Myth

by Terri Todosey

  I pulled up the piece of fabric over my nose and tore into the storm that instantly blinded me. My lungs coughed on the fine grains of sand that managed to find their way through the edges of the material, but I kept running with Justin on my heels. We ran and ran, afraid to stop. Eventually I slowed enough to look back over my shoulder and saw nothing behind us but the blowing sand.

  “I don’t think they followed us in,” said Justin panting.

  Feeling my head pulse with every heartbeat, I stood, gasping for air through the cloth over my mouth. Watching. Waiting for any sign of movement through the sandy haze.

  “Where’s Emily?” I coughed.

  “I don’t know,” said Justin, looking horrified. “I thought she was right behind me.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lily Palus

  “Emily?”

  “EMILY!” we hollered.

  Seconds became minutes and minutes became hours as Justin, Yeri and I waited in the storm, calling her. Our hope that she would suddenly show up faded slowly with every passing minute and a heart-rending worry began to grow in its place.

  “Do you think they got her?” I asked.

  “I do not tink dey happy about being disturb. Very, very nasty, dey are.”

  “Then we’ve got to find her before they do,” said Justin.

  “And how do you suggest we do that if we can’t see more than a few feet in front of us?”

  “Is like, how you say... find needle in haystack?” Yeri offered.

  “Yeah, which is practically impossible!” I said.

  “We spend too much time already. Only Maker can help her now.”

  “How’s the Maker supposed to help if no one even knows where he is?” asked Justin.

  “I sent for help at Demoror Ari and see, here you are.”

  “At Demoror Ari we climbed out ourselves!” I said.

  “Yes, yes! And maybe he favour us here too.”

  I shook my head in disagreement. He was obviously giving the Maker way too much credit.

  “Come. We go now to Lily Palus and I send word to him from dere.”

  “Lily Palus?”

  “Yes, Lily Palus on way to Lockhart. Less dan one sun away.”

  “A sun - as in a day?” stammered Justin. “What if the fire demons got her? It will be too late by then!”

  “If fire demon got her, it already too late,” sighed Yeri.

  It was a horrid thought, but the truth settled in us cold and hard. Justin looked defeated, and I couldn’t bear to think of what they would do, or have already done with her if they caught her, but what else could we possibly do?

  I imagined how scared she’d be all on her own - she was scared enough when we were all together - and I felt sick as I realized that none of this would have happened if I had just listened to her and not gone down the stairs to the cellar. Emily was right, I was selfish. And now, who knew if any of us would make it back home, and what could I possibly say to her parents if we showed up without her?

  “It small hope dat she okay, but it worth hoping,” Yeri encouraged.

  “I wish we had some string or something,” said Justin. “We could spread it out between us and cover a lot more ground.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You know, you take one end and I take the other and somewhere in between we might find her,” he sighed. “I suppose we could make a long rope, if we ripped our shirts into strips.” He looked at me, with my grey shirt already ripped up past my belly button. “Well, maybe just my shirt,” he corrected.

  I giggled, and in that brief moment of ease I remembered the twine in my knapsack.

  Fumbling through the contents, I pulled out the spool of hemp. “Keep your shirt on,” I razzed, tossing it to him.

  “Where’d you get this? It’s perfect!” he said, unwinding the spool. “There’s got to be at least fifty feet here.”

  “Yeah, and if we’re that far apart and one of us drops it, then we’ll all be lost,” I sighed.

  He wrapped one end around his wrist and held the other towards me. “Better tie it tight then, just to make sure,” he said. “If we’re lucky we’ll snag her somewhere between here and Lily Palus.”

  “And what if we snag a fire demon instead?” I asked.

  “It’s unlikely since they fly, but it’s a chance we have to take. If you come across anything unusual, just give the string a good strong tug and I’ll follow it back up to you.”

  It sounded like a good enough plan to at least give it a try. It was also the only plan we had.

  —

  The muddy sun was on the west side of noon by the time we started moving again. Having securely tied the ends of the twine to our wrists, we began to spread outwards into the storm.

  “I thought the sun didn’t set here in Tesqua?” I asked Yeri.

  “What is dis?”

  “The sun, it’s heading west,” I pointed.

  “Ay-yi-yi. I begin to tink dat we did more than wake demon.”

  “Is that good or bad?” I asked.

  “Goot or bad I do not know, but I get feelink we soon find out,” he sighed.

  Each step I took away from Justin made me more and more anxious. I watched him slowly fade into the blowing sand and I had a sinking feeling that we were making a huge mistake.

  “Say something to me Yeri,” I said.

  “What can I say? Storm is very bad, yes?”

  “I just need to hear someone’s voice.”

  “Do not worry,” he said. “Everytink will end goot, you will see.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  “Everytink happen, happen for reason. It only seem bad because it not end yet.”

  I envied him for being able to believe so blindly in the better end.

  He snuggled close under my ear. “Did I ever tell you dat my great grandfather’s aunt’s cousin once removed was Colonel for Imperial army? You know, dey say Maker in dat day sit with dem and read story he write...”

  And so Yeri continued to talk as we journeyed south with the string stretched out between Justin and I. It bumped a bit here and there as we tried to walk a consistent distance apart, which had me questioning how hard a tug would have to be for me to know that it was an intentional tug, but I kept walking and apparently so did he.

  We walked for miles in the pelting sand until I no longer heard the monotonous drone of the wind or even Yeri’s voice, and my mind which was eager to speak to me began to stir deep inside. Unanswered questions still festering there were roused, and I reluctantly allowed them to tumble about.

  ‘How did we wind up in this surreal place, with a talking gerbil, and faeries and fire demons?’ I wondered. ‘It’s as though we accidentally stumbled into an area where stories are birthed and myths are real. Could it be that my warning on the book cover back in the cellar was real? That somehow I had been to this place before? Lustro’s letter in the ice seemed to concur, but how come I can’t remember meeting her?’ I tried to think of what she may look like, but my mind came up blank. ‘Had I really met her, or is it just one of her deceptions?’ My thoughts churned over and over, twisting about without answers for them to feed on.

  I looked out at the string that disappeared into the sand and imagined Justin on the other end, walking by himself. He was braver than I was; I had Yeri to keep me company.

  “What do you think is going to happen to us in the end?” I asked.

  Yeri stuck his head out from under my tent of hair. “Only Maker know end of story.”

  “Have you even met him?” I asked.

  “No, I never been to Lockhart.”

  “So how do you know he’s there?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” he answered straightly. “No one see him for many, many moon.”

  “So he could be dead, b
ut you’re going to keep hoping that everything will just magically work out somehow?”

  “What will happen does not change by what Yeri believe, so it not matter what I tink.” he answered. “Some no have hope. Me, I like to hope, because even small hope is worth hopink.”

  Then, noticing that I could see a little further than before, I asked, “Is it just me or does the wind seem to be dying down?”

  “Is true, it not sting so much, and I see furder - maybe ten feet now or so,” he said. We were both squinting in to the distance when I felt an unmistakable, intentional tug.

  “I felt a tug!” I said. “I’m sure...” and before I could finish, something on the other end of the hemp yanked my wrist so hard that I was pulled off my feet and face down in the sand, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process.

  “JUSTIN!” I yelled, as I was dragged through the sand by the ever-tightening twine harness. I tumbled chaotically, trying to grab the twine with my other hand and stop it from biting into my wrist.

  “Let go! Let go!” shouted Yeri, who was now tobogganing on my head as my body flailed helplessly through the sand.

  “I CAN’T!” I hollered, spitting out grainy bits of sand. “It’s tied too tight!”

  “We must get it off,” said Yeri, hopping off my head, onto my shoulder and scurryng down my arm. Grabbing hold of the hemp he began to gnaw at it with his teeth.

  “What about Justin?” I screamed.

  “Whatever pull dis hard - it not Justin. We must save ourself!”

  My arms and legs burned from the coarse sand and my wrist was raw but Yeri continued to chew at the string, trying to free us from whatever was on the other end. I struggled to get my feet underneath me so I could end the dragging and gallop along with the pull, but all I managed to do was bounce up and down across the desert with Yeri holding on to the twine around my wrist bronco-style. His little feet and tail flailed up above him then fell back down again, as though he was riding a very angry bull.

  I couldn’t imagine things getting any worse, but suddenly they did. The string in front of me disappeared into the sand, pulling us down with it. My insides screamed with horror. I pinched my eyes and mouth shut as the ground underneath me opened up and I fell downward into the sand.

  A loud ‘WHACK’ trembled through my body, my ears rang and everything went black.

  —

  “Tali, are you alright?”

  I heard my name through the ringing hum of pain that resonated against the inside of my skull. It was as though I was looking through a thick plastic bag, watching dim, mottled shapes move towards me against a bright but blurry background. The shadows moved closer, until their fuzzy edges hardened in to focus and I could see Emily’s face.

  “Emily? How...?” was all I could mumble.

  A smile spread up over her cheeks. “Hey!” she said.

  “How’d you get here?” I managed to say as I tried to sit up, but found my body less than co-operative.

  “I fell like you did,” she replied. “But it looks like you landed a lot harder.”

  “Got yourself a good-sized goose egg!” said Justin, as he too came into view.

  Both of them leaned over me, looking as filthy and disheveled as I felt. Their soiled clothes no longer bore any colour but varying shades of brown, and they peered at me from under their tangled nests of hair.

  “What happened?” I stammered. “Where’d you go?”

  “I lost you when we ran into the storm,” said Emily. “I couldn’t see anything and so I just kept running hoping to catch up to you. I called and called, but the wind was so loud, I could barely hear myself. You know, it’d be nice if you actually look back once in a while.”

  “But you were right behind us!” I blurted out.

  “It’s true,” said Justin. “You were there one minute and gone the next.”

  “And just so you know, we spent hours calling you,” I added.

  “When you didn’t show up, we thought you might have...” Justin stopped and looked at me. He didn’t know how to say it.

  “We didn’t know if we’d see you again,” I finally said. “But our plan using the string must have worked.”

  “Actually, we didn’t find her that way,” said Justin. “She found me.”

  I looked at Emily.

  “After giving up on both of you,” she started. “I remembered that Yeri had said we had to go south to Lily Palus, so I used the sun to navigate and started walking. I walked for miles, calling out every so often, but when the wind let up a bit, I saw someone walking a few meters ahead of me. It was Justin. I hollered and he turned around, but then suddenly disappeared.”

  “That’s when I fell in the sink hole,” said Justin. “Check it out!” He pointed upwards, towards an overhanging cliff where some gnarled roots hung down out of a large gaping hole. Sand still sprinkled down from the loose edges, falling onto a growing mountain of sand where we must have fallen and slid down to where I now sat.

  “So of course I ran out to where he had just been standing,” she said. “And I fell through the hole myself, nearly getting tangled in that crazy string you guys tied yourselves up with. I guess Justin and I landed much softer than you and Yeri did.”

  “Where is Yeri?” I asked, raising my head and looking around me.

  “He’s over here,” said Justin walking over to a small rise in the dirt, where a small lifeless ball of fur lay deathly still.

  “NO!” I rushed to stand, but the twine still tied around my wrist abruptly stopped me and I fell back down. “Ow!” I winced. Pain radiated from my bloody wrist, swollen head and now-bruised back-side.

  “Hang on a sec,” said Emily. Picking up a couple of rocks she gently took the tattered twine still tied around my wrist and began scratching it between them. It only took a minute before the string frayed and split apart, freeing me from its hold, but not releasing me from the pain it had caused.

  “I gotta warn you,” said Justin. “I think he’s hurt pretty bad.”

  “Yeri!” I cried. Ignoring the pain I crawled over to him. His eyes were closed, without expression and his fur was matted with dirt. I hated to see him lying there lifeless and so unlike himself. I picked him up and cuddled his tiny, limp body of fur.

  All this time he had worried so much about us, and I hadn’t worried at all about him. How could I have let this happen? I looked up at Justin and Emily and then back down to Yeri, whose body still didn’t move. I fought back tears, but then I remembered what he had said to me back in the storm when we had lost Emily - that even a small hope is worth hoping.

  “Please be alive,” I whispered. “We’re lost without you.”

  His whiskers twitched and he opened his dark glassy eyes.

  “He’s alive!” I shouted and gently squished a kiss into his filthy fur.

  “Of course I live,” he said pushing me off him. “Now why so mushy? Do you not tink I know what you are up to?” he scolded. “I know what you schemink. You want me to take you furder don’t you? And oy-yoi-yoi, squishy, squishy! No, no, you no fool me!”

  I glanced at Justin and Emily and then back to Yeri. “Would you guide us further?” I asked.

  “Aha! Dere you go. See, I no fool. Of course I no blame you for wanting my superior knowledge of land and navigation skill, but you should choose different animal if you tink you can trick me dat easy.”

  I put him down on a rock where he began to groom himself.

  “So?” I looked at him.

  “So what?” he replied.

  “Will you take us further towards Lockhart?”

  Yeri stopped grooming and sized me up with his hands on his hips. From my muck-filled sneakers, bruised legs, dirt covered clothes, up to my face that must have been a sorry sight with sand staining every inch of my skin and a big goose egg protruding out from behind my matted hair. Even a
gerbil’s tiny heart had to feel some sympathy for me.

  I waited silently as his brows twitched and his whiskers fidgeted. Finally he said, “Aye-yi-yi, I was going to say if you let me finish point, dat I intend to go on bit furder, so no need to get all squishy on me.”

  Just like that, we were ready to carry on. I gently raised myself up and although I was sore and stiff, all my bones and joints seemed to have fared better than they felt; amazingly I was mostly unscathed from my fall and crash landing. We slid the rest of the way down the large mound of sand and looked out at the landscape surrounding us.

  Behind us was a tall cliff that rose up and stretched out for miles around us. Tesqua - the desert, was at the top of that cliff. Now at the bottom, we were at the edge of a muddy, damp, cavernous crater. It reminded me of a canyon, just darker, damper and less inviting.

  Large round shadows littered the muddy floor and when I looked up at the sky I saw a blanket of hundreds of large, circle-shaped leaves all at the same height - about fifty feet above. They looked like huge lily pads suspended in the air with thin stems that hung the full way down, rooting themselves into the soggy soil. It was as though we were fish in a lake that had been drained of all the water.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Dis is Lily Palus,” said Yeri, and bending down he stuck his finger into the muddy ground and drew the shape of a shell with a wavy line above it. “It once was sea with crystal clear water.”

  I looked past the drawing to see the mucky canyon floor, spread out with green moss and slimy seaweed covered rocks. Scattered puddles of water sat stagnant in the heat of the day.

  “Looks like a swamp to me,” said Justin.

  “Yes, well dere is much dat change since Maker go away,” Yeri sniffed with a disgusted look on his face. “Nasty smell here. No goot.”

  “So how do we get to Lockhart from here?” asked Emily, looking discouraged from the boggy landscape.

  “First, we go through Lily Palus toward Saltus,” said Yeri.

  “Saltus?” I repeated. “That name sounds familiar.” But where did I hear it?

  “Is big forest on other side of Lily Palus,” he said drawing three vertical lines in the mud beside the shell symbol he had drawn for Lily Palus. “Full of nasty tings. No goot,” replied Yeri. “We stick to shore on other side and go around Saltus.”