AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had been trying to go easy, and was already feeling woozy as a result.
“What does Lottie think?”
“She’s pretty sure she can’t get us through all of that without The Evil noticing,” Tara said, confirming his fears. “We need a distraction.”
“What kind of distraction?”
“For The Evil to be interested, it’d have to be something living….”
They both turned to look at Cornelia, and they both shook their heads at the same time.
“What about the vines?” asked Kyle. “They’re alive, and it would be easy to make a kind of planter for them. It wouldn’t have to last long. If we stopped the ship, Jack could send them one way, and we could go the other when The Evil pounces on it.”
“Brilliant!” said Tara. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. Jack, get around this reef and take a rest. I’ll see if Lottie can keep us invisible for a while longer. Kyle, you get started on that planter and I’ll join you in a sec.”
Jack nodded wearily and raised a new wave. It was much smaller, but it did propel the Omega around the tangled boneyard to a sandy inlet at the base of the mountain. There he brought Omega around in case they needed to make a quick getaway, let the wave of soil go, and eased himself back until he was stretched out flat on the deck, with his hands folded across his stomach. He was exhausted. If he just closed his eyes for a moment he was sure he’d feel much better….
“Jack, Jack, wake up.” Kyle was whispering, but he was doing it right into Jack’s ear, so it seemed very loud.
Jack sat up, blinking. How long had he been out? There was an entirely different sun in the sky above him, and the ground was booming and rocking like the Titanic ride at MovieWorld.
“We’re ready.” Kyle pointed over the side, where a strange craft awaited its launch. It was little more than four barrels tied together, from which protruded an enormous tangle of vines and branches. They hadn’t uprooted everything — there were still plenty of trees remaining on the ship — but nothing easily movable had been spared. The resulting miniature forest had the same shape as a chef’s hat, but many, many times larger.
“Okay,” said Jack, reaching for more fruit. He felt hollow with exhaustion, but if Lottie was still hanging in there so would he.
“Go that way,” said Tara, giving him what seemed like a random direction. “Lottie will protect the raft as far as she can. When it pops up on The Evil’s radar, get ready to move…. You’re sure you can take us where we need to be?”
“One hundred percent,” he said, although he thought it was actually about seventy percent. He’d never tried anything like this before. Who knew what would work and what wouldn’t? But there was no point worrying anyone when they had no other options.
Jack lifted the ground under the vine-raft and sent it moving out across the sand. It wobbled a bit, but another lift set it straight and back on course. He watched it go, farther and farther, and at the last minute thought to lift the wave that propelled it higher before it passed out of the range of his Gift.
Cornelia flapped down next to them, sent by Lottie.
“All hands on deck,” she squawked softly.
There was no visible change to the raft, but what happened on the mountain left no doubt that The Evil had seen it. A whirring shriek rose up from the mass of insects as millions of wings started to flap. Bugs tumbled and rolled, clutching at one another to form new shapes, new configurations. At first it was like watching an avalanche from directly underneath. The middle section slumped downward in one rolling mass, while two flanks separated and began a more leisurely outward descent.
The avalanche kept changing. The flanks got longer and broader, while the middle began to bulge outward. It looked almost as though the avalanche was trying to imitate one single thing, Jack thought. Could The Evil ever have absorbed something so big? It wasn’t impossible, he supposed, given it was old and had probably invaded lots of worlds. There must be creatures as big as mountains somewhere … creatures with solid, muscular bodies, long tails, and wings….
Jack gaped as a giant Evil dragon took shape, poised to leap, then took off directly above him.
A shadow swept over Omega.
“Get ready,” said Tara.
The dragon flapped its wings once, then arched its long neck, pointed its nose down toward the raft, and dived.
“Now!” Tara cried.
Jack needed no encouragement. The sand was already rising beneath the ship, curling up the side of the mountain. He encouraged it on its way, raising not a wave but more a thick tongue of soil that carried Omega where it needed to go. The hole leading to Earth was up there somewhere. All Jack had to do was follow the instincts of his second Gift and keep eating.
They passed several tunnel entrances, but none of them were the right ones.
“Are we close?” asked Kyle.
“Very,” said Jack, swinging his head from side to side. That way. The ship turned and kept going up. “Almost … almost …”
Two more holes swept by.
“There!”
Jack felt the presence of Earth like a ray of light shining through heavy clouds. It pulled at him, and the ship rose faster than ever, riding its long, thin tsunami of sand until it was level with the hole they were looking for. It was black and shadowed, but that looked welcoming to Jack after so much sunlight. He wanted to curl up in the dark and sleep for a month.
Omega eased inside the hole, losing the tip of its tallest mast in the process. Jack guided it forward, and the tunnel narrowed around them. Soon the keel was scraping on the bottom, and several of the spars snapped, raining splinters down upon them. When the sides of the boat came under threat, Jack brought the ship to a creaking halt.
“This is how it works, isn’t it?” he said in puzzlement. “The tunnel takes us home?”
“Beats me,” said Kyle. “I’ve never done this before.”
Jack peered ahead, his first Gift piercing the gloom and revealing his worst fear: The tunnel was a dead end.
“But I can smell it!”
His sensitive eyes searched the rough cave wall ahead. There had to be some way through….
All he saw was a single tiny flower growing in a puddle of sand, watered by the merest drips of moisture falling from the ceiling. A lone forget-me-not, almost impossibly fragile, its blue the blue of Earth’s skies and Earth’s oceans, grown from a seed that had dropped there and gone unnoticed by The Evil.
There had been a way, but it was denied to them now. Blocke
d, perhaps, by all of the Wardens’ most powerful wards. Or perhaps it had never been there at all.
The only direction they could go was back, and try to find another way through.
Jack reached for another fruit, but his hand found only empty deck.
There were no more orange bananas.
“Lottie’s out, too,” said Tara. “The Evil can see us now.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Kyle.
Everyone turned to look up the throat of the tunnel, where the Evil dragon was rising to face them, its immense wings and jaws opening wide.
Jaide and Grandma X confronted the glowing cross-continuum conduit constructor. It and the fragment of the Avak Lodestone it was connected to were doing everything the professor had told them they should be doing by now, except for the critical part of opening a doorway to the Evil Dimension.
“What are we doing wrong?” Jaide asked. She had to shout over the loud humming the device made. It sounded like a very large and very angry bee.
“I don’t think we are doing anything wrong,” said Grandma X. “The way is blocked.”
“Could it be Project Thunderclap?”
“I can think of no other explanation.”
Jaide had lost track of the time since she had left the tent, but at least an hour must have passed. Aleksandr’s “big push” was therefore due any moment. It made her feel sick that they might be just moments too late.
“Let’s pay them a visit,” said Grandma X. “Here, take my hand.”
Jaide gripped her grandmother’s strong fingers with all her strength. The light of the moonstone ring flared, and suddenly they were somewhere else. The blue room had transformed into the big tent, with its crowd of lightning wielders and the glowing lodestone at its heart. Only they weren’t really there: Grandma X had transformed into the glowing ghost of her former self, and Jaide didn’t appear to have a body at all.
Jaide searched the crowd. There was her father, linked by his hands to the Wardens on either side of him. Instead of individual cells, the mass of people had now lined up in one long spiral, sending their power in a chain from one to another, all the way to the person at the center. Jaide expected to see Aleksandr there, but instead it was Stefano. The air around him fairly roared with power. Between him and the bright orange lodestone, the tent looked about ready to explode.
