Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

  The ground groaned as it was being wrenched open, and Amelia’s house began to splinter and break apart. Leven felt the soil crumbling beneath him as the walls of the trench collapsed and the ground began to slough off into the chasm. Leven and Amelia each grabbed one of Winter’s hands and dragged her through a collapsing doorway into Amelia’s small, ivy-covered kitchen.

  The kitchen was made of stone, with rock counters and green, mossy growth on all the walls. A large window above a sink showed off the now-darkened landscape of Foo. As the house vibrated, the wooden bowls on the counter rattled to the counter’s edge and fell to the floor with a resounding clump, and the kitchen walls began to buckle. Everything was out of focus and jiggling.

  The fire in the fireplace regained its strength and began to scream in fear, wrapping itself around any beam or structure it could reach. As it screamed, it emitted fat puffs of smoke.

  The large window above the sink blew inward, showering them in a storm of glass. Winter was still out, and the glass littered her hair like diamonds as Leven and Amelia held her up. The floor in the kitchen began to tip and slide toward the rovens’ rip.

  “We have to get out of here!” Leven yelled, dusting crystals of glass from his forearm and wishing the gateway were still accessible so they could simply return to Reality.

  They turned to run, holding Winter’s arms, but were stopped by the appearance of more rovens standing in formation behind the lead orange one. As Foo continued to shake, the rovens pushed into the kitchen. Fire lit the scene behind them, and Leven could taste the smoke and dust that hung in the air.

  The lead roven looked directly at Leven and screeched.

  Behind the rovens and through the kitchen door Leven could see what looked to be the entire landscape sliding violently into the gigantic rip the rovens had created. The fire screamed as part of it was dragged down into the trench.

  The noise was deafening. Leven stumbled, trying to find his footing, barely able to stand due to the shaking of the ground.

  “They can’t kill us, right?” Leven yelled to Geth. “There’s no killing in Foo?”

  “There are things worse than death,” Geth yelled back, offering no comfort whatsoever.

  “Some wisdom!” Clover screamed from Leven’s right shoulder.

  “They’re trying to suck us into the chasm they’ve created,” Amelia yelled. “We’ll wish we were dead if the gunt gets us.”

  Leven could think of few things worse than being trapped in the pit the rovens had just torn. And gunt? He didn’t even want to know. Leven had spent so little time in Foo that his mind was not yet capable of imagining some of the brilliant and clever and amazing things Foo and its inhabitants could be capable of.

  The orange roven threw its head back and flapped its huge wings. It screeched like a heavy train throwing on all its brakes at once. The rovens beside it did the same. They shook and convulsed in an uneven dance, their wings spinning, their faces puckering in pain. Two seconds later the thick, colorful hair upon their bodies began to fall out in clumps. It dropped to the ground in patches and strips, exposing their white, naked bodies beneath. The hair piled heavily on the ground, surrounding their talons and creating colorful mounds all over the kitchen.

  The lead roven continued to glare at Leven. It still seemed powerful, but it looked ashamed of its hairless body. It glanced away and quickly flapped upward through the now-missing ceiling and roof. The other rovens followed its example, pushing off the ground and out into the evening sky. The chasm outside the kitchen was still pulling everything down and under, growing larger every second.

  “Watch out for the hair!” Geth warned. “If we’re separated, get to the turrets.”

  Leven wanted to reach for Geth, but the piles of hair the rovens had shed began to swirl and rise, filling the air. Clover materialized, holding a comb. He threw the comb to Leven. Leven looked at the purple comb in his hand and wondered if his life could get any more confusing. He suddenly missed Burnt Culvert, Oklahoma. He missed his school and the normalcy of it. He even missed knowing that, as bad as tomorrow might be, he pretty much knew what was coming and had developed a way of coping with it.

  The hair the rovens had shed was swarming now, forming a thick cloud that was swirling toward Leven like a tornado.

  “Part it!” Clover screamed, waving his own comb in front of himself. “Part it!”

  There was no time for that. The hair was flying through the air and crawling across the floor. Thick handfuls surrounded Leven, smothering his scream, dragging him to the ground, and rolling him toward the edge of the chasm. The cloud of swirling hair pushed up his pant legs and down his shirt, filling his ears and nose. He felt as though he were being rolled up in a giant sheet of hairy sandpaper. Out of his right eye he could see Winter, still helpless, being dragged across the ground by another cloud of hair. He knew that Geth and Amelia were most likely experiencing a similar fate.

  Hair filled Leven’s mouth and gagged him, smothering his terrified screams. He was powerless to resist. He was going over the edge. He tried to yell again, but it was too late.

  The entire house was sliding into the expanding chasm. The fire had gone from screaming to running, grabbing at anything it could hold. A roven got in the way, and the fire twisted itself around its neck, choking the life out of it and setting its wings aflame.

  The remaining bits of house gave in. Walls tumbled and folded into the dark void as the rip swallowed everything near its edge. The great chasm was now a mile wide and growing longer and wider with each second.

  Leven kicked and screamed, but the hair dragging him was too strong. The funnel cloud of hair carried Leven over the chasm’s edge and down into the dark void. The hair then released its grip, flying off into a thousand different directions. Leven grasped at the air with his hands, desperately reaching for anything to halt his fall.

  Winter! Geth! Clover! he thought.

  It was pointless. There was nothing secure for Leven to grab onto. Everything within his view was being sucked down into the horrific rip the rovens had created.

  There was no light. Leven could feel broken sections of Amelia’s home and the soil it had stood on tumbling past him as he fell. The dirt tore at him, twisting around his torso. Leven’s head bounced off the side of the chasm, and he could feel blood running down his face. As he tumbled downward, his body contorted painfully. Leven could see flashes of fire, and a great rumble filled his ears.

  Leven relaxed his body, realizing that there was nothing and no force strong enough to stop him from falling deeper and farther down the chasm. Fate had brought him to Foo, and now fate had tossed him to a very dark end. Leven’s head again bounced off the side of the chasm, and his vision began to go black.

  He couldn’t help feeling incredibly misled.

  Chapter Two

  Wedgie

  It’s not easy starting something new. Few things are more intimidating than walking into a brand-new situation and having to make the best of it. Maybe your parents moved during your ninth-grade year and you had to make new friends in a foreign country where everyone spoke a different language from yours. That’s uncomfortable, and, as any well-meaning adult might say, “a character-building experience.” But what if you feel like you already have enough character, and you don’t want to leave all your friends and go to a foreign country with different money and food and a big school where the other kids ignore you and make you wish you were a treasure chest or a dog bone or anything buried deep beneath the earth and out of sight? What then? Well, you do as your parents tell you, and hope you don’t perish from too much character development.

  Foo was not new to Geth, and yet here he was in a new situation where he would be fortunate to come out with just a little more character and not something far worse. Sure, he was not one to worry; he was, after all, a lithen who trusted fully in fate.

  But something was different now.

  Previously, Geth had been a tall, strong, formidable leader, f
eared and respected by most of the inhabitants of Foo. At present, however, he was a little less strong, a good bit less intimidating, and totally ignored by most people—which was understandable, seeing how no one pays much attention to a toothpick.

  As the huge rip opened up, swallowing Amelia’s house and everything in it, Geth had somehow managed to get stuck in the side of the crevasse. His frail little toothpick legs were embedded in the wall of the great trench. He closed his mouth and eyes as a torrent of dirt and debris tumbled past him.

  He couldn’t hear much above the roar of the avalanche of soil, but as the sound died just a bit, he felt the wall in which he was pinned slip and begin to descend in one giant slab.

  Fate was having some fun.

  Riding the toboggan of soil, Geth slid down into the dark chasm. Finally his descent slowed, and the wall of dirt he was stuck in came to a stop. Geth lay there on his back, looking up at the dim light at the opening of the crevasse, far above him.

  A large, dark object was sliding down the wall toward him. For a moment, Geth figured it was a roven whose wings had been clipped in the chaos. But two seconds later, the heavy object landed on him, smothering him. Geth could tell by the smell of lintwood perfume that it was Amelia.

  She was out cold and on top of him.

  Geth could barely breathe. He would have been fine with waiting for fate to show how clever and wise it was, but he knew that what he most needed now was to get out from under Amelia and find Leven and Winter. He wriggled his arms and did his best to poke Amelia as she lay on top of him. It took a little effort, but on the fourth try he was able to give her a pretty good jab.

  Amelia moaned.

  Two more jabs, and she was fully conscious and moaning in complete sentences.

  “That’d better be you, Geth,” she warned. “And if it is, stop poking me!”

  Amelia rolled off of Geth and felt carefully around on the dark ledge. Her right hand found the edge of the shelf while her left hand located Geth. She pinched him extra hard as she pulled on him and popped his legs out of the dirt.

  “I suppose I deserved that,” Geth said.

  Amelia brushed him off the best she could in the dark.

  “I think I have an amber stick,” she remembered. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a wooden stick about three inches long. It was rough on the ends and smooth in the middle. She slid her fingers along the smooth center of it, massaging a small bit of oil from the wood onto the thumb and middle finger of her right hand. Then she snapped her fingers near one end of the stick and it lit up, crackling and spitting. She snapped her fingers at the other end, and it too burned. The light gradually drew into the center of the stick, causing the entire thing to glow while remaining cool to the touch. She held the stick out over the chasm and peered downward.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  The rip the rovens had created was gigantic, and things were still settling. Of course Geth and Amelia had no way of determining just how long it stretched or how deep it went, but they could detect a low, buzzing sound way up above them.

  “Do you hear that?” Geth asked.

  “Locusts,” Amelia answered. “Jamoon is probably using them to inform the whole of Foo that he’s after you.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Geth said.

  “How?” Amelia complained. “We’re trapped.”

  The ledge they had landed on was thin at one end, but there was room to move around on the other end. Amelia moved to the wider part and snuffed out the amber stick. Geth worked his way up to her right shoulder and patted her gently on her large, wrinkled earlobe. He was glad it was dark.

  “I’ve never known you to give up,” Geth said.

  “Give up?” Amelia sniffled. “People give up when they have choices. We have no choice. The gunt will be here soon.”

  “Fate has fixed worse. Let’s hope the message the locusts are delivering falls upon more friends than enemies,” was Geth’s only reply.

  Amelia was a bit dumbfounded. “You’ve changed, Geth,” she said softly. “Where’s the fire you used to have? Where’s your anger?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Geth answered.

  “The Geth that Antsel took from Foo all those years ago was considerably more hotheaded. Sabine took your life and your city and all you had worked for. Where’s your resentment, your anger?”

  Geth was silent; if he had had a brow it would have been furrowed. Amelia’s words seemed to impact him. He couldn’t see himself very well, but he looked at his arms and legs and wondered at what he had become.

  Geth thought back to Reality. He remembered being a tree and the restraint he had used to contain himself. There had been many days when he had wanted badly to wrap a root around the necks of Leven’s sort-of parents, Terry and Addy, and strangle them for being so cruel to Leven. He recalled too how he used to flex and thrust his roots violently under the soil for miles just to let off steam.

  And he thought back to his life in Foo before any of this had begun. He could remember his mission and his hatred and disgust for Sabine and for what Sabine wanted to do to Foo. He could still remember Sabine capturing him, and the pain he felt as his soul was extracted and put into a seed. He had felt nothing but hate. But Geth felt none of that now. He had been reduced. His desire to stop what was happening was as strong as ever, but there was no anger in his heart—no hatred.

  “Interesting,” Geth whispered to himself. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  His thoughts were interrupted by a faint voice yelling in the distance. Geth jumped off Amelia’s shoulder and inched to the lip of the ledge. Amelia was still sniffling.

  “Shhh,” Geth said gently. “I think I hear Winter.”

  Amelia caught her breath.

  “Geth! Leven!” the voice sounded.

  “You’ve got a bigger voice,” Geth said with excitement to Amelia. “Yell out.”

  Amelia moved cautiously to the edge of the ledge and peered down into the darkness. “Winter?” she called.

  Winter was somewhere below them. They couldn’t see her, but her voice was just loud enough for them to make out what she was saying.

  “Are you there?” she yelled from down below.

  “We’re here!” Amelia replied.

  “And Leven?”

  Amelia looked at Geth, wondering what to say.

  “Tell her the truth, of course,” Geth insisted.

  “He’s not here!” Amelia hollered.

  “He must have fallen farther down,” Winter called back. “I’m going after him.”

  “No!” Geth and Amelia shouted simultaneously.

  Amelia relit her amber stick and peered over the edge. She still couldn’t see Winter.

  “I can see your light,” Winter yelled. “I’m on a ledge below you.”

  Amelia dropped the amber stick off the ledge, and it drifted down like a falling star about three hundred feet and then stopped.

  “Thank you,” Winter called, picking up the glowing stick. She held it up and peered through the darkness at her surroundings. Although far below Geth and Amelia, she still was nowhere near the bottom of the chasm.

  Glancing downward, Winter noticed a shaft of light rising from the darkness and shooting toward her. Winter was startled. The light was white and cylindrical and filled with floating circles of color and waves of blue. When it reached Winter, it stopped and leaned toward her. Winter stood still and speechless, waiting for it to touch her. She shivered with excitement.

  It had been over thirteen years since Winter had enhanced a dream.

  The shaft of light touched her under her chin and quickly spread through her, illuminating her entire being. All at once she was alive in the dream of someone in Reality. It felt so warm and safe and normal that Winter wanted to cry.

  The dream belonged to a young girl in Africa—a young girl without a father, who had just lost her cat. Winter took the dream and amplified it by opening her mind. She moved the images around and
took away any uncertainty and made it familiar for the young mind dreaming it. She gave the scenes within the dream an unusual hue and pushed the edges out to fit greater amounts of hope and imagination.

  Winter felt so alive.

  Peering over their ledge, Geth and Amelia could see the dream touch Winter. They watched Winter as she manipulated the light. The bright glow radiating from her body lit up the chasm and revealed a thin ridge that connected the ledge Geth and Amelia were on with Winter’s platform below. Amelia didn’t waste any time. She shoved Geth behind her ear and jumped down the ridge, sliding clumsily toward Winter, digging her heels in the dirt to keep her from plummeting all the way down. Small strings of soil reached out at her, slowing her down as she slid.

  Winter manipulated the dream until it began to fade. Then she pushed the light out of her palms and sent what was left of the dream back into Reality.

  As her mind was clearing, Winter felt some clods of dirt tumbling down from above. She lifted her amber stick up to see Amelia sliding toward her. More dirt rained down on Winter. Two seconds later, Amelia landed with a thud on the shelf of dirt next to Winter.

  “Are you okay?” Winter asked, helping Amelia to her feet.

  “Fine,” Geth insisted, peering out from behind Amelia’s lumpy ear. “But we’d better find a way out of here. The gunt will be coming soon.”

  “Gunt?” Winter asked, having no recollection of what that was.

  “To fill the rip,” Geth answered. “There are borders to Foo. The gunt makes it impossible to dig yourself out. And the last place you want to get stuck is in its path. Many souls have been caught in the glue and trapped forever.”

  “Then let’s hurry,” Winter said nervously.

  “Hurry how?” Amelia asked, rubbing her sore backside.

  “We need to get to the bottom,” Geth replied. “Once we hit the floor, we can run until we reach the end of this rip.”

  “What if there is no end?” Winter asked.