Glory Alley and the Star Riders (The Glory Alley Series) (43 page)

“
Aye, but
then again,
maybe we'll just throw ye to
Budd
.
”

Tired of being scared, she shouted
defiantly,
“If
you eat me,
may
you choke on my bones!
”
She f
old
ed
her
arms over chest
and
she tossed her nose
in the air
.
It felt good to be bold.

The
Wybbil
s
h
earty laughter
confused her.

“
Rock Collector
,
” Needle placed a hand on her shoulder. “I
f ye cooperate, there
be
nothing to fear
.
Star Riders we’re called, w
e
be
the
emissaries assigned to guard over
the
green side of the Elboni
.”

“You literally ride the stars?”

“Of course not, the title be a misnomer, but it’s here to stay. We
fill in for places like Tullah which has no emissaries of its own.
O
ver
the course of
two thousand
years
, plus two hundred
, we have traveled from one spectrum of light to
the
other
.
Protecting all
of
creation
be our mission
, but know ye this,
there comes a time when
the
good of
all
,
outweighs
the
good of
a few
.”

The three
star riders
stared at her with looks of expectation.

“I’m cold
,” she said yanking her shoulder out from under Needle’s grubby hand. “
Can we just get on with it?”

They walked to the bottom of Queen’s Mesa
.
It was a
tiring
climb up a steep hill
, but
despite their thin legs and round bellies
,
the
star riders
seemed solid
on their feet
.
By the time they reached the foyer at the top of the mesa,
Glory
was
the only one
panting
.

“Nonru,” Needle said
. His spike brightened,
illuminating the words carved above the entrance
.

Beware
:
this mountain and everything in it

be private property.

Trespassers devoured on sight.

“We better not go in,”
Glory
said.
“The sign says it’s private property.”

“
It never stopped ye before.” Bone called her out with admirable sarcasm.
“So get going.”

“But what if the
person
who wrote it catches us?”

“Too late,” Needle replied
.
“I’m the one who wrote it.”

“
But that
sign is hundreds of years old
!
”

“Thousands,” White Feather corrected and shoved h
er
forward through the opening.

“You guys weren’t kidding about living
f
ive
thousand years.”

“No more, no less, barring an accident.”

“It hasn’t been that long,”
White Feather
corrected
.
“
Our last mission
to Tullah was also our first one.
What’s it been now—five hundred years or so?”

“Aye,” Bone agreed
.
“Tullah’s a forgettable place.”

T
he
cavern’s
was
coated wi
th rock dust
and
e
vidence
of
Budd
’s thrashing
lay in huge rock piles on the floor.
Thoughts of meeting
him
again
made her want to turn tail and run home.

“Onward,” Bone said.

With Needle breathing over h
er
shoulder,
Glory
retraced the twisting route she
had taken on that fateful trip.
Due to Needle’s spike of light, t
he
caves
had
never looked
as
bright,
but
Glory
had never felt more nervous
.
Spelunking was
always
dangerous,
but
the
rocks and tunnels
had
never consciously plotted her destruction
, unlike the Wybbils and Budd
.
If only
s
he didn’t need a
wish
s
he’d turn over the
blasted
Elboni
and be rid of them
.

The rocks
s
he’d dropped during the chase
with the
Hoogula
were in a pi
le near the tunnel’s exit. She
sifted through them, pretending to look for the Elboni. She held up a large one full of lovely crystals. It was a shame to leave it there. “She’s a beauty!” Glory said. “Is this it?”

“No,” Needle said.

Bone and White Feather shifted their weight around from foot to foot, crossing their arms, looking vexed in general. “The search continues,” Needle said.

After
hours of
more
exploring
, they came to a sheer
cliff
with a
nasty
drop
-
off into nothingness
.
Glory
never liked looking down into endless darkness,
made
her
feel dizzy, scared and exhilarated
all that same time.
She had taken them around in a circle. One more tight tunnel, another five minutes, and they’d be back in the cavern’s foyer.
Memories of
the
Hoogula
’s
mighty jaws
made her
skin prickle. She
zipp
ed her
coat collar higher.
Sometimes t
he cold damp caves pulled the warmth
out of a person’s body so gradually
;
one
could freeze to death unaware
.
Oh, how
s
he longed for h
er
toasty snuggly bed
.

When they entered the
foyers, she was stunned to see it wasn’t the foyer it all
, but the
fairy tale cavern. The
pearly pillars and the vaulted ceilings that glittered like a starry night
took her breath away
again
. For a moment
,
her troubles evaporated into thin air.

“How did we end up here?” she gasped.
“Is this place enchanted?"

“
Without a doubt.
”
Needle's black
bottle cap
eyes gleamed
.
“It’s the point where
Tullah
interconnects with every place in the universe
.
I
do not fully understand it myself, so I
shall describe it to ye
as it was described to me
.

“See, e
ach dimension be a
looping
string
. A
nd those strings are
tied together
in a knot at the center
.
On
Tullah
,
the knot be here.”

“You mean this very cavern
is the inter-looping knot
?”

“Aye, and each world has a place like this—similar in function, but different in appearance
.
These tunnels here don’t just lead through
Tullah
, but to other dimension
s
.
All worlds intersect here.
”

“
Like a big cosmic intersection.”

“
Aye, w
ith the exception of
Hoogula
s, t
here be no way to unlock the gates to travel through them, except via the
Paraplume
.
”
White Feather pointed
to the feather in
his hat
for emphasize
.
“This very special gift from
the
Elboni
allows me to bypass time and space, hopping from dimension to dimension, from time to time
.
Hopping
be
an acquired art
that
only a select few ever master.
”