Gaia's Secret (7 page)

I couldn’t be angry at that smile. “No, but I
woke up well, thanks to you. They smell fabulous.”

I felt like a kid again, running downstairs
early on a Saturday morning, Clara waiting for me with her scones
and milk. And Alex would be waiting for me so we could plan our
adventures for the day.

Light footsteps moved behind me as I grabbed
one of the scones.

“Good morning, Alexander.” Clara smiled past
me.

I didn’t turn around. In fact, my jaw froze
mid-bite.

“Smells incredible in here, as always,” said
that man-voice.

I focused on finishing my bite, trying to
enjoy the taste of cinnamon and maple glaze. From the sounds of
things, Alex was rummaging through the pantry.

“It does my heart good to see you two
together again,” Clara said.

I choked on my scone just as something
slammed to the floor behind me. Struggling to swallow my misrouted
bite, I met Alex’s gaze right before he bent over and picked up the
water bottle that was rolling across the kitchen floor. He left
without another word.

Clara watched after him, glanced at me, and
then turned her curious eyes back to her cooking.

After I finished my breakfast, I meandered
down the hall. Everyone was gathered at the front door.

“Are you ready?” Sonya asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

She looked relieved when she smiled. “Great.
Let me fetch Clara. Meet us out back?” She turned to her husband.
Cicero nodded.

Alex was out the front door before Sonya even
started back down the hall. Cicero glanced at me, scratching the
back of his neck. It seemed like he was trying to think of
something comforting to say but I wasn’t sure. Cicero wasn’t the
most delicate with words. In that way he was a lot like my dad.

He eventually just opened the door.
“Ready?”

The land beyond was blanketed in darkness. We
walked into the chilled morning air and waited on the front porch.
My dad’s silver Subaru appeared around the corner with Clara in the
driver’s seat, smiling. Alex hopped out of the car and held the
door open, motioning for me to climb in back. I caught his hard
gaze as I crawled in, but he abruptly looked away, sat beside me
and shut the door. He took up more space than when we were younger,
and I didn’t remember his frame being so solid and immovable. It
was impossible to keep my shoulders from touching his, even though
he was conveniently leaning away from me.

Cicero buckled himself in the passenger seat.
When Clara shoved down the pedal, I thought the car was going to
throw me out the back window.

For such a passive creature, her aggression
while driving was shocking.

We reached the end of their long driveway in
record time and headed straight for Yosemite Valley. As many times
as I’d visited the Andersons, not once had I gone to the
Valley.

The sky had lightened and we drove through a
short tunnel. When we emerged, my gaze fell captive to the valley.
Water glittered over granite cliffs, carving its way through rock,
plunging into beds of green. It looked like a big crack in the
Earth, the valley a hidden paradise protected by thick walls of
stone and snow-covered mountains.

The road wound through a forest of enormous
pines. Huge boulders dotted the land, having fallen from the cliffs
above. We passed column after thick column of brown bark. Every so
often, Sonya would turn and look at me, her smile both sad and
encouraging.

I still couldn’t believe I’d allowed myself
to accept this. Dad goes missing and I believe he’s gone to another
world. Not only that, I was trying to go there myself.

But then there was my traitorous conscience.
It was confident this Gaia existed, and was appalled that I
wasn’t.

Clara pulled the Subaru into an almost empty
parking lot, designated for the Bridal Veil Falls trail, and the
strange pull within me strengthened. All of us, except for Clara,
climbed out of the Subaru. Alex walked around back, lifted the
hatchback, and retrieved a stack of blankets. Maybe this other
world was colder than Earth.

If it existed.

It does exist.

I pushed my door shut, silently cursing my
conscience.

The roar of rushing water filled the valley.
From here Bridal Veil Falls looked like it fell from the heavens.
It careened over a cliff, widening as it fell, veiling the ground
below with a swirling white mist.

“Everyone ready?” Although Cicero’s question
was addressed to everyone, everyone was looking at me.

So I nodded.

Cicero began trudging down a paved trail,
Alex right behind him. This was it. My sanity would abandon me
forever. I glanced one last time at Clara, who was smiling.

“Don’t worry, miss. It’s beautiful on the
other side. Once you see it, you will understand.”

Before I could respond, she rolled up her
window and backed out of the parking spot. No Subaru had ever gone
from reverse to drive so fast. It was only a few seconds before the
car was gone. Maybe Clara was the one that taught Alex how to
drive.

“Let’s go,” Sonya said.

Sonya and I hurried forward, the thrum of the
falls growing louder and louder the closer we got. After a few
bends I could see the khakis and whites of Cicero and Alex’s
clothing.

The closer we came to the falls, the more I
needed to get there. Like there was an invisible force yanking at
my soul, beckoning me forward. At first I thought I was imagining
it, but it became stronger with each step. If Dad had been hiding
another world from me—for whatever reason—he was smart not to bring
me here. In this place, I felt there was something more. Something
greater.

The trail disappeared into a mountain of
mist, rising and swirling from the base of the crashing water. The
thunderous roar reverberated around me, blotting out all other
sound. Cicero motioned for us to follow him off the path.

The pull continued and I wanted Cicero to
hurry. I wasn’t even sure where we were going, but I needed to
move. Cicero led us parallel with the granite wall, our clothing
getting soaked with each step. He halted right beside a smooth spot
in the granite, scanning the area around us.

He placed his hand on the rock surface. His
eyelids closed and his lips moved. I couldn’t hear what he was
saying. When he dropped his hand, a faint shimmer caught my eye,
right on the rock’s surface. The etchings of a word began to appear
on the granite, glittering with a faint glow:

Then the letters moved, spreading apart until
they formed an arch just above Cicero’s head. He glanced back at me
and stepped forward, vanishing into the solid granite wall.

My jaw dropped with a gasp. “How…did he
just…?”

Sonya grabbed my hand, pulling me towards the
wall with the letters shimmering above. 

"Hurry before it closes.” She let go of my
hand, took a step forward, and disappeared in the wall.

I was frozen in shock, unable to believe my
eyes. I had just witnessed two people walk through a solid, granite
wall. That had to be a major violation of at least a dozen laws of
physics.

Alex stepped forward, pausing beside me. He
didn’t speak or glance at me, just stood there staring after his
parents. I thought he was waiting for me, letting me go first to
make sure I didn’t change my mind and run off. But he walked on,
swallowed by the rock.

The golden lettering began to spark and fade.
If I didn’t hurry, I’d be stuck here alone taking an unwanted
shower. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? I’d run into
a rock wall. As long as no one saw me, I could live with that.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and
stepped away from my world into the unknown.

I
winced, preparing
to smack hard into the wall. Instead, my foot landed on solid
ground. The air was so damp it tasted wet and my clothes were heavy
with dew. I lifted my eyelids slowly. Everything was dark except
for a golden haze in front of me. Before I could wonder where I
was, I heard voices from the glow.

“Where’s Daria?” It was Cicero, but his voice
sounded muffled and distorted, like he was talking underwater.

I took another few steps towards Cicero’s
voice. When he spoke again, his words were clear. “You were
supposed to wait for her!”

The darkness vanished and I ran into
something, hard. My arms flailed as I tried to keep myself from
falling. Something gripped my shoulders, holding me upright.

“I’ve got you.”

I glanced up into Alex’s face. Amusement
sparked in his eyes but quickly faded back to cold nothing. He
released my shoulders and stepped aside, exchanging a quick glance
with his father. Cicero’s face was bright red, but when he looked
at me his frown disappeared.

We were standing in a large, round stone room
with an arched ceiling. The walls glistened and glittered from
torchlight that splattered upon moist rock, and the air was stale
and heavy with mildew and smoke. Torches hung on the wall,
separated by large stone doors spaced at intervals around the room.
They all looked exactly the same, no handles or markings, just
sheets of smooth rock embedded in the circular wall.

But that wasn’t the only thing I found
strange.

There was life to this room—a life force I
could feel—and I could hear distant voices. They were coming from
the doors, pleading in whispers, begging me to pass through. A
shudder ran through me. “What is this place?” My voice echoed in
the empty chamber.

Cicero studied the various doors, his
forehead creased in concentration. “The boundary. It’s necessary to
keep people from coming in and going out.”

My fingers trailed the surface of the cool,
stone door we walked through, trying to find some unique
marking—anything that would set it apart from the others—just in
case I needed to go back. Intuition told me I didn’t want to be
caught choosing the wrong door.

“It doesn’t matter.” Cicero was watching me.
“What lies beyond them shifts regularly. If you pass through the
wrong door, you may never find a way out, and because of that, only
those like myself attempt to cross.”

I knew I never should have followed them in
here, but it was too late now.

“One of these doors leads to this…Gaia?”

Cicero nodded as he took a blanket from Alex.
I soon realized it wasn’t a blanket at all; it was a cloak. The
wool hung to Cicero’s feet, making his broad shoulders look broader
and his hidden physique more threatening. It reminded me of the
strange man I’d seen in the fields. That was only yesterday, the
same day Dad disappeared.

Alex stood before me, holding a pile of
wool.

“I don’t need one, thanks.”

The flickering torchlight sharpened the
angles in his face. “Put it on.”

I ripped the wool from his hands. He arched a
brow but said nothing else.

“We need to hide our clothing.” Sonya was
already cloaked. “The style is…different on the other side.”

I hadn’t given much thought to the style
attribute of another world.

My cloak was enormous. I bunched up as much
fabric as I could at my neck, forced the silver clasp to hold it
together and felt completely awkward doing it. Alex was already
wearing his. The wool clung to his shoulders, rustling ever so
slightly as he moved. The cloak looked elegant on him, natural. It
seemed as much a part of him as the dark hair on his head. Not at
all what I imagined I looked like.

Cicero stood before a door about thirty
degrees to my right. It looked just like the others, was shaped
just like the others. But there was something different about it,
something I didn’t notice at first. Unlike all the others, this one
was quiet.

I felt Alex’s eyes on me as Cicero laid his
hand on the door. A few slow seconds passed and the stone rumbled
as it slid into the wall. Cicero glanced over his shoulder with a
grin, and then stepped into the pure blackness beyond.

With a deep breath I followed, Sonya and Alex
right after me. The door slid shut behind us. The glow from the
torch-lit chamber narrowed and dimmed into a fine line, and was
gone.

The darkness that followed was so thick I
couldn’t see my own hand. The air here was damp but a cool breeze
brushed over my clammy skin, making me shiver. There was a constant
drip—drip—drip echoing somewhere in the distance.

I was about to say something when a light
flickered to life. It came from a single torch hanging on the wall
to our right. The flame burned bright, casting a soft glow down the
stone tunnel, fading into emptiness.

Cicero proceeded forward, and we all
followed.

Just as we reached the end of the torch’s
golden halo, another began burning up ahead, the flame behind us
snuffed out. On and on we walked, torch after torch dimming and
glowing as we moved from one to the other. They were lighting on
their own and I didn’t think it had anything to do with motion
sensors.

What was this place?

There was a strange reverence to the silence:
one that sank deep into my soul, overwhelming me with intrigue. The
walls felt
alive
. Life was everywhere, reaching out,
wrapping over me and through me. What the source was, I had no
idea, but I couldn’t shake the need to move forward. It was
becoming unbearable.

My eyes flitted about, watching the shadows
dance along the rock. I felt like the walls were watching us,
whispering to each other as we passed.

And that’s when I ran in to something.

"Sorry!" I was thankful for the darkness.
Hopefully Alex wouldn’t see the blood rush to my face.

He peered sideways at me and continued
forward.

Well. He could’ve at least said
something
.