Across Carina (9 page)

I folded my arms, staring across the ocean.

“So you don’t wish to return to Earth?” Eden asked. He sounded hopeful.

“I do,” I said, “but only so I won’t be alone anymore. That doesn’t mean I’ll like it there. I’m just choosing the lesser of two evils.”

“Well, you should know that Charlotte’s kind moments are only to convince you to stay. She wants you to become dependent on her. She always has a motive. She can be quite difficult.”

I flinched, holding back a sneer.

“Trust me, I’m well aware.”

“I can assure you that what you’ve seen is nothing,” Eden said, his voice hardening. “You’re in her world now. She can hear everything you say and think. You won’t get home from here.”

I stared at him. “So what does that mean for me?”

“Your best chance of returning home is to send a message to your creator.”

“You just told me that I can’t speak to him.”

“Not in the way that you’re used to,” he said. “You might try visiting different planets. Maybe there’s someone who knows him well and can get word to him. I can’t guarantee your return, Jade, but I can tell you that you have a kind creator. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

I didn’t feel lucky, and Eden’s solution was too vast to comprehend. An array of planets and creators intermingled into one grand secret? The floating tapped on my brain.

“I can’t just gallivant across the galaxy!” I shouted, hoping to thwart the feeling. “If you’re so powerful, why can’t you take me home?”

“But I am no longer powerful,” he said.

“What did you and Charlotte do?”

Suddenly, he took my face in his hands.

“Listen to me, Jade, and never forget this: How you behave in life is how you will behave in death.”

I swallowed. “I don’t understand.”

There was more to him; I could sense it now. He knew things that I needed to know.

“I should leave,” he said, standing.

“But I have questions!”

“Haven’t you been asking them?”

I frowned. “Well I have more.”

“I’m sorry. I can never stay for long when I visit. Charlotte’s too unpredictable.”

He poised himself at the edge of the cliff. I couldn’t see how he was going to get off of it, unless he could fly.

I thought about him calling me “one of the lucky ones.” Even Charlotte had said that the chariot drivers envied Earth, but that couldn’t be. Either I was blind or these people had been misinformed. My planet was so corrupt that my creator, if he existed, had allowed a shadow man to steal me from my bed, a place where I should have been safe.

But, if I was so lucky, then maybe—just maybe—there was a way out of Carina.

Eden looked ready to jump, and I realized that I had no way off the cliff without him—unless that bird came back for me. I couldn’t let him go.

I grabbed his hand. “Please don’t leave me. I—”

“Come with me,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “You can live with me on The Blue Planet. I am not like my sister.”

I dropped his hand, stepping away. So this was why he had come.

“Please,” he said. “I have no ill intentions. I do not
desire
you; I only seek the company of a friend.”

“Just tell me how to get out of here!” I cried. “Please! I want to go home!”

Eden sighed.

“As you wish,” he said, and again he poised himself to leave. “To get off The Mango Sun you must summon a driver. In the meantime, be careful here. This may all be an illusion, but it is a powerful one. Charlotte can still hurt you.”

“How do I summon a driver?”

“Just ask,” he said simply, and he vanished.

I waited at the cliff’s edge, hoping that Charlotte would send something or someone to my rescue. I watched the clouds for so long that they began to animate and engage in conversation. One cloud kept telling me to shut up, and I almost lost it. I was enraged, exhausted, and hungry, far from any mango fog. I knew that Charlotte was getting back at me for the things that I had said.

Eventually the bird from the day before returned, and this time I was able to watch it head-on. Its beak was long and pointed and opened into a mouth wide enough to swallow me whole.

I looked down. The hairs on my arms were standing on end.

Why am I afraid? This creature saved me. Maybe it will save me again.

I waved my arms high in the air, and the bird soared in my direction. Up close I noticed its dark, beady eyes and its beak, lined with teeth. It could do more than swallow me whole; it could tear me to pieces.

I let my arms fall, but it was too late. The bird, which was easily twenty times my size, traversed the last few yards and stopped in front of me. It stroked the air to keep at my level, pushing gusts of wind through me. I took a few steps back and looked around. My options were few.

Exploring the cave was too risky, but I couldn’t just jump off the cliff. If I didn’t go with the bird, there was no telling how long I’d be trapped.

I took a deep breath and mustered whatever courage was left in my heart and my hands. Then I began to walk toward the bird, keeping my lips straight and my eyes relaxed. I didn’t want to appear threatening
or
weak.

The bird’s back was too high for me to mount. I looked at the bird and tried pointing down, but it just kept flying in place.

Stupid bird
.

I slid my foot halfway over the edge, reasoning that now the bird should see my objective. It didn’t. It merely spewed its hot breath all over me. I scowled, and the bird huffed loudly.

“You ignorant—”

I stopped, wiping my face.

“Look,” I said. “I just need to get off this mountain.”

The bird cocked its head, as if listening. Then it moved down several feet and turned so that I could jump onto its back.

I nearly laughed. “Why am I not surprised that you can understand me?”

I looked over the edge of the cliff, gauging the drop to the bird. It had moved down lower than I would have expected, and I was wary to jump.

“Can you please move up a little?” I asked.

The bird flapped its wings, unmoving.

I sighed. It was clear that I was going to have to be the one to give in. If I wanted to get off the mountain, anyway. I waited a minute, and then I sat down and inched forward until my legs were hanging over the edge and my bottom was partially suspended.

“Please don’t move,” I begged.

I closed my eyes and pushed off the edge, landing roughly on the bird. It squawked in response.

“You’re telling me,” I said. I was breathing hard.

Before I could say anything else, the bird took off for the ocean. I clutched desperately at its feathers, nearly sliding off.

“Please slow down!” I cried.

As we began to cross the ocean, the bird did slow, and we moved in steady strokes. I finally sat up, having regained my balance.

We dipped low, grazing the water. I smiled at the feel of the cool spray. The clouds had dispersed, leaving a pink and yellow sunset to reflect off the waves. I was finally free. I spread out my arms and absorbed the wind.

Without warning, the bird swooped up at a harsh angle. I clung to its neck as we raced skyward. I felt like we were about to reach the top of a roller coaster, but instead of seeing an amusement park and surrounding town, I could almost see the whole world.

We flew across the ocean and then over the rainforest and the desert that I had wandered through in the days prior. It was like crossing Earth in the space of seconds, witnessing all the topography at once. However, that’s all it was—ground, water, and sky. There were still no other animals to be seen.

For a brief time, I forgot my troubles. I rested against the back of the bird’s head and marveled at The Mango Sun. Charlotte’s mind was extraordinary; but I knew I couldn’t stay inside of it. I yearned for a beach that stretched for miles instead of yards, that was sprinkled with people, even if I wasn’t going to talk to them. To have been alone in a crowd would have been better than being completely alone.

I leaned in close to the bird’s ear. “Thank you for saving me yesterday,” I said. “And today. This planet is beautiful, but I was hoping that you could help me find a way off of it. Do you remember where I landed? Did you see me arrive?”

The bird cocked its head, listening, and then made a sharp turn. I almost slid off its back.

“Are you crazy?” I screamed.

I tightened my grip around its neck, and it shrieked, booming across a canyon that we were descending upon. Below us there was a river snaking between two mountains, and I thought of the canyon by Charlotte’s house.

The bird careened toward the face of one of the mountains. I dug my fingernails into its neck, pleading for it to stop. When we were inches away from being flattened, it suddenly changed course, and we shot straight up through the sky.

“Why would you save me and then try to kill me?” I yelled, my back now parallel to the ground.

We soared up in circles, throwing my insides into a spin. I almost threw up. Then the bird jerked back so suddenly that I fell off. I crumbled onto the rocky mountaintop, landing sideways on my ankle.

“What the heck?” I wailed.

The bird vanished behind the second mountain, and I sat up, anxious. It appeared that I was alone, but that didn’t mean that I was. I imagined the bird circling back to finish me off. The thought made me shake.

I needed to keep moving, but my ankle was throbbing. I began to massage it, thinking that pressure might ease the pain, but it didn’t seem to help.

There I sat, immobilized on an unstable planet, unsafe. And the sky was changing. Black clouds had moved in and were looming overhead, divided only by the lightning that had followed them.

Then, right before my eyes, the water in the canyon dried up. It sizzled into steam. And all around, the trees were sucked into the earth, leaving behind clouds of crispy, brown leaves.

Charlotte.

I struggled to my knees, looking up at the sky.

“I despise you and your world!” I roared, hoping she heard every word.

The lightning multiplied, rippling across the sky into an electric web. I knew that she was near.

“Jade,” her voice echoed.

I whipped my head back and forth, searching for her. Then I staggered to my feet and started to limp down the mountain with my left leg dragging.

I have to find Eden. He’ll know what to do.

In the distance I heard a rumbling. It was the deepest of rumblings. Something was on its way to me.

I began to walk faster. The path that I was on, which was already narrow, began to curve down and around. The mountain was shaping itself into a spiral.

I started to run. My ankle screamed for me to stop. I could feel myself tearing the ligaments, but I kept on. The spiral never seemed to end. When I looked at the clouds, they were actually closer to me than before. The mountain was rising—twisting and rising—like a screw being loosened from the ground.

“Jade,” came Charlotte’s voice again. “I don’t want to hurt you. I only want you to stay. Remember, you chose to come here. I can give you happiness that no one else can. You’ve seen my powers. Anything is possible here.”

I screamed in every direction. “Liar! You have no powers! They’re all in your head!”

Sensing her behind me, I spun around, but I fell on my bad ankle. I looked up to see that the lightning had detached from the sky and was slithering through the very air in front of me. Charlotte was still nowhere to be seen, but her voice rang out.

“The mind is a powerful thing.”

I hobbled as quickly as I could down the mountain, but the lightning was catching up to me. The air around me grew increasingly warm, and I could feel my skin swell.

The ground was drying, cracking, pushing up weeds in hordes. One weed wrapped itself around my ankle, tripping me. The lightning struck me as I fell and sent a wave of tremors through my body. I shot ten feet out of my shoes, my hair on end. There was a burning on my back and a ringing in my ears. I landed, and my vision blackened into a tunnel.

I groaned. I could not move; I hurt everywhere.

I was on my back, looking up at a cropped version of the sky. It looked different. There seemed to be a bulge in it, like part of it was sagging.

And then it opened up. At first I didn’t trust what I was seeing—not with my hazy eyes—but I wasn’t just seeing. I was hearing and feeling the entire mountain shake beneath me. The rumbling was nigh, and it was coming from two directions.

As my vision started to clear, I could see another mountain. It wasn’t the one across the canyon, but a new one, pushing through the hole in the sky. And it was upside down.

I forced myself to stand. The mountain that I was on had stopped spiraling, but I still had nowhere to go. I was stuck on the peak watching another peak cut through the sky toward me. I began to feel very far away. But before the floating could take me, I noticed something: I was not alone.

Someone was standing on the other mountain. Standing. They looked just like me—feet flat, torso straight—except they were upside down, completely defying gravity. Then again, so was the mountain that they were on.

If
they
look upside down to
me
, then what do
I
 . . .

I swallowed, realizing that maybe I was the one who was upside down.

The mountain came closer still, and suddenly I recognized the other person. His blue skin was unmistakable.

“Eden!”

He was already looking at me. He extended his arm, and I reached out too. Our fingertips almost touched, a mere millimeter between them.

The clouds had consumed almost all the air. Aside from the mirrored mountaintops, they were all that I could see. To my left—Eden’s right—they began to swirl in a current, forming some kind of portal in the sky.

Then the whole planet shook—yes, even the clouds—and rocks began to pour from both mountains. They poured up, and they poured down, trapping me between them, threatening to bloody my face.

“Eden, what’s happening?” I cried, and a rock crashed into the ground at my feet.