Across Carina (25 page)

She stole the axe out of the guard’s hand and swung it down on Aswin’s head. His body crumbled as his head detached and fell onto the ocean floor.

“Nooo!” I screamed.

The crowd exploded as the word
Earth
passed from lip to lip. I was horrified—in utter shock at having witnessed death again—and yet I couldn’t look away. I was still paralyzed.

I was stuck staring at Aswin’s wide eyes and the half smile stretched across his worn face. It was like he knew that somehow everything would be okay. I only wished that I could know the same.

Oh, Aswin, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Tell me, where are you now? Is there really that next place? Is Garrett there?

The leader stood firm, her feet a hip-width apart. Her chin was high, but her eyes exposed her front. She was steadily scanning the villagers. Earth was not supposed to be known.

The guard caught Sal and me and carried us to her. My tail seemed so far away.

“What do you know of Earth?” the leader growled.

“We’re
from
Earth,” Sal said. “We’ve only been here a few days, and we’re trying to get back.”

“How can I know this is true?” she asked.

“There’s no one way,” he said. “But trust me when I say I can educate these people about more than you would like.”

“Educate them about what?”

The leader shoved us out of the guard’s hands, and we hit the ground. Then she turned her back to the crowd so that they wouldn’t hear us. The guards and her partner stepped forward to watch her back.

Sal remained calm. “I can teach them about love, sex, family, and anything else that Lendon doesn’t have or understand. You see, on Earth we’re rather advanced. We make vehicles that travel through the sky. We have machines that let us see what’s inside of our bodies. We can talk to each other from a thousand miles away—on a phone. Do you know what a phone is? Something tells me that you do.”

The leader sneered.

“Release them,” she ordered her partner. “They will be of no use to us here.”

“Then why not kill them?” he asked.

“You ignorant fool,” she muttered. “We have limited powers. We must use them wisely.”

I glanced at Sal. If he had heard them, he wasn’t showing it.

My nerves began to subside as I processed the fact that Zyklon was letting us go. We were inquisitive. We would challenge them. And they wanted androids.

The feeling in my feet returned and began to creep up my legs. I moved onto my knees to wait while the leader finished talking to her partner. The guards were watching the crowd mill back and forth. All the villagers were jabbering and bumping into each other, craning their necks to look at us.

Sal and I couldn’t be molded like the people of Lendon, and Zyklon knew it. Still, I wondered why we hadn’t been killed as Aswin had been. The faction could have made an example out of us, too.

Maybe they killed him because he
did
speak to Cruz
.

My arms finally regained their feeling. I began to twist them and stretch them out. Sal was eyeing the guards, and after a minute one motioned for us to be off.

Again we swam toward the surface. Even though the entire crowd watched us, this time we were not stopped.

When the village faded from our view, I told Sal what I’d heard the leader say.

“Limited powers?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It sounds like they’re borrowing their powers from someone. If there is a creator of Lendon—if Cruz exists—then maybe he has an opposite.”

“An opposite?”

“A destroyer. That’s who they borrowed their powers from. For a price.”

“It’s something to consider.”

I only nodded. I was remembering Aswin’s face all over again.

“Sal, he died,” I said. “And we just watched it happen.”

Sal frowned. “I know.”

“Is there something we should have done differently? I was ready to fight for him. I really was. But then we got shocked and . . . I don’t know . . . I just hate that he did so much for us and I was awful.”

“You weren’t awful, Jade. You just didn’t understand him. At the end, he knew your heart, and that’s what matters. We did our best. There wasn’t much that we could control.”

The water lightened to a pale blue as we neared the surface. With Lendon so shallow, it hadn’t taken us terribly long to reach.

“What would happen if I stuck my hand through the water?” I asked.

“Into space?” Sal said. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea. Not without the shield of a chariot. And on that note . . . we hereby summon a driver of the Carina galaxy.”

I sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

I just hated feeling like I was at a wall—or in this case, a ceiling. Energy was coursing through my arms and out of my fingertips. I had seen more than enough, and I was ready to leave it all behind. I was bursting to break through the water.

Sal gently took my hand and lowered it.

“Are you ready to see me on land again?” he asked. “I have missed it myself.”

A chariot flew down and hovered above Lendon’s surface. Sal and I squinted through the watery sunlight. I counted two horses—no, three. Their hooves were blurry and swirling.

The driver was picking at something on his shirt. His fingers were chubby and backlit by the suns, which had the chariot in a shadow. I couldn’t tell if it was gold like the others. I wondered if Sal had made the wrong call. No, he couldn’t have. I had heard him.

“We can’t go up!” Sal exclaimed, waving his arms at the driver.

The driver didn’t budge.

It occurred to us that maybe he couldn’t hear us. After us, he was technically outside of Lendon.

Sal tilted his head back and blew out a string of bubbles, but they popped at the surface, unnoticed.

“Maybe we have to go up,” I said. “Maybe the shield will take effect as soon as we leave the water.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Sal asked.

The driver piped up. “You lazy lot! Climb out of there! My horses can’t go in the water!”

I glared at him. I had never heard of horses that couldn’t swim.

“At least he can hear us,” Sal said. “Now let me go first. Then I’ll pull you out.”

He let his hand drift to the surface. Then he pretended to knock on it, and I laughed. He pushed his hand through the water and wiggled his fingers, smiling. All seemed well.

“I’ll pull you out in just a minute,” he said.

But then his smile melted onto his chin, and his eyes caught fire.

“It burns!” he screamed.

He tried to pull his hand back into the water, but he couldn’t. The more he writhed about, the further he shifted from the water into space. I tugged on him, but he was locking above the surface as if it were concrete.

“I’m stuck!” he gurgled, his mouth passing through the water.

He squirmed and screamed, and I tugged on him relentlessly. Soon all I had left to grab onto was his tail, which was somehow attached to his legs.

Legs.

He was morphing back.

Something slapped the water. I looked and saw a rope hanging over the side of the chariot. Sal latched onto it and was heaved aboard. His screams stopped as abruptly as they’d started.

Alone in the water, I was terrified to follow suit.

“It’s okay, Jade. The shield caught me. Just move quickly. Don’t linger like I did.”

Sal’s voice was muffled. It was curious listening to him from under water—from a planet that he was no longer on. He sounded far away even though he was only a few yards up.

“Jade Callaghan?” the driver asked.

I froze. I had only given my name to one driver.

He roared with laughter and tossed the rope back down. It hit the water, inches from me. I stared at it.

I can’t overthink this. I just have to act.

In one movement I broke the surface and took the rope. Sal and the driver started to lift me up. At first I felt fine, but then the burn kicked in. It was a slow burn, like when a hairdryer rests on skin.

I cried for them to pull faster. Within seconds I was suspended in midair, all legs and no tail. Out of the water my weight had increased suddenly, and Sal and the driver almost dropped me.

I was in such agony that I didn’t think to shift my weight, and I hung there like smoking meat. I dropped a couple of inches, but they lifted me back up.

“Make it stop!” I screamed.

My face sizzled in the heat of Lendon’s four suns. I had never been as exposed as I was then, hanging by a rope in the middle of the astonishingly bright Carina.

I began to climb the rope just as Sal and the driver gave me one last tug, and I collapsed into the chariot. Immediately my skin cooled and calmed, and my gills receded. I uttered a sigh of relief.

The driver snatched the rope from me and then faced the front of the chariot. His cheek had a familiar diamond-shaped birthmark on it, and I remembered that he knew my name.

“Welcome aboard car six-nine-two-three!” he shouted.

I smacked him on the shoulder. “
You!
You’re the one who started this! You left me on The Mango Sun!”

“Don’t touch me!” he barked, whipping the horses.

We took off so abruptly that I almost fell out the back of the chariot. But Sal pulled me in close.

“You know him?” he asked.

I clenched my fists, boiling all over again.

“Yes!” I screamed. “This is the driver who abducted me and then left me to die! After all the trouble he put me through, the least he can do is take us somewhere incredible!”

Sal began to breathe deeply. He motioned for me to copy him, but I refused. Then he tried rubbing my eyebrows, and I swatted him away.

“Driver,” he said, “can you please take us to Perunda? It’s in Carina, right?”

“It is,” the driver answered gruffly. “What are you offering?”

“You didn’t ask for anything the first time,” I snapped.

“I had orders from Charlotte of The Mango Sun, herself,” he said. “But it seems you managed to escape her. I would be happy to take you back, free of charge. So what’ll it be? To Perunda or back into Charlotte’s mind?”

“Orders?” I squawked. “You asked me where I wanted to go, and I said to the nearest planet, which
happened
to be The Mango Sun!”

“You didn’t know a thing about Carina,” he said. “Anyone would have said ‘to the nearest planet.’ And even if you hadn’t, I knew I was to take you there.”

“So Perunda or The Mango Sun? Those are my options? That’s preposterous!”

The driver snarled. “If you aren’t offering anything, then those are the only two places I’ll take you. The Mango Sun because Charlotte will be thrilled and I’ll receive my pay from her, which will be more than anything you can afford, I’m sure. Perunda because your friend here seems more grateful than you, you little brat, and I think that he and I can work out a bargain later.”

He looked at Sal, who laughed uneasily and began to thumb around in his pockets.

“I’ll find something for you,” Sal said.

I had forgotten how small the chariots were. Especially this one. Sal was nearly standing on my toes while I breathed down the driver’s neck. The driver kept squeezing his shoulder blades together in an attempt to push me away, but I had nowhere else to stand.

We whizzed past meteorites and stars that looked like fireballs. Sadly, the sights no longer excited me. I had become desensitized, even to the constant jerking of the chariot.

“Aren’t there any normal planets in this galaxy?” I demanded. “I just want to go to a beach.”

“What about Perunda?” Sal reminded me.

“We’ll get there soon enough,” I said. “Don’t you just want a day or two to relax from everything? This is our last chance before we go home.”

“We won’t find a perfect world,” Sal said. “And I don’t think that we should deviate from the plan.”

He tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“We’ve chosen Perunda,” he said. “I promise I’ll find something to pay you with.”

“Certainly,” the driver chortled. “But you won’t be received well in those clothes. Not that I care, really. It’s just that I’m rather craving a drive through The Course of the Lost. How about we find you two some better clothes?”

Sal and I were still clad in fish skin, and unless we were on our way to another underwater world, I agreed with the driver—we needed different clothes.

The problem was that I didn’t want go to The Course of the Lost. I could still remember that poor pitiful baby who had just floated past us, and we’d done nothing.

“Please don’t take us there!” I cried. “I can’t go back!”

“But we’re going to find you a pretty dress,” the driver said firmly.

I could see that I had no choice in the matter.

Since Lendon was on the outskirts of Carina, we were in for a long ride. Eventually I caved to Sal’s eyebrow massage and leaned against him as we rode.

We talked about what we would do when we returned to Earth. Sal said he had an older sister in New Jersey, who was possibly still alive. If he could find her, she was who he would live with.

New Jersey is a long way from Georgia.

After a few hours, the driver slowed his horses to a trot, and I could see a blur of brightly colored objects in the distance.

We had reached The Course of the Lost. I wondered what awful things I would see this time, and I silently hoped not the baby.

The first object that came into view was an oversized teddy bear. It was spinning at an angle, with happy eyes and outstretched paws.

“I see more children were up here,” I chided.

The driver shrugged. “I’m sure they were with adults.”

I gaped as the bear floated by.

The horses danced forward, pulling us into the midst of a pack of Crayola crayons that had lost their box. One of the crayons hovered in front of me, and I read its wrapper.

Forest Green.

The color had been one of my favorites as a child. Of course, none of them had ever compared to Brick Red. Garrett and I had fought over that one day after day.

“Keep on looking,” the driver said. “We’re not interested in toys. We need clothes . . . and gold.”