D. MacHale - The Reality Bug

Loor and I stood and watched in wonder as more of these strange plants pushed their way into the clearing. The flower blossoms, or whatever they were, were all different colors. Bright pink, purple, deep blue, and brilliant yellow. I counted eight in all. It was like they were creeping into the clearing, taking a curious look at who their visitors were.

“They’re kind of pretty,” I said.

Wrong. On cue, all eight blossoms opened up and spit out vines that shot right at us! Whoa! One of the vines latched on to my arm, cutting into my jumpsuit. The thing had razor-sharp barbs on it! I quickly pulled it off, just as another wrapped around my ankle and yanked me to the ground. It then started pulling me toward it! One quick look at the plant showed me all I needed to know. Inside the blossoms were sharp, gnashing, fanglike growths. These beautiful plants were hungry, and we had wandered into their house for a bite… of us.

“Loor!” I shouted.

I didn’t need to. Loor had already gone to work with her whupping stick. She hacked like a lumberjack at the vine that had my leg. Two quick whacks and I was free, but the plant screamed. I swear, it actually feet to see Loor was swinging her stick like crazy, batting away more vines that were shooting out of the plants at us. “The trail!” I shouted.

I got behind her, grabbed the back of her jumpsuit and pulled her back toward the safety of the trail. As I pulled her back, she kept swinging away at the incoming missiles like she was in hyper batting-practice mode. She nailed most of them too, knocking them off course.

I kicked at the spiderweb of vines that was blocking the path. They may have been dense, but they weren’t very strong because I could tear them down pretty easily. While I desperately tried to make an opening, Loor valiantly batted away the attacking vines. But there were too many of them. There was no way she could keep this up. I took a quick look back to see the toothy cactus plants were crawling closer, moving in for the kill.

“Just run!” I shouted.

Loor took one last swipe at an incoming vine, then turned with me and ran. We ducked through the opening in the web and sprinted along the narrow path. More vines zinged by our heads, trying to grab us and pull us back. As we got farther from the clearing, the vine attack tapered off. But we didn’t stop running. Still, I feared we could easily be heading toward another nest of those nasty barb-shooting cactus plants.

After a few minutes of frantic chase, we both felt safe enough to take a rest. Good thing, too. My lungs were bursting out of my chest, that’s how hard we were running. I think being terrified had something to do with it too. I stood there with my hands on my knees, gulping for air. Loor, on the other hand, barely looked winded. She scanned the jungle for any more signs of movement.

“There!” she announced.

“Please don’t tell me it’s another hungry vegetable,” I gasped.

As strange as this sounds, rising up from the middle of the jungle was a spiral staircase. It led up and out of the foliage and disappeared into the dark. At first my brain couldn’t compute why a spiral staircase would be in a dark jungle full of hungry predators. But then it hit me.

“We’re inside a building,” I said. “That must lead up to the next floor.”

“Do we climb?” Loor asked.

“Do we have a choice?” I asked back.

Loor took the lead and continued along the path until it brought us to the foot of the stairs. They were made of metal, and a quick tug told us they were solid enough. The whole structure was overgrown with vines, like the ones that had been shooting at us. I touched them to see if they might suddenly spring to life and start attacking, but nothing happened. I took a step back and looked up to where the stairs led, but all I saw was black.

Loor gave me a quick look, then started to climb. I was right after her. The higher we got, the better view we had of the jungle below. The place was vast. But because it was so dense and dark, I couldn’t see all the way to the far walls of the building. At least I thought we were still in a building. None of this really made sense, but then again, if it was a fantasy, was it supposed to make sense? It probably did to Dr. Zetlin.

After climbing for a few minutes, we found ourselves in darkness. Looking down below we saw the jungle, and to be honest, it was making my palms sweat. We were pretty high up. I was trying to figure how we would make our way back through the jungle to get out of here, when Loor stopped suddenly.

“Trouble,” she said calmly.

“What is it?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.

I looked up to see we had reached the next level. The circular staircase continued up through a large round hole in the black ceiling. Loor reached her hand up through that hole, but when she pulled it back down, I felt drops of water on my head. Huh? She showed me her hand. It was wet.

“I don’t get it,” I said, and climbed up past her. I put my hand up to the hole to find that it was actually a circle of water. As soon as I touched it, ripples spread out from my fingers, as if I were looking at an upside down pond. I had no idea how the liquid could be suspended like that and not gush down through the large opening. But it was and it didn’t.

Loor said, “I am beginning to believe Dr. Zetlin does not like visitors.”

“You think?” I said sarcastically. “We gotta go through this.”

“Pendragon,” Loor said with a firm voice. “I cannot swim.”

Oh, man, I’d forgotten. As incredible an athlete as Loor was, she was like a rock in the water. This was bad. I knew what had to happen next, and it made my stomach twist.

“We gotta keep going,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I’ll check it out.”

I really, really didn’t want to, but what else could I do? I could tell that Loor wanted to argue, but she knew there was no other way. So before I could chicken out, I took another step up so that my head was just below the ceiling of water. I took a couple of deep breaths to expand my lungs, then held the last breath and pushed my head up into the wet.

The water was warm. That was one good thing. I only went in up to my shoulders and did my best to get a look around. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, but I think that was mostly because my vision was blurred by the water. What I wouldn’t have given at that moment for an air globe from Cloral! As it was, there was nothing to see when I looked around but wet blackness.

Yet when I looked straight up, I saw light coming from above. I took a step back down and dropped out of the water. My head and shoulders were wet, but very little water spilled out from above. Unbelievable.

“It’s a big pool,” I said. “This is the bottom, but I can’t tell how far it is to the surface.”

Loor and I looked at each other. We both knew what had to happen next. Loor started yanking vines off the railing of the stairs.

“I will tie one end to your ankle,” she explained.

She was a few steps ahead of me. I was still trying to get my mind around the fact that I had to swim up into the unknown. Loor was already making sure I would get back to safety. She quickly tore off a length of vine that was plenty long enough for this adventure. If I swam upward for the full length of this vine and still hadn’t found the surface, there would be no way I’d have enough air in my lungs to make it back to the hole.

Loor tied one end around my ankle, then stood and faced me.

“I will hold on to your waist,” she said. “Please do not lose me.”

“Whoa, you’re not coming!”

“It is better that we stay together and make the trip only once,” she explained.

She didn’t show a touch of fear, though she had to be terrified. Man, this girl was brave. I wasn’t sure which was worse, taking her with me, or risking the trip by myself and having to do it twice. I decided that as long as Loor was game, we’d go together.