Voyagers of the Silver Sand

  Eric felt a lump in his throat. He missed Galen very much. He wished the wizard was back with them all the time, like the old days.

  “I had a scary vision this morning,” Eric said quietly. “My town was nowhere. My house, my parents. Nothing was there. The staircase was gone. Everything was gone. And every vision I’ve ever had was of the future. Every vision I’ve ever had came true.”

  The wizard nodded slowly at Eric’s words. “And yet here you are, trying to make sure that vision doesn’t become real.”

  “But what if it’s impossible to stop it?”

  Galen peered into the teeming streets, then looked even more closely at Eric. “Impossible? No. All things are possible, Eric. All things. I do not know the future. I can only say —”

  “They’re nearby! Hurry!” The green guards raced toward the alley, calling to one another.

  Galen turned, but Eric didn’t move. “What? You can only say what?”

  The wizard pulled him even deeper into the shadows. “I can only say that once, long ago, my vision of the future was also dark. I had lost a mother and two brothers. I was alone. And yet someone told me, ‘What happens now is better than you can possibly imagine.’ And those words proved more true than I could ever believe!”

  “Galen …” said Eric. He paused.

  He wasn’t sure if he should tell the wizard that he was gone from their lives now. He wanted to say how he and his friends tried to search for him, but Ko kept making trouble for them.

  Galen smiled. “Of course, I must have faith, too.”

  “Why?” asked Eric. “You can do anything.”

  “I must have faith so that if I disappear like the stairs, you will voyage as hard to find me!”

  “We will!” said Eric, almost crying now.

  Galen nodded. “Wait for the right time. And remember, all things are possible. You can do wonderful things.”

  With that, he moved away, invisibly joining his phantom at the corner, then racing down the street with the others.

  Eric stood alone for a few seconds, close to tears. His fingers tingled and sparked as they hadn’t done all day. Finally, he breathed deeply and began to smile.

  “Eric!” whispered Keeah, her head appearing around the far corner. “Tick-tock!”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Coming!”

  Galen led them down streets, past shops, around corners, slipping finally into a courtyard with a large fountain in the middle.

  A noise came from the street outside.

  “The fountain!” came the sudden shout of one of the green-hooded guards. Heavy footsteps echoed in the courtyard.

  “They’re coming,” said Julie. “Stay in the shadows, everyone. Find the treasure. Oh, I can’t believe I’m doing this —”

  As the hooded guards stormed into the courtyard, Julie burst from the shadows and hopped onto the rim of the fountain. “Hey, guards. Looking for someone? Well, here I am. Come and get me!”

  “Get her!” shouted all the guards at once.

  Julie waited until they were close, then fluttered up to a nearby rooftop. Landing softly, she turned and waved. “Come on, guards, it’s hide-and-seek. And you’re It!”

  She leaped off the roof, buzzed over the guards, then flew back out into the street. Shouting, the guards followed her, leaving the courtyard empty.

  “She drew them all away!” said Max.

  “Droon will remember this,” said Galen, moving to the fountain. “And now, behold the treasure….”

  He bent over the fountain and pushed his hands into the water, but when he lifted them, they were not wet. Instead, the fountain was dry, and he held a small blue stone between his fingers. “The River Dragon,” he said. “I have sought you for a long time.”

  “Is that the treasure?” asked Keeah.

  Galen smiled. “The dragon has slept here in the fountain for centuries. Take it. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do with it.”

  “Speaking of time,” said Eric. “I think we’re running out of it. The storm —”

  The sun had set in the west, and flashes of blue light streaked across the evening sky.

  Whoosh! — Julie flew breathlessly back to the courtyard. “We have to hurry. The pilkas are already racing toward the storm. And I spotted Saba moving through the streets.”

  Galen gave the tiny stone to Julie. “You helped us today, my dear. Take this from Tortu. Run. I’ll create a diversion —”

  At that moment, Saba stormed into the courtyard, beating his chest.

  “He doesn’t quit!” said Neal, backing up.

  “Four treasures!” roared Saba. “I’ll take them now!”

  “You’ll take this and like it!” said Galen. He leveled a powerful bolt of blue light at Saba, hurling him against the fountain.

  “Fly!” said Julie. Grabbing her friends’ hands, she pulled them up to the roof. They made their way across to the next roof, and the next.

  Turning back, Eric saw Galen steady his aim to blast Saba again. But before the wizard could fire, the phantom faded away.

  “Uh-oh,” said Eric. “Saba’s already going after the next treasure —”

  “Hurry!” squeaked Quill. “I remember the next story and it’s nearly time!”

  “What was the next story?” asked Keeah.

  “Midnight on the Silver Sand!” Quill said.

  As the storm howled and the winds spun, the friends scrambled over the city wall and down to the turtle’s great dome. The pilkas were racing alongside, and the little band leaped from Tortu onto their backs.

  “Ride, ride, ride!” shouted Keeah.

  Faster than the wind, the pilkas flew into the fifth whirling storm of light.

  When the lightning faded and the sand spun to earth, the pilkas touched down on the midnight desert of Eshku.

  The air was cold. The sand stretched far in every direction. It was dull and gray in the moonless, starless night.

  Mile after mile, the pilkas sped over the dunes. The caravan finally stopped.

  Eric sensed something different this time.

  “We’re not alone,” he whispered. “He’s here. He’s already here.”

  “I feel it, too,” said Keeah. “Saba.”

  Creeping silently up the side of a great dune, the four kids, one spider troll, and one feather pen peered over the top and saw him.

  Saba, the phantom, was standing atop a massive dune. He was motionless, staring up into the bleak sky, his three red eyes smoldering.

  But Saba wasn’t alone. Ko himself was nearby. Seated on a black throne, his three red eyes blazing in the darkness, he, too, was still and unmoving. Lying flat on the sand before him was an enormous black disk. It faced the sky like a giant dark eye, staring up from the depths of Droon itself like a bottomless pool.

  Quill trembled. “I remember something. It’s one of the oldest rhymes I can remember.

  As the beast of beasts does sit,

  His dark eye draws light into it.”

  No one said anything for a while.

  “When are we?” asked Eric.

  “I think we traveled back in time, not forward,” said Quill. “I think we’re at the beginning. This is Droon before Galen ever came.”

  Max shivered. “The air is very cold.”

  “If Saba had already found the fifth treasure, he wouldn’t be here,” said Keeah. “We got here in time.”

  Eric raised his hands. His fingers felt warm. He saw Keeah raise her hands, too. They were ready to strike if they had to.

  But they didn’t have to. Not yet.

  If Ko or the phantom suspected the children were there, they didn’t show it. Ko sat on his throne, and the phantom stood on his dune. Both were staring up at the blank sky.

  “What are they looking at?” asked Neal. “They remind me of me, looking at a math problem on the board and not getting it. There aren’t any stars. There’s no moon —”

  All at once, Eric remembered what Galen had said about the Talos. The droomar
made it to watch the skies, the sun, the moon, everything.

  He turned to Neal. “The Talos, quick!”

  Frowning, Neal pulled out the twisted spectacles and handed them to his friend. Eric buffed them on his robe and put them on.

  “What do you see?” asked Keeah.

  Blinking into them, Eric saw something flash far away, high up in the great blank dome of the sky.

  “Whoa …” he whispered.

  It was nothing more than a pinpoint of light, a spark of violet in the vast darkness.

  It flickered for a moment, then went out, and the sky was dark again. Minutes passed, then another flicker appeared. It, too, burned violet for a few seconds, then vanished.

  Eric’s heart raced. “It’s Galen,” he said.

  Max turned to him. “What? How can you tell?”

  “I don’t know how I know, but I do,” said Eric. “He’s in the Upper World using the Wand of Urik, trying to create the stairs to Droon. But he can’t find where the stairs should start. He needs … he needs our help.”

  “Our help?” said Keeah. “But how? He’s all the way in another world. It’s impossible —”

  Eric’s heart skipped a beat when Keeah said the word. Impossible?

  Rrrrr … rrrrr … As Ko watched the tiny lights flickering in the heavens, the giant black disk began to rotate in the sand.

  The phantom turned suddenly and saw the children. His horns spouted black flame, and he began to stride across the dunes toward them.

  The disk turned faster. Saba came faster.

  “Impossible?” Eric repeated. “No, it’s not impossible. All things are possible. Galen told me that. All things!”

  “Get ready,” said Julie. “Saba’s getting closer. Keeah, Eric, your fingers!”

  But Eric was already remembering Galen’s other words to him in the streets of Tortu.

  See yourself do wonderful things.

  He gave the Talos back to Neal and jumped to the crest of the dune. He saw the moon begin to rise above the horizon, its silvery light spreading over the sand.

  The phantom was nearly upon them.

  Keeah turned. “Eric, get ready to fight —”

  He raised his hands. He would fight Saba. But he knew what else he had to do.

  Mostly, he knew he could do it.

  Jamming his eyes shut, Eric drew all his thoughts inside. He saw himself standing side by side with Keeah, aiming their hands together. He saw the phantom, heard him bellow — “You will not stop us!” — and charge full speed at them.

  Even as he sensed Keeah, Julie, Neal, Quill, and Max standing firm on the dune next to him, he felt himself lifting up and out of his body.

  He was no longer on the ground.

  He felt as light as air. Lighter than air, as if birds drew him up over the moonlit desert.

  As Eric floated above Droon toward the sky, his other self and Keeah sent blast after blast at the bull-headed beast. He closed his eyes tight.

  And he imagined wonderful things.

  A moment later, he was running across the rocky ground of his world. Could he even explain how such a thing was possible? It didn’t matter. All things were possible. Galen had told him that. And he knew it was true.

  Closing his eyes for a second, he saw his other self battling the phantom, pushing him back across the sands of Eshku.

  And yet, here he was, running toward the forest he had seen in his vision that morning.

  Gethwing was wrong, he thought. I am in two places at once!

  He staggered into an earthen hollow, smelled the wet ground, and felt cool air rush through his hair.

  Breathless, he looked around. He remembered how devastated everything had seemed in his vision. But he knew something now that he hadn’t known that morning. The world of his vision — and the world he was seeing now — were not what his town looked like after it had been destroyed, but before it had ever been built.

  This was his world more than five centuries ago, at the moment Galen had first set foot here.

  The downed trees had fallen, not from Gethwing’s terrible rage, but in a storm. The rocks and boulders strewn across his neighborhood were the same ones that would be cleared away to build his house.

  The moon was shining brightly now as he moved toward the nearby forest. Running to it, he could already hear the rainwater trickling from leaf to leaf, shedding droplets of water and making pitting, patting noises on the ground.

  Best of all, there was no Gethwing here. There was only …

  Crack! A branch snapped in the forest.

  “I’m here,” Eric said softly.

  Although he felt he could listen in at any moment and hear the sounds of Saba roaring, Keeah yelling, Max shouting, and Neal yelping, the noise of Droon seemed far away.

  “I’m here,” he said again.

  Then Eric watched a figure dart from tree to tree in the forest, a dark patch against the even darker background.

  Fwit-fwit! The figure dashed out of the forest to a boulder, then to a nearer tree.

  Closer. Closer.

  Suddenly, the night air flashed again with violet sparks. The light came from an object glowing in the figure’s hand.

  Eric smiled as he called out to his friend.

  “Galen.”

  A moment later, a boy in a green tunic and green boots staggered up to Eric. His eyes were wide with wonder and gleaming in the violet light of the flowered wand in his hand.

  “Eric?” he said breathlessly. “But … how did you get here?”

  “I’m actually not here,” said Eric. “I’m really down there.” He pointed toward the earth. “Just call me the phantom!”

  Galen smiled, surprised. “Phantom? Who taught you how to do that?”

  “You did,” said Eric. “You told me to close my eyes and see myself do wonderful things. Then open my eyes and do them. So I did.”

  Galen laughed. “That actually sounds smart. When did I tell you that?”

  Eric tried to figure out just exactly when it was. But he gave up. “Later than now, I think. Anyway, it’s a long story —” He laughed now, too. “A really long story, in fact!”

  “I like stories,” said Galen. “Especially long ones. Ones that never end.”

  Eric grinned. “Then you’ll like this one!”

  As simply as he could, Eric explained how more than five hundred years in the future Ko would curse the staircase, making it vanish. He told Galen of their voyage back through time to collect the five treasures.

  “To make sure the stairs return,” he said.

  “The stairs that I haven’t even made yet — they disappear?” asked Galen.

  Eric nodded. “But then, none of what I just told you has actually happened yet.”

  “Sounds pretty strange,” said Galen.

  “A lot of it is strange,” said Eric. “And scary. And dangerous. But most of what you’ll find after you make the stairs to Droon is amazing and mysterious and incredible.” Then, without thinking, he added, “What happens now is better than you can possibly imagine….”

  He trailed off, astonished to have said those words.

  Galen smiled. “Better than I can possibly imagine. I like that. You know, I traveled five months across the sea, was shipwrecked three times, fought a sea serpent and an elephant king. But through it all, I knew I had to come right here.”

  Closing his eyes for a moment, Eric saw Julie flying over Saba, hurling fistfuls of sand in his face, but not slowing him down. And the real Ko was cranking his disk faster and faster.

  “Galen, I have to go,” he said finally. “I just wanted you to find the right place.”

  With that, he led Galen from the forest over broken trees, past boulders, and across a field, to a dip in the land between several rolling hills and a long gentle slope to the sea.

  Turning, he walked several feet one way, again in another direction, then finally turned and walked back three steps.

  Looking one final time in every direction,
he nodded and smiled. “Here’s the place. In about five hundred years, my house gets built right here. Julie and Neal and I find the staircase and meet you and Keeah and Max and —”

  “What happens next is better than we can possibly imagine?” asked Galen.

  Eric laughed. “Pretty much.”

  The wizard stepped to the spot. “So, I guess I’ll be seeing you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Lots.”

  Pointing the Wand of Urik at the ground, the boy wizard whispered words under his breath.

  Shheeee! At the very moment the flower on the wand’s tip lit up with purple light, and a single petal loosened and dropped to the earth, Eric felt that strange sensation coming over him again, as if he was being whisked away by a bird. Only this time, the bird was flying down through the ground and away.

  When he popped open his eyes again, he was on the sand with his friends. He came into himself just as Saba sent another beam of flame and the top of the sand dune exploded in a splash of sand and fire.

  Suddenly, Neal sprang to his feet. “Oh, my gosh. Look! There they are! The rainbow stairs!”

  The next few seconds seemed to last forever.

  A glow in the distant sky grew and grew until they could all see the magic staircase descending step by step toward Droon.

  Step by step it came down directly toward Ko’s spinning black disk.

  Quill gasped. “His dark eye draws light into it. That’s what it means!”

  As they watched, streams of black fog rose from the disk like fingers, reaching for the stairs, drawing them to it.

  “But no! He’ll capture my master!” chittered Max. “Ko will control the staircase. This can’t happen! Everything we’ve worked for will be for nothing! What are we going to do?”

  As the stairs descended toward Ko’s whirling disk, Eric suddenly saw Neal wearing the Talos spectacles.

  “The treasures …” he said. “According to Bodo, Galen said that without the treasures, the staircase wouldn’t exist. What if the treasures are treasures because they helped make the staircase possible in the first place?”

  “Are you saying we should use them?” asked Julie, pulling out the blue stone from her pocket.