Chapter 26 - More damn travel scenes

Cerpt Dosdezzesex - Scaena malte demme iterne (Yes, translating again!)

Cept'dezze'dos'sax - Sceni dem trekkaea'multeri

They met in another small room in some old, unknown hallway. It was dark, mostly, until someone turned the lights on and the lighting became dim instead.

There was a small table in the center of the room, and they tried their hardest to fit around it. Allie and Eric were squished somewhere in the middle of two immortals, a sailor, a queen, and the queen’s four guards.

The guards were all male – Allie didn’t seem to mind that, much. Eric, on the other hand, was fuming.

There was an awkward silence.

Liana coughed.

“So. Tell me why you’re here, again?”

“Thought you loved him,” Allie said. “Why the hell would you keep the man you loved waiting, just so you could organize some dance?”

“Yes,” Liana said. She frowned. “Okay, so you people have a plan, then?”

“Sort of,” Marliana replied, rolling her eyes. “We need the Maskil’anim army, like we told you a few days ago. Daemonicus has an army of her own, and she’s got our friends captive. We’ve got to…”

“What, rescue them?” Liana sighed. “You have no plan at all, do you?”

“Well…”

“How do you plan on rescuing them if you’re busy getting slaughtered by monster children from another dimension?”

Silence.

“And how in the world do you plan to get the army there, hm? You’ve got to get them across the sea and through that forest without being seen. There is no way in the world that you’ll be able to get there with the element of surprise on your side.”

“We don’t need…”

“Close it, sailor. Listen, I want Leril back as much as anyone. I really, really do.” Liana closed her eyes. Weird. She’d never shown any emotion other than annoyance before. “So don’t give me a lecture on this. I… Listen, I’m just saying we’ve got to think this through.”

“We don’t have time to think it through,” said Windwhisper. “Our friends are…”

“I know,” Liana said. “But we can’t call up an entire army in a few days. It’s not that simple. We have to get everyone armed, armored, make sure their training’s up to stats. We’ve got to assemble everyone, get transportation, make a battle plan…”

“Then do it,” Allie said. “Hey, tell you what – me and Tarn’ll go ahead and free everyone. Then you guys follow up with the army.”

“What?” Tarn asked. “That’s ridiculous. It’s not that simple.”

“Yeah, it really is,” Allie said.

“That’s a childish, stupid, impossible…”

“I know the area by heart, okay? I know the layout of the castle. I even know what cell they’re in. I rewrote that scene a thousand times over. I can get them out of there. All I need is for Tarn to help me get there – she can ask the ocean to let us across, right?”

Liana stared at her. “Who are you, kid?”

Allie smiled. “Alexandra Biblia Lewis, Author,” she said, proudly, like it answered the question or something.

“That makes a ton of sense,” said the queen sarcastically. “How could you-“

“Allie,” said Windwhisper, “You really think you could get them out of there?”

She nodded. “With my hands tied behind my back. I know that place, Windwhisper. Like the back of my hand. I can get them out of there.”

“You really aren’t going to send a child…”

“Yeah, your majesty, we are,” said Tarn. “The kid can handle it, okay?”

Something in Allie’s chest tightened. Tarn thought she had a shot? Tarn, standing up for her? She grinned, literally swelling with pride. If Tarn thought she could do this, she could do this. It was that simple.

Things really were, in essence. Sometimes. When you boiled out all the complex stuff.

Liana glared. “Fine. You two go get ready to leave, have a good time, we’ll meet you there.”

“You’re coming with us?” Marli asked.

“Well… Leril’s in danger. I’m not going to sit here and wait for him to die, you know. Even I’m not that heartless.”

…

How the hell had she gotten dragged into this?

One moment Tarn was living a perfectly good, if not especially happy, life on the ocean. Now she was chasing demonic children around with an equally weird non-demonic child, and she didn’t have her boat. Tarn missed her boat.

Dammit.

She didn’t really have all that much to pack, but Tarn stood in the room anyways, procrastinating. Honestly, the kid didn’t stand a chance. As soon as Tarn had her boat back, she was bailing.

Enter Eric, stage left. Tarn glared at him as he stood in the doorway, chin held high and weak. He was obviously determined about something, and more than a little nervous…

“I’m coming with you two.” Ah. There it was, then. To be expected.

“Why?”

“Because, frankly, Allie doesn’t stand a chance and you know it. And I won’t let you… You know, get her killed.”

“Just because you’re in love with the girl doesn’t mean you should throw your own life away, you know. If she dies, she dies. She’s gonna one day, and so will you. Get used to it, Eric.”

“No, I won’t. I. Um. She’s my best friend. I can’t just sit here and do nothing, Tarn! I’m not a fighter, you know! I can’t exactly march off to battle! And Allie’s an author, not a secret agent! She needs help.”

“What, you can help her?”

Eric shook his head. “I can try. I can do something. I can…”

“You’ll get in the way. If you get her killed, I’m not helping you take the blame.”

Eric went pale. “I don’t care. I’m not letting you two leave without me.”

…

“Why the hell is Eric coming again?”

Allie was furious. Eric was supposed to stay at the palace, where he was safe. She already had to rescue Marci, she didn’t want to rescue Eric, too.

“Because he’s an idiot, Allie, that’s why.”

Tarn, on the other hand, really didn’t care one way or the other.

“He’s not…”

“He’s an idiot. Trust me on that.”

…

Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.

So, Eric wondered, how’s a sailor supposed to feel when the sunsets here are greens and blues?

…

The portal was one of the oldest models Windwhisper had ever seen.

The giant sphere rose almost a hundred yards above him, white, glowing softly like a star or something. He had a feeling it was mocking him for being unable to remember Arjia’s directions.

“I can’t believe I just forgot.”

“It happens. Immortal we may be, but we’re human, too.”

…

Lord, what fools immortals be.

…

“But you don’t forget something like that, not when a life depends on it.”

“Possibly a planet.”

“Marli.”

“Sorry. Er, do you want me to go to sleep? Try and contact her?”

Windwhisper gave her a look. “If you’re tired, Marli, just go and go to bed.”

Marli grinned. “You should, too, Windwhisper. You’re the one that keeps showing up in that place, anyways.”

Windwhisper shrugged. “I’ll never be able to sleep with this on my mind.”

“Windy, please.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Marliana rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m going to sleep. See you in the morning. Zombie.”

“Piffle.”

“Woodles.”

“Meh.”

The door to the portal room slammed shut.

…

Allie felt her breath catch on the air as she spun around, arms out. The grass of a farmer’s field tickled her feet in the moonlight. The stars above – the infinite, amazing stars above – turned into a whirl of circles and darkness above her.

Allie let herself fall back into her bedroll and sighed.

Tarn looked at her. “Are you done?”

“Yeah,” Allie sighed, giggling. She could see Eric roll his eyes without even looking at him. “I’m home,” she whispered.

“We’ve been here for weeks, Allie,” Eric pointed out.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Something howled in the distance, unearthly and unreal. Allie smiled as the kraken sang, listening to the pure loneliness of the melody.

“What’s that?” Eric asked.

“Kraken,” Allie whispered. “One of my favorites.”

She’d always identified with the kraken. Doomed to be alone and homeless forever.

Except she wasn’t, and she never would be. Allie had to smile at the irony.

“It’s not carnivorous, is it?” Eric asked.

“No,” replied Tarn. “Not unless it’s hungry.”

…

Nothing happened in jail all that much. Marci hated the prison beyond anything, and she couldn’t wait to leave.

She’d lost about ten pounds, though. There was something in the food. For a while now, Jade had spent the mornings hogging the small in-cell toilet that Daemonicus had been kind enough to install.

…

It wasn’t the food making Jade sick, and she knew it. When everyone else was asleep, Jade would press a hand to her stomach and wonder if her suspicions were correct, and was that a kick? But it was too early for that.

It was really, really bad timing, she thought.

But that’s another story.

…

Windwhisper wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t a dream.

He was walking down a white, concrete path in a pale, nearly familiar world. The sky was clear and blue – it looked wrong – since when was the sky blue? – and the trees were almost comically patchy. There was smoke and smog and who knew what in the air, choking him – except this was a dream, so he wasn’t really breathing.

Windwhisper thought that this was a school.

It was supposed to be a school. There were children playing in huge tubes of composite materials, swinging and leaping and climbing.

And two other girls, walking in a nearby field.

He was walking towards them.

One had blonde hair. She was skinny, with blue-gray eyes and a soft, energetic expression on her brow. She had thin arms and…

Her left hand. Windwhisper couldn’t help but stare. She only had four fingers on her left hand.

The other girl was normal, although she seemed a little too skinny as well. Pigtails and huge, horn-rimmed glasses obscured her face, but Windwhisper had an odd suspicion that it was Allie.

“It’s easy,” the blonde girl said. “It’s like addin’, only you skip a step.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You jus’… Like, one times three. You add one to one three times. One plus one plus one. One times three.”

“Or you add three once.”

“Yeah. Well.” The blonde girl smiled, and Windwhisper thought it was a beautiful smile. Sad, perhaps, but beautiful. “Exac’ly.”

“That’s cool,” said Allie, and smiled.

The scene melted away, and Windwhisper sighed. So it was going to be one of those nights again.

…

Allie found it hard to contain the questions.

Tarn was just too cool.

Allie – and Eric, for that matter – knew nothing about the wilderness. Allie would have died a few days into the journey. Eric would have had a hard time making it out of the city. Sure, it wasn’t their first time on this road – they’d gotten to the city, after all – but neither could survive on their own.

Tarn knew everything about the wilderness, and soon Allie had proclaimed it the sailor’s mission in life to teach Allie what she knew. Eric, too, but that wasn’t as important. After all, didn’t Eric…

“…plan on leaving?”

“I wasn’t, really,” said Eric, sighing. “I mean, I wanted to come.”

“But didn’t you want to go home?”

“I don’t recall saying that,” said Eric. “No, I don’t. Not really. There’s nothing on Earth for me, anyways.”

“I’m leaving,” said Tarn. “I want my ship back.”

“You call that thing a ship?”

“Close it, Allie.”

“What do you mean, there’s nothing for you there?” Allie asked, ignoring Tarn for once. The sailor should have felt blessed, honestly, but for some reason she just got annoyed. “Eric, you’ve got a family. And friends, and a home. You’ve got a lot to return to.”

“And you don’t?”

“No, not really.”

“Your parents, your friends, your writing…”

“My writing’s here. My parents don’t care. And I don’t have any friends.”

“What about Marci?”

“Marci doesn’t count.”

“Marci does count, and you know it,” Eric said, glaring at her. “You can’t just pretend you’re leaving it all behind without a second thought. You grew up on Earth, Allie. You can’t just leave it behind.”

“I bloody well can,” Allie said, wondering where the word bloody had come from. She’d never actually used it before, and it wasn’t like they were in Europe or anything. She was American, not English.

“Allie,” said Eric in that tone that meant he didn’t believe a word of what she was saying.

“Eric,” said Allie, in the tone that meant she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Allie,” said Eric, in a tone that said she was going to talk about it whether or not she actually wanted to.

“Eric,” said Allie, in a tone than meant no way in hell.

“Your amazing articulation abilities astound me,” said Tarn.

“It’s hard to describe, you know,” Allie told them. “Do you know what it’s like to be born in a world where everything seems to work against you?”

“Yes,” said Tarn, and looked Allie in the eyes. “Have you ever met your god, Allie? How do you know she’s not seven?”

“I’m not a god,” Allie replied, smiling a little – Tarn knew perfectly well that Allie thought of herself as one, considering how poorly she hid it. “And I’m not seven, I’m thirteen. And I didn’t… The world wasn’t against you, you know. It’s just that you hadn’t gotten to the main chapter of the story yet.”

“So how do you know that’s not what’s happening to you?” Tarn asked, and Allie smiled.

“I think,” she said, “That that’s exactly it. My luck’s changing, Tarn, just like yours.”

“How the flame is my luck changing? My boat got stolen!”

…

It was dark in the surreality, and Windwhisper realized it was nighttime there. He’d only ever dreamed of it in the surreal version of day – it was an odd feeling.

Windwhisper could smell memory on the air, and suddenly he realized that he was dreaming it – an actual dream, not the ways he’d gotten here before. Also, memories smelled like fish. There was probably a metaphor in there somewhere, he thought vaguely.

Arjia was sitting in front of him, cross-legged. Her eyes were closed, but underneath the browned skin they were moving rapidly – REM sequence? – and her lips were moving. It was vaguely eerie.

He hadn’t seen her before, but she’d been there all along.

You forgot, didn’t you?

And her eyes opened. For a split second, before he woke up, Windwhisper could see that they were still moving rapidly, spinning, darting, dreaming.

Then his own eyes opened. He sat up in the bed in Maskil’anim, breathing hard.

And the memories came rushing back to him. They still smelled like fish, or maybe that was only the memory of the dream.

Point is, he remembered.

…

Tarn waved her hand, and the sea parted.

“Then Tarn stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the waters were divided, and we went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left,” Allie said with a giggle. “Bibleish. Exodus something.”

“Thought you were an atheist,” Eric said. “You’ve read the Bible?”

“Yeah, I’m an atheist,” Allie replied, “But even I can’t pass up a good story. And it’s a pretty good story.”

“What’s the Bible?” Tarn asked as they strolled into the ocean. “And who the hell is this Moses guy? You keep comparing me to him.”

“He’s a character of… er, of everyone, I guess. Dunno who actually wrote the Bible. But according to legend, he waved a stick around and his god parted the sea, and he led all the oppressed Jewish people out of Egypt,” Allie said.

“For a writer, you suck at storytelling,” Eric said.

“I didn’t get a word of that,” Tarn added. “Can you give me the non-condensed version, please?”

Allie grinned. “So a few thousand years from now, there’s gonna be this land called Egypt…”

…

Windwhisper stood in front of the portal, with the woman he loved by his side, and placed a simple ring on his finger. Its match lay on the table – quantum-entangled with his own. He’d remembered how to splice one ring into two, without changing it in any way, linking it permanently to this world.

He remembered the path away from here.

Taking Marliana’s hand in his, Windwhisper stepped through the portal.

---

an: Well, I had this mostly written a while ago, actually. It's not very good. But then the motherboard on my comp went fizzle, and this computer was out for a while - but it's back now, so all is good. I promise, the next chapter will be... more well-written, anyways.