Ch. 5
I woke early, I’m not sure what time, I didn’t have a watch, and I wasn’t sure if time works the same way as it does on Earth. For a while I stared at the ceiling, unsure of where I was. At first I thought I was back at the hotel, about to go to the convention. And then I thought I was home. I almost jumped out of bed upon realizing that I could be late for school. But the patterns on the ceiling were different from both the hotel and home, and then I remembered, as I would recall a bad dream, all the events of the previous day. I closed my eyes hoping that everything would just go away and my room would return. No luck. I sat up, feeling dazed but well rested. There was a whooshing sound and Miggins stood before me. He had a ceramic bowl that he handed to me.
“You steel this to?” I asked, referencing his clothing choice. He wore a Beatles t-shirt and mesh shorts (backwards) from a high school football team I had never heard of.
“I never stole them, they were in a large collection that Dimitrius brought back years ago.”
“Who?”
“That’s the man who built the Tekogoly.”
“Did he bring anything else back?”
“Oh, many things.”
“One question, how did he make something that could make it all the way to Earth?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”
“I doubt that will happen, since he’s exiled.”
“Yes, but maybe you can go out there sometime.”
“Will you get in trouble?”
He looked back toward the curtain, “I think you should be allowed to see the person who is responsible for you being here. And I also need to speak to him.”
“If he’s exiled, who piloted the Tekogoly?”
There was a long pause while he thought of a response. I looked into the bowl, it was filled with a greenish something that reminded me of yogurt. It was actually very good, but I don’t believe I ever got the name or ingredients of the stuff. He finally answered. “I piloted it.” He said timidly.
“You did? And why did you happen to choose me?”
“Well, you were the first person I saw, that one night when you were on that metal contraption. I looked for you for days – since you were the first person I saw I decided you would be the one.” He added quickly. “After several tries I found you again. You were being carried away by the metal beast, and so I really saved you.”
“We were not in any danger, that was a car, and you told it to drive off with my dad, didn’t you?”
“I thought I was only able to save one of you.”
“It doesn’t matter now, I’m sure he’s fine, and I’ll be back with him after I stop this invasion, right?”
“Right.”
I finished the green stuff and we left the room. I would have killed for a brush, but apparently nobody in Hurdeen cares about their hair. The rooms were meant for guests of the capital, called Yim. Miggins tells me all sorts of things, about the past, and about the present as we walk along, and climb stairs, go down stairs, and even go through walls where doors are carefully hidden. By the time we get to the archives I am overflowing with information, most of which I forget instantly. One thing that did stick with me is that there are four provinces in Hurdeen, and we were in Yim, named for the capital, the one that Dimitrius lives in is mostly abandoned, and has been for hundreds of years. It is now mostly occupied by those who are exiled.
The archives are in a small room about a mile away from the room I stayed in. Wooden crates hold everything anyone in Hurdeen could care about. Miggins gets one from up high and hands it to me. It is considerably smaller than the others. I went to the lone table in the room and start looking through it. All the stories are written on cloth, entirely in symbols that I have never seen before. It would have been the same if somebody had handed me Linear A to read. Luckily Miggins reads this language so he read them out loud.
He put on his glasses, two circular magnifying glasses that had a strap around his head, and began to read. It might have been the glasses magnifying his eyes, the stories themselves, or the stress of the moment, but something about that situation made me have to try really hard to not break out laughing. I think it was a combination of the three, but mostly the story, which was titled American Civil War. And let's just say it was nothing like how I remembered the Civil War from History class.
"It started over one hundred years ago in the Opposing World. A nation split in half by their differences, forced to fight to the death in glorious fields around the country. The generals of the North, having been beaten early, called upon the Jedi (a type of super warrior) to defend the capital from their own Terror Bringers from the West. The Jedi used the force (an outward power) to crush the sith (evildoers). The battles waged for fifty years, before the sith brought the moon crashing down. The Jedi called upon four giants to hold up the moon while Lalvadort, (leader of the sith) came in and fought Jedi master Lincoln. Their one-on-one fight lasted for many weeks as they displaced the ground under them. Finally, backs against the wall, Lincoln leveled up, and with new golden hair, defeated Lalvadort once and for all. . ."
I couldn't speak. By this point I was no longer trying not to laugh as much as remember every detail for a possible future in stand up. I am not sure how this Dimitrius guy could possibly get that much information wrong. He must have gotten the real world confused with the movies. And Miggins was not even done yet.
"This particular story is just about that war, this is mainly the summarized version that was written down using his notes as a guide. There is another in here that's even better, again another summarized one. Oh, here it is. Let's see, the events in this one are more current, it was the last one he told, so it was about ten years ago, shortly before being exiled. It talks about how the fourteen year olds have to go on a journey across a desert, which I think is stupid, but they’re your customs not mine. I'm sure if I tell you more stories about here you'll be bound to think some are stupid. Ah, here is my favorite part. It says you have a leader that's a plant . . . that's really neat. Your people must have translators like we do. And then there's . . . yes yes, here -- look here."
"I can't read that, remember?"
"Oh, yes, sorry. It says that when a person turns eleven they get a letter, and they go to a school to develop superpowers. And by that I assume it means powers beyond normal beings, not that you can all fly or something. So that's it, it says it right there. And none of it is true?"
"Well," I said slowly, not wanting to burst any bubbles, "it’s just that those stories are not exactly accurate. Did you see anybody with superpowers when you were on Earth?"
He thought for a second, "I saw your dad controlling the metal contraption. And I saw people rising high into the air in towers larger than anything I had ever seen."
"That's not super, that's ordinary."
"For you it’s ordinary. It must have been that Dimitrius thought it was super. But he sure did spend a lot of time there to get so confused in the end. That must have led to his exile."
"I'm still not sure I understand why he was exiled."
"His inventions did not meet the code of the council, which states that anything they do not like shall not be built or even designed, the only reason they let him do it for so long was because they wanted him to bring something back that could help them defeat the Terror Bringers if it came to a fight."
"And he didn't?"
"Is he still here?"
"I guess not."
"That's enough of this, let’s get you to training. We only have thirteen more days before they arrive."
"What kind of training?"
"Oh, you'll find out."
I didn't like the malevolent gleam in his eye, but I trusted him to not let me look like a complete idiot when it was my time to fight, or hopefully my time to tell other people what to do. That was my plan at this point. To suddenly decide that my power was planning, that way I wouldn't get killed
and the council could believe that they made a wise choice by kidnapping me. And then in just over two weeks I would be home with stories that nobody would believe. As far as actually planning the fights, I figured I had learned enough in history classes over the years, plus I once read a lengthy magazine article about great generals and how they thought and processed everything when it came time to shine. I took the "can you be a general" quiz and got high marks, not that that equaled real world experience, but I figured it was better than nothing.
We left the archives for the training area which was out in the open, three stories above the archives, and I finally got to see what the world looked like. To my surprise it did not look any different than Earth, same color sky, same air, same cool fall breezes; it didn't dawn on me that I may not be able to breathe until I was already outside for several minutes. For a second I wondered if I was really still on Earth, just a small part of some government conspiracy, or some kind of reality show, that all went away when I remembered the humming, the car acting up, and the bright lights coming down on me.
The training area was a large dirt tract, rimmed with a high red wooden fence. Various types of equipment lay about. Miggins took me around and told me what to do. I recognized some of the things around, including weights, jump ropes, and shot-puts. He seemed to think the jump ropes were whips. We started there, hitting each other with the plastic ends of the ropes; it hurt, but was actually kind of fun. If anybody else was around I might have been less inclined to really go at it, but with just MIggins I felt comfortable with it all. We moved on to something unfamiliar. A metal pole stuck out of the ground, another pole stuck out of one side of that one, ten feet up, parallel to the ground. The objective was to climb to the top, but each time I touched the second pole it began to twist around very fast making it impossible to climb up without being hit with the spinning pole. I gave up after several minutes and moved on.
After an hour I had tried everything, and had the bruises to show for it. I was tired, hungry, and overheated, wanting nothing more than to have more green stuff and sit underground where it was cool. Fortunately we went in for lunch after a while. We had a salad, of sorts, complete with some kind of animal hair which they claimed was healthy, but after fifteen years of avoiding hair in my food it took some convincing. The only thing on the schedule after lunch was a meeting with the council; they wanted to see how much progress I had made in my one day.
One the way there I got to asking Miggins some things. "So what are some differences between here and Earth?"
"The Opposing World seems so much better," he said dreamily, "but there are some nice things about Hurdeen. We have great weather for instance; it gets cold, but not as bad as the north. And we have a caring council who oversees everything and makes sure that we all get along. They take care of everything; they even make sure we are all used to our fullest."
"The council does that, how?"
"They assign us our jobs; do you think that I would be an assistant to them if I had been left to choose on my own? I probably would have been a baker like my dad, not that there is anything wrong with that of course."
"This council sounds a bit like they are using communism."
"What's that?"
It was weird for him to be asking the questions. "It is as you described the council, deciding things for you instead of letting you decide them."
"Yes, but like I said, do you think I would be here if it wasn't for them?"
"I don't know, but imagine if they had chosen something else, something you didn't like. What then?"
He nodded. "I see what you mean, I have a friend who is on the disposal team; they take care of trash. I don't think I would have wanted that."
We entered the council chamber and the conversation dropped. I didn't know what to think of the council; sure they had been nice to me, besides stealing me away. By the time the council came in, fashionably late like a bunch of high schoolers going to a football game, I had no ill feelings toward them whatsoever.
Once again I sat in the lone wooden chair in the center of the room, being stared upon by faces on the high bench that stretched so far away in each direction. There were so many of them, it was hard to focus in on who was most important, if any. I think it was the old guy directly in front of me, but I could have been wrong. They once again wore their long colored shirts, which I took to be their official uniforms. This time I could see that they all wore black pants underneath the shirts.
Nobody said anything; they all just stared, waiting for me to start. Miggins, who remained at my side this time, squeezed my shoulder. I wished we had worked on nonverbal communications in the training area. Finally I started by telling them all about what we did in training. I was nervous and they made me speak louder until I was practically yelling. When I was finished they continued to stare me down. There was silence for a while. I was beginning to get angry and refused to say anymore. Ten or so minutes passed before Miggins took me away. He went back in to speak alone with the council, leaving me alone in the hall. In no time he was back at my side, leading me away. I didn't know where we were going, but I really didn't care.
"What was that about?" I complained once we were safely out of earshot.
"They wanted to see how much you learned."
“By staring at me? They could have at least asked questions."
"They seemed happy with your progress, and most importantly they approved our going to the Forgotten Lands. I did not tell them that we were going to see Dimitrius; that would not have gone over well."
"Why did you want to see him again?"
"I just need to talk to him about some things."
"I thought you said you never knew him."
"I didn't but I need to -- Oh, never mind, it’s not important."
Miggins decided it would be best to leave first thing in the morning, so I went to bed early that day. He got everything ready while I slept. When I awoke he was setting up what I would bring. A bag, with shoulder straps thankfully, similar to the backpack I used for school. It was packed with food, water, and even a blanket. I got dressed while he went back to his room to get ready. I had a white shirt, brown pants, and a brown jacket, all too big, but I figured it was the style for travel because he came back wearing something similar, except with a dark blue jacket. He gave me a small dagger just in case, and a case to match that I wore on my belt.
Before I was aware of what I was doing I was leaving my little room and the underground labyrinth and stepping into the early morning darkness. The air was warm with a chill breeze. We started walking westward, away from where the first lights of dawn lightened the darkness. I could see what I believed to be a forest up ahead. Not much else was visible. Miggins moved with a purpose, looking behind him every few feet. This made me feel uneasy, and it only got worse when he exclaimed "Shoot!" I turned back. Dark figures were heading toward us from the entrance to the underground, hidden away on the side of a small hill. He stopped me, holding my shoulders and speaking very fast.
"I was afraid this would happen. You will need to go on alone," he silenced my protest, "You can do this, just go straight through the forest and you will come to a house. The person there will be able to guide you from there."
"Why aren't you coming?"
"I think the council wants you to do this on your own. Here, take this," he placed a floppy scroll of cloth in my hand, tied together with a string, "Give this to Dimitrius and tell him to write his answers on the backside. You can do this, remember this is only training." His last words were not reassuring.
The figures reached us. One of them spoke. "The council requests that the girl go on her own, you are needed for a meeting today."
He pushed me in the direction of the forest. I did not even say goodbye, but walked on, brave. I could hear him arguing with the people, but in the end I saw him go back into the underground with them.