“Jaide, shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”
“She should indeed,” said Grandma X, folding her hands in front of her. “But great minds think alike, I’m afraid. Seeing she’s come this far, we might as well include her — provided she does what she’s told from now on.”
Jaide beamed. It seemed she wasn’t going to get in trouble, after all. In fact, she was going to find out how Grandma X and her father planned to rescue Jack, Tara, and Kyle.
“What about you?” Hector asked Stefano. “Are you volunteering as well?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Because I want to, not just because it’s partly my fault. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Hector came to join them at the table, and another adult stepped into view from behind him. It was Rennie. Of course she was part of the plan, Jaide thought. She and Hector had actually been arguing with Aleksandr as a distraction, for Grandma X, not for Jaide.
“Was the mission a success?” Rennie asked.
Grandma X nodded, removing Professor Olafsson from his pouch. He blinked and flexed his plaster features, taking in the new environment.
“Thank you, madam and milady, for retrieving me from that gaggle of ignoramuses,” he said. “Not one of them has the slightest speck of curiosity. All they dream of is victory and power. That Aleksandr fellow is a right buffoon.”
“He is not without his admirable qualities,” said Grandma X. “But we have had our moments, yes.”
“Tell us about Aleksandr’s plan, Professor,” said Hector. “Project Thunderclap: Will it work?”
“I don’t see why not, if they follow my blueprint to the letter.” The professor’s gaze swiveled to take in everyone sitting around the table. “With enough lightning wielders to create a sufficiently energetic megastorm, the cracks between our world and that of The Evil can be erased forever.”
“How do you erase a crack?” asked Jaide.
“Take a piece of cheese,” said the professor. “Break it in two. Now place the pieces in an oven so they sit next to each other. Close the door. What will happen?”
“The cheese will melt back together,” said Stefano.
“Exactly. And so it will be here, when Project Thunderclap is enacted, only with the megastorm instead of the heat of an oven, and dimensions instead of cheese.”
“Does anyone else feel like a toasted sandwich?” said Ari.
Kleo’s whiskers twitched, but no one else reacted. Jaide was thinking about the word megastorm, and how that sounded so much more serious than Project Thunderclap.
“How are we going to stop it?” she asked.
“Stop it?” His eyebrows bolted up the domed forehead so far they looked in danger of falling off the death mask’s edge. “Why would you want to do that?”
“We brought you here, professor, because we have some loved ones caught on the other side,” said Hector.
“Then you will need to act quickly. Once the cracks are erased, there will be no way to return here from the realm of The Evil — or to go there to rescue them. The way will be completely sealed. They will be trapped forever.”
“We suspected as much.” Hector looked grim. “Is there any way to rescue them before the megastorm is unleashed?”
“Only one,” said the professor. “To do it you’ll need a cross-continuum conduit constructor that is turned to the realm of The Evil.”
“As a matter of fact, we have just that.” Grandma X explained what had been unearthed in the house next door. “We know it works. I have tested it on several occasions, and each time a small amount of The Evil leaked through.”
This was news to Jaide, although she supposed she should have guessed. All those small attacks by The Evil had been focused on the house and its surroundings, which made sense if Grandma X was opening the way rather than Aleksandr’s Thunderclappers.
“And this is the problem,” Rennie was saying. “The Evil always notices when a breach is opened between here and its home. It wants the breach to be open so it can come through without running into me and the other wards. It will always be waiting for anyone coming through from our side.”
“This was Lottie’s downfall, I fear,” said Grandma X. “She stole the Bifrost Bridge from the Hawks when they wouldn’t let her use it in the hope of making peace. She opened the way, and The Evil was ready for her.”
“Jack made it,” said Jaide. “Stefano and I heard him calling us, so we know he survived.”
“But he didn’t tell us what he did to get past The Evil,” Stefano added glumly. “And he’s been quiet ever since.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” said Grandma X. “Why was the breach sucking instead of blowing, this time? Is there any way we can control where the breach opens on the other side? Could we somehow disguise the opening so The Evil can’t see it? To answer these questions, we need a more complete understanding of the principles involved. Professor, will you help us?”
The death mask’s expression was solemn.
“These are difficult questions,” he said, “and time is short.”
“We know,” said Hector. “Will you help us try?”
“Of course,” the professor said, “as long as you are aware that the odds are against us.”
“We’re Wardens,” said Grandma X, folding her hands on the table in front of her. “They always are.”
I still can’t see anything,” said Kyle. “Are you sure Cornelia’s taking us the right way?”
Kyle had the sharpest eyesight of the three of them. If he said he couldn’t see anything then Jack was happy to assume he wouldn’t see anything, either. Tara, however, squinted so hard at the horizon it was amazing she could see anything at all.
“All right, hang on,” said Jack. “I’ll check.”
Setting down his bone-scimitar, he lay out flat on the sand, tilted his head to the side, and closed his eyes. He was reminded of trackers in some of his father’s old westerns. They claimed to be able to tell all sorts of things just by listening to the earth. Jack wasn’t listening, and he couldn’t make out any details like numbers of people or anything like that, but he could sense the life in Lottie’s oasis, and he could tell in which direction it lay.
There was no mistake. Cornelia was leading them the right way.
So why couldn’t they see anything ahead of them but dead, white desert?
Jack clambered to his feet, brushed the sand out of his ear, and told Tara and Kyle what he thought.
“So we press on,” said Tara, although the way she leaned on her sword suggested her enthusiasm was forced. They were all tired, hungry, and thirsty. It felt as though they had been in the realm of The Evil a lot longer than one day. Not once had all the suns set. Twice more had ice storms swept over them, bringing welcome rain, but never lasting long. The weather always returned to its default state of hot, dry, and boring.
“We press on,” Kyle agreed. “But if you and Cornelia are wrong, Jack, I’m going to eat both of you.”
“Cornelia would be a bit stringy, I reckon.”
“You’ve never been so hungry you didn’t care what you ate?”
Jack thought of his mother’s cooking and rubbed his own growling belly. “Sometimes.”
They hadn’t gone ten feet before Tara said, “Shhh!” and stopped with her left hand held up in the unmistakable halt sign.
Kyle and Jack fell in behind her.
“What is it?” asked Jack.
“Shhh, I said.”
He held his breath and looked all around them, but could see nothing but white sand rolling in waves to a featureless horizon, punctuated by the occasional weird-looking skeleton.
Tara’s hand came down.
“I thought I heard something,” she said through painfully cracked lips. “Something other than you two big mouths.”
“Like what, exactly?” asked Kyle.
“I don’t know. Bugs, maybe.”
“You’re going mad with
hunger, just like I am. Let’s keep going. We’re not actually going anywhere, but that’s better than standing around here waiting for something to find us.”
“Look at Cornelia,” Jack said, pointing upward.
The blue speck was circling over a patch of desert not far from them.
“Is she trying to tell us something?” asked Kyle.
“Maybe she can see something we can’t,” said Tara.
Jack agreed. “Is she telling us where to go or warning us away?”
“Beats me,” said Kyle. “I vote we go find out.”
Shouldering his oar, he set off in the lead. Tara looked uneasy but followed. Jack put a hand into his remaining stash of blue-room trinkets before following them, just in case.
“This would make a great beach,” said Kyle, “if only there was an ocean.”
“I bet there is one, somewhere,” said Tara. “All the water in the storms doesn’t just vanish.”
“Maybe there’s an underground ocean.” Kyle was excited by this idea. “It’d be cold and dark, and full of eyeless dinosaurs. Maybe that’s where Lottie is, Jack, in The Land That Time Forgot.”
“That was an island,” said Jack. “You’re thinking of Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
“Am I? Did that have dinosaurs in it?”
“I think so. The movie did, anyway. But they had eyes.”
“That’s silly. There wouldn’t be any light.”
“You think that’s silly,” asked Tara, “but dinosaurs you’re okay with?”
Ahead of them, the sand exploded upward, creating a wall of billowing dust directly across their path.
“Uh-oh,” cried Kyle, raising his oar. “I don’t think this is your great-aunt, Jack.”
Jack spun around at the sound of more explosive sand and blooming dust in their wake. To the left and right it was the same. They were surrounded.
“It’s a trap!” Tara said, backing up so she, Jack, and Kyle formed a triangle with their weapons facing outward.
Out of the billowing clouds stepped strange figures, alien creatures with too many arms, legs, and heads. At the back was a human, although one that clearly wasn’t alive. The figure was composed from Evil bugs, all swarming and squirming in a horrid approximation of a person. The figures, human and alien alike, stepped forward to encircle the three children.
“Stay back!” said Tara, menacing the first to approach with her sword. “I mean it!”
The Evil alien didn’t even slow. It came for her with four arms open, and she slashed at it, cutting it in half. There was a ring of steel against bone and the creature fell apart. It was made of bugs swarming a long-dead skeleton.
Another Evil alien instantly took its place.
Jack felt cold sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades. He and the others were tired, hungry, and dehydrated. They were outnumbered many times over. There was no way they were getting out of this one.
++Take me,++ he said. ++I’ll give myself up if you let the others go.++
++Too late, troubletwister,++ said The Evil. ++There is no escape now, not for you or your friends. Not now, and not ever!++
Jack slashed his bone-scimitar at the humanoid figure approaching him and felt a sickening squish as it hit home. Two more took its place, reaching for him with squirming, grasping fingers.
Above them, Cornelia was circling and circling, squawking pointlessly. They couldn’t move. They were trapped.
Then a ghostly figure appeared in the battlefield, a young woman looking around her as though trying to see her way through a fog.
++Is that you, Jack Shield?++
++Yes!++ Jack cried, relief mingling with desperation. The Evil aliens surrounding them were really pressing in now. One hideous thing with two heads and four mouths snapped entirely too close to his face before he managed to push it away. ++We’re in trouble and we need your help!++
++I cannot help you. You must find your own way.++
++I can’t! We’re surrounded!++
++Do not be afraid. Your Gift is stronger than you think.++
How did you know that? Jack wanted to say. She knew nothing about him. But she had a point. There were very few shadows in a world with three suns, but what there were could be used against the Evil horde. He had to try.
He concentrated and felt his Gift stir in response. He ducked a swipe from a seven-toed paw and pushed up with his bone-scimitar, noting as he did so how it cast a faint shadow across the chest of the thing attacking him. The shadow flexed and darkened, then slid up to wrap itself around the Evil alien’s head, where he guessed its eyes should be.
It kept coming, presumably because it was seeing through the eyes of all the Evil bugs at once. Jack ducked another swipe and tried expanding the shadow. If he could blind all of them at once, maybe that would do the trick.
What happened startled him so much he almost lost his concentration entirely.
The shadow spread across the entire alien, which fell back with a chorus of insect squeals, bumping into the creature behind it. Like a contagion, the shadow spread to that alien, and to the next one in line, and the one behind that. Within moments, a cloud of shadow was spreading through the entire army like ink through water.
Jack gaped in amazement. He hadn’t been trying to do anything like that. But he didn’t stop to question it. He pushed harder, encouraging the spread of the shadow to Kyle and Tara’s side of the fight. They were still under attack. Kyle’s oar was broken in two, and there was only so much he could do to defend himself with the remaining splintered end.
Faster, Jack told the shadow. Keep going!
And that was when it happened. The shadow filled the Evil horde and began spreading across the desert, from grain of sand to grain of sand, until everything was black. The sky turned purple, and one by one the suns flickered and went out.
It was suddenly dark, so dark even Jack had trouble seeing.
“What happened?” asked Kyle. “Did we go blind?”
“That was me,” said Jack. “I don’t know how, but my Gift did that.”
“This is our chance,” said Tara. She had her owl’s eyes again, thanks to the glass rod. “Come on!”
She took Kyle’s hand, and Kyle took Jack’s. They ducked low under the clutching hands of the alien horde, which was blinded but still trying to attack. Jack kept his Gift working hard to maintain the shadow as they brushed by protesting Evil bug flesh, but really it wasn’t that hard at all. All he had to do was keep concentrating and the whole world, it seemed, remained dark.
His head was feeling light when they reached the edge of the horde. Tara seemed to know where she was going, and after a moment Jack realized how. She was following Cornelia’s cries. They stumbled across the sand, leaving The Evil horde behind, and ignoring its angry roars.
++Nearly there,++ said Lottie into Jack’s mind, her voice little more than a whisper. ++Not much farther. A few more steps. You can do it.++
Jack didn’t know what she was talking about. The desert ahead appeared to be as empty as it always was. Just bones and sand all the way to the empty horizon.
But then, without warning, there was suddenly something else.
Jack blinked, not believing his eyes. There was a three-masted ship with ragged sails sitting up proudly in the sand, with trees branching from its decks, hanging low with fruit. Letters carved on its bow declared its name to be Omega. Vines crept down its hull to a mat of thick greenery that spread out across the soil. Jack’s feet tangled in thick grass, and he almost fell. Kyle pulled him on.
Cornelia swooped down to guide them to the starboard side of the boat, where a ramp led up to the deck. It was steep, and Jack was dizzy. Everything had a strange, dreamlike quality, as though he wasn’t quite there. The light was fading in and out, and the shifting shadows made him feel faintly sick. Was the deck moving underneath him, or could that just be his mind playing tricks?
Still holding hands, they came to a large cabin that might once have been the m
ess. Vegetation crowded the room. They had to push through a wall of foliage just to see what lay at its heart. There, on a bier made from many mattresses sewn together, rested a figure so tiny she looked like a child. She had wispy gray hair and wrinkled features that had collapsed in on themselves, so although it was possible to tell that she had once been beautiful, those days were long behind her. If Jack had had to guess how old she was, he would have said at least a hundred.
“I can’t see a thing,” said Kyle. “Can you bring the light back, Jack?”
Jack nodded, and the sun returned. White light flooded the cabin, and the old woman blinked up at them.
“Is that really you, Jack Shield?” she said, her voice a rusty wheeze. “You’re a little young to be a rescue party. What took you so long?”
“Lottie,” said Jack. But it couldn’t be her, surely. She was far too old to be Grandma X’s sister.
Before the old woman could say a single word, a sudden dizziness rose up in him even more powerfully than before. He clutched at Kyle’s shoulder, but missed, and went down on one knee.
“Jack?” called Tara in alarm. “Jack, what’s wrong?”
He shook his head, unable to speak. His knee folded beneath him. By the time he hit the floor, he had fainted clean away.
* * *
Much later, or so it seemed, the sound of voices drew him slowly back to consciousness.
“It’s all about the Gifts,” an old woman was saying. “Mine are of growing and concealing. That’s how I’ve been able to survive here so long. They keep my oasis secure and self-sustaining. Once upon a time, there was room here for many people, not just one. But over the years I’ve grown weaker, and this is all I can manage now.”
“Are you the last one?” Jack recognized Kyle’s voice. He was talking around something he had in his mouth. It sounded like a bite of apple.
“I am, yes. The others … gave much of themselves to call for help, and when the call wasn’t answered their spirits broke and one by one they died.”
“What do you mean they gave of themselves?” asked Tara.
“Our life force, our vitality … we used some to escape The Evil when we arrived, and the rest to strengthen our living message. It took its toll. They died before their time. Finally, I was the only one left. But I refused to give up. I knew someone would come for me eventually. We gave half our lives to send that message. Our cry for help had to arrive, one day. We knew it would not be ignored.”