Ice Phoenix (3 page)

Terrana rolled her eyes and huffed.
"Why couldn't you do it?"

"
Uh uh, I'm not allowed to." He grinned. "I'm learning to play the piano."

"
What! Since when?" Terrana was pretty sure that Archie had the musical sense of a farting monkey with bananas for fingers. Crabs were more musically gifted than he was.

"
Master Manoa offered to teach me and Mum agreed, but first I have to take it easy on my hands. He said I had too much
crescendo
!"

A sly smile came over her face.
"You mean
Father
Manoa. The only free time he has is on Saturdays so there goes your weekends. Because it's Mum agreeing to it, there goes your Sundays too coz she'll expect you to play in church."

She watched with satisfaction as Archie
's face changed from smugness to horror. She nodded sympathetically. "Yep, Mum finally got you," she said in a way that was not at all sincere. "Don't know how you didn't see that one coming."

Archie screamed.
"
Muum
! You didn't tell me that Master Manoa was a
priest
!"

The sound of softly padded footsteps entered the living room. The plump form of their mother appeared, complete with her pink slip-on dress that fell just above her knees, curly dark hair, dark eyes and ruby red lips. She loved lipstick.

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" she said innocently. "He's just come down from the next island and will be serving God here for a year."

"
Eeh? God doesn't live on this island, Mum! He's on the other island with all the
ulukaus
. You tricked me!"

Terrana sniggered.
Ulukaus
was Fijian slang for village idiots. It resulted in a slap on the head from her mother. "Oouu — what did I do?" she said, rubbing her sore head.

"
Go scrape the coconuts. I need some
lolo
for the fish and
bele
."
Lolo
was coconut milk and
bele
was a leafy green vegetable rich in iron, two of the most common ingredients for cooking on their island. She looked at Terrana and her eyes twinkled. Terrana had inherited her brown eyes and black hair from her mother, whereas Archie had his father's colouring.

"
All right," she grumbled, turning to leave. "Guess I'll be stuck scraping coconuts for the rest of my life now that Archie's playing the piano. I'm a young girl with dreams you know." She gave her mum a pointed look. "I plan to be a marine biologist, saving the ocean, and I need to be in the sea looking at sea stuff but nooooo — instead I'm doomed by my mother to scrape coconuts. Where is the love?"

She received only a raised eyebrow in response.
"I'm gonna have coconut hands like you, and men will think that I work in the kitchen." That didn't work either. Her mother just shook her head and walked back to the kitchen. Terrana scowled and glared at her brother, whose turn it was to snigger.

"
Still, it beats spending my weekends in church playing the piano just to impress some stupid girl."

She succeeded again. Archie was just too easy.

"Akanisi is not stupid! She's tall, smart and beautiful and she can dance too! Not like you, flapping like a dying fish on the sand."

"Fine then.
I'll scrape the coconuts and you'll play the piano every weekend — in church. Did I mention that Akanisi is leaving for Suva next week and will be away for the rest of the holidays?"

Her brother
's face twitched.

"
Guess not," she said, smiling sweetly before walking away. A few seconds later Archie followed, screaming.

"
Don't you dare touch those coconuts!"

That night, Terrana
went to bed early. As she lay there fiddling with the pearl around her neck, she wondered whether she would have the same dream again. She hoped so! Like a giant TV in her head, she would get to see strange people in weird worlds doing different things.

The pearl gleamed in the candle
light, distracting Terrana from her thoughts. A memory came to her. Black pearls were pretty common on her part of the island, and the women from the nearby village would gather and sell them at the market every week. They weren't very expensive because most of these pearls were tarnished in some way or another, marked by a ridge, hole, or bump.

Terrana didn
't particularly care for them either, but the one around her neck was special. Puddy had given it to her. It was quite large, covering her thumbnail easily. The dolphin had dropped it into her hand one day and, without knowing why, she had asked her father to make a clasp for it. She liked the way it had formed into a teardrop and no matter which way she turned it, it always caught the light. Because it was from Puddy, it was especially sentimental.

Even as she
admired the pearl in the candlelight, she was already falling asleep. Eventually, her head fell to one side and drool trickled down the corner of her mouth and onto her pillow.

I
mages flashed by, one after the other. A beautiful, alien woman sitting astride a strange, winged animal. A city where colourful and outrageously designed buildings reached the clouds. There were trains that were sleek and white, running on different levels above the ground. Footpaths moved on their own so people didn't have to walk, and tiny islands floated in the sky.

Terrana studied the people with something akin to awe; never in her life could she have imagined such a melting pot of alien races. She was looking
at large insects wearing helmets, dodging air traffic. A frog twice her height whirred by, a jetpack strapped to its shoulders. She could have also sworn she saw a jellyfish drive by in a car without wheels on the road below her.

A strange feeling dogged her — s
omething didn't feel right about the dream on this occasion. She didn't feel like an outsider as she usually did, looking in from another world. This time she felt
included
in the dream, and as she dangled high above the city watching everything go by, she experienced another strange sensation. She could
feel
the wind. She could
feel
the exhaust coming from the flying cars. Her heart clenched. Suddenly, she didn't feel very safe.

"It's just a dream, you won'
t really fall," she told herself. She inhaled deeply to quell her rising panic. A sound, unlike any she had heard before, almost withered her insides to jelly.

"Get off the tracks you
moron!"

Terrana nearly
dropped to the ground then. Wobbling around like a beginner on skates, she spun around and saw a train bearing down on her. Even though it was far away, it was travelling really fast. Terrana felt her heart flee her body, most likely to search for her stomach.

In her head,
she could imagine the horrified faces of the train drivers who were frantically depressing the horn in a desperate attempt to alert her to the danger. They didn't just alert her, however, but probably everyone else in the entire city.

Cars
and their startled drivers came to a screeching halt on all levels of the city as the alarm sounded. Train passengers on the surrounding tracks pressed their faces up against the glass, hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of the perpetrator; some even pulled their cameras out, hoping to record something.

A few
bystanders spotted her and pointed.

"
Move, stupid girl, move!"
they yelled.

It was all too much for Terrana. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to wake up
, but it wasn't any good. She could hear the screaming, the blaring horn, and she opened her eyes again. The train was almost upon her. Desperately, she tried to lurch out of the way. As her limbs flailed wildly in the air, she realised with a sinking heart that it wasn't helping. She was stuck.

Dinz
and Bob, the two train drivers of the M71 bullet train, had been laughing over something when Bob noticed the early detection signal. He stood up and walked over to the main control panel, pulling up the track screen. His eyes widened when he spotted the girl hovering beneath the fluorescent lit tracks.

"
Ey, Dinz — we got a hoverer! Better flash her to the cops. They'll soon be on her."

"
Yer have it. Initiating scan of the soon-to-be jailbird." Dinz pressed a bright yellow button on a smaller control panel next to him.

A three
dimensional image of Terrana popped up in front of them and as Bob leaned in for a closer look, he noticed something wasn't right. The girl lacked shoes; her attire was strange and out of place, and she seem terrified.

"
Hey Dinz, is it me or is she missing a hover-board?"

His partner took a closer look and his eyes widened.
"She ain't got no stizmo either! Dunt say she's caught in an anti-grav bub!"

By
stizmo, Dinz meant a flight-pack capable of carrying a single person over short distances. However, teenagers tended to fit them with additional boosters that allowed them to fly through the many levels of the city. This was illegal and caused endless headaches for the city's transport department and, as such, heavy fines and even jail terms were levied on all offenders.

The colour drained from the
conductors' faces as they realised the girl on the track was helpless and incapable of moving.

Bob was sweating. "Dinz,"
he said in a voice barely above a whisper, "We gotta deploy the bot."

"
De-deploy the bot?" Dinz looked scared. "But we ain't dun that before! Will it work?"

"
We don't have a choice. It's either that or splat!"

"
Yer right, Bob. We gotta do it now." Dinz flipped over the glass cover on the emergency panel where a line of coloured switches blinked rapidly. Then swallowing nervously, he depressed a grey switch. A whole second went by before the train shuddered and a panel on the outside slid out of position to reveal a chute.

Something shot out of the chute and sped for the helpless girl. At the same time, the entire a
larm system went off and the conductors were forced to cover their ears.

"
Get off the tracks you moron! What do you think this is? A frigging cleaning service?"

"
They should really change the message," said Bob, flinching.

"
Bob, it ain't gonna make it!" Dinz could hardly hear himself over the alarm as he watched the rescue bot veer off course. "And we ain't gonna stop in time either. Bob, this is gonna be our first rail kill in the history of this city!"

They could only watch in horror as their train bore down on the girl.

Splat!

Both men screamed as they heard the unmistakable sound of the train colliding with a soft body. When it finally rumbled to a stop, the rescue
bot appeared at the window. It was an old model, manufactured over fifty years ago, and yet the city had not seen fit to replace it because of its utmost confidence in the bullet trains to stop in time. Therefore, the rescue bot resembled something out of a junk yard, with its scratched black coat of paint and conical shape. It gave a polite knock on the window. The drivers noted with much despair that there was no girl with it.

"
Status report," said Bob, rather shakily.

"
I missed," replied the bot. "But not to worry, the train didn't."

Dinz
swooned and fell to the floor.

Terrana could have sworn that she had been millimetres away from being hit by the train when she experienced a gut wrenching feeling of having every cell sucked out of her body.
Poof!
She was in another place and, unfortunately, high up once more. So high that she could see clouds drifting below her feet.

"
Dream, dream, dream. This is just a dream," she told herself. She inhaled deeply several times, trying to build up the air in her lungs before releasing it in one go. "
I want my mummy
!"

When she screamed, her body tensed. When
she tensed, she fell through the air like a sack of potatoes. Course of logic was surprisingly quick with Terrana and she stopped screaming. Almost immediately she stopped falling, which was a Newton moment for her, accompanied by opportunistic thoughts of pure potential.

Just what else could she do in the air? She blew out gently and found herself drifting back. She
adjusted her position so that she was standing, and then she exhaled. As expected, she dropped several metres. She held her breath and found herself plummeting, something which she quickly rectified. After attempting a few swim strokes and glides, she became impatient. Except for the sky and clouds she couldn't see much of anything, which wasn't fun, so she decided to take a risk. She inhaled several times to open up her lungs and then held her breath. She plunged instantly.

With Herculean effort, she forced her eyes open during the breakneck descent. She instantly regretted it as the wind tore at
them, causing her eyes to water. However, something caught her attention and she kept them open. A never-ending lake, mountains covered in forest, and buildings came into view.

Terrana had seen this place befor
e
— many times actually. However, she had never been able to enter.
Would she succeed this time?
She released her breath, slowing her descent. She could see the dragon now.

The
'dragon' was an enormous structure built into the side of the mountain, and Terrana had taken a while to figure out that it wasn't alive. With its head raised to the sun and a mouth partially open, she could discern people walking inside. Its eyes were soulful yet fierce, and the upper half of the dragon's body rested above ground. Without knowing how, Terrana knew that the rest of it entwined its way below, into the great lake that seemed to stretch on forever.

Every detail of the dragon was intricate, down to the ridges on its red scales
, to the splayed claws on the ground. She landed lightly on its head, took one step and fell right through.

No one noticed her as she fell through the floors, unable to exert any of the control she had possessed earlier. Finally, after what seemed like forever, she reached the bottom. Her bare feet sank into a soft, beige carpet
that felt wonderful. She also felt heavier and more solid. Totally intrigued, she studied her surroundings — and was completely blown away.

A
large hallway meandered towards the left, heading upwards. However, it was what lay on the other side of its transparent walls, majestically lit up by angled lights to reveal a whole new worldthat robbed her of her breat
h
— she was under water.

Transparent domes and esplanades weaved in a serpentine fashion, further
embellished by strange and elaborate sculptures. Terrana was struck by how clear the bottom of the lake was; a combination of soft, white sand and smooth pebbles. She could see people, mainly young students, moving through the esplanades. She wasn't sure how they were moving, but they weren't strictly walking. Her eyes widened in surprise to see a boy crawling along the ceiling like a slug.

None of the students were human. They weren't
restricted to the dry confines of the domes either. As she inched closer to the glass, she saw there were others swimming outside. Long, graceful bodies with forked tails swept past, and Terrana noticed their faces were strangely alien, with tiny nostrils, glassy eyes, and very sharp teeth.

A gigantic creature,
similar to a manta ray, rose from the lakebed. Terrana gaped in awe as it enveloped her in the shadow of its enormous, wing-like pectoral fins, each spanning over ten metres. Its fantail consisted of slender fins, implying to Terrana that this creature was a master acrobat and speed-king of the lake. Other aquatic creatures swam by; they were all fascinating in their own right with their wonderful array of colours and compositions.

Terrana tried to
see up to the surface of the lake and failed. Disappointed, she left the hallway and headed towards the top of the dragon. Eventually, it opened up into a grandiose domed room where several daises were suspended in the air, connected by large disks that formed paths throughout the dome. It was swarming with students hovering around weird monitors. She guessed it to be a library.

She came to a fork in her path and chose left.
She had come to the conclusion that no one could see her, contrary to her time spent in the city. She encountered another fork and picked left again, heading upwards. After what seemed like forever, she arrived at a door. Constructed from wood, it appeared out of place with the rest of the school and its winding, transparent esplanades. The sleeping face of a strange creature was carved into it.

Even in sleep, it looked frightening. Hairs stuck out of pointy ears. Eyes blended in with the deep wrinkles on its forehead. Its nose was a
lmost nonexistent. And Terrana did not fail to notice the sharp teeth peeking from its wide mouth. Not knowing why, she reached out to touch the face. It came as no surprise when her hand passed right through, but it was a very big shock when the creature's eyes opened. She screamed and jumped back.

"
Oh hoo, a cheat!" it said nastily. But it couldn't see her. Its face emerged from the door, rotating left to right, trying to sniff her out. Terrana's worst fear came to life when it stepped out the door completely, like a stubborn glob of snot.

The creature was nearly as tall as her, with a stunted but muscular body. It wasn't wearing any clothes and she
did her best to avert her eyes from certain areas while trying to inch away from it.

"
Hide all you want, I'll still find you," it wheezed. Terrana didn't think that'd be too hard considering it was almost standing on top of her. Its eyes popped out suddenly, bouncing up and down on springy cartilage.

"
Eeew gross!" she cried out as some something thick and slimy touched her face.

"
Found you
! I can see my goo!" It tried to grab her with both hands but her reflexes were quicker. She ducked beneath them, diving through the door. It was still shut. How she knew she'd go through, she had no idea. She picked herself off the floor quickly, eyeing the door warily. Behind her, the door stretched and twisted, but no matter how hard it tried, the creature could not penetrate. Refusing to give up, it continued banging on the door.

Terrana ignored it with practised ease gained from dealing with her brother. Instead
, she decided to study her surroundings. By all appearances, it resembled an office. She padded across the smooth, wooden floor to the old bookshelf, curious about the type of books she would find. Most of them were leather-bound and tightly wedged in. She pulled one out, flipped through the pages and placed it back. Not a single word had made sense. She focused her attention elsewhere.

The furnishings in the room were surprisingly sparse. It contained a single
wooden chair and a mirror hanging over the fireplace — that was all. She'd seen more stuff in a toilet than in this room.

She spotted a crystal ball above the fireplace, pranced over and picked it up. There were planets inside and perhaps
... stars? She wasn't sure. She returned the ball to its place and chose to study the mirror next. That was a little more interesting with its delicately wrought metal frame featuring ships and cars. She glanced into the mirror and her heart flipped. There was a man reflected in it and he was watching her!

"
Just a dream, you're in a dream," she told herself. "No reason to be afraid." She reached out and touched the mirror. It was solid. Frowning, she turned around. A bare wooden wall met her eyes. If she were to go by the mirror, the man should be sitting behind that wall with a window at his back. Convinced that anything could happen in dreams, she took a deep breath and strode towards the wall. She didn't stop when she reached it.

She passed right through and found herself looking into the eyes of the man behind the desk. He was smiling. Terrana couldn
't help herself — she smiled back.

"
Hello," he said. "I was expecting you. What is your name?"

"
Terrana. How'd you know I'd be here?" She was curious now. He was the only person in this school who could see her. Also, he was the most human-looking.

"
We have monitors in this school. We know when someone else other than students and staff is here."

"
Oh." Then, "Are you a teacher here?"

He smiled again.
"Yes."

"
This is a really cool school. I like it here!"

This time he laughed. He looked much friendlier.
"Well, if you like it so much, why don't you become a student here?"

It was her turn to laugh. Fancy someone from
a dream asking her to attend dream school! "You're funny. You know I can't. You're a dream!"

He looked surprised.
Very surprised. "A dream? Are you trying to tell me that you don't think this school is real? Or that I am real? That you are dreaming about us right now?"

She nodded. She didn
't know why but she was starting to feel uncomfortable. It was becoming really hot in the room. The man asked her several more questions, which she answered, but she was beginning to sweat. Unable to bear it any longer, the words rushed out her mouth. "The air is so hot! It's getting hard to breathe. Please open your window!"

He rose from his desk quite suddenly, knocking his chair over
, and was at her side in an instant. "Don't be scared." He took her left arm, as if he was checking her temperature. Something on his face changed as he studied her.

"Terrana, listen to me closely. You are in great danger and you need to wake up right now! Do you understand me? You need to leave this office, this school, this place and wake up right now. Go! Leave this place immediately!"

"
You're hurting me! Let go!"

"
Wake up, Terrana! Get away from here! Wake up!" He was shouting. If he had intended to scare her, he succeeded. Terrana wanted nothing more than to get away from him. The heat around her was unbearable. Her dream was going all wrong. Suddenly, there was that gut wrenching feeling as she felt herself being sucked away. When she opened her eyes next, she knew she had woken up.

She was back in her room and
— her ceiling was on fire. Like a movie played in slow motion, she stared transfixed as the beam above her bed gave way and fell. Pain. Terrana screamed as it caught one of her legs. Her sheets burst into flames.

With a strength born from desperation, she hauled herself from under the beam, struggling to ignore the excruciating pain of being burn
ed alive. An ordinary person would have panicked while going up in flames, but not Terrana. She landed heavily on the floor and began rolling back and forth to put out the fire on her legs.

Where were her parents? Why weren
't they running into her room to rescue her? There was another danger now. Smoke. She could barely breathe and whatever she drew into her lungs choked her. She knew she had to get out of the house.

"
Muum." It was only a whisper, but by uttering that single word, Terrana released all her fear and anxiety into it. Something was terribly wrong. Her parents were light sleepers.

The pain of getting to her feet almost caused her to faint. She didn't realise that her left leg had been fractured by the falling beam. The sharp pain had been disguised under the agony of her burns
. Very slowly, she dragged herself to the door and stepped onto the landing. Her parents' room was at the end.