For the most part, the buildings look like they’re made out of bricks. There’s little glass and metal that often characterize the modern buildings that I’m familiar with. There are chimneys on many of the buildings that are spouting thick black smoke. At this point, my impression is that I’m looking at a city that would have been from the 19th century in my country.
Michael is having the most difficult time of all of us breathin
g. He is coughing constantly. Occasionally he even gags as he attempts to get a breath of non-existent fresh air. If he begins to choke on the polluted air, I wonder what we could possibly do to help him.
With each step my lungs burn. My throat is sore from the dirty air and lack of water. Of all the frightening experiences we have encountered since starting our mission, I’m beginning to think that this is the one that is going to destroy us. I can see that we’re getting weaker and weaker. The absence of hope is crushing us.
By the time we reach the outskirts of the city, I can barely stand. I have no strength or will left to move any further. When I stop, my friends cease moving as well. I know if I was to sit down on the hard cold ground, the others would follow, and there’s a pretty good chance that we’d never get up again. Even Squirt, who has been perched on Michael’s shoulders since we started walking, is wheezing. If we don’t find some water soon, our mission is going to come to an ugly end.
We continue to pass more inhabitants from Shade. The Shadites we have seen so far have faces that create the impression that their dark eyes have sunken into the taut skin that wraps their skulls.
Suddenly, a huge heavy-set stranger in a long, black trench coat, steps in front of me. He comes out of nowhere, but then again at the moment I was lost in my own thoughts.
He is carrying a menacing leather whip in one of his massive hands.
“Can I help you?” he snarls.
As I look at him in my weakened condition, I’m so taken aback by his hideous partly-human face that I almost collapse. There’s something in his bloodshot eyes that is terrifying. It’s as though he’s staring right through me.
“Can I help you?” the stranger asks once again in an intimidating voice. “My name is Tarcharon.”
The frightening man offers his hand to me.
I jerk away from it.
“No, we don’t require any help,” Jamie says, but it’s obvious from the trembling tone in his voice that he’s frightened by this gruesome creature.
The Shadite turns deliberately in Jamie’s direction and flicks his whip with such force that Jamie is knocked to the ground.