Only paces behind her, she tried to clear a massive fallen log, but her foot nicked against the trunk, and she fell on her face, slamming her forehead with all her force into a rock. Instantly, her vision blurred. It would be on top of her in a second. Her forehead scraped and dirtied, and her eyes filling up with tears from the impact. The barrel of her crossbow was still firmly in her hand, but to turn and shoot the monster out of the air, with blinded, blurring eyes, and a pounding in her head, would be nothing short of impossible.
���The necklace,��� she thought, only barely able to make any coherent sense in her mind. She pressed the stone, just as the beast came over the log to attack her.
Barbara fumbled to the tree log, pressing her back against the rough bark. The animal, over two meters long with a whipping tail, sniffed in the air, letting its mouth hang open to show its pointed tongue. It appeared to catch her scent, but it was confused, she was nowhere to be seen. So that it frustratedly whipped its tail all the more, flicking dirt and leaves into the air.
Still, it followed the scent, until it was its strongest, breathing in the air in front of her face. Her vision was clear enough by now to see it, and she felt its menacing breath, and could now see its slitted eyes. Its open mouth and tongue could almost touch her. If it could see her, even in the least, there would be no chance for her to still be alive.
She stared into its mouth, and aimed her crossbow. This shot she could make, even with foggy eyes and head aching, and she fired into the soft part of its throat. The arrow piercing through its neck, the creature gargled a cry, wriggled in agony, and fell lifelessly in front of her.
���Barbara…���
She could hear a woman’s voice, coming closer. The worst of it was over. Barbara pressed the stone, and the gleaming energy returned to her medallion.
���Oh, God, thank you,��� Delany said, jumping over the log, and holding Barbara tightly in her arms. ���But how could you? How did you escape?��� she asked, seeing Barbara’s terribly bruised forehead, and noticing how she was still very disoriented.
���I hid,��� Barbara said frailly, and mostly unconvincingly.
���You hid?��� the Queen asked, seeing no place at all where she might have hid herself.
But then, the ringing began, and they were so terribly excited to be leaving that awful giant world, that the Queen thought less about the improbability of Barbara’s escape, and Barbara thought less about another lie told to keep her secret guarded.
Chapter Nine
In The Cavern
Their orb flew through the portal of the painting, and back into the underground cavern, with the entire group ecstatic to have them returned safely. Though once they saw the brutal scrape across Barbara’s forehead, they knew all was not alright, and when the Queen told their story it was confirmed.
���How does your head feel?��� and ���Are you having trouble concentrating?��� Wilbur would ask, although Barbara said multiple times that she was fine, when in fact she was not.
And when the group was in full discussion regarding what should be done, Wilbur interjected, saying that it was obviously too dangerous for them to travel to new worlds in pairs, and that they should all go together or not at all. Though to this, Matilde suggested that since Barbara had so nearly lost her life on her last trip, that she might like to stay behind (which was a nice way to say that Barbara should not be allowed to go).
However, this did not bode well with Barbara, who insisted that Timothy and Ata had almost died as well, being nearly frozen to death on an icy desert planet, and if they should be allowed to go, then she should also.
���Then none of you are going,��� Matilde said, having lost some of her good patience, mainly because she’d been so frightened by Barbara’s close call.
���But why?… That’s not fair,��� Timothy said, with a bit of childish disappointment in his voice.
���I don’t care what’s fair. I care that you’re all alive at the end of this,��� Matilde Wolcott, the Queen of Earth said.
���But-��� he began to say, before his grandfather interrupted.
���It’s final, Tim. You’re not going,��� Wilbur ordered.
And with that, the King and Queens set their coordinates for the last of the four undiscovered planets, and were gone with a flash of light.
The three younger travelers were left alone, and their hidden cave was once again silent.
���Thanks a lot,��� Timothy grumbled, after they’d stood quietly for several moments, while staring at the moving images in the cave painting, scenes from a world that they had been kept from.
���Don’t be mad at me,��� Barbara argued. ���I’m not the one who said you boys couldn’t go.���
���Yes, but it was your idea,��� Ata interjected, which caused Barbara to glare at him from the corner of her eye.
���Not now, Ata, please,��� she said, with a stern expression, and speaking somewhat more harshly than she normally would have, causing Timothy to raise up his eyebrow at her; For, by then, he’d known Barbara for years, and was slightly caught off guard by her growing rude nature.
���Is something the matter, Barb? You’ve been acting snippy since we got here,��� Timothy said. ���First the thing about the rat the other night, then we can’t find you when we want to get any work done, and now this.���
���There’s nothing the matter with me,��� she answered, and then turned to ask Ata for confirmation.
���I’m not being snippy, am I?��� she said.
Ata smirked. ���No thanks,��� he answered back, as if to brush her away.
���No thanks? What is that supposed to mean?��� she said.
���It means… I’m not getting involved in your little tryst,��� he said to clarify, and pointing at the two of them. ���But if you must know, yes, you have been.���
Barbara’s lips curled up, as if she could not believe the treatment she’d gotten, letting out a heavy sigh.
Though Timothy wasn’t finished with his accusations.
���And another thing,��� he said, ���It’s that crummy necklace of yours. You just walk around all day holding it, doesn’t matter what you’re doing. It’s like you’re not even wearing it. You just hold that medallion in your hand like it’ll get away from you.���
���I do not,��� Barbara answered back. Though looking down, she realized she’d been unconsciously holding her medallion in the palm of her hand, during their entire conversation, as if it were some sort of security for her.
And sadly, they may have gone on arguing for hours, if at that moment, Barbara hadn’t begun to blink her eyes, and let her words drag on as she spoke.
���My head,��� she said, feeling her forehead beating in pain.
Immediately, she vomited, and fell to the ground in a hazy stupor. With the force of her fall, and the way in which she still held her medallion tightly in her hand, it broke the clasp around her neck. The ridges of her back and spine ached, her temples throbbed, and she lay on the ground for some minutes, even after Timothy and Ata came to her aid, and until an orb of light shot back into their secret cavern.
���Barbara, dear, what happened?��� Wilbur said, kneeling beside her, and making sure that she kept her head still.
���My head,��� she muttered, with the image of the kindly old physician blurring in and out of focus. She tried to follow his finger to the corner of her peripheral, but found that she could not, and simply trying made her head ache.
���She’s got a concussion. It’s fairly serious,��� Wilbur said. And he insisted, though she was in a poor state to be moved, that she would do better in the palace, where they would have the proper medicine needed to treat her condition.
And so, carefully Wilbur lift
ed Barbara up from the cave floor. She was mumbling something, now unintelligibly, as he carried her to the globe.
���Not less…��� she kept repeating��, as they set the globe’s coordinates for Ismere, and as she and Wilbur, and Matilde, touching the surface of the globe with a cave stone, flew through the painting and back to the palace. While Queen Delany, Timothy and Ata, began the long duty of leading theirs and the rest of the group’s horses back to the capital.
And as soon as they had lost sight of their hidden cave entrance, there was a young girl that happened by, not more than five minutes afterward. Her ringlet-curled dark brown hair blew in front of her saddened eyes as she led her old plow horse by the reins, and she was in pitiful trouble with her father, for she had meant to sell trinkets that morning, but hadn’t.
*
�� In this case, it was not that Barbara had actually said, ���Not less…��� It was only that that was what they thought she had said.
Chapter Ten
Things Forbidden
Tavora had not liked the dark. She had never liked darkness. In fact, as a young girl she would beg her mother to keep a candle lit by her bed; And, if the candle were already melted down to the nub, sometimes her mother would allow it.
She inched down the rope held by her father, and was grateful to find that this bizarre cave could somehow make its own light, twinkling as starlight. And as she descended further below the earth she saw the reason for this; that reason being a tall magnificent cave painting, drawn onto a wide center column in that expansive room. Outward from the painting sparkled a gently glowing light, almost as if she were not staring at a painting at all, but up into the most heavenly night sky imaginable. And the more she gave it her attention, the more it seemed that that painting were actually alive, or moving of its own accord.
Her feet touched down upon the cavern floor, with the domed cave ceiling roughly thirty to forty feet above her head. The whole place echoed, with some strange bits of ancient secrets all around her. There was a mural of multiple painted scenes, and an unknown hieroglyphic text that filled one entire wall. There was that painting of lifelike stars that she’d seen before, and there in front of her, in the exact center of the room, the hidden globe of Gleomu, she was sure of it, and something that was unlawful for her to see, or to even know the location of, but there it was. She knew that she should run away automatically, and perhaps, the fact the she had found it on accident would be forgiven her.
By the delicate light of glowing stars, Tavora gathered up all the trinkets and jeweleries that she could find, stuffing them awkwardly into her bag until the metal and gem stones could be seen spilling over the brim. She flung her pouch strap over her shoulder so that it hung firmly in place, as she climbed the rope, hand over hand, out of the depths of that forbidden cavern as quickly as she could, so that she would not be caught; For already she was in dreadful trouble with her father, but to add onto it the just anger of a king would be far too much for one day.
Crawling past the spiky branches that covered over the cave entrance, she stood upon the frozen winter’s ground again. And heard the crashing of the waterfall nearby, which she hated.
���That better be all of them,��� her father grumbled, as they were preparing to leave.
���It is,��� Tavora said, lifting the flap on her pouch again to be sure that she had gathered them all. ���I made sure of it,��� she replied.
���Yeah, and how can you be sure?��� he said, leading the way, pushing aside overgrown branches, and crunching a thin layer of iced snow beneath his feet. ���…fumbling around in the dark, with no light at all,��� he continued.
���There was a light-��� she began to say, but suddenly stopped herself, knowing better than to tell her father about what she had seen.
Oded began to walk more slowly, with a pondering suspicion in his head. ���What light? Underground?��� he asked.
Tavora’s eyes darted, trying to think of how to cover over her misgivings.
���No, it was… the moonlight,��� she said, fumbling her words. ���It was bright enough to see by,��� she continued, now more confidently.
���Well, you’d better hope so,��� Oded replied, pushing aside another large branch from their path. ���Or you’ll be back here in the morning, to search that cave on your hands and knees, until you find every last scrap.���
���Yes, sir,��� she answered quickly, just glad to have pacified her father’s line of questioning: Eager to put that cave behind her, and that forbidden globe, which was even a crime for her to hold in her memory, and so she did her best to forget it.
Later that evening, once her father had gone to bed, she emptied out the contents of her overflowing pouch onto her father’s workbench, to count each trinket and jewelry piece one by one. And the reason she’d decided to wait to count them until after her father had gone to sleep, was so that if she had lost any, he would not have been able to yell at her until morning.
Though as she raked her fingers through the pile, she found that she had not lost anything, as she had feared, but instead had actually gained a gorgeously sparkling medallion necklace, the most magnificent handiwork that she’d ever seen. Except that the chain had come apart somehow; Yet, this was hardly difficult to fix for a jewelry maker’s daughter.
And once she had finished crimping and clamping the chain, she held up her work to inspect it. Specifically admiring the jeweled medallion, gazing at its intricacies, and realizing, in some instinctive way, that it had held some special purpose.
She ran her slim finger on the cool of the stone, it moved, as if it were meant to be pressed down. She pushed into the center of it, and immediately her breath quaked within her chest. A wash of glittering energy enveloped her, and falling into her mouth and over her tongue as she inhaled, but it did not suffocate her.
Instantly, she knew this was some strange, and possibly dangerous power. It was another thing, like the globe of Gleomu, that was not meant for her to see, another thing that was forbidden.
Chapter Eleven
Strange Things In Ismere
When Barbara, and the King and Queen of Earth returned to the palace, Wilbur carried her speedily up the steps, and down the hall to the palace���s chief physician, who gave Barbara a heavy dosage of medication, that was meant to control her brain injury. However, Wilbur had run so quickly while carrying the wounded Barbara (who was not a heavy girl by any means, but then again not a child either, and closely coming upon her sixteenth birthday), and so that Matilde had to catch up to the old man, to ask him how he could have run so fast, and whether or not his knees had bothered him, as they usually had for several years by that time.
���I don’t even feel the slightest bit of discomfort,��� he said, later on that evening, after they’d brought Barbara back to her quarters, so that she could properly rest.
���Nothing?��� Matilde asked again, with some skepticism, and knowing how much of a physical toll, the many months spent in Darius’s dungeon had taken on her husband.
Wilbur’s demeanor suddenly changed, and for the first time he’d realized the importance of this seemingly trivial observation. ���That is strange, isn’t it?��� he said, pondering. ���I feel perfect… absolutely perfect.���
And once the rest of the group had returned on horseback, later that night, Wilbur also told them in passing about his cured knees, and they all were very happy for him that he’d so suddenly been mended, though they didn’t give it much more thought after that (nor, if they’d known to check for it, to the fact that Matilde had no longer needed to wear her reading glasses).
Her eyes opened in a squinted haze, as Barbara awoke much later that night, wrapped softly in velvety sheets, but her mind was jumbled. She was still rattled from her fall in the Giant world, and while her good sense might have told her to rest, all that
she could think of with any amount of clarity, was that she could not find her necklace, and that she must have it.
In fact, this innate desire, this physically felt need for her necklace was not an entirely new feeling. It had been steadily growing since she’d first realized its secret powers, nearly a week before, so that each time she used it to hide, or the thought that she might use it at any moment, to runway from any danger or threat, it was a growing comfort for her.��
���Where is it?��� were the thoughts that gargled in her consciousness. She remembered having it in the Giant world, and then in the cavern, but not after that.
���I have to go back,��� she said aloud for some reason, because her mind was so disoriented.
And then like the movement’s in a dream, how you will leap from place to place, without a conscious perception of the travel that it took to get there: she found herself in the palace stable, unlatching her horse. Then feeling the cold night air as she cantered through the sleeping city streets, then arguing with the gatekeeper, until he would open the main gates (which he only did after she lied, saying she was under orders to leave the city). Then riding under starlight, until she could hear the waterfall, and a babbling off in the distance that sounded vaguely like her own name.
���Barbara,��� it said. ���Barbara!��� again louder.
She had been standing at the secret entrance to their cavern, in a stupor, until that voice brought her back to her consciousness.
It was Timothy, calling out her name as he rode into view and dismounted from his horse. He had followed her from the city that night, knowing immediately that something was wrong, and had followed her trail until it came to the night watchman at the gate, and after that, to their secret cavern.
The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 44