“Peter,” Orb asked, “are you well?”
“There is something else here talking to me,” hissed Peter.
“The guardian? Interesting,” replied Orb.
“It is not too late to turn back, Peter. I will not harm you if you leave.”
Peter swung to one side then the other searching for the source of the voice. He froze when he finally noticed the mountain lion just a few feet away. Time had not been kind to the lion. All its bones were visible under its sagging pelt, which was so white with age that it blended in with the stone it lay upon.
Peter stared, too curious now to be scared, and saw that several odd tufts of what appeared to be hair on the lion’s muzzle and front paws were porcupine quills. So that’s what can kill a porcupine.
“I don’t want you to harm me, and I don’t want to harm you,” Peter said. He realized that he was unconsciously walking closer.
The guardian stared at him, calling him a liar without using words.
“Good,” said Orb, “Keep it talking as you get closer.”
Peter felt awful. He felt bad tricking an old lion, even if it was a guardian. He also experienced the nagging suspicion that Orb was using him. Peter stopped and stared at the guardian. He then forced his eyes away and stared again at the beautiful, multicolored ceiling. Spheres of blues and reds mixed together in a collage of colors and shapes. It was all too much: Orb, the guardian, the beautiful lights in the cave, and the piles of bones that surrounded him.
“Aren’t you afraid that I’m going to attack you?” the guardian asked.
“Yes,” Peter replied honestly. He stopped looking at the ceiling and again focused on the guardian, then at the skeletal remains all around him. “I am also very confused, and very tired.”
“Why aren’t you moving toward him?” Orb prodded.
“What do I call you?” Peter asked the guardian.
The guardian shifted a little, gingerly moving its paws to avoid rubbing the quills stuck in them against the rock. “It does not matter. I am here to stop you.”
The guardian raised its left paw slightly to point at Orb, “To stop It. My son died in the attempt to stop your guardian. I did not come back to allow another receptacle to be reunited.”
Peter paused, waiting for Orb to say something, then asked, “You can’t hear him, can you, Orb?”
“No. I can hear him no more than he can hear me,” Orb said.
“Lack of communication,” the guardian replied to Peter’s comment, “was always one of the bigger problems.”
Peter looked at Orb, then again at the guardian. “So, I am the only one who can hear everyone in the room?”
“Yes,” both Orb and the guardian replied in unison.
“I don’t understand why you want to hurt each other. Is there no other way?” Peter’s question hung in the air.
Finally Orb spoke. “His master destroyed my kingdom, broke me into pieces, and imprisoned me for thousands of years.”
Peter waited for the guardian to say something but found only silence.
“Guardian, Orb says that your kind destroyed his kingdom and imprisoned him.”
The guardian made a noise that sounded like a mix between a chuckle and a roar. “I lack the power to do what you say. My role is only to defend those I serve against evil. Evil like the thing you hold in your hand.”
Peter felt a sickness creeping into the pit of his stomach. None of this was what he wanted. He wanted to be home, in his own bed. He had no idea whom to trust.
“Orb, the guardian says you’re evil.”
Orb again replied with the electronic laugh. “Coming from a guardian of Cube I would expect nothing else.”
Peter chewed on his lip. Orb began to feel heavy in his arms and again pressed him, “Peter, just move a few feet closer and this will all be over. I will help your family. I will do everything I promised. My word is my bond.”
I wish I knew who to trust, Peter thought. I wish I’d never found Orb in the river bed. I wish my dad and brother were back home. I wish my mom was still alive.
“You can’t fix anything by wishing it,” said the guardian.
Peter stared at the guardian.
“You can hear my thoughts?”
“Of course,” said the guardian.
“What if I made you promise not to listen?”
The guardian made his chuckling sound again. “What an odd thought. I am sorry, small human, but I have very little time left. I must do what I was created to do. I must also take revenge on behalf of my fallen son. I wish you no harm, but then as I said wishing doesn’t do anything.”
Peter watched as the guardian, in an impossibly quick move, gathered her withered muscles and, fangs and claws outstretched, threw herself at Peter and the Orb. Peter instinctively raised his free hand and turned his head away. He felt a stab of pain and, at the exact same instant, saw a red flash and heard a loud roar.
Everything went black.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in his own bed. The morning sun poured light through his window, and an even larger Orb sat on the pillow beside him.
CHAPTER SIX: Homecoming
Peter jumped from his bed, completely confused as to how he had returned home. He looked down and noticed he was still wearing the filthy clothes he had on in the cave. The front of his shirt was covered in dried blood. He tore at the shirt, pulling it up while running over to the mirror above his small desk. All he saw was his pale, white belly.
“You are unharmed.”
Peter let his shirt fall back down and turned to Orb. “Then why is my shirt covered in blood?”
“You were injured by the guardian, but I repaired the damage. All is well.”
Peter stared intently at Orb, about to ask about ten other questions that occurred to him, when Orb said, “You should go answer the phone.”
On cue, the phone in the kitchen began to ring. Peter was torn. He wanted to answer the phone, but he also wanted answers. He wanted answers right now. He would have pressed the point, but Orb added, “It is your father calling.”
Peter’s eyes widened. He had not spoken to Big Ed in what seemed like forever. He had so much to tell him!
He scrambled out of the room, happy for the first time in days, and realized that there was little he could tell Big Ed—unless he tried to explain everything about Orb and all the lies he had told.
His happiness sank. As he grabbed the phone from its mount on the wall, he once again felt a growing sickness in his belly.
“Hello?”
“Rug rat! It’s so good to hear your voice!” Big Ed’s volume was such that Peter had to pull the phone back from his ear a bit. Normally Peter did not like being called Rug Rat—he was too big for that now—but this time it made him happy.
“Dad! Where are you? Is Eli with you?”
“It’s all good, son! We won! The governor got involved late last night. It was amazing. We get our river back tomorrow. All the charges have been dropped. We’re all coming home together this afternoon. They’re telling me that everyone, including the governor, will be at the new dam tomorrow afternoon for a press conference.”
Big Ed was nearly breathless from his long outburst. Peter seized the moment to ask a question.
“I don’t understand, Dad. I thought the governor was backing the company that dammed the river for the new commercial farm. Wasn’t that why you had everyone go to protest?”
“I don’t get it either, son, but something must’ve happened. Maybe that son-of-a…gun finally grew a conscience. At this point I don’t care how or why. We won!”
Peter looked back to his bedroom, where Orb rested on his pillow. He was pretty sure he knew why—and how—all of this had happened.
“That’s so great, Dad! I can’t wait to see you.”
“Me too, Son. I’m so sorry we left you all alone there at the house. I don’t know what I was thinking.” There was a long pause. Peter had to fight back the urge to tell his dad that it w
as not his decision. Orb was the one who arranged to have him left alone.
“You’re good? Everything is okay there?”
Peter continued to stare at the bedroom. “Yeah, Dad, everything’s fine.”
“I’m proud of you, son. Pretty soon I won’t be able to call you a Rug Rat.”
Peter smiled in spite of himself. “That’ll be the day, Dad.”
“OK, Peter. I got to go. Still a lot of papers to sign and plans to make here, but Eli and I will be back in time for dinner. Make sure you remember to pack a lunch for school.”
Peter looked up at the square clock radio sitting on the counter. The display read 6:15 a.m. School? That’s right. Today is Monday—I think. Orb brought me back from the cave last night.
“Ok, Dad. I’ll try to come up with something for dinner too.”
“No, you won’t! We’re going out. There’s some other good news I’ll tell you about when I see you. We’re celebrating tonight!”
Peter was now truly confused. They never went out. Big Ed thought restaurants were a waste of money. Now they were going to celebrate? At a restaurant…
“Sure, Dad. I’ll be here waiting for you.”
“Make sure you wear shoes, Son! Bye!”
Big Ed hung up and Peter held the phone to his ear for a moment longer, then put it back in its holder. He knew he had to go back into his bedroom, but he really did not want to confront Orb.
He reached down and scratched at what was normally his itchy, rashy bottom and was surprised to find the rash was gone. He rubbed the spot where it normally flared up, then he slowly shuffled back to his room, his dirty socks sliding around beneath him. He pushed the door to his bedroom open and stared at Orb, glowing on his spare pillow.
“You see now that my word is my bond, Peter. I promised I would help your family. I kept that promise. You have everything you wanted.”
Peter thought carefully about what he would say next. Orb thought he should be happy, and in some ways he was, but he was also very unhappy about what had happened the night before. Many things the guardian had said bothered him. He decided to start there.
“Why did the guardian say that you are evil?”
“I’m surprised at you, Peter. Did you not see the piles of bones in the cave—all the animals that the guardian and its predecessors killed over the past 3,000 years? Do you not see the blood on your shirt and recognize that if I had not saved you the guardian would have added your bones to its pile?”
Peter rubbed his stiff, dirty shirt on the spot covering his belly.
“Yes. I see all that, Orb. But the guardian did that—well, I think she did that—because it was better than letting you reunite with your other receptacles. Why would it think that?”
“Do you not remember our conversations regarding the other entity—Cube? Cube, who defeated me and sowed evil into the fabric of humanity? Cube, who split and imprisoned me so that I could not help your species.”
Peter chewed on his lip, then walked over and sat down on the far edge of his bed. “Yes. What I don’t understand is why the guardian would say you are evil while you are saying it is evil.”
“What exactly is ‘evil,’ Peter?”
The question caught Peter off guard. Everyone knew what evil was, but Peter had never been asked to express that idea in words. He thought hard and chose his words carefully.
“Evil is causing pain or hurting others. Evil is forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. Evil is destroying beautiful things for no reason.”
“Agreed.”
Peter waited, expecting more of an answer, but Orb offered nothing more.
“You’re saying that I have to trust you. That you are good and Cube and its guardians and emissaries are bad.”
“Yes. I wish you could have seen your world before the arrival of Cube.”
Peter lay back on his bed and stared at the cracks in the drywall in the corner of the ceiling. He decided to try another approach.
“If you were able to bring me back, why did we have to hitchhike across the state?”
“That should be obvious, Peter. I did not have enough power on my own to teleport you to the cavern. Once I was reunited with the others, however, I had enough power to heal you, bring you back here, and fix all your family’s problems.”
Peter let that thought sink in. Orb had done as he promised. They were, he supposed, done. He rose up and leaned on one elbow to look at Orb. He felt it more proper to make eye-contact, even though Orb did not have eyes.
“So now that you are back with the others, where will you go?” he asked a bit devilishly.
The idea that the more powerful Orb would leave and Peter’s life could go back to normal was quickly squashed.
“You mean, where are we going next.”
“I didn’t think you needed me anymore. You have your powers back. You can teleport. What can I do that you can’t?”
“You must help me reunite with my final receptacle, Peter.”
Peter sat all the way up, then stood and began to pace.
“Why? You have the power—”
Orb interrupted, “I had the power, most of which was consumed last night. Further, I require the presence of my own human emissary to bring me to my final receptacle.”
Peter opened his mouth, almost said something, then continued pacing.
“I have almost enough power left to teleport us, Peter. I will continue to recharge for the next few days, then we must go.”
Peter stopped pacing again and looked at his dirty, bloody shirt in the mirror. “Where do we have to go?”
“Costa Rica.”
Peter turned back to Orb. “Costa Rica? I don’t even know where that is.”
“Go to the globe on your shelf and look at the thin strip of land that connects Mexico with South America. I know you know where Mexico is.”
Peter walked over to his globe, again unhappy that Orb knew everything about him, including the research paper he had done on Mexico for his social studies class last year. The part of the globe facing him showed Africa, so he slowly spun it until it he saw the United States. His finger tracked past Mexico, past Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua. He made it to Panama then recognized he had gone too far. He squinted and saw that, nestled between Nicaragua and Panama, lay the small country of Costa Rica.
“Huh. How did one of your receptacles get all the way down there?”
“The land now called Costa Rica was once the seat of my power, Peter. Indeed, perfect replicas of me still exist in that land, though they are called spheres—‘las bolas’ in Spanish.”
Peter continued to stare at the globe.
“Where else did Cube put your receptacles?”
“Various places. Most were imprisoned in locations in what you know as South America.”
“Why were two of your receptacles put in my state? And why did you combine five of them in the cave?”
“These are long stories, Peter—stories I will share with you later. For now, know that those loyal to me attempted to wrest my receptacles back from the guardians. They were not successful, but they did manage to make Cube’s guardians stop and find refuge here when it appeared that their true goal was the icy lands in the far north.”
Peter understood that Orb was not going to tell him anything significant—at least now. He was happy his family was coming home but frustrated with Orb. The wise thing to do, he thought, would be to take Orb somewhere and just walk away, but how could he walk away from something that knew everything, saw everything and had the power to teleport? Peter decided he had one last question.
“Orb, I do not want to lie to my father and my brother. When they come home tonight, can I bring them in to meet you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You must not.”
Peter found himself growing angry. “Are you telling me I must not or that I cannot?”
“Are they not the same?”
“I don’t think so. Can
not sounds like you are threatening me.”
“Peter, as soon as more than one person knows something, it is no longer a secret. The technology of your civilization is far beyond what I left. If knowledge of my presence were to go beyond your family, your government would send teams to investigate. They will want my power. They will also fear my power. While they cannot destroy me, they can do great harm to all of you. I do not yet have the power to protect all of you. Is this what you wish to happen?”
Peter’s anger loosened its grip on his mind. Movies were generally silly, but they also, at times, had some truth to them. He thought back through every movie he had ever seen involving aliens. Every movie turned out the way Orb said it would—the government came after the alien, destroying the lives of the people who had discovered it. His family had just finally had its first good day in a long time. Could Big Ed, who always turned everything into a fight for what was right, really be trusted to not say anything?
“Ok, Orb. I won’t say anything, but I can’t leave you lying here in the middle of the bed, and you’re now too big to go in the box underneath.”
“Place me in your closet, and close the door. I am going to rest now, but if a guardian or emissary from Cube comes I retain sufficient power to defeat it.”
Peter turned and looked at the window where the squirrel had come in, then back to Orb, who was now far too big for a squirrel to carry.
“We’re not going to have mountain lions coming in through the windows, are we?”
“No. I assembled a team of guardians to protect us. In the unlikely event that one of Cube’s guardians should breach our defense, I will destroy them. My word is my bond.”
Peter continued to stare out the window, trying to see Orb’s agents patrolling the perimeter. He saw nothing, and then turned back to Orb.
“Orb, I still don’t understand why I have to come with you.”
“I recognize the difficulty. I promise it will all make sense at the end. I also promise that once I am fully whole I can fix everything for everyone. Crime, pollution, war, poverty—all gone. Can you not see that your world is suffering, sick? If you do not help me, you are saying that you do not want to help your family or your world.”
The Promise of the Orb Page 6