The Last Portal (4 page)

‘This is
unreal,’ Chris muttered under his breath.

‘Awesome,’ Joe
agreed, drawing alongside him.

The distortion
started spinning. The key flew out of Chris’s hand and vanished
into the blur. Suddenly they found themselves struggling against a
powerful wind that threatened to suck them into a growing vortex.
Chris felt himself being dragged forward as the vortex spun faster
and faster, increasing the strength of the wind. As the wind
increased, the stream itself appeared to lift up and funnel into
the centre of the vortex. Leaves, branches of trees and even small
rocks flew past him. The force continued to build until Chris felt
his feet sliding on the loose gravel of the creek bed. Susie flew
past and vanished, followed closely by Joe. Finally, Chris was
swept up and sucked headfirst through the vortex after his
friends.

Cathora

Chris tumbled a short
distance and ended up in the middle of a prickly bush. He was
completely soaked. The key had landed next to him, amongst some
rocks. When he picked it up, although still warm, it was much
cooler than before, and changed immediately to red. The wind that
had thrown him through the vortex only moments earlier was gone. In
fact the distortion itself was now barely visible and could easily
be missed. And there was something else; a control panel, or
something resembling one, close to the distortion.

Joe and Susie
had landed in an untidy heap some distance away and were slowly
untangling themselves, groaning noisily as they did so.

Chris flexed
his legs and arms. Nothing seemed broken. When he looked around, he
realised none of his surroundings were familiar. The boulders, the
stream and cliffs were all gone. In their place was a forest with
tall, umbrella-shaped trees he couldn’t identify. It was cold too,
maybe ten degrees cooler.

Joe had climbed
to his feet and was slowly pivoting on his heels as he gazed around
him.

Susie hadn’t
risen from a sitting position. Her hair, always a wild tangle at
best, was now plastered to her face.

‘The trees are
like huge mushrooms,’ she exclaimed, parting her hair and looking
up. ‘And this place smells different.’

Chris stood up
and brushed some of the mud off his clothes. The tree trunks were
strange colours; red, grey, and shades of bluey-brown. He looked up
and realized the trees were similar colours. And Susie was right
about the smell. A slight breeze carried with it scents and odours
he couldn’t identify - sweet, musty, spicy…he couldn’t really
identify any of the smells.

‘I don’t
recognise any of this,’ Joe said, wrapping his arms around his
soaking clothes, ‘and I’m cold and wet. ‘We shouldn’t be here…we
gotta get back.’

Chris focused
on the device next to the distortion. It was about the size of a
large suitcase with a screen and key board on top.

When Joe saw
it, he rushed past Chris.

Susie sprang to
her feet, after him. ‘Don’t touch anything!’ She reached Joe just
in time to pull his hand away from a large button he was about to
press.

‘Well, don’t
you want you go back?’ Joe said, wrenching his hand away from
Susie’s grasp.

‘That button
could do anything. Even transport us to another place
entirely.’

‘Well...’ Joe’s
thin eyebrows knitted together in concentration, ‘how else are we
ever going to get back?’

‘I’m sure
there’s an explanation for all this.’ Chris said, stepping up
behind them.

Susie turned to
him.

‘I just can’t
think of one… yet,’ he said with a shrug.

‘Nothing can
explain what just happened,’ Joe replied.

Before Chris
could stop him, Joe reached across to the distortion and thrust his
hand through. When nothing happened, he walked straight through and
appeared out the other side. ‘Maybe we’ve been sucked through a
time machine,’ he suggested, walking back through the distortion a
second time. ‘That’s why this place looks so different. It’s
millions of years ago.’

Joe could
always be counted on to come up with the most ridiculous
explanations. ‘I don’t see any dinosaurs,’ Chris commented.

‘Well, we’re
only just arrived, haven’t we?’

‘I don’t
recognise any of these words,’ Susie said, leaning over the control
panel and running her fingers across a series of symbols.

Chris moved up
beside her. The symbols looked a bit like stick figures with
geometrical shapes like triangles and squares all mixed in.
Certainly nothing he had ever seen.

In front of
them, the land was sloping gently upward, suggesting they were on
the side of a hill or mountain. But it was difficult to tell since
the tree canopy obscured everything. Further down the slope he
noticed that the ground cover gave way to rock. Here the canopy
thinned. Deciding it was worth a look, he jogged down the slope a
short distance. The rock formed part of a rock ledge that ended in
a cliff. Chris crept up to the edge and peered out. He found
himself staring out at a totally alien landscape. Countless saw
tooth-shaped mountains, covered in sheets of ice and snow,
stretched as far as he could see. The closest mountains stood
beyond a gold-coloured lake, which lay directly below him, some
distance away.

‘Over here,’ he
yelled back to the others.

Susie and Joe
arrived soon afterwards and stood in silence next to him.

On its shore of
the lake stood what looked to be a village, except it wasn’t like
any village he had ever seen. The houses were more like stone
towers then houses, which rose above the forest canopy, like a
series of rounded spikes. The tops of these towers were interlaced
with walkways and roads, crowded with figures. Chris was pretty
sure that some of these figures weren’t human.

Susie pointed
to the sun. ‘Look at the colour.’

The sun was
much redder and larger than the Earth’s sun. This, at least,
explained some of the strange colours around them. But it also
meant they couldn’t be on Earth, or even in the same solar system,
for that matter.

There was a tap
on Chris’s shoulder, and he turned around to see Joe pointing
toward at a tall, dark haired man.

‘Welcome to
Cathora,’ the man said with a faint smile.

Instantly Chris
recognised the grey face and pale green eyes.

‘My name is
Batarr,’ the man said.

Some type of
flying creature started circling. Like everything else here, it
bore little resemblance to anything that Chris had ever seen.
Instead of one pair of wings, it had two pairs that appeared to
flap independently of each other, like a huge dragonfly. The
creature circled once then landed on a tree branch next to Batarr,
neatly folding its wings into its body as it landed. Chris
estimated it was the size of a large turkey, but there the
resemblance stopped. It had a broad leathery face, a mouth full of
sharp teeth and oval shaped eyes. The rest of its body was covered
in soft grey fur, except for two scaly legs, which ended in sharp
talons.

‘This is Sasli,
my companion.’

The creature
dipped its head once, as though acknowledging Batarr’s words.

‘Do you have
the key?’ Batarr asked.

Chris, feeling
as though he was still in one of his dreams, pulled the key from
his pocket.

‘Very good.’
Batarr gave a satisfied nod. ‘Chris, I’m very happy to finally meet
you in person.’ He smiled warmly. ‘And, of course, your two
companions, Susie and Joe.’ He paused, studying each in turn. ‘It
will be dark soon and considerably colder. I have a warm fire
waiting for us and a change in clothes.’

Chris had
forgotten how wet and muddy he was. Joe and Susie were also looking
at their wet clothes.

‘There is much
to talk about, but it’s too dangerous to linger long in this place.
If you would please follow me, I’ll answer all your questions.’

With this
comment he abruptly turned and walked off. The creature unfolded
his wings and fluttered after him.

‘What did he
mean when he said he was happy to meet you?’ Susie asked Chris.

‘And how did he
know our names?’ Joe asked.

‘What..?’ Chris
was still trying to comprehend the sight of someone walking off
with a creature that resembled a cross between a butterfly and a
bat fluttering over his shoulder.

Joe nudged
Chris in the side. ‘How does he know you?’

Chris explained
how Batarr had appeared in his dreams. But he could offer no
further explanation as to what any of this meant.

‘We have
creatures that are similar to your wolves,’ Batarr called back when
no one moved. ‘And they’re always on the lookout for an easy meal,
so I would advise you all to keep up.’

After glancing
at each other one last time, the three friends ran after him.

The party soon entered
a narrow gully filled with prickly bushes, similar to the type
Chris had landed in. Batarr searched among these bushes and found a
narrow path that weaved toward a cluster of large trees. ‘It’s not
long now,’ he called back, before striding ahead again.

They reached a
tree which seemed to consist of a number of smaller trunks fused
together. Chris estimated the entire trunk was the size of a small
house. It rose vertically for nearly fifty metres before branching
out into a thick mat of green and brown foliage. At ground level
the trunk split into a tangle of roots that reminded Chris of the
arms of an octopus. A path was cut through these roots that ended
at the base of the tree.

Sasli was
perched on top of one of the exposed roots, waiting for them.

When Batarr
approached, Sasli burst into song. He nodded, then walked straight
into a narrow passage carved out of the trunk. When the others
followed, they found a door which opened on to a spiral staircase.
The stairs led down into a large roughly circular chamber, with a
beautifully carved wooden table at one end and a large fireplace at
the other. Along the sides of the chamber, set in metal holders,
were a series of glowing crystals that bathed the chamber in a soft
red glow. Batarr led them to the fireplace and gestured for them to
sit on some chairs arranged in a semi-circle around the fire.

Once they had
settled, Batarr went to a cupboard and pulled out some thick robes
and offered them. After some hesitation they changed out of their
wet clothes while Batarr set about lighting a fire.

They watched in
fascination as Batarr used a flint box to strike sparks into straw
at the base of the fire. With only a few strikes a fire crackled
into life.

‘I apologise
for not explaining anything when we first met,’ Batarr said, when
he was satisfied the flames had taken amongst the kindling. ‘But
it’s dangerous to linger too long on the surface.’

‘Where are we?’
Joe asked.

‘I’ll answer
all your questions soon, but first please listen to what I have to
say.’ Batarr threw a few fagots on to the growing flames then came
and stood directly in front of them.

This was the
first time Chris had seen Batarr up close, and it was clear he
wasn’t human. Apart from his grey skin, his eyes had no pupils or
eyelashes, which gave the unnerving impression that he was
constantly staring at whoever he looked at. The rest of his face
was human-like, except his nose was too short and slightly
upturned. From the lines under his eyes, Chris estimated, Batarr
might be in his late thirties. That’s if these people aged at the
same rate as humans.

‘This may sound
strange, but you have all fallen through a portal into another
dimension,’ Batarr continued, looking at each of them in turn.

‘You’ve having
us on,’ Joe said after a moments silence, glancing around at Chris
and Susie.

‘I assure you,
I’m not,’ Batarr replied. ‘You have already seen things that
couldn’t possibly exist on your planet.’

‘We didn’t fall
through,’ Susie said. ‘We were sucked through.’

Batarr looked
at her for a moment. ‘Yes, that’s probably more accurate. It was
necessary that you came.’

‘You did it?’
Chris asked.

‘In a manner of
speaking... yes,’ Batarr replied. He held up his hand before Chris
could ask any further questions. ‘Please let me explain. I’m a
Guardian of a portal, or what you might term a gateway, that exists
between your dimension and ours. You’re in a parallel dimension.
This planet, Cathora, shares the same time and space as your world,
but vibrates at a different frequency. Earth and Cathora could be
considered sister planets. Our size is similar, so is our climate,
and our more intelligent inhabitants have followed a very similar
evolutionary path to humans on Earth.’

‘We can’t be in
another dimension,’ Joe said, looking at Chris and Susie as though
they could offer a better explanation.

‘I can see,’
Batarr continued, ‘that my words have caused more than a little
confusion.’ He paused, as though deciding what to say next. ‘I
think,’ he said finally, ‘that we need to go back to the beginning
in order to understand what I’m saying.’ He brushed a loose strand
of hair behind his ear. ‘As a Guardian of one of the portals to
your world, I have certain responsibilities to keep the balance
between your dimension and ours. You were brought here to ensure
that the balance between our two worlds is maintained.’

‘You mean you
can control events in our world?’ Chris asked.

‘No, no. I just
try and divert potential disasters, and I only interfere as a last
resort.’

‘And you use
these portals to monitor Earth?’ Chris asked.

‘Yes, to stop
humans destroying themselves and their environment. And there
are

Guardians on
your planet who will be doing the same to the planet that Earth is
linked to. It’s like a huge chain linked by portals. Each planet
monitors and looks after the next, so the dimensions are kept in
balance and intelligent life can thrive.’