I started laughing in between my coughs, but that
just made the coughing hurt worse, so I plopped down in the cool, muddy grass.
The coughing settled and I looked up at the clear sky.
Hadn’t it just been storming?
“How long was I
out?”
“You were dead for about a minute,” he answered. I
realized he was lying next to me when he sat up and climbed to his feet. “We
should go now.” He took my uninjured arm and pulled me to a sitting position,
then stopped when I involuntarily yelled. My entire body hurt so badly.
“I need water. I need to go to a hospital,” I said.
“No, that would take too long and there would be too
many questions.” He pulled out his book and put his leadless pencil in my hand.
I really tried to sign it, but my hand wouldn’t work and I could barely feel
the pencil.
“I can’t,” I said. The pencil and book disappeared
and he was pulling me to my feet. I shouted again before my vision blurred.
“Hush. We mustn’t stay here, for there was much noise
and someone may come to investigate.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure about what.
My mind and body didn’t seem to be connected and everything was spinning. When
the ringing in my ears started, I knew I was going to pass out. Edward held me
up and forced me to walk. He was mostly dragging me, which I was fine with. I
wasn’t sure how long it was before he sat me up against a tree. “I’m sorry,” I
said again.
“Don’t be. You did very well. Are you about to black
out? You’re sweating and very pale.” Without waiting for an answer, he pressed
a small bottle to my lips. “Drink,” he ordered.
I did, and nearly gagged. It was thick like medicine
and tasted like extremely sweet spinach. The instant the liquid hit my stomach,
my head stopped pounding, my temperature regulated, and the nausea and ringing
stopped.
“Better?”
“God, yes.”
He pulled my sleeve up on my injured arm to reveal big
welts of blood. “It would be a bad idea to splint this before we jump worlds.”
My eyes closed and I bit my lip until I tasted blood when he felt for breaks.
“Your bone’s broken in two places and cracked in three.”
I couldn’t look until I felt my arm become numb with
cold. He was putting a mint-colored paste on my arm. “What is that?”
“A mixture of plants from my world.” He finished and
sealed a jar next to him. “This will hurt,” he warned.
I covered my mouth with my free hand as he took a
white gauze out of his bag and wrapped it around my arm. When he tied it off, I
gritted my teeth, but the pain faded quickly. Whatever the medicinal paste was,
it was pretty fantastic.
“Is that better?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I pulled myself up to sit a little
straighter and coughed a little. My lungs felt raw, which was ironic because
they were actually cooked. “Before we leave… can you help me get to my
apartment? I need to pick up a few things and I want to call Vivian.”
“We can’t stay for long and the less time we take,
the better.” But he helped me up anyway. “I don’t advise this.”
“I value your advice.”
I just value clean
underwear more.
“We can’t go until I get control back into my hand, so we
might as well take care of a few things.”
The walk home was nearly unbearable and when we
finally got there, Edward had to unlock the door because my hands still weren’t
cooperating. Luckily, none of my neighbors cared enough about me to check if
everything was all right.
After getting Edward and myself towels to dry off
with, I opened my dresser and started to shuffle through papers. I didn’t need
financial records or school papers, but it was safer not to leave my social
security card and birth record behind. I collected my favorite clothing and
headed back into the living room, where Edward stood at the edge of my couch,
petting my cat.
“That’s Dorian. Can we take him?”
“Not unless he can sign my book. Besides, it’d be
difficult for him to adapt to Duran.”
I nodded. It was just one more goodbye. I picked him
up with my unbroken arm, ignoring the pain, and looked him in the face. “You
were there to help me through college. Maybe Vivian will find a good home for
you.” I set him down and he flounced away, annoyed I didn’t pet him.
I stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed the phone above
the sink. It took several tries to stab the correct digits with my stinging
fingers. I put it to my ear and it rang several times before someone picked up.
“Hello? You have the wrong number.”
I recognized the four-year-old’s voice. “Hanna, is
Vivian there?” I asked Vivian’s little sister.
“No, she’s in her room.”
“Can you take the phone to her room, please?” I heard
Hanna climb up the stairs, a door open, and then Vivian’s loud protests about
Hanna entering without knocking.
“Hello?” Her sweet voice was seeping exhaustion.
“It’s me. How’s the studying doing?” I heard her sit
on the bed.
“Terrible. I haven’t even been able to start yet. I
have a paper due tomorrow that Mr. Brian swears he told us about two weeks ago.
He’s lying through his brown dentures, of course. And Dr. Doom wants me to go
over his ten-page speech. I guess that you don’t need to be able to spell as a
lawyer; you just have to get a good secretary.”
I was a little disappointed that the last time I
would be able to talk to her was when she was in a bad mood. I glanced into the
living room at Edward, who was paying me no attention. “How was the movie with
Chelsi last weekend?”
She paused for a second. “Awesome. Guess who we saw
there.” And she went on and on, telling me about her day. Five minutes later,
she took a breath and I was able to jump in.
“Sounds like you had a fun day. Listen, you know
Mother’s new boyfriend?”
“Yeah?” She sounded startled that I had brought my
mother and her idiot boyfriend into our conversation. “What about him? He’s not
back bothering you again, is he? I can probably pull a restraining order.”
“No, no. He’s… Well, he had an accident. He’s in a
hospital in Dallas and I need to be there for Mother. I’m leaving tonight and I
won’t be back for about a week. I’m going to let Dorian run free. I haven’t
gotten my check from work yet. If you’ll pick it up, you can have it. It’ll
just go to waste otherwise. My apartment’s a mess and I’m going to have them
bug bomb it sometime, so you definitely shouldn’t go in until I get back.”
“Okay… Well… I’ll see you when you get back then. Are
you sure everything is okay?”
“Yeah. It will be. I have to get going now. Bye.” I
hung up the phone, sighed, turned around, and jumped back, just barely holding
back an unmanly shriek. Edward was standing a foot away. “Jesus! Don’t do that!
You look like a freakin vampire!”
Edward smirked. “No, I don’t. I’ll point out a real
vampire to you one of these days.”
“There is no such thing,” I told the alien. I dragged
myself back into the living room and gathered my stuff into a plastic bag. It
was pretty sad that everything that was important to me could fit in a grocery
store sack, and even sadder that it was almost all clothes.
“It’s not necessary for you to bring so much. You
needn’t bring any clothes; we will have to go to Anoshii to get some things. I
can lend you something of mine since it would be unwise for you to walk around
in such odd clothing; people cannot know you’re from another world. Why did you
tell your girlfriend you will be gone for a week?”
“If I didn’t, she’d come looking for me by tomorrow.
My apartment will still smell like me tomorrow, and I assume it’ll smell like
the book, too. It’ll be as bad as her being with me.”
Edward nodded. “Very clever of you. Do you think
you’re ready to sign the book?”
“Maybe.” He pulled it and his pencil out. I was able
to clumsily wrap my fingers around it. He opened the book to the third page and
there was a small blank spot in the middle. I signed my name very slowly and it
turned out pretty good. If it was going to represent me eternally, I wanted it
to be good. “There. Wasn’t so hard.” My uninjured arm twitched and the skin
near my shoulder grew cold. It didn’t hurt, thankfully. I rolled my sleeve all
the way up and examined a new mark. It was in red, like an old wound, and was
the same that Edward had on him. It faded very quickly with the cold and was
gone.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
I opened my door to let Dorian out, shut and locked
it, and then grabbed my papers, my toothbrush, toothpaste, and two outfits. “As
ready as I can be. How do we do this?”
“Can you remember the symbol on your arm?”
“Yeah. Surprisingly, yeah.”
“Good. Focus on that. Forget about everything else
and focus on the symbol. I don’t have the time to teach you how to travel on
your own yet, so I will do it for the both of us.” He took the bag from me.
I nodded and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, I
was able to clear everything from my mind except for the symbol. The fact that
I was completely exhausted actually helped.
Then I felt like I was light as air, but also that I
was falling. There was no wind, but I couldn’t breathe, as if a great wind was
blowing in my face. I hated the feeling of falling, so it was surprising that
the overall sensation felt rather nice. My body didn’t ache so badly and I
didn’t even lose my stomach like the falling sense has made me do. I wasn’t
tired anymore.
Then it ended. The pain, the exhaustion, and a whole
new level of feeling like lead came over me with a rush. I hit ground all at
once and entirely too hard. It took a minute before I realized I could breathe,
and even then it was like I was breathing in half water, but the cool humidity
helped the pain in my lungs.
Edward turned me over onto my back, but it was dark
and I could barely see him. I was outside in the soft, wet grass. “Come on, you
should get in and dry off.” I tried to sit up; I was just too heavy and too
tired. At this point, I felt worse than when I accidentally consumed hemlock.
Edward sighed. “All right then. Just sleep.” That I could do. Edward picked me
up and I heard a door shut with a creak as I passed out.
I woke up. What a stupid thing to do. My heart was in my head, my
stomach was a shriveled up pea, my body was aching, and my arm was itching.
Is
it Monday already? Did I fall asleep in Luis’s class again?
A cold wet cloth on my forehead gently eased my
headache as I slowly remembered where I was and what happened. I sat up and
immediately flopped back down. It was harder than it should have been to merely
raise my hand and pull the cloth off my face. Gentle morning light filled the
room and unfamiliar birds sung in the distance.
The room was small and dusky, but a two-foot by
three-foot window high in the wall let in plenty of light. It was simplistic
with sparse furniture and unpainted stone walls, but reasonably cozier than a
basement. I was in a twin sized bed with light brown covers that were made of
something between wool and short fur. The bed was very plush and pliant; not
made with springs. A matching bed sat empty across the room. Next to my bed was
a small ebony dresser with three drawers, about three feet tall. Beside the
other bed was an identical dresser in a red mahogany color. There were wooden
stairs that led to a trap door, starting about five feet from the foot of my
bed. Against the middle of the wall, opposite of the two dressers, was a large
mocha-colored wooden bookshelf.
I sat up again, prepared for my new heaviness. It
wasn’t so difficult after a few seconds when the vertigo faded. Although there
was a tan bandage around my arm, it didn’t hurt any more than the rest of my
body; it was more of an ache than an injury. My clothes were gone, probably
ruined by the sheer amount of blood I had shed, but a t-shirt and jeans were
folded up at the foot of my bed. My muscles protested every movement as I
carefully dressed.
I pulled myself to my feet, wobbled for a minute, and
headed up the stairs. Pushing the door up was a struggle that left me out of
breath. The air itself felt thick and wet, but definitely not short of oxygen.
I entered a picture perfect cabin, both simplistic
and comfortable. The floor, walls, ceiling, and door were all made with dark
brown wood. It wasn’t a tall or a wide cabin, only about twelve-by-twelve. On
the far wall to my left was a heavy door with a brass knob. On the left side of
the door was a large window with durable shutters on the outside. To the right
of the door was a large, empty cage.
In front of the trapdoor I was standing in was a dark
wooden table, four foot across, with three matching wooden chairs around it and
a strange brass lamp in the center. Across from the table was a wood-burning
stove. Against the wall to my right was a collection of shelves and cabinets.
Beside the stove was a large chair that had the
general shape of an easy chair with dark red velvet cushioning. On the other
side of that was another bookshelf, full of old books and small jars. One clear
jar displayed an assortment of small bones.
Where is the bathroom? Aliens have to go to the
bathroom, don’t they?
I forced myself to stand relatively straight as I
staggered slowly to the door and opened it. I groaned at the bright light,
stumbled out onto the fair-sized porch, and took my first look at the foreign
world I would be living on.
The cabin was in a massive forest. And when I say
massive, I mean rainforest massive. The trees were huge and the branches were
high. Most of them had leaves that were different shades of green and bark that
was shades of brown, but one tree was completely silver. It was very beautiful.
The grass in the forest was taller than the grass in
the clearing, about a foot in height, and was darker and bluer than normal. The
sky was cerulean in color and the sun was just as bright and warm as the one on
Earth. The weather was warm and clear, and though the air was strange, it did
feel nice in my lungs. Or maybe my poor lungs were just happy to have oxygen
again.
About four meters to my left was Edward, wearing an
outfit identical to the one he wore when I met him. He was chopping wood logs,
which in itself, wasn’t odd. What made me pause was that while the logs had
dark brown bark, the insides were bright green.
He stopped chopping to examine me. His eyes didn’t
look so cold, or even as dark brown as before. Whether it was the light of day
or the fact that he was at his home, he appeared a great deal friendlier, which
was a definite relief seeing as how I would have to live with him for several
years.
“How long was I out?” I asked. My voice was raw and
I thought I would have to say it again.
“Two days. I’m surprised to see you standing.” He
regarded me with concern when I made my way slowly down the stone steps to
stand in front of him.
“You said something about there being more gravity?”
“I wasn’t lying. With the same density and greater
size, the mass of Duran is greater.”
“Therefore, more gravity,” I concluded, nodding.
“You’ll get used to it,” he assured me.
I noticed him chewing on something and remembered my
shriveled up stomach. “Is there anything to eat?”
“Well, apparently you don’t like volcram or milwyd.”
He made a face and I almost laughed. “You’ll probably like murk, but they’re
rare this time of year. We can find something when I’m done.” He bent over the
pile of split logs and snapped off a piece of bark. “Chew on this while you
wait. It’ll help you with your dizziness. How’s your arm?”
I looked at the bandage around my arm. “I had
actually forgotten about it. It doesn’t hurt.” I took the bark and eyed it
suspiciously. “What is this?”
“The bark of a Wigknot tree. It has excellent medical
properties, but it is an acquired taste. I used the leaves in the medicine I
put on your arm.”
I cautiously stuck the small piece of bark in my
mouth. “Peppermint,” I said. It was the best bark I ever tried. Edward shrugged
and continued chopping. There was a dishearteningly large pile of wood left to
be chopped. “Is there another axe?” I asked.
He glanced at me but continued to chop. “You’re not
ready for much physical labor. If you don’t remember it, I can describe to you
how you accidentally cooked yourself.” He stopped. “But don’t take me as
someone to let you slack off. When you’re healed, I expect you to be ready to
work harder than you ever have.”
“Mother said the same thing to me about fifty times.
You can’t be worse than her,” I said. He continued to chop with a new smirk on
his face. He must have had a long time to work on his expressions to perfect
such a smirk. “How old are you, exactly?”
“Probably older than you will ever be.”
I sat on the steps of the porch and asked Edward
questions. The wood pile shrank quicker than I thought it would have, and by
the time it was very low, I had decided that I really liked Wigknot bark.
When I asked him about the other lands of Duran, he
gave me a bunch of names and descriptions that were challenging to remember.
Besides Shomodii, Anoshii, and Canjii, there was also Banjii, Tumordii, Mokii,
Mijii, and Zendii. Zendii was the Hawaii of Duran; it was the always sunny
place of beaches and paradise. In other words; a place to avoid. Tumordii was a
farm land, where it was sunny every day and rained every few nights. Banjii was
a place of military and strict discipline. The schools there were hard to get
through, and cost a fortune. The people in general tended to be jittery, stuck
up, and suspicious. Mokii was the only land with kingdoms, which sounded very
medieval when Edward described them. And Mijii was pretty much the opposite of
Banjii, sort of like Shomodii without all the wizards and erratic weather.
Out of all of them, Shomodii sounded like the most
fun, minus the unpredictable weather that consisted of windstorms, rainstorms,
snowstorms, sandstorms, radiation storms, and firestorms. There were several
small villages here, but they were few and far between.
I was also horrified when I found that on the other
side of the cabin was an outhouse. That was going to be aggravating. I was even
more horrified when I had to ask Edward where the bathtub was.
“What’s a bathtub?” he asked innocently.
I thought I was going to break down again. “It’s a
tub you fill with water and clean yourself in. You know, with soap and all
that.” He stopped chopping and gave me a look. “You’re joking.”
“Of course I am. I know what a bathtub is.”
Thank god.
“I just don’t have one. On Shomodii, there is no
plumbing, so people must heat their bathwater manually.”
“So I’ll never get a warm bath again?” I asked, my
fried heart breaking.
“There is a natural hot springs on my territory that
is warm and very sanitary,” he said. He continued chopping and had only a
couple logs left.
I thought about what I would need at Anoshii other
than clothes and could only think of one thing. “Anoshii doesn’t have any
ketchup, does it?” I asked when Edward was finished chopping. “I’m going to
miss ketchup. Do you even have tomatoes here? Can we get food now?”
He regarded the clear sky and leaned his axe against
the cabin wall. “Alright.” He went back into the house and I waited for a
moment before he came out with two shot guns. The look I gave him made him
frown. “You aim the barrel at the animal and push the little trigger. I know
you have guns on Earth.”
“We do, it’s just… you have no indoor plumbing, and
yet you have high-powered guns. I find that ironic.”
“How did you suppose I hunted?”
“Magic?” It felt silly coming out of my mouth and
Edward rolled his eyes. I guess some things really are universal. “What are we
hunting? Anything in particular?”
“No, nothing in particular. Avoid the… just ask me
before you shoot. Don’t even bother with things that fly.”
“I think this is going to be a long hunt.”
We headed off into the woods. There were no bugs at
all that I could see, though there were many birds. Some were small, some were
large, and just about all of them were very colorful. The small ones flew like
bats from tree to tree while the larger one soared high above the trees like
hawks. Edward enjoyed pointing them out and naming them, but I only remembered
one; a dull black one called a phoenix.
After an hour or so of strolling, I got tired of
Edward complaining that I walked too loudly, so we sat down by a tree.
“Perhaps, if you’re quiet, the animals will all come back. Seriously, you need
to work on your footing.”
“This world is so heavy I’m surprised I can walk at
all. How am I ever going to get used to this? I’m never going to be able to
hunt on my own here if I can barely walk fast. This will destroy my bone
structure.”
“You complain a lot. Give it time. After a few weeks,
you’ll still feel heavy, but if you were to go back to your world, you’d feel
much lighter than you did.”
“Can I see my book?” Edward shrugged and took it out
of his bag. He must have replaced the strap of the bag, because it didn’t look
sewn. I opened it and considered the names. “The god of Earth… What’s his
name?”
“Her name is Tiamat,” he answered. I stared at him
with wide eyes. “What?” he asked, startled by my reaction.
“I’ve heard of her.”
“Don’t believe anything you’ve heard about her. I’ve
never met her, but I hear she’s the most pleasant god. She doesn’t torture her
Guardian and she cares about her people more than the others do. Ronez knew
her, and he never had anything bad to say.”
“In mythology on my world, Tiamat, also known as
Thalattē, was the Sumerian dragon of chaos and the personification of
saltwater. She and Apsu, the personification of freshwater, were the creators
of the first gods, Lachmu and Lachamu, who went on to have more deities. Then
Apsu became frustrated with their children and decided to kill them. The deity
Ea killed him in his sleep before he could do this, though and Tiamat became
angry and decided to kill her descendants. She made an army of monsters and
convinced her new consort, the god Kingu, to lead the army. She gave him the
Tablet of Destiny. Supposedly, whoever possessed the tablet ruled the universe.
“The gods knew they couldn’t defeat Tiamat, so they
bribed Marduk, the storm god and son of Ea, to fight her army and destroy her,
with the promise that he will become their supreme ruler. He defeated Tiamat by
cutting her in half to make the sky and the earth. Out of Kingu’s blood he
created humans. He took the Tablet of Destiny, but gave it to Anu as a gift.”
I understood the dead stare Edward gave me; it wasn’t
the first time I got that response. People usually couldn’t figure out if I was
a nerd or some history nut. Then, when they found out how prone I was to
accidents and natural disasters, they usually avoided me altogether.
“You…”
“I love psychology, philosophy, and mythology.” As
well as paleontology and ancient scripture.
Edward thought for a moment. “I haven’t heard a
human’s version of this story in a few hundred years. The people of Duran, of
course, have a much better version, which is just as wrong. Supposedly, the
truth is as unpopular with the gods as the tales told.
“Tiamat was no dragon, but they were some of her most
beautiful creatures. She wanted to protect them, but the humans insisted on
killing them off. Tiamat was creative, smart, and was very protective of her
dragons. To some, this is enough to call her chaotic. She was much like a
brilliant child. She would destroy species not because it was logical but
because they didn’t work.
“The Tablet of Destiny was actually a set of five
books. As an all-knowing god, she didn’t like keeping her knowledge to herself;
she wanted to share it with her world. When humans had advanced enough to
learn, she went to Earth, divided up the knowledge, and gave each part to four
humans. There was too much for any one of them to know it all. They wrote this
knowledge in four books, given to them by her, and gave them all the language
of Enochian. These are the Tablet of Destiny.”