The Shaktra

  Then she saw them, huge leather arms, wide as parachutes, strong as tree trunks, fixed to his sides, and flapping with the strength of a thousand eagles locked together as one being. His wings were magical—she blinked and they were there. And even as he fought to gain altitude, she knew he had only to spread them and gravity would loosen its grip. At the last second he seemed to realize that and he relaxed, and they swooped over the ground like the space shuttle returning from space without power, without force, but in perfect control.

  Ali vigorously patted Drash on the head. “You did it!” she screamed.

  “We did it,” he said. “Without you, it would never have happened.”

  “My friend, Drash, the dragon. I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

  He smiled at her joke. “Where to, Geea?”

  Ali nodded. “Let’s get the others. We have a kloudar that needs visiting.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  The distant white kloudar that Amma had pointed out turned out to be the largest of them all. It was its frightening elevation that made it appear small, at first glance. But as the four of them neared it, on the back of Drash, Ali saw it was at least two miles across, as large as her hometown. Plus it seemed to possess the greatest energy of all the kloudar. Drawing close, she felt as if the blood in her veins was turning into air. Almost, she believed that if she were to step off Drash’s back, she would not fall, but drift forever alongside the kloudar on its eternal journey around Anglar.

  They did not speak until they landed on the icy mountain, although Amma pointed out to Drash where he should set down. Ali did not like the spot—it was too near the top edge of the kloudar. She could see nothing around but ice and more ice.

  The air was a nightmare; there was not enough of it. Ra staggered the second they landed, had to sit in the snow, his shawl wrapped around him, and fight for breath. Yet he assured her he was fine.

  “This is good training for climbing Kilimanjaro,” he muttered, his jaw trembling.

  Ali turned to Trae. “He cannot stay up here long.”

  “He should not be here at all,” Trae said.

  Ali scanned the area, looked at Amma. “What is special about this spot?”

  “This is where I was two weeks ago,” Amma replied. She gestured around a white wall made of sharp icicles, and took a bold step forward. Ali did not feel safe to hike—the ice was too slick, the rim too near. Without Drash beneath her, it would be a long fall to the ground. However, she listened as Amma added, “There is a cave nearby. We can take shelter there.”

  The landscape altered as they trudged around the bend. Black rock appeared, as smooth as the frozen lava that lined the walls of the cave on Pete’s Peak, and suddenly she saw a dark hole, a fresh cave to explore. Its sides were jagged, irregular—no human or fairy hand had taken the time to polish its ebony walls. Nevertheless, Ali turned to Amma with a question.

  “Did the ice maidens dig this out?” she asked. The cold did nothing to decrease the heat in her palm. Indeed, since they had landed on the kloudar, her hand had begun to throb.

  Amma replied, “The caves of the kloudar are natural formations. But since the ice maidens are a part of nature, the answer to your question might be yes.”

  “Will we meet ice maidens inside?”

  “You might meet them, but that does not mean you will see them.”

  “They are invisible?”

  “They are whatever they choose to be, at any particular moment. Come, let us get Ra and Trae inside. But then you and I. . .we must go on alone.”

  “Why?” Ali asked.

  “That is the last time you want to ask that. In this cave, there are no whys.”

  Drash was unable to fit even partway inside the tunnel, but the conditions did not seem to bother him now that he was a full-fledged dragon. He waited outside in the snow, staring at the green sky, reveling in his glorious red wings and his fiery breath. Ali would have liked to use his hot nostrils to warm their bones, but Amma was anxious to press on. Ra was turning a worrisome shade of blue and Ali herself had a headache. She suspected that they were higher than any mountain on Earth.

  The tunnel entrance provided some comfort. The temperature increased several degrees and the air grew slightly thicker. But the improvements were marginal, and Ra continued to suffer. Even Trae looked aged, his face paling the more he attended to Ra. Ali knew that the high fairy was feeding Ra life energy, and was grateful, for she had none of her own to spare. However, when she asked Amma to let Ra move deeper into the cave, Amma shook her head.

  “It is not allowed,” Amma said.

  Ali almost asked why, but bit her tongue. She had to bite it to feel it.

  Amma led them forward, and it was not long before they lost sight of the entrance. It grew dark, but not pitch black, as Ali would have expected. It seemed as if the tunnel walls emitted a faint blue phosphorescence, but she was unsure if she was seeing it with her eyes or with her mind.

  If the ice maidens hovered nearby, they kept well hidden. For the life of her, she could not decide if she wanted to meet them or not. After all her questions to Drash and Amma, she still had no clue what they were. Only that they could bring the dead back to life . . .

  “You know this tunnel?” Ali whispered as they walked.

  “Yes,” Amma replied.

  “You were here two weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “I cannot ask why?”

  “You need not, you know why.”

  Ali sucked in an icy breath. “You were dead?”

  Amma paused, looked over at Ali, her luminous green eyes questionable comfort. For the fact that they shone with life meant they might all possess imperishable souls. Yet the same light in the high fairy’s eyes opened doors in her that Ali was not sure she wanted to enter.

  “Yes,” Amma replied. “This body was dead.”

  “Why did you choose . . .” Ali stopped herself. No whys.

  “I did not choose. The choice was made for me.”

  “By whom?”

  Amma hesitated. “My daughter.”

  “Did I know her?”

  Amma nodded, then unexpectedly shook her head. “None of us knew her.”

  “Amma. . .” Ali began. But the woman raised her hand, pointed down the tunnel.

  “You have to go forward, alone. I will return to our friends.”

  Ali swallowed. “What will I find?”

  Amma reached out and gently tugged Ali’s ear, and the gesture felt so familiar.

  “What Geea wanted you to find. The truth,” Amma said.

  Amma left, and Ali stood without moving for several minutes. She told herself she was trying to catch her breath, to gather her energy to face what she would meet next, but the truth was she was trying to make sure her heart kept beating. . . .

  Here in this place where the dead slept.

  Ali walked forward, and the blue glow grew strong enough that she could no longer dispute its reality. For a time she thought the ice maidens were watching her, that they were in front of her, then behind her. Then she decided that they were probably not interested in her at all.

  The tunnel ended in a round room, a half sphere with roughly hewn ice walls and a crude stone floor. Inside, in a perfect row, were five glass cases. They looked more like quartz cocoons than normal beds. They might have been fashioned out of a rare form of elemental ice—an exotic mixture of water and crystal and cold that was not affected by time. Each case balanced atop a squat boulder that bore a vague resemblance to a granite pyramid.

  Stepping inside, Ali felt as if she were violating a tomb.

  She remembered her nightmare from two weeks ago.

  She was standing in an icy chamber, with five glass coffins set on top of a row of low black boulders. The clear box on her left drew her attention, for a beautiful woman with long red hair lay sleeping in it. But as she approached, the case began to fill with bubbling red liquid. It might have been steaming blood, or worse, acid.
As the red goo spread over the woman, she began to dissolve, like a wax doll in a boiling pot. In seconds there was nothing left but the sick liquid, with bits of hair and bone. It began to spill onto the floor, and splash her legs, and she let out a scream. . . .

  Yet now the two on the left were empty, the three on the right were not.

  There were women in them, beautiful fairies, their eyes closed, sleeping.

  Or were they dead? Ali feared to approach.

  Different colored lights hung over the fairies. The lights seemed to be coming from the fairies themselves, like auras, not from the cases. For that reason—and it may have been no reason at all—Ali did not fear the lights.

  The clear coffins—she did not know how to think of them—were labeled in the same hieroglyphics she had seen in the southern harbor near Tiena. There was one word on the bottom edge of each case. Ali studied the fine blue letters, searching for a pattern, saw that three out of five of the words ended in the same letter. It looked like a capital “O” with a line through it.

  Because of the labeling, Ali was confident the ice maidens had not built the glass cases. The fairies must have done so, as people on Earth erected private tombs for the whole family. Perhaps the elementals did so to aid the ice maidens in their reclamation of the dead.

  Gathering her courage, she stepped to the first case on the left. There were white sheets inside, neatly folded, no lid, and one of the sheets was stained with a single drop of what looked like dried blood. Or frozen blood, the chamber was no warmer than the cave she had left behind.

  She studied the second case. Again, there was no covering top, and she sensed an odor emanating from the sheets—of ash perhaps, something that had burned—and the smell disturbed her deeply, although she had no idea why.

  Ali moved to the third glass case, saw a fairy inside. The woman was short and plump, with relatively plain features. Lying on her back, she had on a green robe, but she wore no jewelry of any kind, and did not appear to be breathing. A green light enveloped her from head to toe, although it was streaked with faint yellow rays.

  Her heart pounding, Ali moved to the fourth case. Another fairy inside . . .

  “Who are you?”

  “You.”

  “Who am I?”

  It was the fairy she had seen the night she had completed her seven tests in the cave near the top of Pete’s Peak, a month ago when the time frames had merged, and she had remembered who it was that had saved her from certain death a year before that.

  Her double turned and their eyes met. Ali did not see her, however, nor did her double see her. They were suddenly both gripped by the same vision of the green being who had rescued them from the fire that dark night. They both remembered the creature’s face. The magical light that flowed from her enchanting eyes. The hypnotic colors of the jewels in her golden crown. And most of all the love that radiated from her gentle heart. They both remembered who they were.

  The woman was more beautiful than a goddess. Her long red hair burned, and her smooth skin was as cool as a blue moon. She wore no crown, but anklets and bracelets made of green vines, yellow petals, and silver and gold thread, and she had on a white silk robe. Her legs were long and shapely, as though sketched by an artist, and her face was a mystery. Even with closed eyes and silent ears, it was as if she saw and heard everything around her—in the chamber, on the far side of the green world, maybe on Anglar itself. Her kindness was a large portion of her beauty, for she did not need to speak for Ali to know the words she would say. Because her words would be about love. . .

  Ali had only to stare at her still face to feel comforted.

  She realized she was staring at Geea, queen of all the fairies, herself.

  This was her own body, her elemental body.

  Three colors shone from the fairy’s forehead and heart, blending in soft bands of light like the colors of a rainbow created by a newborn sun: yellow, green, and blue. Ali wondered if the yellow was there because she was a human being, if the green was present because Geea was in fact an elemental. She did not understand the blue light, although it attracted her above all else. . . .

  Her face, her body—it all belonged to her, and yet it was all so strange. She felt as if she were being commanded by fate to stare into a tall mirror, only this mirror was not made of glass, but of time, and Geea’s memories had never felt so near. . . .

  But she could not grab hold of the memories! She could not touch them!

  Yet she reached down and touched her own hand. And it was warm.

  “She’s alive!” Ali gasped.

  Yet Geea’s eyes did not open, and she made no sound.

  Happy, sad, Ali moved on to the fifth and final case.

  This fairy was shorter than Geea, was not as stunningly beautiful, and had darker skin, and wore no covering sheets, only a plain white robe. Yet the various colored lights that emanated from her were far brighter than the ones that hovered near Geea, and there was a pulsating violet streak that permeated them all, which rose and fell like an unheard and unseen breath. It was apparent to Ali that this last fairy was the most powerful of all, and that it was also the most alive.

  Careful, Ali reached for the fairy’s hand . . . and got the shock of her life when it grabbed her! The fairy’s eyes sprung open, and stared not at her but at the frozen ceiling. They were bright eyes, violet in color, and very much alive.

  Oh God.

  The fairy’s lips moved, and Ali heard a voice she had heard before, not so long ago, in Toule. “Steve. . . Steve,” the fairy whispered, and there was sorrow in her tone.

  Then her eyes closed, her lips went still, and she let go of Ali. Filled with foreboding, Ali retreated several steps, once more studied the names attached to each glass box. The first, fourth, and fifth were the ones that all ended in the same letter. But what was the letter? Mentally, she began to review the alphabet, trying to correlate it with people she knew. She did not have to go too far into the alphabet to find a pattern. . . .

  The letter “A”. . .

  Amma and Geea and Nira all ended in “A”!

  Also, she saw that the first name, on the first case, began with the same letter.

  Which probably meant Amma had been lying here two weeks ago!

  In the first glass case, the one with the drop of blood!

  Which meant. . .Ali was too terrified to imagine what that meant.

  However, she had come to this spot to know the truth, and a large chunk of it detonated in her mind at once. Amma had been protective of her from the moment they had met. For that matter, they had been very careful with each other. Amma had known things about the woods behind her town—specifically the details of the cave on Pete’s Peak. Most of all, Amma had seemed very familiar, as if they were the oldest of friends. . .

  Because that’s precisely what they were.

  Ali finally understood why Amma liked to pull on her ear.

  Ali heard a sound, a distant roar, the crackling of fire, and a cry. . .

  A terrible force struck the room.

  The chamber shook as if caught in a major quake.

  Instinctively, Ali retreated to the doorway, all the time fighting to remain on her feet. Then she realized the futility of cowering at the door. The kloudar itself was being attacked! She had to get outside and help her friends! Throwing one last look at the silent fairies, she raced for the tunnel and the outside.

  She was halfway to the exit when she suddenly stopped.

  There was something up ahead. A cloaked evil.

  Slowly, Ali drew out the Yanti. She did not whisper “Alosha,” but repeated it mentally, as she carefully placed the Yanti first on her forehead, her heart, and finally on the top of her head. The field that always surrounded her swelled in size and filled with light, and she knew the thing in front of her knew what she was doing, and was amused. Far off, it seemed, Ali heard female laughter, a mocking sound that told her it welcomed her efforts to dispel it. However, it was at that moment that the
evil presence diminished, and appeared to depart.

  Putting away the Yanti, Ali strode quickly forward.

  At the entrance to the cave she found a nightmare.

  Ra lay unconscious in the snow, barely breathing.

  Trae also lay sprawled in the snow, his chest badly burnt, but alive.

  Amma sat inside the cave, leaning back against a cold wall. There was a seared thumbprint on her forehead between her empty eyes.

  Ali recoiled in horror. The Shaktra had come! The Shaktra had touched her!

  Amma was now marked.

  Ali knelt by her side, took her hand. “Amma. Amma!”

  Amma’s eyes did not blink, her head hung like a discarded marionette.

  Weeping, Ali hugged her. “Mother!” she cried, and the word just burst out of her mouth, and it was true. The chamber was a family tomb, that’s why Amma had led her to it. That’s why Amma had only arisen two weeks ago, and returned to Uleestar, because her human counterpart had been murdered then. That was why there was blood on the sheets. Now that it was too late, Ali thought bitterly, it was all clear. Her nightmare two weeks ago had not been a premonition, it had been a recognition of what was happening right then.

  Amma rocked in her arms like a lifeless doll.

  All this time, Ali had been seeking what was right beside her.

  Her heart heavy, Ali eventually let go of Amma and rose and knelt beside Trae. She was able to rouse the high fairy by stroking his forehead. Opening his green eyes, he stared up at her and his lower lip trembled.

  “Sorry, Geea,” he whispered.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  He coughed. “A dragon came, a dark fairy, and something else, it was awful. We saw them in the distance, but the dragon was fast. It struck near here with its flame and a piece of the kloudar fell off. Drash rushed to meet it, in midair, to fight it, but it was four times his size. . .” Trae had to stop to catch his breath.

  “Is Drash still alive?” she asked.

  “Don’t know. He fell close to where we landed. He was not moving.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The dark fairy shot me in the chest. That’s all I remember.”