D. MacHale - Raven Rise

Mark felt a lot of things. Fear, anger, embarrassment, frustration, confusion, and above all, nausea. There was a lot of nausea going on. Nowhere on that list was the feeling of pride.

Mark and Courtney left Mr. Paterson and took “the lift” (as they called the elevators in London) down to the lobby of the small office building. Waiting for them when they stepped off were Mark’s parents and Douglas “Dodger” Curtis, the feisty bellhop from the Manhattan Tower Hotel in New York City who had helped Courtney track down Mark. Dodger had become their guide to the territory, helping the aliens from Second Earth maneuver through the strange world of 1937.

“Well?” Dodger asked enthusiastically as soon as he saw Mark and Courtney.

The look on Mark’s and Courtney’s faces was all the answer they needed.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Mark said, defeated. “We knew destroying the prototype didn’t change anything. It was dumb to think we could have talked them out of developing Forge. I’ve been doing a lot of dumb things lately.”

“Stop,” Mrs. Dimond said. “You couldn’t have known any of this would happen.”

“I got played, Mom,” Mark shot back. “I did everything Saint Dane wanted.”

“And it backfired on him,” Mr. Dimond added. “The Travelers beat his army on Ibara, and now he’s trapped there.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, sounding even more depressed. “Along with Bobby.”

The group fell silent.

“So what do we do now?” Courtney asked.

Nobody was sure of what to say, until Mark finally spoke. “I think we go home. Back to New York. That’s where the flume is.”

Dodger offered, “The Queen Mary sails back in a couple days. I can book us return passage if I get a move on.”

“Can’t we just fly?” Courtney asked.

“How?” Dodger countered. “You got wings?”

Mr. Dimond observed, “I don’t think there’s regular air service across the Atlantic in 1937.”

“You mean people fly across the ocean on Second Earth?” Dodger asked. “Like taking the train?”

“Yeah,” Courtney said. “You get free pretzels, too.”

Dodger whistled. Courtney wasn’t sure if he was impressed by the idea of regular air service or free snacks.

“Do it,” Mark said confidently. “We should get back.”

“I’m on it,” Dodger declared, headed for the door. “Meet you all back at the hotel.” The little bellhop tipped his hat and was gone.

“We’re all tired,” Mrs. Dimond declared, always the mother hen. “We should get some rest.”

“You guys go,” Mark said. “I want to walk a little.”

“I’m coming with you,” Courtney declared.

A few minutes later Mark and Courtney were strolling along the southern border of Hyde Park, the massive expanse of green grass in central London. They looked like any other couple from 1937. Mark wore a dark gray suit with a fedora cap and a wool overcoat to ward off the November chill. Courtney wore a dress and a cream-colored overcoat. She even wore high heels and stockings. To her it was a costume for their meeting with Paterson. She didn’t think a stiff British businessman would take her seriously if she wore the pants and floppy wool hat she’d bought at Macy’s in New York. Turned out it didn’t matter.

The two had grown up since their adventure began when Bobby Pendragon left home to travel through the territories. They were now both seventeen…and felt around a hundred. They walked together along the sidewalk, their minds a million miles away from their bodies. For the longest time neither said a word. They walked past Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and on to the Houses of Parliament, where the famous Clock Tower with the bell known as Big Ben rose into the sky. Both stopped to look up at the immense tower in awe.

“Wow,” Courtney declared. “I had no idea. They should call it ‘Really Big Ben.’”

They continued along the river Thames until they reached Westminster Bridge. But their walk wasn’t about sightseeing-it was about taking time to think. Finally, on their way back toward Hyde Park, Courtney broke the ice.

“You know, maybe it’s a good thing we couldn’t stop KEM,” she offered. “At least now we know how things are going to play out. Technology on Earth is going to change. The dados are going to be created, but Bobby is going to beat them on Ibara. That’s all good, right? Who knows what might have happened if we’d stopped Paterson and his KEM geeks? We might have started a whole nother chain of events and Saint Dane might still be in business.”

“And Bobby might not be trapped on Ibara with him,” Mark muttered.

“Yeah, that,” Courtney whispered softly. “But it was his choice, Mark. He ended the war. Halla is safe from Saint Dane. Who knows? Maybe that’s the way it was supposed to be.”

“This is my fault,” Mark said.

“Stop!” Courtney shouted quickly. “You had no idea you were being manipulated. It’s not like you set out to invent something that was going to change the course of Halla. Come on!”

“I should have seen him coming,” Mark muttered.

“But you didn’t! Just like a whole lot of people all over Halla. What about me? I was fooled too, remember? Whitney Wilcox? Hello?”

“Except when you got fooled, it didn’t start a chain of events that changed the future of a bunch of territories and created a war.”

“Details,” Courtney said quickly.

“Really bad details.”

“Okay, so it led to a war, but it was a war that Saint Dane lost! Look at it this way, maybe he blew it. The way things have worked out, by getting you to invent Forge, Saint Dane set up his own defeat on Ibara. Now he’s trapped there. It backfired on him, Mark. Maybe you’re the hero in this whole thing!”

Mark stopped walking and looked directly at Courtney. “Do you really believe that?”

Courtney wanted to shout out, “Yes!”

She didn’t. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But it’s possible, right?”

“Let’s go home,” Mark said. “We’ll have plenty of time to figure things out on the boat.”

“I can’t believe we’ve gotta get on that tub again,” Courtney complained. “It’s nice and all, but it’s still just a floating hotel. Talk about claustrophobia.”

They had reached the Royal Albert Hall, the large round brick concert hall. Behind it was the small hotel where Dodger had found them all rooms.

“I want to walk a little more,” Mark said. “On my own.”

Courtney nodded. “Don’t be long. The sun’ll be down soon, and it’s getting cold.”

The two of them hugged.

“We did okay, Mark,” Courtney added. “Bobby would be proud.”

Mark didn’t respond. He wasn’t so sure he agreed. Courtney left him, headed for the hotel. Mark turned the opposite way and entered Hyde Park in the area known as Kensington Gardens. The trees were alive with autumn colors. Kids played pickup games of soccer. The air was turning colder, and Mark had to button up his coat to fight the chill. It was a beautiful day. Mark stood in the middle of a wide, grassy area and did a three-sixty to take it all in.

He had a moment. A brief moment. In spite of the fact that his best friend had sacrificed himself by destroying the flume so he couldn’t leave Ibara, and in spite of the fact that he felt embarrassed by having been duped by Saint Dane, Mark allowed himself a moment to think that the sacrifices might actually have been worth it. Saint Dane’s evil quest might be over. Halla might be safe. He even had the hope that they might have the chance to recapture some semblance of a normal life.

It was a great moment.

It didn’t last long.

“Hello, Mark,” came a familiar voice.

Mark spun quickly to see a woman standing near a thick oak tree, her hands shoved into the pockets of her long wool coat, her feet set apart defiantly.