“Well …” Like a sculptor studying an untouched block of marble, Barlow surveyed the tree. “I see no reason not to shave it all over. Most trees respond well to a liberal pruning.”
“We’d better move out of the way.” Lauren grabbed one of Apollo’s dowels, rose to her feet, and guided Tamara toward the ladder. “It’s liable to make quite a blaze.”
“Then I will have to work quickly.” Barlow put on his gloves and began hacking at the outer foliage. With every cut, leaves dropped to the ground and began to glow with a golden aura.
As Barlow shifted around the tree and continued cutting, Lauren knelt and slid Apollo close to the portal wall, glancing back and forth between the light meter and Barlow’s efforts. Tiny leaves of fire popped forth from the newly sliced stems, making the tree twinkle like a starlit sky. Narrow beams shot out from the leaflets and drew pictures on invisible canvasses in front of the shelves, walls, and doorway. The edges of the tiny hole that led to Second Eden caught fire and expanded from the center. As if burning away a paper covering, the fire revealed more and more of the garden. The crushed plant appeared, then dark soil and stones.
Lauren rose to her feet, Apollo again in her grip. Maybe they wouldn’t need Apollo after all.
Finally, a vast land of fallen trees, scattered boulders, and hazy skies covered a quarter of the museum room’s wall space. In the distance to one side, Mount Elijah loomed, easily visible in the glow of lava and spewing sparks. If not for the fact that the trees had been flattened, the volcano probably wouldn’t have been visible, but now it stood tall, as if proud of the damage it had done.
Between the garden and the volcano lay a scene of devastation. Illuminated by countless torches, boulders and leafless trees lay strewn across a grassy meadow, as if tossed aimlessly by a violent wind. People reclined throughout the field partially hidden by makeshift lean-tos, apparently injured in the storm of debris, and other people wearing torn and dirty clothes walked or limped from station to station, attending the wounded.
A lump sat at the border between the garden and the field. It looked like a woman huddled under a leather tarp. Her head protruded from her covering, dipping low. Since she faced the field, it was impossible to tell who she was.
Light from the tree of life’s new leaves danced across the portal, as if maintaining the drawing with its radiance. Lauren blocked one of the beams at the edge, but it passed right through her hand without interrupting the scene.
“Let’s see if we can get a bigger picture,” Barlow said as he continued circling the tree and cutting leaves.
Lauren set Apollo in front of the portal and straightened. Instead of spreading into the garden, her shadow fell onto the doorway, standing upright, as if the portal opening had physical substance. “Do you think I can just walk in?”
“I advise caution, Miss. I see smoke, which could be poisonous. The people there appear to be in dire straits, perhaps victims of poison.”
Lauren sniffed the air. No sign of any fumes. “I don’t think it’ll hurt to try. I could always come right back.” She put on her sweatshirt, raised the hood, and covered her hands with her sleeves. She reached out and pushed through the waxy membrane. Her arm disappeared up to her wrist with the membrane sealing every gap. No sign of sizzling appeared on the protected material.
She walked into the doorway, feeling the wax adhere to her sweatshirt and pants, but as she pushed through, it offered almost no resistance. Without a hint of residue on her clothes, she now stood with her back to the museum, the tree’s firelight illuminating the outer chamber and the arched entry leading to the Hades exit tunnel.
She turned to the museum. From this side, everything looked normal within. Sir Barlow continued pruning the tree while Tamara stared at the doorway.
“I’m still in Hades,” Lauren called. “Can you see me?”
Barlow paused his pruning. “You vanished. We see only the garden scene in Second Eden.”
Another voice made its way to Lauren’s ears. The hole was there a long time before you pushed the pen through. Tamara’s thoughts.
Lauren took off the sweatshirt, retied it to her waist, and walked back in, feeling the same slight resistance. This portal was definitely different from the other two. It didn’t burn and showed no sign of shrinking.
She stood next to Tamara and faced the Second Eden scene. “I heard what you thought about the hole. What do you think it means?”
Tamara pushed her hand through the portal. It disappeared on the other side. Maybe we’re able to see the portal right away, and ability to enter comes later.
“But why would time be the trigger? Maybe it’s something else.” Lauren picked up Apollo again and turned slowly to the right, glancing at the spectral meter as she rotated. The readings fluctuated wildly.
The Second Eden landscape grew blurry at its edge. Farther to the right, the beams from the tree painted a new scene that covered the second quarter of the wall space. Three men dressed in camo stood in a cave with a spotlight shining toward the portal. An empty backpack lay crumpled next to the light—Dad’s backpack. Two men carried what looked like machine guns. The third rested his weapon against a wall while he sat on the ground smoking a cigarette. A portable lantern lit up the chamber and cast their shadows against the walls.
Lauren walked to the portal and reached out. When her arm passed through, her finger touched a shelf and a book behind the image. The portal view made it seem as if she were standing at the cave’s back wall where she and Dad had jumped to get into Hades. The guards couldn’t see her, but how long would that last? If the portal eventually opened on its own, she and Tamara and Barlow wouldn’t stand a chance against them.
As Barlow continued cutting, yet another scene appeared beginning at the halfway point around the tree.
Still carrying Apollo, Lauren skirted the flames and stood in front of the newest scene. A dragon sat on its haunches in a dim room next to a table. A thick slab of a candle, white and dripping, burned on the surface, providing the only light. The dragon read a huge book mounted at a slight angle on a four-footed stand at the table’s edge. Four translucent eggs sat in tripod mounts at the opposite end. Three orange and one green, the eggs were large enough to belong to an ostrich. A foot-tall hourglass sat nearby, its sand piled high in the bottom half. The dragon’s eyes flashed blue, and he looked straight at her for a moment before returning to his reading. Strings of smoke puffed from his nostrils and rose toward the ceiling.
Letting her gaze follow the smoke, she scanned the upper sections of the museum room. Each scene continued as far as light from the tree’s flames reached, providing a view of the sky in Second Eden; the ceiling in the portal cave, then stone farther up; and a higher ceiling in the dragon’s lair.
At the bottom of the lair’s entry, a wall of bricks stood, waist-high at the sides and tapering down to knee-high at the center, as if an explosion had blown a hole through a brick wall. At each side, a wooden frame ran vertically with handles attached to partitions that looked like sliding doors. She tried to grab a handle, but her fingers passed through it.
Barlow finished his pruning and showed the knife to Lauren. “I fear that it is quite dull now. The last few cuts were difficult.”
“You did great. Thank you.” Lauren moved to a spot in front of the final quarter of the surrounding shelves, again checking Apollo’s fluctuating meter every few seconds. Soon, the new leaflets painted a high wall with a dazzling white gate. The wall extended upward beyond the reach of the tree’s flames, making it impossible to see over the top.
The gate opened slowly. A winged man walked out and flew into the sky at an impossible speed, his wings barely beating at all. In less than two seconds, he was gone.
As the gate swung back, apparently by itself, Lauren squinted to see inside. A street of gold led into a city, but the gate closed too quickly to catch any details.
“Second Eden,” Tamara said as she touched the first por
tal. She walked to the second and set a hand over it. “Earth.” She continued the circuit, naming the final two scenes as she pointed at them. “Valley of Souls … Heaven.”
“Valley of Souls,” Lauren repeated. “Dad mentioned that place. He called it Abaddon’s Lair. People and dragons wait there to get resurrected. My mother spent four years there. He said we should avoid it.”
“By the looks of that dragon,” Barlow said, “I agree. He seemed quite unfriendly.” He nodded at the Earth scene. “I think that one should be high on our avoidance list as well. I am not a coward, but battling three men with weapons like those would be foolhardy, especially when we have only a dull knife and perhaps books and scrolls to heave at them.”
“Lauren!” Tamara called from the Second Eden wall. “Look!”
Lauren jogged toward the Second Eden landscape. With a spyglass in one hand, Matt crawled toward them on hands and knees, his face flushed and his hair damp.
“Matt!” She bounced in place, her heart pounding. “It’s Matt! He survived!” Cradling Apollo in one arm, she knelt and slid to the portal. Flexing her fingers, she ached to reach out to him, grab his arm and help him crawl, but if she tried, her hand would just grasp the air outside the museum room.
She drew her head closer. Dressed in a black T-shirt and camo pants, Matt appeared to be exhausted, though his muscles bulged through his sweat-moistened shirt. He looked like he had worked beyond his body’s limits, and now fatigue forced him to crawl.
When he came within a foot or so, he laid the spyglass on the ground and rose to his knees. He lifted his hand close to the portal as if trying to press his palm against it.
Lauren set her hand in front of his, but the two palms couldn’t connect.
He grabbed the spyglass and looked at the portal through it. He reached out, making his arm disappear up to his elbow. As he pulled back, he clawed at the wall as if trying to snatch a bug. He laid the spyglass down again and set his eye to the portal wall.
Lauren’s back tingled worse than ever. “He’s trying to look through the hole,” she whispered. “The one I pushed the pen through.”
“I suggest that you not do that now,” Barlow said. “You know what they say about a sharp stick in the eye.”
“I’m not going to poke him in the eye!” She set her face directly in front of Matt’s. “Matt? Can you hear me?”
Matt pushed his finger through the hole, forcing Lauren to draw her head away. The finger appeared in the museum room for a moment, but he quickly jerked it back. How weird is that? It just disappeared.
Lauren touched her ear. “I’m picking up his thoughts, but I don’t think he heard me.”
He set his mouth close and spoke. “Who’s in there?” He then eased back.
“Did either of you hear him?” Lauren asked. “He spoke out loud this time.”
Tamara and Sir Barlow both shook their heads. “You will have to be our ears,” Barlow said.
Lauren searched the floor. “Where’s the pen?”
“Here!” Tamara scooped it off the floor and handed it to her.
Lauren wrote her name on her left index finger and ran it along the portal plane until it pushed through the original hole and appeared in Second Eden. Matt’s eyes widened. He lurched forward and looked at the finger, his lips moving as he read her name. He hooked his finger around hers and spoke toward the hole. “I hope you have your super hearing turned on. If you can hear me, squeeze my finger.”
She tightened her grip.
“Great.” Matt heaved a sigh. “Where are you? I know you can’t write a book on your finger, but maybe another word or two.”
Matt jerked away and looked to the side. A man shouted, “A stack of fallen trees was holding back a wall of lava, but it broke apart!”
“Lava’s coming!” Matt said as he hooked his finger around Lauren’s again. “I have to go!”
Chapter 12
ESCAPE TO HADES
Walter held the Jeep’s steering wheel with one hand and a phone against his ear with the other. As he and Ashley barreled down a two-lane back road, the Jeep’s open top allowing the wind to beat back their hair, he shouted into his phone. “Can you see Billy’s GPS signal?”
“Yes,” Marilyn said, her voice nearly drowned by helicopter noise. “He’s still at the bottom of the crater.”
Walter glanced at Ashley. Her slight nod indicated that she could understand Marilyn’s end of the conversation. “What happened over there?” Walter asked.
“We think the military picked up Merlin on the radar and tailed Billy’s rental truck to the crater, because it didn’t take too long before they showed up with an assault helicopter. Since it aimed its guns at Jared, he couldn’t go anywhere. When he jumped out to warn Billy and me, three guys from their chopper mobbed him and pretty much beat him to a pulp, and another one ripped out his console radio and stole his phone. While they were going inside the cave, he crawled back to his helicopter to try to find a weapon. When the soldiers came out with Billy and me, Billy went on a rampage. He scorched one guy with his breath and set their chopper ablaze. He and I broke away, and while we were running to our chopper, one of them shot Billy in the leg. He yelled for Jared and me to leave in case the military chopper exploded.”
A pause ensued. Walter looked at Ashley again. She just shook her head sadly, her hair blowing wildly around her worried face.
“What could we do?” Marilyn continued. “If we tried to fight them, we’d all be prisoners or dead. Since Jared was losing consciousness, I had to get him out of there. When we took off, they shot a bunch of rounds. The helicopter took some dings, and we lost a window, but we got away.”
“How is Jared now?”
“Not good. I stopped the bleeding and bandaged his cuts, but with the disease ravaging his system, he’s not healing. He looks like one big bruise. I don’t think a doctor can help him. Otherwise I’d be at the emergency room right now.”
Walter glanced at Ashley again. She winced as if sharing the pain. “Did their chopper explode?” Walter asked.
“I lifted off just before it blew. But as we were rising, I saw that Billy was still okay. He was crawling toward the portal cave.”
“So the soldiers had no way out of the crater.”
“Not that I know of. If their ability to communicate burned with the chopper, then they’re stranded until someone shows up to find out why they’re not answering calls. But they have rifles, so I can’t go back until I get some reinforcements.”
Ashley tugged on Walter’s sleeve. “Where was their helicopter in relation to the cave entrance?”
Walter repeated Ashley’s question into the phone.
“Maybe a hundred feet closer to the center of the crater,” Marilyn said. “Why?”
Ashley snatched the phone from him. “Walter, just drive as fast as you can.” She set the phone against her ear. “Marilyn, how long will it take you to get to the portal site, the one Elam and company are trying to get home through? … You can pick up Merlin? Great. … Right, it’s about a hundred miles from the prison, so we’ll be there in a little while. … Good. We’ll see you there in about four hours. Let’s hope we can gather some reinforcements.”
She pressed the End button and laid the phone in Walter’s lap. “If I’m right about where the portals are and what’s opening them, we need to get back to where Billy is at light speed.”
* * *
“Catch!” Still kneeling, Lauren set Apollo down, pulled the scroll from her pocket, and tossed it toward Tamara. When she caught it, Lauren drew her finger back in, wrote the word Wait on her finger’s upper pad, and flipped the pen to Tamara. “Write where we are on the back of that message!”
Tamara missed the pen but quickly scooped it from the floor. Kneeling, she unrolled the scroll over the uneven stone and set the pen to write. “This will be … difficult.”
“Then get Sir Barlow to help you!” Lauren pushed her finger throug
h and turned the new message toward Matt.
While Matt squinted at it, the people in the field began scrambling to and fro. “Wait? Wait for you to tell me more?”
She wagged her finger up and down. Maybe that would communicate a nod. She pulled her finger back in and slid Apollo next to her knees. “Let’s see if we can break through.” As she browsed the spectral readings, she shook her head. “The numbers are jumping all over the place. They aren’t stable at all.”
A young woman ran up behind Matt. Her hair tied in unraveling pigtails, she knelt at his side, breathless. “Valiant says we need to leave right away. The lava will definitely come into the villages.”
“Listener!” Tamara called. “My daughter!”
Lauren glanced between Tamara and the young woman. Dad had mentioned Listener, and seeing the pigtails confirmed the connection. “I’ll try to get you two together, but Apollo won’t synchronize.” Lauren looked at the tree. With dozens of lights wavering and flickering, it was no wonder the light stream wouldn’t stay consistent. She pushed her finger through the hole again, hoping to signal another “wait.”
“How can he be sure the lava will get this far?” Matt asked Listener. “It’s never come here before.”
“After the dragons returned with the children, Valiant rode Albatross and surveyed the land. Valiant has mapped the topography and knows it intimately.” Listener pointed toward the volcano. “When the blockade broke, the momentum carried the lava over some old natural barricades that once protected our villages. Also, the wind shifted, and a huge cloud of poisonous fumes is coming our way. Valiant and Albatross nearly passed out. In fact—” Listener stared at Lauren’s finger. “What sort of magic is this?”
Matt pushed Lauren’s finger back in. “Strange, isn’t it? I just discovered it myself. I’m waiting for an explanation.”