Seeds of Rebellion (3 page)

Matt studied him. “We could go together. Want me to swing by?”

“Better not.”

Matt nodded knowingly. “How about some lunch? You hungry?”

“I’m good. Maybe I’ll see you tonight.”

Matt shrugged. “Have it your way. Catch you later.”

Matt pedaled away on his bike. Jason climbed onto his own bike and headed home. If he wasn’t careful, soon he’d have no friends left. Was he deliberately pushing everyone away? Having unfinished business in Lyrian did not guarantee he would find a way back there. Like it or not, he might need to start living an actual life in this world again. After all, school would resume in less than a month. A regular schedule would make it much tougher to behave like a hermit.

When Jason got home, he left his bike in the garage and looked out back for Shadow, his Labrador. He came up empty. Nobody was home. His parents had grown closer to the dog during Jason’s absence and had probably taken him for a walk.

Jason retreated to his room. He had spent a lot of time there lately. He went to his closet and got down a shoe box from the top shelf. From a drawer he collected a spiral notebook and a
pen. Removing a pair of rubber bands, he opened the shoe box and took out a human hand. The severed wrist revealed a perfect cross section of bone, muscle, tendon, nerves, and blood vessels.

H-E-L-L-O. Jason traced the letters on the palm. He set the hand down and picked up his pen, ready to transcribe.

Not now,
the hand spelled hastily in sign language.

Ferrin must be in some sort of trouble again. Jason had established contact with the displacer not long after returning from Iowa. He had taught Ferrin the sign language alphabet using a book from the public library. The tedious communication was his only link to Lyrian, and Jason had faithfully logged all of their conversations.

Jason felt grateful for the living hand. It represented his only tangible evidence of all that had happened. Without it, he wondered if he would eventually have come to believe his months in a parallel universe had been an elaborate delusion.

Back in June, soon after receiving word from their son, Jason’s parents had driven from Colorado to pick him up in Iowa. His father had good insurance, so not long after Jason related his story of a four-month blackout during which he had somehow traveled hundreds of miles to awaken wearing filthy homespun clothes in a cornfield, he was referred to a neurologist. Jason affirmed to the specialist that he recalled nothing after reporting for work the day he was tagged in the head by a baseball, resisting the temptation to fabricate a horrific tale of alien abductors, sterile lights, and invasive probes. When asked how he got to Iowa, Jason had theorized that he might be a narcoleptic sleepwalker.

After an MRI, the neurologist confirmed that if the blow had resulted in a concussion, as she assumed based on the symptoms Jason had described, it had left no lasting visible damage. Jason was diagnosed with some form of anterograde amnesia, which
the neurologist explained as an inability to remember events subsequent to brain trauma.

Jason had a hunch that the neurologist didn’t wholly believe the story, but she never went so far as to call him a liar. His parents had been perplexed that given all the media attention Jason’s disappearance had received, nobody had noticed him wandering the country for months as an amnesiac. They had insisted that Jason see a therapist, who had blatantly tried to investigate whether Jason was telling the truth about his lost months, but all Jason confessed to was a dream involving many of the details from Lyrian. In the end, the scrutiny had finally subsided.

Jason had considered confessing everything to his parents and trying to use the severed hand as evidence. But he had finally decided that although the lively hand was an inexplicable oddity, it was far from concrete proof that he had journeyed to another world. The hand would only raise a more lingering batch of unanswerable questions.

After putting the hand back into the shoe box, Jason went to his computer and turned it on. Besides the hand, he had one other source of evidence that his trip to Lyrian had actually happened. He went into his photos folder, then clicked through a maze of folders within folders until arriving at one marked “Rachel.”

Inside that folder, he found images of Rachel Marie Woodruff, a thirteen-year-old girl from Olympia, Washington, who had gone missing in Arches National Park the same day that Jason had vanished. Jason had acquired the images from sites all over the Internet.

Apparently wealth and connections mattered, because Rachel’s parents had managed to turn her disappearance into one of the biggest news stories of the year. The case was particularly baffling because the family had been alone with a guide in such remote
country. Rachel had vanished quickly and quietly. The huge team of hastily summoned rescuers had found no body and no trace of violence. Her tracks had led to a natural stone arch where all evidence abruptly ceased.

For earning media exposure, it also didn’t hurt that Rachel was quite photogenic and her family had dozens of recent pictures to display. Not to mention that her father had offered a no-questions-asked million-dollar reward for information leading to her recovery.

Jason studied a color photo of Rachel looking up from a canvas she was painting. Another showed her beside a skinny blonde, both of them wearing track uniforms. A third was just her head and shoulders, taken in a studio. She looked like the cute girl next door, but with a little extra style, both in her haircut and her fashion.

Jason had considered making an anonymous call to her parents, just to let them know that he had seen her and that she was all right. But such contact posed several problems. First off, Rachel might not be okay anymore. Last Jason had heard, she had been on the run with Tark, pursued by imperial soldiers. Secondly, if her parents somehow traced the call to him, he had no alibi. He had gone missing at the same time, which would make him a very appealing suspect if he was ever connected to the case. And lastly, he had no idea if Rachel would ever make it home, so it might be cruel to give her parents false hope.

Switching off his computer, Jason rose and started pacing. He hated being the only person in the world who knew where Rachel had gone. He hated being the only person in the world who might be able to bring her back. He hated being the only person in the world who knew that the secret word that could supposedly destroy the wizard Maldor was actually an elaborate hoax meant to distract and measure his enemies.

Jason undressed and took a shower. After drying off and dressing, he stood and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not regained much of the weight he had lost in Lyrian. In spite of his absence from baseball, Jason had exercised vigorously ever since returning home. He threw pitches in the backyard. He jogged. He did sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups. He bought books on karate and practiced in his room.

“You know where you’re going,” Jason told his reflection. “You always go there when you’re feeling like this. No point in waiting around.”

He went and removed the hand from the shoe box and placed it in a plastic grocery sack, which he wadded into a black backpack stocked with provisions. He wore a gray T-shirt and tied a lightweight jacket around his waist. He put on a new pair of sturdy boots, zipped a disposable waterproof camera into a jacket pocket, shrugged into the backpack, and slipped a pocketknife into his jeans pocket, just in case today would be the day.

At the Vista Point Zoo, Jason pulled the season pass from his wallet and flashed it to get inside. Ignoring the crowds, he strode directly to the hippo tank. As he had done on more than twenty occasions since returning to Colorado, Jason took up his regular position leaning against the guardrail.

The first time he had revisited the zoo, Jason had intended to leap into the tank and get swallowed by the hippo again. But as he stood staring at the lethargic beast, doubts had begun to assail him. What if the hippo was no longer a gateway? It could have been a one-time occurrence. What if the hippo refused to swallow him? What if it mauled him after witnesses watched him intentionally enter the tank? He would get locked up.

Jason sighed. Every time he came to the zoo, he wore his boots and brought the hand, the backpack, and the pocketknife. And
every time he just stared at the hippo until he eventually went home.

He had considered trying to find the stone archway that had brought Rachel to Lyrian. All he knew for sure was that it was somewhere off in the middle of the Utah badlands. The way Rachel had told the story, it sounded like the gateway was only open for a brief time. He also worried that searching for the arch could end up connecting him to Rachel’s disappearance.

One way or another, he had to return to Lyrian. His friends needed the information he knew about Maldor and the fake Key Word. He needed to show Rachel how she could return home. His current life seemed unbearably mundane and insignificant when weighed against the duties awaiting him elsewhere.

Last year, Jason had not understood why Matt’s older brother, Michael, had wanted to enlist in the military. Jason and Matt had argued that the decision was impractical and dangerous for a guy with so many other options, but Mike had been determined. He had joined the marines a month after graduation. It had been something Mike had wanted to do, in spite of the potential hazards and inconveniences. Now Jason had discovered something about which he felt much the same way.

Perhaps he could learn to ignore his experiences in Lyrian, to pretend that the information he knew was not crucial to the destinies of countless people, including many he cared about. But Jason had no desire to forget what had happened. He had become involved in a struggle much larger than himself, he had people depending on him, he had found a cause worth fighting for, and just when he had gained information vital to that cause, he had been forced to return home.

The hippo was his best hope for returning. He lay at the bottom of the tank, motionless. Jason sighed. Just because he needed to get back didn’t mean the hippo would comply.

A little redheaded kid stood beside Jason on his tiptoes. “Make it come up, Mommy,” he complained.

“The hippo’s resting,” the woman behind him explained. “He can hold his breath for a very long time.”

Jason clasped his hands together. Should he go for it, just dive in? Maybe. At least he would wait until he was unobserved. Even though the zoo was fairly crowded today, an opportunity would eventually arise.

Secretly, though he hated to admit it, he knew he would not jump. He had already passed up countless opportunities. It was just too uncertain.

“What’s that music, Mom?”

Jason glanced at the kid and then listened.

He heard a distant, basso melody, much like a tuba, but somehow richer. Jason’s hands squeezed the railing. How long had it been playing before he had noticed it? The resonant melody was gradually increasing in volume. He looked at the woman beside him.

“You hear that?”

The woman nodded, her brow furrowed. “Is it coming from the tank?”

“I think so.” Jason bit his lower lip. He could have elaborated that the music was originating from a separate reality through the hippopotamus.

Jason felt his heart hammering. Here was evidence. The gate was open. If he was ever really going to do this, the time had arrived. He would be foolish to expect a more obvious opportunity. He gripped the railing more tightly.

Did he really want to go? How would his family feel? He wasn’t much closer to his parents than he had ever been. They had made a real effort after his return, although the attention had mostly
made him feel like a psych patient being handled with kid gloves. He appreciated the intent, and had tried to show it, but he and his parents had never really been on the same wavelength. Once the excitement of his return had faded, the same old patterns of life had resumed. Still, a second disappearance would certainly be hard on them. Poor Matt would be stunned.

This trip to Lyrian didn’t have to be permanent, though—he knew a way back. Sure, deadly enemies awaited him. There was a very real chance he would get killed and never make it home. But what he needed to accomplish was worth the risk. He had to let Galloran and Tark and the others know that the Word was a fraud. And he had to rescue Rachel.

Jason glanced back at the Monument to Human Stupidity, a glass case displaying items careless people had tossed into the hippo tank. If the hippo mauled him instead of gulping him into another world, maybe they could hang his corpse in there.

If he succeeded in being swallowed before the eyes of this woman and her son, what would his family and friends think? Surely they’d assume he was dead. They would probably decide he had succumbed to depression and lost his mind. How would people explain the hippo swallowing him whole? Though large, the animal did not look big enough for such a feat.

Then again, as long as he made it back to Lyrian, who cared what others thought? It might be a little harder to explain his reappearance next time, but he could stress about that later.

The volume of the music continued to increase, still just the deep notes of a single instrument. The placid hippo did not stir from the bottom of the tank. Jason rubbed his palms together. He looked over at the woman, who was leaning against the rail, attentive.

She met his gaze and then said, “Isn’t that peculiar?”

“Yep. I’m going to investigate.” Taking a deep breath, Jason
flung himself over the railing and plunged into the water. He stroked down to the hippo, which remained motionless. Hesitantly, he touched him on the snout, receiving no reaction.