Shimmer (15 page)

David sighed and turned to gaze at his mother and Rodney through the portal.

Kora turned to watch them, too. She squeezed his hand. ‘It might be the last chance you get.'

She focused on the present. It took all her control to not let her thoughts wander to what-ifs or maybes. There was no room now for doubts, only the job at hand and that was to defeat Vennum.

She concentrated on the list she had made, carefully summoning each item. She looked up as David returned.

She could hear Marcia crying in the next room. ‘Did you not make peace?' she whispered.

‘Not really.' David rubbed tiredly at the stubble on his head. ‘She asked me to never disappear like that again.'

‘And what did you say?'

‘The truth.' David turned to stare out the window. ‘What I could tell her of it, anyway.'

‘What exactly do you mean?'

‘I told her I would be going away for a while and that I wasn't sure when I would be back, but that it was really important and something that I had to do.'

Kora was incredulous. ‘What did she say to that?'

David sighed. ‘She begged me not to leave and told me time and again how much I was breaking her heart.'

‘Would it have been easier not to tell her?'

‘Easier, yes.' He turned away from the window. ‘But it would hurt her more to simply find me missing again.'

Kora looked sympathetically at him. The human boy in front of her was so much more than she had expected when she had first met him. She handed him the backpack she had prepared. ‘The spare mask and the chloroform bomb are in there, plus a couple of other emergency items.'

He opened it and had a look through the contents. Then he zipped it up and swung it easily onto his back. ‘And our masks?'

She waved her hand and they appeared around both their necks. ‘I think we should wear them so that we can put them on quickly if we need to.'

David nodded. ‘Is there anything else on your list?'

‘That's everything.' She looked up at him. ‘Are you ready?'

‘Not yet.'

She watched him walk over to the small cupboard by the bed. He opened it and pulled out an old box. Inside it there was a Swiss Army knife and a compass that he put in his pocket. Then he lifted out an old photo that looked as though it had been folded and unfolded a thousand times. He stared down at the picture and then bent his head over it and murmured something too quiet for her to hear. When he finally stood and turned to face her the photo was gone, hidden somewhere beneath his T-shirt. With a jolt to her heart she realised that something about him had changed. Despite his ordinary clothes he no longer stood in front of her as a boy, but as a soldier prepared for battle.

His voice was firm. ‘I'm ready.'

She nodded and looked toward her globe in time to see Amurru emerge. He shuffled over and stopped in front of David. ‘On behalf of the High Council of Genesia, I express our sincere gratitude for what you are about to do.'

Before David could answer he turned to Kora and taking her hand sank to one knee. ‘Be safe, Empress,' he said and touched her hand to his bowed head. ‘I will eagerly await your return.' She thought she saw the sheen of moisture in his eyes as he released her and turned away without another word.

Speechless, she simply glanced at David and then, with a wave of her hand, shimmered them both to one of the most isolated places in Australia — the Simpson Desert.

The sun had risen on the desert turning the landscape a magnificent golden red. They had planned to do this at night but now it somehow seemed fitting that they would travel at the dawn of a new day because the outcome, for good or for bad, would also bring the dawn of a new era for Genesia.

David had been quiet since their arrival. ‘How much longer do we have to wait?'

‘About ten more minutes.'

‘You look tired.'

‘Thank you,' she said. ‘So do you.'

She was glad to see a small smile tug at his mouth. ‘I only meant to ask if it will affect your powers.'

‘Maybe a little.' She shrugged. ‘But it cannot be helped. Even if we waited to do this I think it would be impossible for me to sleep now.'

Emptiness stretched out around them and David moved to stand in front of her, his face serious. ‘I want you to know, Kora, that no matter how this turns out I will have no regrets.'

‘Even if Vennum kills you?'

‘The chance to see my father again is more than I could have hoped for.' He reached out and gently grasped her hand. ‘And I hope that you get the chance to see your father again, too.'

The sincerity in his voice brought the sting of tears to her eyes and she quickly blinked them away. Pulling her hand out of his she turned. ‘I think we have waited long enough.'

Kora stood with her back to the sun, the golden rays forming a shimmering halo around her. She lifted her arms and centred her power. The location was easy to find. They were going back to the cave where they had found his father's blood. But the time would be harder. They had to go back five years, to the day his father had been reported missing. The time of day had been an even harder decision to make. They knew from the official Army report that he had last been seen at 3.00 pm. David's watch had stopped at 3.17. In the end they had decided they would return to 2.50 pm and, with a little luck, see David's father in the last moments of his life.

Kora focused, summoning all her power until her chest ached with the force of it as she pushed her way back through the heavy glue of time. She gasped for air as the weight of the years squeezed her lungs. She felt like she was drowning in time. Finally, there was a flash of light and a tiny pinprick of a portal opened in front of her. She closed her eyes, summoned every last drop of her power and forced it to open further. She groaned with the effort, it was like swimming through mud. Then finally, with an exhausted moan, she dropped to the ground.

‘You did it.'

David's excited voice reached her and she struggled to pull herself up. ‘Vennum,' was all she could manage to say.

She felt David's strong hands clasp her and pull her to her feet. They only had seconds before Vennum would be after them. Without hesitation David dragged her to the portal and jumped through, pulling her with him.

They landed on the other side with a thud and covered in a sticky layer of something that resembled a spider's web. She immediately turned back to the portal and, with a sigh of relief, closed it down.

‘Are you okay?' David was kneeling beside her looking worried. ‘Was Vennum there?'

‘I am okay, I think.' She sat for a moment resting her head on her knees. ‘I did not see Vennum, but he will be there now.' She lifted her head to give him a small smile. ‘That was a lot of power. I thought for a moment I was not going to be able to do it.'

‘But you did do it, Kora.' David reached out to help her to her feet. ‘I think we'd be safer inside the cave. In case someone sees us.'

Kora scanned the barren landscape. ‘Only a human would want to go to the middle of a war zone.'

‘Come on,' he said. He pulled her towards the cave.

They stepped into the familiar darkness. ‘There is no one in here,' she said.

David walked to the wall of the cave. ‘There's no blood on the wall.' His voice was hoarse. ‘My father — he's still alive!'

Kora stepped out of the cave into the bright sunlight. Hot wind whirled around her, lifting the dry, powdery sand and whipping her hair into her eyes. She would have shielded herself from the heat, but she needed to save every ounce of magic to open the time-travel portal to return home. She squinted into the afternoon glare.

David stepped out of the cave and stood beside her. Below them the desert sands stretched away for as far as they could see, disappearing into a cloudy haze on the horizon.

‘Come on,' said Kora, clambering down the hillside. She was exhausted but knew they did not have much time. ‘We have found our hiding place inside the cave, now we need to find somewhere out here to hide before your father comes.'

David nodded. They scrambled about two hundred metres from the cave to a place where five tall boulders jutted up from the ground like the grotesque fingers of some long-dead giant. They squeezed in through one of the wider gaps to stand in the centre. The fingers of rock towered around them like a cage. ‘This should give us some cover,' she said, ‘no matter which direction your father comes from.'

‘How long do you think we have to wait?'

‘Not long. A few minutes at the most.'

David dropped his backpack onto the sand and leaned against one of the boulders, his eyes scanning the desert. ‘You know, Kora, I still can't believe I'm about to see my father again, after all these years. It seems like we are doing the impossible.'

‘I know. Even for a genie, this is an unbelievable thing to be doing.'

David turned to face her. ‘I keep wondering, if my father wasn't killed by an enemy soldier, then how was he killed? Was it an accidental death? Did he fall off a cliff? Did a wild animal attack him?'

Kora nodded. ‘At least we will not have to wait and wonder for much longer.'

‘There's something else I keep wondering about, Kora.' David spoke quickly, his voice strange, wavery. ‘What if my father can be saved? What if he is attacked by a wild animal and we can stop it?' She heard the hope creeping into his voice. ‘What if he is injured, and bleeding to death, but we can get him to a hospital?' He reached out and grabbed Kora's hands. ‘It's possible, isn't it?'

‘I do not know, David.' She smiled sadly at him. ‘I just do not know.' Kora thought about everything she had learned on the theory of time travel. ‘It is not known whether history can be changed during time travel. But most Genesians believe that it cannot.' She watched his face. ‘They not only believe that you cannot change history, they believe it would be wrong to do so.'

He nodded, but she could still see the hope in his eyes. He turned to gaze out between the boulders again. ‘Where are they?' he murmured. ‘It must be almost time.'

She turned to scan the horizon in the other direction. The hot wind whipped the dry desert sand up into squalling dust clouds. Finally a few faint sounds came to them.

David grabbed her arm. ‘Did you hear that?'

She nodded. They peered in the direction of the sounds. Then they saw them. A small contingent of soldiers materialising out of the swirling dust. They were mostly on foot, marching in front of a jeep, and were heading out from around the base of a distant rocky outcrop.

‘We're miles away, Kora,' said David. The glare from the afternoon sun was blinding and he shielded his eyes with his hand, straining to see. ‘And they're not even heading this way.'

She glanced up at the nearby cave where they knew his father was soon to die. ‘No wonder they did not ever find your father,' she whispered. ‘It is so far from where they would have been looking for him.'

David turned to her, his face anxious. ‘We'll never see anything from here, Kora.' He grabbed her hands. ‘Can you spare the energy to shimmer us a bit closer?'

She looked at his panicked expression. She couldn't let him down. Not now that they had come this far. She gave one quick nod. ‘I have to be able to.'

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and she shimmered them both into a position slightly ahead of where the men were marching. Further out in the desert there were less places to hide, but they managed to find a boulder just big enough for them both to crouch behind.

They huddled down, back to back, peering around the rock. The Australian soldiers were marching almost directly ahead of them now, trudging heavily, guns slung over their shoulders.

‘Can you see your father yet, David?'

He shook his head. ‘But I know he was rostered on as one of the rear guards the day he died.' He glanced back at her. ‘Today, I mean.'

Kora nodded. Some distance behind the jeep, almost completely shrouded in the clouds of dust, she could just make out the ghostly shapes of two or three soldiers. One of those men had to be David's father.

David was tense beside her. ‘Stay here,' she whispered. ‘Do not do anything stupid.'

The jeep rolled by them, and then the rear guards were there. They could make out the men more clearly now they were closer.

‘I see him, Kora,' he said. ‘It's him, there, the one closest to us.'

For one wild moment Kora thought David was going to sprint the short distance across the sand to his father. She turned to grab at his shirt, but then everything dissolved into chaos. A flash of light streaked through the air above his father's head, slicing open a hole in the empty sky, and a man wearing a strange, bright red coat fell through it. He dropped out of the sky right on top of David's father, the two of them falling to the ground in a tangled heap. It happened so fast that David's father didn't have time to react.

Kora stared, mouth gaping. She couldn't believe her eyes. She recognised the man in the red coat! ‘It is Rihando,' she croaked.

David's father barely had time to yell before another group of Genesian men materialised out of thin air just metres away from them. Rihando sprang to his feet and grabbed David's father, hauling him up by an arm. He waved his hand in the direction of the men charging towards him and an explosion of sand flew up from the ground in front of them. The flying sand surrounded everyone in a thick blanket that was impossible to see through.

David and Kora stood staring into the swirling cloud. It had all happened in less than ten seconds, and the other Australian soldiers must have seen or heard something unusual because they were returning to investigate. But when the hot wind cleared away the dust cloud everyone, David's father included, had vanished.