The Merchant of Death

by D. J. MacHale

  This made Courtney fall silent. Mark was right. Up until now she was only thinking about Bobby and the Pendragons. But the implications of what they were reading were totally huge. Too huge to comprehend.

  Mark continued, “As we were sitting with the police, I thought about what might happen if I gave them Bobby’s story. I came up with two possibilities. One was that they’d announce it to the world, there’d be a huge furor and we’d be smack in the center of it. Remember, I might still get more pages. I don’t think Bobby would want that kind of uproar, especially if he wants me to help him. If he did, he would have started right off by telling me to take his story to the newspapers.”

  “What’s the other possibility?” asked Courtney.

  “The exact opposite might happen. The stuff Bobby wrote about might be so disturbing to the world that they’d bury the whole thing and pretend it never happened…kind of like the aliens from Roswell, or the Kennedy assassination. People don’t like to hear that their nice, orderly world isn’t what they thought it was. I wouldn’t blame them; I’m not so thrilled about it myself.”

  “There’s a third possibility,” added Courtney. “People may think we’re responsible. Everyone always wants easy answers and the easiest answer is that we made the whole thing up. It would be easier for people to think it’s all a hoax than to believe there are people who jump through wormholes and travel through the universe.”

  It was hard to believe that only a few hours ago their biggest concern was that Bobby Pendragon had missed a basketball game.

  Courtney looked to Mark and asked, “What do you think we should do?”

  Before he could answer, someone reached in from behind, grabbed his backpack and yanked it out of his hands! Courtney and Mark looked up in surprise.

  “What’cha got, Dimond? More magazines?” It was Andy Mitchell, the kid who caught Mark in the boys’ room reading Bobby’s first journal. He fumbled with the clasps on Mark’s pack, trying to open it.

  Mark jumped to his feet, shouting, “M-Mitchell. G-give it back!”

  Mark lunged at him, but Mitchell danced away.

  “Aw, c’mon,” laughed Mitchell. “Don’t you want to share?”

  He held the pack out toward Mark. Mark swiped at it, but Mitchell pulled it away and laughed.

  “How bad you want it back?” Mitchell taunted. “Bad enough to swim with the rats for it?” He backed toward a storm drain in the curb. It was plenty big enough for the pack to fit through.

  “Don’t!” Mark shouted desperately.

  Mitchell dangled the pack over the drain. “What’ll you give me for it?”

  “What do you want?” asked Mark nervously.

  Mitchell thought for a moment, then spotted something on Mark’s hand. “I’ll trade the pack…for that big old ring”

  Mark couldn’t give up the ring, no way. But he didn’t want to lose the pages, either. He hadn’t read what Bobby wanted him to do yet.

  “Think fast, Dimond,” snickered Mitchell as he dangled the pack over the storm drain. “The pack or the ring…pack or the ring.”

  Mark didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, a steely-strong hand clamped down on Mitchell’s wrist. He looked up and came face to face with Courtney. She had been calmly watching the scene from the bench. She might not have known how to deal with the mysterious disappearance of Bobby and the Pendragons, or the fact that the world had just turned upside down, but the one thing she knew how to handle was a bully like Andy Mitchell. She squeezed his wrist and stuck her nose in his face.

  “Drop that in the sewer,” she said through clenched teeth, “and you’re going in after it…headfirst.”

  They stood that way for a long moment. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Mitchell smiled.

  “Jeez. I was just kidding around,” he said.

  Courtney reached over with her other hand and grabbed the pack. Once she had it, she let Mitchell go. He pulled away quickly, while rubbing his wrist to get the circulation flowing again.

  “It was just a goof,” he said, trying to save face. “Where’d you get that butt-ugly ring anyway?”

  Mark and Courtney stared at the guy until he felt so uncomfortable that the only thing he could do was leave.

  “Jeez, lighten up,” he said as he turned and jogged away. Courtney tossed the pack to Mark.

  “Thanks,” said Mark with a bit of embarrassment. Now that the crisis was over, he knew he hadn’t handled it well.

  “I hate that weenie,” she said.

  “We’ve got to go somewhere and finish reading this,” Mark said seriously. “I’m nervous about having these out in public. Let’s go back to my house.”

  “Uh-uh,” Courtney said uncomfortably. “No offense, but your room is like…rank.”

  Mark looked down, embarrassed.

  “Hey, don’t sweat it,” she said with a smile. “All guys’ rooms are rank. It’s just the way it is. Let’s go to my house.”

  It was a short walk to Courtney’s house, and neither of them said much along the way. Both had their minds on the pages. There were a lot of questions to be answered, but one stood out above all others: What was the dangerous favor that Bobby wanted Mark to do for him? Courtney was dying to know. So was Mark, but he wasn’t all that sure he liked the idea of having to do something dangerous, no matter how important it was. Up until now, Mark’s idea of doing something dangerous was to ring somebody’s doorbell on Mischief Night and run away. Given what Bobby was going through, the stakes here were a wee bit higher than that.

  They arrived at Courtney’s house, which was very much like Mark’s. They both lived in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. But rather than go to Courtney’s room, Courtney took Mark down to the basement where her father had a workshop. Mark had a fleeting moment of disappointment that he wouldn’t get to see the inner sanctum of the glorious Courtney Chetwynde, but there were larger problems to deal with.

  The two sat down on an old, dusty couch and Mark opened his pack. He laid the precious pages out on a coffee table in front of them. The two hesitated a moment. As much as they were dying with curiosity about what happened next to Bobby, they were also a little bit frightened about what the pages contained and what new and disturbing wonders they would reveal. They each took a breath.

  Then Courtney looked to Mark and said, “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  They looked down at the pages and picked up where they had left off.

  I was going to get myself out of here and kiss this place good-bye—with or without Uncle Press.

  Journal #2

  (continued)

  Denduron

  My plan was to climb back to the top of the mountain, get past those cannibal quig beasts, find the gate that leads to the flume, and get the hell out of here. Simple, right? Yeah, sure. I’m not even sure I couldfind that stupid cave again, let alone survive the climb through the snow and the quigs. Still, my mind was made up. It was better than staying here.

  But it wasn’t going to happen today. The suns were going down and it was getting dark. Yeah, that’s right. Suns. Plural. Remember I told you there were three suns? Well, they all set at the same time, but in opposite parts of the sky. North, south and east…or whatever they use for directions around here. I figured I had to spend the night and sneak away once it got light. Besides, I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything since I had a banana and some raspberry Pop-Tarts before the basketball game I never made it to.

  Loor brought me to a hut that was like the one I woke up in, only smaller. In one corner was a pile of furry animal skins.

  Loor pointed to them and gave me a simple command. “Sit.”

  I did. It was smelly, but comfortable. There was a small stone fireplace where Loor quickly and expertly made a fire that gave us light and took the chill off. Osa arrived soon after with a cloth sack that I quickly found out was full of food. Yes! We all sat around the fire and shared loaves of crunchy bread; some weird fruit that looked like an orange but you ate l
ike an apple; and some soft nutlike things that tasted like licorice. Maybe it was because I was so hungry, but this odd meal was delicious. I would have preferred some fries from Garden Poultry Deli on the Ave, but this did just fine. While we ate, Osa gave me some strange instructions.

  “Is there someone back on Second Earth whom you trust above all others?” she asked.

  It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer. I told her it was you, Mark. Sure my family’s cool, and of course I trust them, but a friend is someone who gives you trust because they want to, not because they have to.

  Osa handed me a stack of blank parchment paper that was all yellowed and crunchy. She also gave me a crude pen that looked like it was carved from a tree branch, along with a small bowl of black ink.

  “It is important that you write down all that is happening to you,” explained Osa. “Every chance you get, write your thoughts, your feelings, and describe the things that you see. Think of it as a journal.”

  “Why?” was my obvious question.

  “Because you will send them to your friend for safekeeping,” she answered. “I will not lie to you, Pendragon. This is a dangerous journey. If anything should happen to you, this journal will be the only record of what you have done.”

  Yikes, that sounded grim. It was like she was asking me to write out my last will and testament. Part of me wanted to refuse because doing what she asked made me feel like I was going along with the program. And I definitely was not. On the other hand, what she said made sense. If anything happened to me, nobody would know the real story. I didn’t like that. If I was going to go down, I wanted everybody to know why.

  “How are we going to get it to Mark?” I asked.

  “Write first,” she said. “When you are ready, I will show you.”

  That was interesting. If she could get these pages to you, that meant she knew how to use the flume in the other direction. Maybe this would be my chance to find a way home. So with that in mind, I took the pen and went to work. I set myself up next to the fire, using a piece of wood on my lap as a desk. It took a while to get the knack of using the pen because it wasn’t exactly a Bic Rollerball. I had to dip the pointy end in the ink and scratch the words out on the paper. It was a pain, but after a while I got to where I could write a whole sentence without having to re-dip.

  Across from me, Loor was doing the same thing. It felt like we were doing homework together. As she scratched out her thoughts on the same kind of parchment paper, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was writing about me. I knew she thought I was a toady boy, but maybe having survived a brush with Saint Dane gave me a little more credibility. On the other hand, who cares? Tomorrow, I was out of here.

  That’s how I spent the rest of the night. I wrote for a while and when my eyes got heavy I sacked out on the animal skins. I’d sleep for a little bit, then wake up and write some more. Loor did the same thing. Osa was in and out of the hut. She’d come in to put some wood on the fire, then leave again. I wondered if she was getting any sleep at all. I got as far as writing about Uncle Press being captured by Kagan’s knights, and then I crashed for good. The next thing I knew, Osa was gently shaking me to wake up.

  “It is morning, Pendragon,” she said softly.

  I was sleeping deeply and had to force my eyes open. There was light in the hut, but I could tell it was early because there were no shadows and the birds were singing. I looked around to see that the fire had gone out and Loor was gone.

  “Give me your journal,” she commanded.

  I sat up and gathered the pages I had written. She took them, rolled them up, and tied them with a leather cord. She then walked to the center of the hut, sat down cross-legged and placed something on the floor. It was a big old clunky silver ring with a gray stone mounted in the center. From where I was sitting I could see there was some kind of inscription engraved around the stone, but I had no idea what it meant. Osa looked to make sure I was watching, then reached down to the ring, touched her finger to the stone and said, “Second Earth.”

  What I saw next sent a bolt of adrenaline through me so quickly that I was shocked out of any last remnant of sleep. The gray stone in the ring started to glow. It acted like the flume had when it brought me here. The flume was made of gray rock, just like the ring. When I said, “Denduron,” the gray rock of the flume had started to glow, just like the ring. Bright light shot from the facets of the stone and washed the walls of the hut, just like the lights in the flume. And like the flume, I started to hear the strange musical notes.

  Then the ring started to twitch…and grow! The band actually stretched out and got bigger until it was about the size of a Frisbee. But inside the circle, where the floor should have been, was a hole. It was like this ring opened up a miniflume to…where? Osa took the rolled-up parchment pages and dropped them into the ring. The pages disappeared as if they had been dropped into a hole in the floor. Then the ring snapped back to normal size and everything ended. No lights, no sound, no hole. Just the ring. Osa picked it up and put it into a leather pouch that hung from around her neck.

  “Your friend Mark has your journal,” she said and got up to leave. That was it. No explanation, no nothing.

  I jumped to my feet to head her off. “Whoa! You can’t pull that hocus-pocus number and not tell me what happened!” I demanded.

  “I told you what happened,” she said calmly. “I sent your journal to Mark Dimond.”

  She tried to continue out of the hut, but I got in front of her.

  “But how? Is that like a portable flume?” Obviously my mind was in overdrive.

  “There are many things to know about being a Traveler, Pendragon,” she said patiently. “Once you are more comfortable, this ring will be yours and you will be able to send your journals to Mark Dimond yourself. Until then, be satisfied to know that the power contained in the ring is similar to the power found in the flumes.”

  I wasn’t going to give up that easily. “But how can it find Mark?”

  Osa took a deep breath like she was getting tired of my questions. Too bad. She knew how this stuff worked. I didn’t.

  “I gave another ring to Mark Dimond,” she said.

  “What? You saw Mark? No wait, you went to Earth? When? How? Did you tell him I’m here? Did you see my parents? Did you—”

  Osa put a hand to my mouth to shut me up. She was gentle, but firm.

  “I went to Second Earth and gave Mark Dimond the ring,” she explained. “That is all. I saw no one else. No more questions.”

  She took her hand away and started out of the hut.

  “Just one more,” I called after her.

  Osa turned back to me, waiting to hear.

  “Does this ring thing work both ways? I mean, if we can send things to Mark, can he send things to us?”

  Osa smiled. It was the kind of smile I’d see from my mother when I thought I was being clever about trying to keep something from her. That smile said “I know exactly what you’re thinking, smart guy. You can’t fool me.”

  “The rings can transport small objects, but they only work for Travelers,” was her answer. “Mark Dimond would not be able to send you anything. Now if you wish to bathe yourself, there is a river that runs a few hundred feet south of the village.”

  She left and my mind went into hyperdrive. This ring business had just opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Maybe I didn’t need to get all the way to the top of the mountain after all. Maybe the ring could grow big enough for me to jump into it. And if I’m a Traveler, then the ring will work for me! Yes! For the first time in a long while, I felt as if I had a shot at taking control of my life again. When the time was right, I’d get the ring from Osa and punch my ticket out of here. That was the new plan and it felt good. Heck, anything would be better than climbing that mountain and getting past the quigs. So with a new sense of hope, I left the hut to start the day.

  The suns were just creeping up over the horizon and I saw it was going to be a clear
day. The first thing I wanted to do was find that river and wash up. Not that I’m a clean freak or anything, but the animal skins I was wearing weren’t exactly cottony fresh. I’m not sure which smelled worse: me or my clothes. A quick splash of water would be a good thing, so I picked my way through the Milago village in search of the stream.

  The village was just waking up. Smoke drifted up from chimneys in all the huts. A few women scurried along carrying firewood. In the distance I saw farmers already working out in the fields. I also saw a pretty depressing sight. A group of men trudged into the village on a path that led from the woods. I figured they were miners since they were covered with dirt, like the miners who had brought glaze to the Transfer ceremony the day before. Could these guys have been working all night? I then saw another group of miners pass them going in the other direction. I realized this was some sort of change in shift. The day crew was taking over for the night crew.