Bakkian Chronicles, Book I - The Prophecy (64 page)

“
Nice to meet you as well, Mikal,” Stan
answered, noting the strange manner in which the boy spoke
.

Tristan stepped forward, giving a slight cough.

“
Stan, I’d also like you to meet Tristan, who will be Mikal’s tutor while he’s here.”

“
And are you going to be taking care of him?” Stan asked, after shaking hands with the silent, bald man.

“
We are his official bodyguards,” Sarah confirmed. “Until things are safe again in his
kingdom
, we will be looking after him.”

Amazed, Stan looked at the boy again. At that time, Sarah heard her husband finally say goodbye and then heard the distinctive snap of a cell phone being closed. Steve joined them
moments
later.

“
You’ll never believe this,” he told his wife, momentarily forgetting that his father was standing quietly nearby. “Mom knows about Lentari. Apparently the Scribes, I mean grandpa Simon, actually told her a little about -”

“
Did you just call your grandparents ‘the Scribes’?” Stan interjected.

Realizing his father was still present, Steve grinned. “Yeah, that’s what they were called in Lentari. They were the court Scribes, restoring ancient Lentarian manuscripts and cataloging the royal library. They’ve been performing tasks for the king and queen there for years now. That’s where we’ve been. We were stuck there until we could get the key to come back. Long story.”

Stan’s head was spinning. All those stories his parents had told him were true? He had just figured they were pathetic attempts to excuse their behavior for the past thirty or so years.

“
Sarah says you can control fire?”

Amazed, Steve stared at his father, and then at his wife, who nodded her encouragement for a demonstration. “Yeah, I do. How did you - never mind. Wanna see?”

Without waiting for a response, he ignited both hands, holding them up for his father’s
inspection
.

Stan blinked. Both of his son’s hands were now completely engulfed in flames, yet he didn’t appear to be in any pain! Incredible! Realization finally started to settle in, and a profound sense of guilt slowly reared its ugly head.

Steve shared a glance with his wife. He
suddenly
knew what the rift had been between his father and his grandparents. The guilt his dad must now be suffering had to overwhelming.

“
There’s no way you could have known that they were on another world, dad,” Steve said softly. “I wouldn’t have believed it, either.”

Nodding appreciatively, Stan met his son’s eyes. “I just felt that they had to be telling lies. All those attempts at telling me stories about griffins, and magic.” Sighing heavily, he leaned up against his son’s Santa Fe. “You actually met a live griffin?”

“
About thirty of them,” Steve confirmed, smiling at his dad. “Would you believe some can actually speak? I even made friends with several of them.”

“
I wish your mother was here.”

Looking closely at his father, Steve gave his wife a sidelong glance, raising an eyebrow. Taking the mimet from Steve’s outstretched palm, Sarah closed her eyes.

Let’s see
, Sarah thought.
If my jhorun truly works here then I should be able to picture something to reference.
An image formed: a quaint living room in Bonnie and Stan’s house. She’d been there a few times, enough to be able to visualize where everything was. Taking a deep breath, she teleported.

Sarah vanished, right before Stan’s eyes.

“
Where’d she go?”

“
To see if she can bring mom here.”

“
What?! Can she do that?”

“
She was teleporting people across the kingdom of Lentari not three days ago.”

“
How? How can she move people around like that?”

“
Essentially, it’s magic. Whether you believe it or not, it exists. You watched me light my hands on fire. Sarah just teleported right in front of you. Take it from someone who had a very difficult time believing in all of this. Magic is real, and exists on Lentari.”

“
And here, too, apparently,” Stan observed.

“
Yeah, I can’t figure that one out,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Why are we still able to –”

Sarah materialized then, with a short, middle-aged woman clutching her arm, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“
Hi mom.”

Bonnie Miller cracked an eye open. Good lord! There was her son! It worked! Sarah had just teleported them over thirteen hundred miles north! Rushing to hug her son, Bonnie caught sight of a small boy with a strange bald man standing silently nearby.

Introductions were made while Sarah snuck off to call her sister. Much to Sarah’s surprise, before she could get a word out edgewise, Annie hit her with, “Must be nice to be able to take such a long vacation! Coeur d’Alene must be very pretty.”

“
You weren’t worried?”

“
Should I have been? Mom got a call from Steve’s mom, saying that you were probably going to be gone longer than planned and that they don’t have cell service there.”

“
She did, did she?” Clever woman! She had surmised, correctly, that when they were gone longer than anticipated, that they were more than likely out of the area. Way out, Sarah thought with a chuckle. A quick phone call to her mother confirmed Annie’s story. Her mother was pleased she that she had a good time and to call later that night to hear how things went. Her mother-in-law had just saved her from a major headache!

Rejoining the rest of the group, she was shocked to see Steve’s parents embracing, with his father doing his best not to get teary-eyed.

“
How’d it go?” Steve inquired. “Were they all freaked out?”

“
Nope, not at all. And I have your mother to thank for that.”

“
Excuse me? What did my mom do?”

Detaching herself from her quietly grieving husband, Bonnie approached her daughter-in-law. “I do hope you don’t mind, dear, but I had told myself that if we ever lost contact with the two of you, especially going up there, that there was a chance that you could have found the
portal
. You two are the most intelligent people I have ever met, so if anyone would have been able to figure out how to activate it, it would be you two.” Smiling warmly at her son, standing next to his beautiful wife, Bonnie continued. “After two weeks with no contact I just knew the stories were true. Lentari did exist, and you two managed to find your way there. So I called
Sarah’s
family, assuring them that that you were okay, and chose to extend your stay.”

“
And that we were out of cell phone range,” Steve said, nodding his head.

“
Like that trip you two took to that small town in Oregon,” his mother confirmed. “They didn’t have cell phone service there, either. Sarah, your mother was very understanding. If she would have called to inform me that you two were out of cell phone range, and taking even more time, I would have panicked.”

“
That’s my mom,” Sarah laughed. “She’s very laid-back.”

*****

Assuring her in-laws that they were fine,
Sarah
set about preparing to transport the both of them back to Phoenix, with Steve’s father agreeing to leave his truck behind.

“
I can drive it back down at Christmas, if that’s okay,” Steve had told his father.

“
Son, that’s fine with me. You just saved me a twenty hour trip. Your mother and I can use the car for a while.”

Tucking several mimets into her pocket, Sarah returned the Millers to their home. Moments
later
, she reappeared, smiling at both Tristan and Mikal.

“
You are gonna come in really handy,” Steve observed, giving his wife a hug.

“
I can’t wait to tell Annie all about what’s happened to us!”

“
How much are you going to tell her?”

“
Everything. I don’t keep secrets from her.”

“
Sorry, I knew that. What I meant was, how much are you going to hit her with at one time?”

“
Oh. Probably all of it. She’s a smart girl. She can handle it.”

“
We’ll have to set up some type of get-together, really freak her out. Just show up
suddenly
on her doorstep. What do you think she’d do?”

“
We’re not going to do that,” Sarah shook her head. “You want to surprise your family all the time, that’s fine, but we’re not doing that with mine.”

“
Spoilsport.”

The two of them took the remaining part of the day to set their affairs straight. Steve had
indeed
been let go from his job for his extended absence, a fact which didn’t trouble him in the slightest. He had been itching for an excuse to leave and start his own computer consulting business for quite some time. Sarah’s employer, a medical billing company, had a much more mom-and-pop feel to it. Her company had no choice but to fill her position with someone else. However, not only were they thrilled to learn Sarah was safe, they even offered to let her work remotely when they were finally settled in Coeur d’Alene. All she needed was a computer, a high-speed
Internet
connection, and a phone. She thanked her bosses profusely, but declined, explaining that she and Steve needed to focus on their family.

A phone call to their apartment manager confirmed their apartment was still in order, with action just now ready to be taken to locate the missing tenants. They gave their notice and promised to move out in thirty days.

Draining the cell phone battery for the second time that evening, Steve finally took a seat in the huge, luxurious sitting room on the ground floor. Mikal followed suit moments later. Sarah and Tristan rummaged through the kitchen, finding not one crumb of food in the entire house. Squeezing enough power out of Sarah’s cell to make one more phone call, Steve delighted the young prince with his first pizza. Tristan was less than enthused, but politely ate a few slices.

“
We’ll get some proper food soon,” Sarah promised. “As soon as we find a grocery store.” Tristan nodded his appreciation.

Mouth full of pepperoni, Mikal grinned. “I like pizza! Can we have this again?”

“
Pizza is only the start of it,” Steve promised. “There are hamburgers, fried chicken, and burritos, just to name a few. Then there are video games, which, just to give you fair warning, I am the king. And movies! Don’t get me started!! Trust me, sport, you’re gonna love it here!”

THE END