D. MacHale - Black Water

“Be right back, Dad,” Courtney said, and jogged after Mark. When she caught up, Mark kept walking. “What’s going on?” Courtney said under her breath.

Mark’s answer was to show Courtney his hand. The center stone of his ring was glowing.

“Oh man,” Courtney gasped.

Mark clapped his hand over the ring to hide the pyrotechnics. When they got to the street and out of Mr. Chetwynde’s sight, Mark ran next door and ducked behind a huge bush in front of the neighbor’s yard. By the time he got the ring off, it was already growing. Mark placed it on the ground and stood next to Courtney. The two watched it grow to Frisbee-size, opening up the conduit between territories.

“This is too much. I’m going mental,” Courtney gasped.

The bright light shot out of the hole inside the ring, along with the sweet musical notes. With a final brilliant flash, the event ended and the ring returned to normal. Lying on the ground next to it was a rolled-up piece of parchment paper. Mark moved to pick it up, but Courtney stopped him.

“Wait,” she said. “One thing at a time. Did my father snap or what? That was not what I expected from a guy whose daughter was missing for a month.”

“Because I don’t think we were gone for a month,” Mark answered.

Courtney gave Mark a blank look. “No way. That wasn’t someWizard of Ozdream we had. I’ve got the black-and-blue marks to prove it.”

Mark laughed. “No, we spent a month on Eelong, but I think we were brought back here only a few minutes after we left.”

Courtney shook her head, confused. “You mean, like time stood still while we were gone?”

“No. I think we went to a territory that existed in another time. When the flume brought us back here, it was to the same time we left.”

“So…we’re not in trouble?”

“Not with our parents, anyway.”

The implication was there. Parents were the last thing Mark and Courtney had to worry about. They both looked down at the rolled-up parchment paper.

“That was fast,” Courtney said.

“For us. Who knows if Bobby wrote it in the past, or the future.”

“Don’t go there,” Courtney scolded. “My brain already hurts.” Mark picked up the parchment. It was crunchy brown paper, wrapped and tied with leather twine. Mark’s hands were shaking as he untied the knot.

“What happened to the flume, Mark?”

“Maybe this will tell us,” he said, unrolling the pages. He took a deep breath and glanced at the first page.

“From Bobby?” Courtney asked.

“Uh-huh,” Mark answered.

“Where is he?”

It was a trap.

Everything that happened from the first moment I set foot on Eelong was about leading me into it…and I went. The poison from Cloral, Seegen’s death on Second Earth, Saint Dane’s boasting to me that he would wipe out the gars, the attack on Black Water; everything! It was all about setting the trap. The thing is, I felt certain that Saint Dane was up to something more, but I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.

Now it’s too late.

I’m real good at looking back and putting the puzzle pieces together. It’s looking ahead that I’m not so hot at, and we paid the price. Mark, Courtney, I want to go back and tell you exactly what happened from the moment you left Eelong for Second Earth. You need to hear it all. Be warned, this is going to be tough to read. I wish I didn’t have to tell you. But you’re in this now, more so than ever. We’ve had a lot of victories over Saint Dane. For that, we deserve to be proud. But we’ve also made mistakes, and we have to accept those, too.

This is what happened.

“Run in!” I shouted to you guys as the flume crumbled around us. “Meet the light!”

I saw that the flume light was coming and wanted to make sure you’d make it, so I gave you both a shove to go deeper into the flume. That’s when the tunnel started to break up. On the ground between my legs a huge crack appeared. If I hadn’t thrown myself to the side, I might have fallen in. I hit the bottom of the flume with my shoulder. The pain shot all the way down into my leg, but I couldn’t worry about it just then, because above me the rocks of the flume were breaking up and falling down… on me. I rolled out of the way just as a boulder hit the ground where my head had been. But I nearly rolled right into the crack in the floor that was already a couple of feet wide, and growing. I grabbed on to the edge and stared down into nothing. Absolutely nothing. That crack may have opened up a hole to the center of Eelong for all I knew. I tried to crawl away, but the floor crumbled beneath me. One second it was solid, the next I felt it break loose, and I fell with it.

“I’ve got you!” shouted Kasha. She had fought her way through the curtain of vines and into the crumbling flume. It was a good thing, because she snagged the back of my clothes with her claw, just in time. She saved my life. Again. I was able to twist around and grab on to the craggy ledge of rock. Beneath me the crumbled ledge fell to oblivion.

“I got it,” I told her as I pulled myself up.

The horrible, wrenching sound got louder. It was like being inside a thundercloud. Rocks were being torn apart by some incredible above-ground earthquake.

“Get out of there, Pendragon!” Spader shouted.

I looked to see that he and Gunny were outside the mouth of the flume.

“Stay back!” I shouted. But I didn’t need to. Another crack appeared in the floor in front of Spader and Gunny, cutting them off from the flume. But worse than that, it kept Kasha and me from getting out. All around us, the flume was falling down and the ground was crumbling away. We were moments away from being crushed, or plunged into the dark pit. There was only one way we could escape.

“Zadaa!” I shouted into the flume.

The light sparkled from deep within, coming to our rescue. It would be a race. Would the light get us out of there before the flume collapsed on our heads?

“Run!” I shouted to Kasha.

She tried to help me to my feet, but it was like trying to stand up inside a washing machine. We both fell again. I heard the musical notes coming closer.

“Hurry, Bobby!” Gunny shouted from outside the flume. “Run toward the light!”

Everything changed in a single second. One second. A second is nothing. A tick on the clock. Seconds pass all the time and we never think about any one of them. But a second can be an eternity. I got back on my feet and reached down to help Kasha up. I had her hand. I was a second away from pulling her to her feet. One stupid second. If I had been a second earlier, the falling rock would have missed her.

I wasn’t.

Before I could pull her to her feet, a chunk of rock fell down from the ceiling and hit Kasha square on the head. It was so loud in the flume that I didn’t hear the sound it made, and I’m glad for that. But I will always remember the sight. Kasha’s head jerked to the side, and her body went limp.

I didn’t allow myself to think about what had happened. I pulled on Kasha’s furry hand, knelt down on one knee, and draped the big klee over my shoulders. I was operating on pure adrenaline.

“Go, shorty, go!” Gunny shouted.

Itook a quick look back to see Gunny pulling Spader away from the mouth of the flume. They disappeared back through the curtain of hanging vines. Safe.

The floor of the flume was rumbling so hard, Inearly lost my balance again. But through sheer force of willIwas able to stay upright and put one foot in front of the other. I was desperate to get us deeper into the flume and away from the destruction. The light blinded me…

“Hobey-ho, Pendragon!” I heard Spader yell.