Day 1 ���
I am marooned.
Arthur�� will pay for this, for his crimes against me, against human accomplishment. Such an illogical half-wit. Can’t he see how foolish he is to keep our discoveries hidden from the world? I should have murdered him when I had the chance.
I will avenge myself, and return to Earth somehow. I will be avenged.
From that mammoth center room, there spread out in a jagged circle, many small hallways and passages: like light beams traveling away from the sun, or like the tentacles of an octopus. And out from one of those halls, there burned a constant, weak distant light, melded with flashes of an intense striking light that made crackling noises, and they were always followed by the painful cries of a man, of a familiar voice.
���Asa,��� Timothy thought.
And sneaking in closer toward the light, he saw that he was indeed right, howbeit he wished he hadn’t been.
Locked within a small dark cage, made of heavy black metal bars, sat Asa, hunched and huddled in the center, he looked exhausted, tormented and very weak.
���Sir, you do not seem to understand your status,��� Darius proclaimed, standing outside the cage, speaking down to Asa, as if he were not even human.
���All that is required, a simple ‘yes’, nothing more…��� he spoke tenderly now, but even Timothy as far away as he was could sense the true viciousness behind his words.
���If you are silent, there will be repercussions. If you say ‘no’, there will be consequences,��� he said now more angrily, but was instantly switched again to false tenderness. ���But a ‘yes’… and all this pain and consequence will be removed. Don’t you want that?��� Darius asked.
But Asa, taking all his strength to sit upon his knees, his face was harsh and ragged, he began to laugh, forcefully.
���You call this pain?��� he uttered.
Yet as quickly as the words had left his mouth, a shock, like lightning from the end of Darius’s cane, burst out as he shoved it into Asa’s side, and there again Timothy heard the awful sounds of pain. And seeing him in such a state, made all the baked sugared apples, and candied treats that Timothy had gorged himself on since they’d arrived, it made the memory of them taste noticeably sour in his mouth.
But his laughing only maddened Darius all the more, who said that he would actually prefer it if Asa would starve. And without another word, Darius’s echoing footsteps and electric light turned and went straight toward Timothy. And Timothy, retreating from the light, found a secure place in another hallway to hide in, until Darius’s steps could be heard up the winding stairs.
And after some more minutes, when all was silent, and he thought he’d waited long enough to be safe, Timothy went slowly, using the pale bursts of electric spark light from that towering machine to find his way. And there in the heavy metal cage, locked up like an animal, he found Asa.
���I’m sorry I took so long,��� Timothy said, crouching by the cage door, in the nearly pitch black hallway, but with those words a very horrible and dangerous thing happened. Immediately, the hallway lit up with a blindingly stark, electric glaring beam, and there was Darius, standing just over Timothy showing an evil expression.
���I knew you were there,��� he sneered.
A burst of electric lightning into his back. Pain beyond our imagining, his muscles seized up, and Timothy lay unconscious on the cold dungeon floor.
���The time,��� Barbara thought again, and knew she had stayed longer than was safe to do so.
Puffing out the candle, she half ran in her fuzzy slippers, nightdress, and blanket around her shoulders, down the hall, and bounding up the stairs, returning to her own door, just as the sound of stone against stone was heard from the downstairs closet passageway.
Barbara delicately twisted the handle, and slid well beneath her covers, hoping she would not be found out. Meanwhile, Darius, taking his deadly cane in hand, marched heavily and loudly down the main hall, clinking his cane on the ground, so that Barbara heard it even with her door shut, and while folded well below her bedcovers.
The noise stopped, and Darius, seeing his laboratory door had been left open a small crack, went to investigate, and found his ledger closed upon the desk, just as it had been, but the table candle melted slightly lower than he’d remembered, and with a fresh pool of wax ringed around the candle base.
A few moments later, Barbara heard her bedroom door creak open, and saw an electric lamp partially illuminating even the space beneath her bedsheets with cracks of discomforting light.
���Up so late, dear heart?��� came an old man’s voice from the open doorway.
Her insides sank, as a breath of shock entered through her nostrils.
*
�� Arthur Greyford
Chapter Thirty
The Machine
Fluttering his eyes in the darkness, Timothy awoke with his mind aching, and head lain stiffly on the cold stone floor. By the flashes of intervalic spark light, he could tell he was in the great room of the dungeon, locked into his own separate cage. And among other things, he noticed immediately the burning sensation in all his muscles, like he’d run for days without water.
���Timothy, you’re alive!��� Barbara exclaimed. And there his eyes focused on another cage far to his right.
���Barely,��� he moaned, willing his hands to lift himself off the floor, and then leaning his back against the metal cage bars.
For a moment, there was a hopeless sort of pause.
���He’s going to torture us, until we eat again, you know,��� Timothy eventually broke the silence.
���Sorry, but it’s worse than that,��� she said, loud enough to be heard clearly across the wide room.
���What do you mean by that?��� he asked.
Though, if Timothy had been close enough he would have seen the disturbed expression on her face as she said this. ���He’s going to experiment on us,��� she said. ���I know all about it. I read through his journal.���
���You did?��� Timothy said, eyebrows raised, with a tone of unbelief. ���What else did it say?���
���It said, he was going to try some awful thing on your grandmother, first, and if that didn’t work, then he’d use us as alternates.���
���If it didn’t work…��� Timothy reiterated. ���Like if he killed her?���
���Maybe,��� Barbara answered, but sounding like she’d mostly agreed with Timothy’s reasoning. ���He said, it had something to do with frequencies, and a light transfer… which I think means-���
But Timothy interrupted, ���That he means to steal our only way home,��� he said, still painfully resting against the metal bars.
���Exactly,��� Barbara answered, almost too preoccupied now by their present state, to worry all that much that Timothy had just stolen her prime chance to sound logical and smart.
Frustrated, that he had been caught, and that they seemed to be inexhaustibly trapped, Timothy hit his head against the wall of his barred cage. And then another sound, of grinding stone, and malicious footsteps down the long winding stairs.
The steps as they descended grew more inescapable, and after a minute, two figures settled into the room: Matilde Wolcott, the Queen of Earth, being directed about like a barnyard animal, with forceful nudges from a black metal cane, and Darius, following behind and holding up a stark glaring light, and prodding her onward.
Matilde’s face was blank and expressionless, her mind obviously still confined within a heavy trance. Darius led her to a pedestal near the base of that giant tree-like mechanism, locking her forearms and ankles into golden metal straps. And the windmilled turbine atop the machine began to spin more quickly, as if power were being transmitted from Matilde Wolcott to the machine, like she were some human battery sou
rce, or an engine of some sort. The tree machine’s hummings swelled to a higher pitch. Its sparks shot out more frequently and violently, climbing up the wires on its trunk-like portion.
And even in her comatose state, Mrs. Wolcott’s face now showed signs of wincing pain.
���You’re hurting her. Stop it!��� Barbara yelled out from her cage, which was closest to Darius, and Timothy’s closest to his grandmother.
And he, their captor, twisting knobs and flipping switches, and pressing buttons on some ornate control panel, turned to give her some attention.
���Child, I’ll do as I like,��� he said, and reaching inside his coat pocket he retrieved a yellowish-red medium-sized piece of fruit, tossing it into Barbara’s cage.
���Here, have an apple,��� he said snidely. ���You’ll feel better, I assure you.���
���You monster,��� Barbara shot back, hurling her apple back at Darius, so that he’d had to duck his head.
���Tut, tut,��� he said as a warning, and flashing a small spark out of his cane to show her his seriousness.
And returning again to the controls, he spoke over his shoulder, ���You are not informed enough to make such a claim.��� And throwing the final switch, he said, ���Let history decide who I am, and who I am not.��� His words arrogant and face greedily proud.
The machine roared in high-pitched swirling madness, massive sparks leapt along the wires. Timothy’s grandmother cried out in searing agony. Whatever Darius’s dastardly monstrous machine was doing, it could only be for the worse.
Timothy could not bear to see his grandmother this way, and so he shut his eyes tightly. And in the corner of his mind, separate from the chaos in the room, was another ringing, a distinct tone that he had heard once before. A ringing that grew more loudly in his ears, drowning away everything else. Light began to expand outward filling his cage, in the shape of a glowing emanating sphere of light. The room outside the orb was now completely silenced. Timothy saw Darius throw up his hands in rage and yell something, but he could not hear the words.
Unbelievable force, shot so lightning fast toward the ceiling that Timothy rocketed between the spinning cupped blades and through the stone, and through the ground above: Out of that world entirely, as instant as a camera’s flash bulb.
Chapter Thirty-One
Earth
When Timothy landed back in Mayfield, in the window room, he found that hidden gable room enclosed within an ever widening sphere of electrified gold-colored energy. It was much like the orb by which he had just traveled, only many times greater, yet seemingly less stable.
Timothy gazed up at the giant sphere surrounding the window room and everything within it, and that’s when he realized its true purpose.
���He’s not just stealing our way home,��� he said aloud. ���He’s stealing all of it.���
Trapped, Timothy turned all around the room trying to think of something that might stop him, but what? To his knowledge it seemed impossible now to alter this chain of events, to keep Darius from taking the globe and the painting, and the entire room. But maybe, he thought, he might have just enough time to use them once more, before they were gone forever.
Wooden beams breaking like twigs, the walls being shattered away from the rest of the house. The entire window room, with most of its walls and ceiling, was being wrenched into the air above the nighttime English countryside.
Timothy could barely get to the almanac��, as the room rattled and shook through the air, like it were being pulled upward through an earthquake. He snatched up the heavy book, almost toppling over as he tumbled toward the globe, and holding the immense old book, cupped in the cradle of his left arm, he shouted the numbers aloud as he fumbled to set the dials and switches.
And with the last switch thrown, the painting came alive again, showing the images and topography of Gleomu like a glowing atlas. He spun the crank vigorously to charge its internal mechanisms. The shaking became more and more violent; items fell from the desk and an elegant Grecian statued bust tipped from its pedestal and slid across the wood planked floor.
Light spun outward in colored circles from the globe, all was ready. Yet, before he could touch the globe’s face he was thrown off his feet, as the room and himself were exploded toward the stars with a boom that echoed like a hundred cannons all being fired at once.
From over his shoulder, through the missing portions of wall and floor where the room had broken away from the rest of the house, Timothy saw the lights of the Mayfield school, and the surrounding countryside, beginning to fade away into the distance below (like you might see if you were traveling by rocket ship).
And then another flash of brilliant light, and he saw Barbara arrive, blasting through the center of the painting. He had forgotten her in the hectic chaos. Of course, both he and Barbara had made it a point to set out for their rescue mission separately, so that they would return separately, incase something dreadful had happened to either one of them, so that neither would be trapped in Gleomu permanently.
���Honestly?��� Barbara said, seeing Timothy knocked from his feet, and still seated on the wood planked floor.
Behind Barbara, the painting jumbled its images for a brief second, like a television set might do, if it’s losing its signal.
���Come on,��� he answered, stumbling in the quaking room toward the globe.
He set an unsteady finger roughly to where the capital city might be. Light shot upward toward the bits of the ceiling that remained, causing an obvious disturbance in the electrified orb surrounding the window room.
Timothy reached out his hand for her to take it.
���Where are we going?��� she asked, as the signal in the painting grew less and less distinct, and the countryside below them became lesser dots of light. And off along the night horizon could be seen the greater London city lights, but those too soon faded.
���To Ismere, or to Darius. You take your pick,��� Timothy said.
���Will we ever come back to Earth?��� Barbara asked, seeing London and the blackness of the sea, and all the great cities of Europe through the broken portions of the room. And knowing her parents, on their summer in Madrid, would never have dreamed this would happen to her.
���I don’t know,��� Timothy said, honestly.
And yet, realizing there was no better choice, Barbara took his hand as the light solidified around them.
And from within Darius’s giant thieving orb, there was another flash of an even whiter, more radiant light, and the world of Earth was disappeared, in an instant.
*
�� A book that contains information relevant to a specific date. In this case, the almanac is a large ledger book that holds specific coordinates for many of the most interesting planets in our known universe.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Threats and Promises
���Open the gates,��� Timothy shouted to the morning watchman.
The pair now stood at the entrance of the southern gate, after landing quite off the mark, in a nearby recently deserted hamlet of the city, and after shattering the roof ridge off an old barn during their blazingly fast descent. The two had run across the fields and were now standing in front of the city, at the entrance of the South Gate, desperately out of breath, and rather impatient with the watchman’s remarks, but understandably so.
���Under whose authority,��� the watchman answered, knowing that an hour after the warning bells had rung, the city gates were to be barred shut, not to be reopened for any reason, or so were his orders.
���Under… his,��� Barbara yelled to the watchman, pointing toward Timothy. And her companion peered peculiarly back at her, however he was quick to understand her meaning.
���Is that right?��� the watchman responded, almost chuckling. ���And who might you be, little man?���
��
And then, with a measure of regalia Timothy had not yet known he’d possessed, he shouted to the man in an even royal tone, ���I am the Prince of Earth.���
King Corwan and the rest of the survivors from Hrim had rode into the city late during the final watches of the previous night. And at sunrise, the giant’s army could be seen marching along the foot of the Hyrdig mountains, and it was commonly thought that they would be ready to make war before nightfall.
Within a half-hour of their arrival, Timothy and Barbara were ushered into a council room within the palace, and were made to give the account of their adventures before the King and Queen, and all of their army’s generals; Including the portion of the story in which Asa had been captured and had rather been tortured, than to eat Darius’s food. And it was here that Barbara could no longer bear to look directly at the Queen, and to see her face, knowing that she now felt all the more responsible for leaving him (Asa, the Queen’s son), and for losing all memory of him as she had.
And finally, when they had come to the end of their stories, Timothy ended with this, ���We have six hours left, Your Majesties.���
���And then what?��� One of the elder generals called out, directing his question mostly to the young prince.
Although, he was not the first to answer. For as everyone there in the council room knew, Queen Delany was by far the most experienced with regard to the sciences of light travel, and so all eyes focused toward her, mostly out of habit.
���It’s hard to say, for sure,��� the Queen answered, somewhat reluctantly. ���Even in our younger days, this is unprecedented, unlike anything King Corwan, nor I, have ever seen,��� And she reached out to take the King’s hand, as a comfort for what she was about to say.
���Either you will be reflected back to Earth, to be dropped from heights unknown, where you’d left from,��� she said, looking empathetically at Timothy, who’d been the last to touch the globe. ���Or else, you will follow the window room to wherever Darius takes it.��� And then Delany, squeezing more tightly onto Corwan’s hand, said something that all there knew better than to oppose.
The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 20