The Soldiers of Halla (4 page)

I'm not sure what made it all come together. Maybe it was something subliminal that I couldn't consciously place. Maybe it was a smell, or the shadows made by the sunlight that tried to peek through the gray clouds. It could have been any of those things, but I'm thinking it was the penguin and the polar bear. The two oddest clues helped me realize the truth.

I was indeed standing in an oasis. At least that's what many people considered it to be. It was a magical place that existed in an amazing city. I had been here before. Many times.

“We first brought you here the day before Shannon was born,” the familiar voice of a woman said. “Remember?”

I froze. Was it possible? It was the last thing I expected. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because it felt like too much to ask for. Maybe I had given up hope. Maybe I didn't want to open myself up to the possibility, only to be disappointed and crushed. I felt something nudge the backs of my legs. I didn't jump in surprise. I knew exactly what it was. I had felt it hundreds of times before, in another life. Memories like that become part of your being. Poking his head between my legs from behind, looking for attention, was my dog, Marley. His big, brown golden retriever nose pushed its way forward, followed by those big brown eyes. I could feel his whole body rock, as his tail wagged happily. I reached down and held his head with both my hands.

“Hi, Marley-Mar,” I said through my tears. “Where've you been?”

That's when I knew where I was. The buildings. The polar bear. The penguin. I was standing next to the sea lion pool in the zoo that was on the edge of New York's Central Park. At least, what was left of it. The huge, tilted building in the distance was now all too familiar. It was the Empire State Building. I was on Earth. What I still didn't know was
when
I was. At that moment, I really didn't care.

“Did you have to grow up so fast?” the woman said.

I had to hold myself back from breaking out in tears. Or bursting with joy. It's a fine line. I turned around to see them. My family. Mom. Dad. My little sister, Shannon. Though she wasn't so little anymore. How old was she now? Thirteen? She was now a young lady in jeans and a pink sweater. She looked perfect. They all did.

We stood facing one another, nobody really sure of what to do. I was suddenly hit with a fearful thought. I had been down this road once before, and it didn't have a happy ending.

“Is this a Lifelight jump?” I asked.

“A
what
?” Shannon asked with a wiseass look that can only come from a thirteen-year-old girl who has been working long and hard to perfect it.

“No, Bobby,” my dad answered. “It's us. For real.”

I couldn't move. It was too much for me to comprehend. I hadn't seen my family since the day they'd left me at home to go to the basketball game at Stony Brook Junior High. They had disappeared. My life had disappeared. Finding them was one of the driving forces behind everything I had done as a Traveler. Maybe the only driving force. And now, they were standing in front of me.

“So who won the game?” was the first question that came to mind.

Shannon rolled her eyes. “You're such a dork.” But she gave me a sly smile. I loved Shannon.

“Stony Brook lost,” Dad said. “Bad. They needed you.”

“And I needed you,” I replied.

“I know,” Mom said, barely holding back her own tears. “That's why we're here.”

That did it. I ran to them and threw my arms around my family. The moment I had longed for all those years had finally arrived. We were back together. The Pendragons were a family again. I don't know how long we stayed hugging that way. It could have been a week for all I cared. I wasn't going anywhere. I didn't want to let go, for fear they'd disappear again.

Dad put his hand behind my head and held my neck. His eyes were as red as mine were. “I'm proud of you, Son.”

I nodded in thanks and burst out in tears. I couldn't help myself. The floodgates of emotion and relief were open. Things were going to be okay. When I finally got my act together, I straightened up, wiped my eyes, and said, “So what the hell is up with Uncle Press? You gonna tell me what that guy's about or what?”

“We are,” Mom said with a chuckle. “You're going to learn everything. But first we have to go home.”

“To Stony Brook?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” Mom answered. “We're going to the place where you were born.”

I let that sink in, then added, “Something tells me we're not going to Second Earth.”

“We're not” was Mom's simple, direct answer.

It was the right answer. The only answer. Though it scared me to death. I was finally going to learn the truth.
About me. About the Travelers. And maybe most important, about Saint Dane.

“Then let's go,” I said.

Dad led the way. Mom kept her arm around my shoulders, Shannon's arm was around my waist. Marley ran in front of us, his big bushy tail wagging.

We took maybe two steps when I realized…

We weren't on Earth anymore.

W
e had stepped out of one strange situation, directly into another.

There were no flumes involved. No journey that I could tell of. I didn't get the sense that we had traveled any distance at all. Except that one moment we were walking through the windswept ruins of the zoo in Central Park, and a second later we were in an environment I can best describe as being alien. Though I guess “alien” can mean a lot of things. I stood in wonder, looking around at the most barren, forlorn chunk of real estate I had ever seen.

The air was clear. That's the best thing I could say about the place. It was night, though there was plenty of light to see by. The sky was full of stars. More than I could imagine. I didn't recognize a single constellation. The night sky was alive with thin, wispy clouds of all shapes and sizes that moved quickly overhead. At least, I thought they were clouds. They weren't like any clouds I'd ever seen. Some glowed with color. Reds, greens, oranges, and yellows. Others were dark shadows. None were so thick that they blocked out the stars, yet they definitely had substance. I
could see right through these translucent bodies that shot across the heavens impossibly fast. Many blazed with light, as if they were somehow charged with energy. It was a tightly choreographed fireworks display in the vast night sky.

On ground level I felt as if I could see for miles, yet there was nothing to see. The landscape was made up of nothing but jagged gray rock. I saw peaks in the distance, chasms beneath them, miles of flat land in between. I thought of the lava field we once visited in Hawaii where the molten lava had spread and hardened, leaving a jagged world of gray. That's pretty much what this was, multiplied by about a million. There were no buildings. No trees. No sign of civilization. We stood at the bottom of a mountain of rock that jutted up higher than I could see. There seemed to be levels everywhere. Were there caves built into this dark matter? Could people live on this rock?

Dark matter. That's what the flumes were supposed to have been made of. The oldest known substance in the universe. The gray rock that made up this strange world looked exactly like the rock from the flumes. Was there a connection?

As much as this desolate world seemed dead, it wasn't empty. This is hard to describe, but I'll try. I sensed life. It's not like I saw people crawling around on the various levels of rock. I didn't. But I felt the presence of life. What I saw were shadows and light that moved quickly past on the edge of my vision. When I tried to look at them, they'd be gone. A few times I thought I actually saw the image of a person, but by the time I turned to focus…nothing. These maddening images danced beyond my ability to actually grasp them and understand what they were. Who they were. It seemed as if I were surrounded by ghosts.

Oddly, I wasn't scared. Confused maybe, but not scared.

The only thing normal about this place was my family. Though seeing them standing in that desolate place was about as abnormal as I could imagine. Dad had on his usual dark green khakis and his favorite faded Villanova sweatshirt. Mom wore a jean skirt and a black turtleneck under a white sweater. I already said that Shannon had on jeans and a pink sweater. Marley wore his blue collar that was embroidered with fish shapes. They looked about as normal as I remembered them. They were a typical-looking family from Connecticut…standing together on Mars.

They let me take in the surroundings without a word. I guess they were waiting for me to get used to the place. Yeah, right. Fat chance that would happen. After seeing all I thought there was to see, which wasn't much, one question jumped out ahead of all the others.

“So, uh, this is where I was born? Not exactly homey.”

“It wasn't always like this,” Dad replied. “This is what it has become.”

“What territory is it?” I asked.

“It isn't a territory,” Mom answered.

“Then what is it?” I asked, growing anxious.

“We call it Solara,” Dad said. “Though others use different names. It's the essence of Halla.”

I guess I should have followed that up with a surprised, “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” I didn't. Though I had no idea what he meant, I felt as if it were right. It made sense, like I already knew the truth. But I didn't. Or did I? At least, I was confident that it would eventually make sense. I didn't panic. I needed to learn. I kicked at a gray stone, sending it skittering across the rocky surface. I had
a million questions. The trick was to figure out which I needed answered first.

“Do you know what happened to me?” I asked. “I mean, about what happened after I left home?”

I was surprised that Shannon was the one to answer. “We know it all, Bobby. Everything. More than you, in fact.”

I didn't like the idea that my little sister was so well informed, but what the heck. If that was the worst of my problems, I figured I was doing okay.

“What happened to you guys?” I finally asked. “Where did you go?”

All three exchanged looks. It was time. I was going to find out why my family had disappeared.

“Let's sit down, Bobby,” Mom said softly. “We have so much to tell you.”

That made me nervous. It was as if she were getting ready to break some bad news and wanted me to be prepared.

“I'm good,” I said. “I'll stand.”

Shannon sat down on a hunk of rock, hugging Marley, keeping him happy, which wasn't too hard to do. Marley was a good dog.

Mom began, “Before we go any further, we want you to understand something. No matter what you hear, what you learn, you must remember that we love you. We have always loved you. Nothing will change that.”

Yikes.

“You're starting to worry me, Mom,” I said. “And after what I've been through, that's really saying something.”

“But you must know that,” she repeated. “It's important to us.”

“I know, Mom,” I assured her. “And I love you too. Tell me what happened.”

Dad began. “Once you learned that you were a Traveler, we were no longer needed. In fact, it was important for us to leave. If we hadn't, you might never have accepted your destiny.”

“So, you knew all about this from the get-go? Like, my whole life? You always knew I'd be chosen as a Traveler?”

“You weren't chosen to be a Traveler,” Shannon said. “You were
created
to be a Traveler.”

I changed my mind. I sat down.

“You weren't alone,” Mom added. “It was the same for all the Travelers. They were each put on their territory to grow up there, learn about its culture, become part of the world. It was all in preparation to try and stop Saint Dane.”

Dad said, “On each territory it was the job of the previous Travelers to mentor the new Travelers. To guide them and to give them a moral compass, based on their particular world, that would guide them during their difficult mission.”

I saw something on the edge of my vision. This time when I looked, I thought I caught a fleeting image, far in the distance. It looked like Kasha walking upright with another klee. It was Seegen. Her father. The Traveler from Eelong before her. Was she getting the same talk I was? Were all the other Travelers here in this barren, forsaken place learning of their true history?

“So the Travelers before my generation didn't battle Saint Dane?” I asked.

“No,” Dad said with certainty. “They were preparing you and the others for the battle.”

I nodded, letting this sink in.

“But you guys aren't Travelers. Or are you?”

“Not exactly,” Dad answered. “But we are the same as you. It was planned for you to have a Traveler mentor, but
circumstances changed. Saint Dane saw to that. He was already at work before you became a physical part of Second Earth. Things had to change. We became your family, and Press was given the task of mentoring you.”

“So who bailed? Who was supposed to be my mentor if it wasn't you guys or Uncle Press?”

“Alexander Naymeer,” Dad said flatly.

It was a good thing I was sitting down.

Naymeer was definitely a Traveler. But like Nevva Winter, he was corrupted by Saint Dane.

“Do you know what happened to him?” I asked tentatively. I hoped they didn't, since what happened to him was that I had killed him. That was the kind of nasty tidbit you wanted to keep from your family.

“I told you,” Shannon said with a hint of thirteen-year-old impatience. “We know it all.”

So much for keeping things from my family. I jumped up and paced nervously. Though I had wanted to know the truth for so long, hearing it wasn't easy. It was a lot to get my head around, and we were just getting started.

“Saint Dane told me we were illusions,” I said. “I don't know, maybe I'm in denial, but it's kind of hard to accept that none of us are actually real.”

“Because we
are
real!” Mom said with passion. She quickly stepped forward and took both my hands. “I told you before, sweetheart, the love we have for you, and that I know you have for us, isn't a fantasy. Or a mirage. All that happened before you left Second Earth was reality. Everything we did. Everything we shared. It was real. We were given a gift. We spent more than fourteen years living on Earth, experiencing all that world had to offer. That can never be taken away from us. We were as human as anyone else.”

“But not anymore?” I asked.

She didn't answer. At least not with words. Her sad eyes said enough.

It was an odd feeling to know that my family had known the truth all along and had been keeping it from me. I guess that was all part of the deal, but still. They were my family! Mom and Dad taught me not to lie. As it turned out, they were lying to me every day.

“You couldn't know,” Mom said, as if reading my mind. “I'm sorry that we kept this all from you, but you needed to be a part of Second Earth. It was all about your being a normal person with the perspective and experiences of your territory. You were fighting for the people of Second Earth. In order to do that, you needed to believe you were one of them.”

I looked up at the starry sky, watching the colorful, charged clouds flying by. It was beautiful. Though as spectacular as that sight was, the ground around us was a total contrast. It was dark. Bleak. Desolate.

“What is this place?” I continued. “I'm afraid you're going to tell me we're really little green aliens from the planet Nimrod or something.”

When I looked down at my mom for her answer, I blinked. She stood in front of me, holding my hands, but I could see through her. Literally. I could see Shannon and Marley right through my mom.

“Mom?” I gasped.

“It's all right,” she answered soothingly.

It wasn't all right. Mom was disappearing. Her hands no longer had substance. I quickly glanced to Dad and Shannon. They too were flickering, as if they were lights that were slowly running out of power. Dad walked toward us, wavering between solid and transparent.

“I told you that Solara wasn't always like this,” he said soberly. Sadly. “This is what Saint Dane has wrought. His only hope of controlling Halla is by destroying all you see around you. Or at least destroying what it should be.”

I heard a quick bark from Marley. When I looked to my dog, he was gone. Disappeared.

“What's happening?” I asked in a panic.

Dad said, “Our ability to exist as physical beings comes from all that surrounds us here. We are fed by the essence of Halla. It's that very essence that Saint Dane has been methodically destroying.”

This was all getting a bit too cosmic for me. I needed answers, and it didn't look as if Mom and Dad were going to be around much longer to give them. Shannon jumped up, ran to me, and kissed me on the cheek. It felt like nothing more than a soft, sweet breeze. She was nearly gone.

“I miss you, Bibs,” she said. “Don't worry about us. Kick some ass, all right? We'll be watching.”

She had called me Bibs since she was a baby and couldn't pronounce Bobby. That had to have been real, right? I reached out for her, but too late. She'd disappeared. My sister was gone. Again. In the sky above me, I heard what sounded like rumbling thunder. I glanced up to see one of the dark clouds suddenly glow bright red.

“Mom?” I gasped in desperation.

My parents stood together. They were nearly gone.

“This is right, Bobby,” Mom said reassuringly. “You don't need us. We only came to see you again, and let you know that we're fine. That
you're
fine. You don't have to worry about us any longer.”

“But…where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” Dad answered. “And everywhere. Shannon
is right. We'll be watching. Your job isn't done just yet.”

“You can't go!” I cried. “I've got more questions now than before!”

“We love you, Bobby,” Mom said. “We're proud of you, and maybe most important, we believe in you.”

“I don't want to lose you again!” I screamed.

“Then make things right,” Dad said.

A moment later they were gone. I had lost my family. Again. At least, I thought I had. In the dark sky above I saw two more dark clouds crackle with light. One flashed yellow, the other deep blue. What the heck was that about? I found myself standing alone on a shelf of gray rock on a desolate world that was supposedly my birthplace. Not at all how I thought the day would play out. But was I truly alone? As I said before, I felt the presence of life around me. It was more like a feeling of energy, or spirit, than anything physical. I know, that's weird. It felt weird to me, too. But I wasn't afraid. Not even when I caught glimpses of figures that could have been people who floated by. I kept turning, hoping to bring one into focus, but that didn't happen. Could one of them have been Shannon, or my mom or dad? Was that what they meant when they said they weren't going anywhere? Were they still right beside me, only in some kind of spectral form? Or had they flown up and become colorful clouds in the sky?