The Legend of the Rift

  Qalani.

  Her hands—Torquin’s hands—were bound at the wrists, and a bandanna covered her mouth. Her thigh was bandaged with a blood-stained tourniquet where she had been stabbed by the thrown dagger.

  Trapped in Torquin’s body, Qalani stared forward with the eyes of a mother who could not bring herself to fight back against her own son.

  Massarym pushed her toward the edge of the ridge. Then, lashing out swiftly and mercilessly with his foot, he kicked her over.

  “And one more,” he called out, “makes eight!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  THE CIRCUIT OF POWER

  QALANI FELL, ROLLING to the bottom of the ridge. I had to turn away. Seeing Torquin’s body so out of control was painful. Knowing who was inside was unbearable.

  She landed few feet from us, her face twisted into a grimace. Blood oozed from the tourniquet. Eloise calmly grabbed the Loculus of Healing and ran to her. As she pressed the Loculus to Qalani’s leg, she untied her bonds.

  I grabbed the Loculus of Language and held tight.

  “Thank you . . .” the queen rasped.

  “By Qalani’s crown, Massarym, how could you be this cruel to a commoner?” Uhla’ar said. “Has this man attacked you?”

  Massarym bounded down the rain-slickened ridge. “Ah, well, maybe I will not kill this traitorous peasant after all! You do put me into a merciful mood, Father. For I see you have collected the Loculi for me!”

  King Uhla’ar stood. “I have collected the Loculi indeed, Massarym. But not to serve your plans.”

  The prince strode toward us, placing his foot on the Loculus of Healing, jamming it down into Qalani’s wound. Wincing, she cried, “Massarym, my son, please . . .”

  “Do you not hear this blasphemy?” Massarym said. “This oaf claims to be the queen. And the queen is missing. Is that not an odd coincidence?”

  “Missing?” Karai said. “Is that true, Father?”

  Uhla’ar looked confused. “I—I don’t know.”

  Eloise, Cass, and Marco were all touching the Loculus of Language, which was in my arms now. They knew exactly what was being said. And I felt the blood draining from my face.

  Two of the same things cannot exist in the same time.

  When Uhla’ar had come through the rift from the twenty-first century, he had simply replaced the Uhla’ar that was here. No one seemed to have noticed this, but that wasn’t surprising.

  But Qalani-as-Torquin had replaced regular Qalani. And that was a big difference, to put it mildly.

  “What is your plan, Father?” Massarym said. “Why has no one seen the queen? Perhaps she has been fed to this animal of a man, who speaks in her voice?”

  “Why would I do such a thing?” Uhla’ar retorted.

  Massarym shrugged. “I do not understand your actions. One minute you are my helpmeet, the next you conspire with Karai to destroy the Loculi. What deeds, what foul magic, are behind the actions of Uhla’ar? Has my brother twisted your mind in his delusion to save Atlantis for himself?”

  “That’s preposterous!” Uhla’ar said.

  “Stop this, my son!” Qalani said.

  Karai stared at Uhla’ar in confusion. “Who is that man, Father? Why is he calling Massarym his son?”

  The sky cracked with lightning. There was no time to explain Torquin to Karai. Massarym was delaying us. “Ignore him!” I shouted.

  Karai shook his head. “But . . . there is something about that fellow . . .”

  Qalani looked at me and I stared back, trying to drill my thoughts into her head. Play along. Do not call him “son.” They will not understand, and you will ruin everything.

  Another jolt shook the earth. Eloise grabbed the Loculus of Language from my hand and ran to the Heptakiklos. In her other arm was the Loculus of Healing, which she had taken to heal Qalani.

  As she put them both back into their places, she shouted, “Let’s do this—now!”

  We all raced to the Heptakiklos. The Loculi were together now, all seven.

  The Song of the Heptakiklos rang from ridge to ridge. I could feel the energy flowing from the rift, coursing through the seven orbs to create an unending circuit of power and mystery, healing and goodness. As we stood with our backs to them, the light seeped in through my feet and filled me up to my knees, up through my spine, up to the white shape on the back of my head.

  The rain poured down, but I felt bone dry. Marco staggered back, shielding his eyes from the glare.

  Like a flock of birds, they will travel close together yet each seeing a clear path ahead.

  “Take the kopadi—the weapons!” I shouted. “Now.”

  All seven of us turned and grabbed a lambda-shape knife.

  “Give me those!” Massarym shouted.

  He ran toward us, holding his sword aloft. I heard a loud, guttural yell.

  Turning my head quickly, I saw Qalani’s thick Torquin arms close around her son’s legs. She wrestled him easily to the ground and stood, dragging him backward, his face in the mud, until he was unconscious. Then, turning him faceup at the base of the ridge, she gently daubed his mud-spattered, unconscious face with the edge of Torquin’s shirt.

  As Qalani knelt and kissed the cheek of her son, Uhla’ar held up one hand. “Wait.”

  Striding toward the wet, hulking figure of Torquin, the king held out his kopadi. “You are Qalani, my beloved wife,” he said, his voice cracking, his brow dripping with rain and tears. “I cannot deny this. Nor can I bear returning to the time and place from which I traveled. I have lived many lifetimes there, and I desire no more.”

  Qalani stepped forward. “My husband, my kind king,” she said, “I shall remain here with my people. It is I who caused this, and I who must bear responsibility.”

  “If you remain, then you also deprive this man Torquin, whose person you fill, of his own life,” Uhla’ar said, walking toward her. “He did not ask for this fate. Come.”

  He placed the kopadi into the thick, callused hand of Victor Rafael Quiñones, and then planted a tender kiss on the stubbled cheek. “We will meet again.”

  Qalani bowed her head. Weeping, she hugged Uhla’ar for a good solid minute.

  At the crack of thunder that sparked an instant fire in the western woods, Qalani let go and stepped toward the circle. She lifted the kopadi high over her head, aiming the point at the Loculus of Flight.

  “Lift!” I said.

  All seven of us took our positions. The ground shook again, hard. With a jarring rumble, the rift split open, nearly to the edge of the Heptakiklos.

  “And . . . strike!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  IT BEGINS

  ON THE MORNING I was scheduled to die, a large barefoot man with a bushy red beard waddled past my house. The thirty-degree temperature didn’t seem to bother him, but he must have had a lousy breakfast, because he let out a burp as loud as a tuba.

  Belching barefoot giants who look like Vikings are not normal in Belleville, Indiana. But I didn’t really get a chance to see the guy closely.

  At that moment, I, Jack McKinley, was under attack in my own bedroom. By a flying reptile.

  I could have used an alarm clock. But last night I’d been up late studying for my first-period math test and I’m a deep sleeper. Dad couldn’t wake me because he was in Singapore on business. And Vanessa, the beloved au pair I call my don’t-caregiver, always slept till noon.

  I had known I’d need a big sound. Something I couldn’t possibly sleep through. That’s when I saw my papier-mâché volcano from last month’s science fair, still on my desk. It was full of baking soda. So I got my dad’s coffeemaker, filled it with vinegar, and rigged it to the volcano with a plastic tube. I set the timer for 6:30 A.M., when the coffeemaker would release the vinegar into the volcano, causing a goop explosion. I put a chute at the base of the volcano to capture that goop. In the chute was a billiard ball, which would roll down toward a spring-loaded catapult on my chair. The catapult would release a big old pla
stic Ugliosaurus™—a fanged eagle crossed with a lion, bright-red.

  Bang—when that baby hit the wall I’d have to be dead not to wake up.

  It worked like a charm. I jumped out of bed, washed my face, and ran downstairs. I wolfed down a bagel with butter, swigged from a carton of milk, and leafed through the travel brochure on the kitchen table.

  I knew that when the week was out, I would be flying overseas for the coolest vacation of my life. Dad would be flying up from Singapore and Mom from Antarctica. We would meet at the airport and take a hydroplane to get to our resort.

  I could not wait.

  No!

  I woke up so fast I got a humongous charley horse in my left calf. Groaning, I rubbed my leg and sank back onto the pillow, my eyes still closed.

  The dream was all wrong.

  It didn’t happen like that.

  Dad called from Singapore and I got a late start, so I rushed to school and nearly ran over Barry Reese, who picked a fight and caused me to dash out into the street, where I passed out and then woke up hours later in the hospital, where I saw a chaplain who was really Torquin in disguise. . . .

  “Jack?” Mom’s voice made my eyes pop open.

  My room was icy cold. An air conditioner pumped like crazy from a duct overhead. My suitcase was wide open on a wooden stand by a flat-screen TV, and clothes were strewn all about.

  By my bedside, a clock flashed 7:30 A.M.

  It wasn’t my clock. It wasn’t my bedroom. And the Ugliosaurus was nowhere in sight.

  What the heck was going on?

  “Jackie! Time to wake up!” Mom’s fingers rapped on the door three times. “Sleep well?”

  “Mom!” I screamed.

  She was alive. Smiling. Here.

  “Awwww . . .” she said, cocking her head to the side. “Nightmares, sweetie?”

  I jumped up and kissed her. I couldn’t help it.

  With a giddy laugh, she squeezed me and then ducked back through the door. “Somebody’s still in dreamy land. Okay, get dressed. We have a big day ahead of us.”

  Dreamy land?

  Nightmares?

  I counted to three, then ran to the bathroom. I’d unpacked my toothbrush and toothpaste and a brush and . . .

  There.

  The hand mirror. It was the one Dad and I had bought at CVS when I was in second grade. I turned it and saw the laminated photo of four-year-old me sledding with Mom and Dad. Still there.

  Quickly I turned my back to the bathroom mirror and held up the hand mirror so I could see the back of my head.

  “Nice hotel, huh?”

  Dad’s voice made me jump. I nearly dropped the mirror onto the marble countertop. “Really nice,” I said.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “No!” I snapped back.

  “Come. Your mom and I are ready for breakfast,” he said. “They have custom omelets. And your favorite—chocolate chocolate-chip muffins!”

  “Yum,” I said, pretending I had not completely lost my appetite.

  After he left, I quickly got dressed. But my mind was racing.

  What had happened? Where was the lambda? Where were my friends? Had this whole thing been a dream?

  Where on earth were we?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THE FLOCK

  NISSI, THE LOST WORLD,

  WELCOMES YOU!

  THE BANNER STARED down at us as we finished up breakfast. It was like some cruel reminder of everything I’d just experienced—or thought I had.

  I half expected to blink and see the black tower of Mount Onyx, the odd brick buildings of the Karai Institute. But we were in some big old tourist resort, vast, manicured, and flat, with towering palm trees set against blue skies. All around us were dads wearing Hawaiian shirts and moms loading up strollers with stolen supplies from the buffet table. And vice versa. Just outside the door was a gigantic pool with a waterslide shaped vaguely like a green dinosaur. Mom and Dad spent the whole meal jabbering on about animals and exhibits. They both knew this scientist and that, and I was sure we’d spend many hours chuckling over tea and talking about genetics.

  It all felt familiar. It all felt like I just woke up on Mars. So the two sensations canceled each other out, leaving me just plain numb.

  Part of me wanted to run into the middle of the breakfast area and dance my butt off—because Mom was alive and Dad wasn’t running away from home and we were together and nothing had ever been wrong.

  But another part of me felt like my life was a great big PowerPoint presentation and a virus had just swept in and replaced all the slides.

  Torquin . . . Marco, Cass, and Aly . . . the Seven Wonders . . . Professor Bhegad and Brother Dimitrios and Daria and Canavar and Crazy Farouk . . . they couldn’t have just been thoughts and dreams.

  Could they?

  “Onward!” Dad trumpeted as he swigged his last bit of black coffee.

  “Aren’t you hungry, Jackie?” Mom asked, frowning at the untouched omelet on my plate.

  “Tummy ache,” I said.

  She handed me a banana from her tray. “Well, take this,” she said. “Just in case you do get hungry. It’ll be gentle on your stomach.”

  I tucked the banana into my shirt pocket, which looked ridiculous, but in this crowd of tourists, no one would care. As we walked outside, the weather slammed me like a fist. Compared to the frigid AC of the hotel, the air was heavy and hot—and it was still morning.

  We took a tram ride that raced along a lush tropical preserve. Our first stop was called Simian Surprises.

  A canned voice spoke to us through the tram PA: “As on the island of Komodo, where the famed Komodo dragon survived to modern times, so, too, here in Nissi were found extraordinary examples of evolutionary anomalies not seen anywhere else in the world. At Lost World we preserve natural habitats, which necessitate sometimes dense tree covers, so walking visitors are urged to be patient. Do not under any circumstances attempt to feed the animals or even pretend to, and stay behind the Plexiglas barriers. . . .”

  And blah, blah, blah.

  I was tired and cranky before we even climbed down the stairs.

  Our tour guide led us down a path between two extremely high Plexiglas walls. Kids had scraped words into the plastic, and by reading them I knew that Nick loved Jennie, and Taki “wuz hear,” and someone felt the need to write FIXX about a zillion times.

  All I could see behind the scratched plastic was thick clumps of palm trees and an occasional bird. I slowed down so the grown-ups would go on ahead and let my eyes wander upward. I heard a monkeylike screech and imagined Qalani becoming the Omphalos while trapped inside jungle animals. “Hello, my queen,” I murmured.

  The screech sounded again, this time a bit closer.

  I looked left and right, and took the banana from my pocket. “Here, monkey, monkey, monkey!” I said. “Want some breakfast?”

  “EEEEEEEEEE!”

  A black figure dropped from the trees and slammed itself against the Plexiglas. I dropped the banana and fell to the ground as the creature spat a yellow glob that slimed the wall and dripped down.

  The guide came running around the bend. He was trying to act all friendly, but I could see the anger in his face. “Oh dear, the black maimou must have smelled that banana, ha-ha!” he said with forced cheer. “This is exactly why we posted all the Do Not Feed the Animals signs!”

  I bolted to my feet, staring into the yellow eyes of my assailant.

  I knew that glare. I knew it very well. “It’s not a maimou. . . .” I said.

  “Excuse me?” the guide said.

  The creature bared its teeth at me through the plastic and spat again.

  “I’m not crazy. . . .” I turned to the guide and laughed. “I didn’t dream it!”

  “No, no, no, no,” the guide said, “these animals are nightmarish indeed but very real—”

  “It’s a vizzeet,” I said. “It’s called a vizzeet and it spits poison.”

  “Uh,
ladies and gentlemen, the maimou’s venom sac has been surgically neutralized so that any contact with its saliva is perfectly harmless”—he chuckled—“if a bit unsightly.”

  As he walked onward with the group, Mom and Dad stayed behind. “Jack, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m fine and I’m not crazy. I’m not. Where is this place?”

  They gave each other a look. “We’ve been talking about this for weeks, Jack,” Dad said.

  “It’s Nissi, the lost island in the tropics?” Mom added. “The place that somehow escaped being discovered until it was picked up by satellite a few years ago? Ding, ding, ding . . . ring any bells?”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s right. The island didn’t sink. This is it. We went through the rift and the rift closed. Forever. The Loculi are gone! They’re gone and there was never a Karai Institute or any Massa. I’m not the Tailor anymore. Or the Destroyer. I don’t have to rule! Do you know what this means? Woo-HOO!”

  A maniac. A raving lunatic. I knew I sounded like that, but I couldn’t help it.

  Mom and Dad gave each other a look and burst out laughing. “Another short story, yes!” Dad shouted. “I love the way your mind works, Jack. Everything a springboard for an idea. You will do this for a living someday. I know it. An author of a children’s adventure series!”

  “Make sure you include a little romance,” Mom said with a wink. “Now come on. Let’s do some more exploring.”

  As we walked on, all I could think about was Aly. And that made my collar feel about three hundred degrees hotter.

  I had to find out about her. About Marco and Cass and Eloise. I had to know if they existed. But to do this, I would need some time alone.

  We nearly ran into another family, a couple and three kids, heading into an enormous, high-roofed building that echoed with screeches. The eldest brother was maybe a year or so older than me, taking a zillion photos with his phone. Just inside the door, I could see a bright red dot in the middle of his image. I followed his line of sight to a branch on a tree way up by the opposite wall. The entire wall was constructed of caves, and at the very top one I saw a flurry of red.