Chapter Fifteen
Things Discovered
Subtle rumors had trickled through the kingdom, since the day of rope, when the royalty of Earth had used the globe to transport an entire warring enemy into their waiting hands. The news of that day spread outward from the city of Ismere like a tide, and what returned from certain surrounding, hostile nations were whispered briberies and rumors, saying that whomever could find this globe, and could bring it to them, this man or woman would instantly be made as wealthy as kings.
And these same rumors Oded had heard as well, and they’d settled in his heart. So that he knew as soon as he’d seen the globe that there was no question whether he would be treacherous. The only uncertainty in his mind being, which nation would he sell this newfound globe to, and what would be his price.
And as he readied the cart, packing supplies and extra blankets to keep out the cold, his mind was made up. He would take the globe as far west as he was able, over the bridge at Bethharbor and through the canyon pass, and would sell his treasured prize to the Desert King. It would be his quickest route to take, and would keep him away from Ismere. And although it would be a dangerous trek through wild lands, at least, he thought, it would be better than to try to make a journey over the mountains in winter, or to try to charter a boat, to travel down the river Theydor, which would certainly give him away.
Tavora sat on her cot bed in the main room of the cottage, as her father came to pack his saddle bags with jars of food for the journey, and an extra loaf of bread for himself.
And when she saw him, she instantly flinched, and unwittingly covered the red mark on her cheek that was still sore from that morning. She glared at him with the foulest expression.
���I don’t care what you think of me,��� he said, packing another coat.
���You don’t care about anything, do you?��� she answered defiantly, not afraid now to show her truer hatred for her father, and feeling that he’d deserved such treatment.
He lifted the back of his hand to strike again, but restrained himself. And slamming the door he left, leading that poor ignorant plow horse, over the rickety footbridge near their home, and away into the distance. And she could hear the squeak of cart wheels, even after the cart and horse had been lost behind the overgrowth of trees.
Timothy was no physician, and the little bit he’d learned from his grandfather did not cover injuries so extensive as this. So he set Barbara gently on the rubbled street, under the watch of mammoth buildings, in that desolate city, and hoped for something of the miraculous. And waited, for hours as the enormous white sun of that world sunk toward the edge of the horizon. Around nightfall, he carried her into a vacant building, under the awning of a courtyard plaza, to give them some means of shelter, and he gathered anything that would burn, to make a fire for the evening; For although this world seemed vacuous and empty, and was not especially cold, who knew what darkness would bring, or what sorts of monsters might lurk in the shadows of night.
The fire crackled and sparked in the absolute silence of that devastated world. Timothy had gathered bits of already charred old wood, and piles of ashy clothing, anything that would burn to make a fire. Yet, the irregularity of his kindling made for a smoky fire that burned in strange colors, and smelled of horrid odors, like a fire will smell if you are burning those things which ought not to be burned.
Yet, this pungent odor might have actually have been a benefit. Laid down against the courtyard wall, wrapped in nicer fragments of clothing that Timothy had found to keep her warm, Barbara began to rustle. And her movement became a slight moan, which then turned into hoarse words.
���Tim?��� her gravelly voice said, with all the frailness of a whisper. ���What is that smell?���
���Ah!��� Timothy yelled out in excitement, and ran to her, a grin firmly pressed upon his face, and laughing a little. ���I thought you were going to die, I really did, but you’re okay.���
Barbara glanced at him, the same way that she often would when he’s said something silly, but lethargically, like all her energy had been drained from her.
���Well I don’t feel okay,��� she said. ���And I have this terrible headache… ��� she went on to say, feeling the back of her head as she said this, and discovering a massive wound on the back of her skull. The size of which was so dire that she immediately realized that she should have been dead, and that no one could have survived such an injury.
���Am I… dead?��� she asked, which in her mind was the next logical conclusion.
But Timothy grinned at her, while sitting over her makeshift bed. ���Would I be here with you, if you were dead?��� he asked.
���How should I know? I’ve never been dead before,��� she answered, with a certain familiar wit in her voice, so that Timothy knew she would be alright.
���Then you’ll just have to trust me,��� he said, putting a hand onto her hand, so that she’d know they were not ghosts. ���I carried you into the last world of men.���
And since, her face seemed to still be confused as to why that should be important, Timothy went on to remind her about how she’d been injured in the Giant world the day before, and about how Wilbur had carried her to the palace doctors in Ismere. He told her about how his grandfather’s knees had not felt an ounce of pain, and how Wilbur believed that this was no coincidence, that it was this last world of men that had fixed them.
���Sort of like…��� she said, trying to remember the name for it, ���like a fountain of youth?��� And her eyes began to close again, because of her tiredness.
���Yes, something like that,��� Timothy answered.
Barbara slept soundly, through the remainder of the night. Though during the latter midnight hours, there was a sound; incredibly distant and quiet, but no less terrifying. And while it is hard to describe, because we do not have such sounds on Earth, or in Gleomu, you might be able to imagine it, if you think of a bat’s shrieking squeals combined with the sound of a lion’s roar. And then the noise was gone, as quickly as it had started, as if that beast who’d made the sound had instantly finished its murdering, or as if that beast itself had been murdered. In which case, Timothy would not liked to have met whatever creature could slay something that sounded so terrible.
So that, Timothy then barricaded the broken gate that led into the courtyard where they made their camp, with anything that he could find: broken bits of rubble, shattered and scorched pieces of furniture. Yet, in the end, he ran out of supplies before he could securely seal themselves in. And so he sat against the wall, huddled near Barbara, meaning to guard her from attack, to use his force-shield bands to create a half-dome barrier around her, if it would come to that. And though he intended to stay awake all night, his eyes batted closed, and he fell asleep seated beside her.
In the morning, they awoke to a smoldered fire, and that last world of men, once again draped in its false serenity. Timothy was hungry, but not as much as he would suspect. And he knew, above all else, that the most important thing for them would be to find a secure shelter for the night. For he knew that they could live without food or water, for the remaining two days, but if that terrifying beast found them in an unprotected shelter during the night, they might not survive.
���I heard something last night,��� Timothy said, once Barbara had awoken.
She lifted herself, so that she was sitting against the wall, with her eyes slightly squinted. ���What kind of something?��� she asked, her hair matted with old dried blood, but her voice, not as gravelly as before.
Timothy looked at her with his most serious expression. ���The kind of something you don’t want to see,��� he said.
Tavora sat on her cot, resting her head in her hands. She felt a weight of anger and shame sinking in her chest. Her own father, the globe thief.
She could run to tell
the royal family about her accidental discovery, about how her father had committed unpardonable treason, but what then. What if they did not believe her? What if they thought she had found the globe on purpose? And she would not be able to tell them where her father had gone, he had kept that to himself.
Outside the snow still fell. Soon his tracks would be covered up forever, and lost under a layer of white. All of this screamed in her head. She felt powerless to stop this relentless crashing of events, and as she lowered her head again, feeling defeated, she remembered something that still might grant her some power.
���The medallion,��� she thought.
It still hung around her neck. She knew it had some fantastic power, but what. Springing from the bed, she ran outside to see what it might be, pressing the center stone of the necklace, and watching the glitter of energy encompass her.
Perhaps she might be able to fly, she thought, like that boy from Earth. Roughly a year prior, she’d seen him fly into the merchant district, and land near her booth. He’d walked right past her, without even noticing. Yet, in all her fervent trying, she still found that she could not jump any higher than she could normally. After this, she tried punching a wooden post in Myre’s stable to see if it might be some manner of force field, which most would have guessed was a terrible idea.
Thus continued many attempted feats of strength, or speed, all horrible failures. She knew the medallion would give her some fantastic power, but she could not tell what it would be, and time was fleeting away from her, and the snow still fell.
Speedily packing a sack with all the blankets that remained in the cottage, and a flask of water, Tavora hurried out the door. She would stop her father on her own, even without secret powers. Though as she left the cottage, under the falling snow, traveling over the rippling creek, and the old footbridge beside her house, she saw, or better put she did not see, what this mysterious power had been.
Gazing into the water, her reflection had completely disappeared. She could be invisible. In her heart, for a passing second was the thought that she could run away: away from her father, she could hide in a place where no one would ever find her, and the King would not know that she’d been the one to find the globe.
Though as quickly as thoughts may come, she pushed it away.
���No,��� she said aloud, pressing the stone so that she would become visible again. And she breathed a heavy breath through her nose to ready her courage, and set off on her way. She would follow the tracks, and steal back the globe without being seen. And there would be nothing that could stop her, she thought.
Picking her path through the woods, feeling the crunch of newly fallen snow under her boots, the night began to rise up around her. The winter’s cold would soon be overpowering, and although her medallion could make her invisible, it wouldn’t make her invisible from the cold. The cold she could still feel.
Chapter Sixteen
Things Pursued
���What do you see up there, Tim?��� Barbara called out, frailly from the street below, like it took all her energy to shout the words.
The morning in that new world was burning brightly overhead. Timothy had practically carried Barbara away from where they made camp the night before, and had gone alone to cautiously climb a partially crumbled and shattered stone staircase to the highest point he could find.
The broken buildings shown beneath a clouded and dirtied sky. He saw piles of rubble buildings like low mountains, half-broken towers, but far off in the distance, he saw a set of three massive ziggurats��, and in their center a mighty, towering golden structure that seemed for the most part, unaffected.
���I see a palace, in the distance… but it would take us all day to get there,��� he said, answering Barbara’s question.
���Are you sure?��� she shouted back. ���How do you know it’s a palace?���
He smiled coyly. ���I’m a prince. I know these things,��� he said.
���Oh,��� she said, as if falsely impressed. ���You’re not as smart as you think you are… Your Highness,��� she replied, giving a mocking half-bow from her seat on a pile of rubble.
It was good to see Barbara in a more normal state, Timothy thought.
Though they did not have time for simple conversation. If they wanted to find a secure place to make camp for the evening, somewhere safe from that nightmarish noise that Timothy had heard the previous night, then they would need to hurry.
However, thankfully for their sakes, Barbara was feeling spectacularly better. And although her normally finely brushed blonde hair was now matted and cover with dried blood, the wound on the back of her head had staunched the bleeding on its own, and had closed overnight. There were no signs of infection, and she was not in pain. And her leg, that was most certainly broken, could now be walked on with only a limp, but even that was quickly resolving itself.
This new world was indeed a miraculous one. So that even Timothy was beginning to feel stronger: his eyesight becoming more keen, his hearing more adept. And as they journeyed toward the palace, miles from where they were, moving gradually faster as Barbara continued to heal, Timothy picked out of a pile of debris, a metal pole to use as a weapon, in case they were attacked. This pole was about two and half meters long, as long as a Cavalryman���s spear in Gleomu, and fashioned from a particularly dense metal that under normal circumstance Timothy might not have been able to carry for more than a few minutes.
Yet here in this bizarre world, he carried it like you would a walking stick, without breaking a sweat, or feeling in the least bit famished.
And thus they continued, past deserted amphitheaters, and buildings ready to topple, and an entire vacant world. And with each hour that passed, Barbara’s leg grew stronger, until they both could walk at a rapid pace, and her without the faintest limp. So that there was no doubting that this world was a place of miracles.
After a long while, Barbara spoke up again, saying, ���What I don’t understand is, if we can heal so well in this world, then what could have killed all these people?���
���Let’s hope we don’t find out,��� Timothy replied.
The sun set over the glistening, icy snow. Tavora was wrapped up tightly in her thickest winter’s coat, following the now barely indented horse cart tracks. And while the snow fall began to ease, it still fell in a light dusting, so that she could not stop, or make camp, for fear of losing the trail, and so she kept her pace in the impenetrable silence of a snow covered forest.
The air in her mouth felt frozen as it entered into her lungs. Cold ridges began to form on her lips, which was the first sign that they would start to crack and bleed eventually, and the cold from the outside world inched its way into her core, but still she walked.
���I have to find him,��� she thought, and she knew that meant that she’d also have to do whatever she could to stop him; That her kingdom needed her, and that she could not rest, or relent, no matter how cold the night would become. Yet, more than that, she knew that if she stopped to rest at all, without the constant warmth of a blazing fire, she would freeze to death. So she wrapped a wool blanket around the outside of her coat, over her shoulders, as she followed the horse cart tracks by moonlight, following them west, through the forest, toward some unknown land.
Howl…
A wolf’s cry in the distance. Her already slightly shivering body began to shake all the more. At the present, she was doing all the things her father had warned her against: traveling by night, alone, without a fire, and in wilderness regions, away from any who would hear her cries for help. And the worst of it all, was that she would be outnumbered if they found her; For wolves never hunt alone, but in packs, many many horrible teeth and vicious fangs, and the most deadly sense of smell.
If they found her, there would be no chance of her escape. And so she began to hurry, quickening her pace as she went, knowing that if she could k
eep a steady bearing, following the general bend of the river gorge, she would eventually come to the town of Bethharbor at the base of the large archway bridge that led across the river into western lands.
How far had she gone through this blanket of snow? How much further to Bethharbor? She’d been walking for hours by then, yet in a cold and tired haze, so that she had not given it much thought. Quickly her mind raced and eyes darted, trying to calculate the distance in her head. Perhaps several more miles��, but no more than ten, she thought. Whatever it was, she would need to run; For wolf packs move quickly, like flowing water.
Howl…
Another howl, nearer than before, rang through the forest. Tavora was running for her life, and the ankle deep snow powder made it difficult to keep a steady pace, and the icy cold whipped against her face.
In another world, there was also a bit of running, as Barbara and Timothy jogged over towering stacks of debris, broken stone, and through craters: never tiring, never losing their breath.
So that they could still speak in a regular manner, as you might while sipping tea in the palace, during a gentle summer’s day.
And Timothy had just finished telling Barbara the story of how they came to that world.
���So… you had no idea that this would work?��� she asked, while bounding up the side of a rock face. ���I was dying… and what, you just took a guess?���
Timothy was following after, still carrying his metal pole he’d found. ���I had a good feeling about it,��� he said, smiling. ���Though, at the time, I’d only thought it might stop the bleeding, and give you a fighting chance, but this… this is unbelievable.���
���It is, isn’t it?��� Barbara replied. ���It’s brilliant, really, fantastic. I feel absolutely… perfect.���
The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 46