D. MacHale - The Pilgrims of Rayne

Courtney froze. There was a lump in her throat. Her heart raced even faster. She was about to be reunited with Mark. The door opened and Sixth Officer Hantin poked his head in. He spotted Courtney and said, “No funny business now, miss.”

Courtney nodded silently. Sixth Officer Hantin stepped back into the corridor, and Courtney heard him say, “You sure you’ll be all right?”

There was no answer. The door opened a few inches farther and someone stepped inside. Nevva Winter.

The fallen Traveler stood there facing Courtney, looking every bit like an older woman from 1937. She wore a beautiful evening gown that sparkled with light cast from the single bulb in Courtney’s cell. Over the dress she had on a short fur wrap to guard against the night air. Her hair and makeup were perfect. She looked to Courtney like a glamorous movie star from the golden age of Hollywood.

She also looked like a traitor. Courtney wanted to rip her throat out.

“Do you know who I am?” Nevva asked.

“Where is he?” Courtney asked coldly.

“I’m not a villain, Courtney,” Nevva said calmly. “Neither is Saint Dane.”

Courtney wasn’t sure if she should laugh or scream.

“No, he’s a great guy,” Courtney said sarcastically. “Sure, he’s destroyed a couple of civilizations, but who hasn’t?”

“This is a revolution,” Nevva said, maintaining her composure. “There are casualties in every revolution. It’s unfortunate, but inevitable. The future of all humanity is at stake.

When you think of it that way, no price is too high.”

“Do you really believe that?” Courtney asked, her anger rising. “I mean seriously? The guy is a coldblooded killer. No, I take that back. There’s nothing cold about it. He enjoys it. How could you think whatever it is he has planned for Halla could be justified by the misery he’s caused?”

“Because I know what that vision is,” Nevva answered.

“Then please, share!” Courtney demanded. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me Bobby and the Travelers are wrong. Tell me the thousands-no, millions-of people whose lives he’s destroyed are all going to be better off because of his evil. I’d love to hear all that.”

Courtney walked closer to Nevva. With each step her anger grew. Nevva didn’t move. Courtney was a moment away from taking a swing at her when she saw something that made her stop. Someone else had entered the room. Standing in front of the open door, sheepishly, was Mark Dimond. Courtney saw him and nearly burst into tears. Suddenly Nevva meant nothing.

“Hi, Courtney” was all he said.

Courtney’s first thought was that in spite of the incredibly tense situation, Mark didn’t stutter. The second thing she realized was that Mark looked grown up. His curly black hair was cut short and, for a change, was combed. The wire-rimmed glasses made him look ten years older than he was. The bizarre image was completed by his tuxedo. He was no longer the nerdy kid from Stony Brook. Mark looked like a man. Courtney could barely breathe, let alone talk.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Nevva said, and quietly backed out of the room. Before leaving, she looked at Mark and said, “I’ll be right outside.”

She left. Mark and Courtney stood facing each other for the first time since the afternoon Bobby’s Journal #25 from Quiilan had arrived on Second Earth. It was later that night that Mark’s parents were killed when their flight disappeared over the Atlantic. It was the beginning of the odyssey that led them to be staring at each other awkwardly in a prison cell on an ocean liner on First Earth. Neither knew what to say. It was Courtney who finally took the leap.

“So, how ‘bout them Yankees?” she asked lightly.

Mark chuckled. Courtney did too. The ice had been broken. Sort of.

“What do you think of my stateroom?” Courtney asked with false cheer. “Sweet, huh? You want me to order you something from the kitchen?”

“You shouldn’t be here, Courtney,” Mark said softly.

Courtney could have sworn his voice was deeper. It was definitely more assured.

“Yes, I should,” she said quickly. “It’s you who shouldn’t be here. But you are.”

“You don’t know what’s happening-“

“Yeah, I do,” Courtney snapped. “I know everything.” She took a breath, realizing she was getting too emotional. “There’s so much I have to tell you, Mark, but I want to hear it from you first. Why did you come here? What happened that night when…” She didn’t finish her sentence.

Mark finished it for her, saying, “When my parents were killed?”

Courtney nodded. Mark sat down on a wooden chair. Courtney leaned against the bunk. Now that she was about to hear the words she had been waiting to hear for so long, she wasn’t so sure she wanted Mark to say them. She feared what she was about to learn.

Mark fidgeted. This was difficult for him. For a moment Courtney thought he was reverting to his old form, the insecure geek. He wasn’t. When he spoke, it was with authority and without a stutter.

“That night Andy Mitchell and I went to clean up his uncle’s florist shop. The sprinkler had broken. It was a mess. If we didn’t salvage all those Christmas flowers, his uncle would lose his business. That’s why we stayed and my parents took the flight to Florida without us.”

“I remember all that,” Courtney said.

“Then you know what happened,” Mark said solemnly. “Their plane went down over the Atlantic. Everyone was lost.”

Courtney nodded and said, “I’m sorry, Mark.”

“I didn’t find out about it until nearly midnight,” Mark continued. “We’d been working in the store the whole time. The airline tracked down my cell-phone number. At first I thought it was a joke. Things like that don’t happen in real life, you know? All it took was one look at CNN to see it was true.” Mark hesitated. The memory was tough to relive. “I tried to call you.”

“I know,” Courtney choked out. “I’d turned off my phone. I didn’t get the message until the next morning. If only I had-“

“It’s okay. There was nothing you could have done. But somebody showed up who could.”

“Who?” Courtney asked, suddenly back on alert.

“Nevva Winter. The Traveler from Quillan. You know that Saint Dane won Quillan, right?”

“Yeah, I heard something about that,” Courtney said dismissively. “Nevva Winter came to Second Earth?”

“She escaped from Quillan before the fall,” Mark said. “She told me that Saint Dane was breaking down the borders between the territories and Bobby needed my help.”

“Oh, did she?” Courtney said sarcastically. “Did our friend Andy Mitchell hear all this?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, hanging his head as if ashamed. “He shouldn’t have, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I mean, I’d just heard my parents were killed. Still, I tried to talk to Nevva in private, but she said she needed Andy’s help too.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet she did,” Courtney said with even more sarcasm.

“Andy wasn’t as surprised as you’d think,” Mark continued. “Sure, he was a little freaked, but remember, he’d read Bobby’s first journals, so it wasn’t totally out of the blue. I admitted to him that we didn’t write them after all. I didn’t know what else to do. Mitchell knows about the Travelers now. He knows everything.”

Courtney realized that Mark still didn’t know Andy Mitchell was Saint Dane. She was all sorts of anxious to tell him, but wanted to hear the whole story first.

Mark continued, “Nevva told us that after losing Quillan, Bobby realized the only way to beat Saint Dane was to use his own tactics against him. Any hope of keeping the territories separate was gone, and the demon’s next target was Second Earth. It’s what we always feared, Courtney. We knew it would happen someday, and that day had finally arrived. But Nevva had a way to stop him.”