D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

The chaotic screaming suddenly stopped. A confused rumble followed, as word spread that a gar had been pulled from the wreckage. Nobody made a move for me. Instead, they formed a protective circle, staring in at me like I was some kind of freak. My cheek was on the dirt, which meant a lot of dirt was in my eyes, which meant I couldn’t see all that well. I made out the fact that all the gars wore brown cloaks with hoods that covered their faces. It was a frightening sight. I wasn’t sure if they were going to welcome me as a friend… or tear me apart.

“Leave the klees alone,” I coughed. “They’ve come as friends.”

Someone pushed through the crowd. He was a tall guy with his head completely covered by the hood. He stood over me, looking down. It seemed like whoever it was, he was in charge, because nobody pulled him back. He stuck the tip of his boot under my chin and lifted it to get a better look.

I squinted up, but saw nothing more than a shadow, because the sunbelt was high in the sky behind his head.

I squinted and croaked out, “Sorry for dropping in like this, but you’re ah in danger.”

I sensed the guy stiffen, as if I had said something earth shattering. Or Eelong shattering. As it turned out, I had. But it wasn’t what I expected. I had rocked him all right, but it wasn’t because of what I said. It was because of who I was.

He knelt down by my head and said, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

I knew that voice. It wasn’t a he, either. It was a she. The hood came off and I was faced with a vision. It was a girl with long, brown hair and amazing gray eyes.

“Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you, Bobby?”

Yeah. I found Courtney.

If I were a crying kind of guy, I would have cried.

Okay, maybe I did anyway. A little. But I’m not admitting to anything for certain. Courtney held out her hand and helped me to my feet. I wrapped my arms around her and held her so close I was afraid she might break. Oddly, I thought of a line from a Marx Brothers movie I had seen on First Earth. “If I held you any closer, I’d be in back of you.” If I could have squeezed her any tighter, I would have. Seeing her was not only a complete surprise, it triggered a feeling that I never would have expected.

It gave me hope. The last time I’d seen her, she and Mark were being herded into the flume on Second Earth. I feared they had both been killed. But Mark turned up alive. And now, so had Courtney. Knowing that my two oldest and best friends in Halla were okay re-energized me. After all I had learned about my true origins, holding Courtney reminded me that I had another life. A much more familiar, comfortable, and yes, understandable one. I was Bobby Pendragon from Stony Brook, Connecticut. As much as I believed all that I learned on Solara, I couldn’t imagine turning my back on the person I had always been. Being with Courtney centered me. It brought back my base. For those few seconds I didn’t think about how impossible the battle was that we were about to face.

I thought about how I wanted to win it more than ever. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered. “Sorry it took so long.”

“Doesn’t matter. I always knew you would come,” she said, breathless.

“I was afraid you were killed.”

“I came close. A couple of times. I still don’t know what happened to Mark.”

“He’s okay. He’s on Third Earth.”

I felt Courtney shudder. I wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or the physical release of tension she’d been holding for a long time. She pulled away from me and looked me right in the eye. Like Mark, Courtney was older. By how much, I couldn’t tell. A few years maybe. She had been through a lot. I could see that just by looking into her eyes. They were hard. They had seen things. Courtney had always been intense. When she played, she wanted to win. But the look she had in her eyes just then showed more than that. The stakes were higher in this particular game.

And she was more beautiful than ever.

“They’re coming, aren’t they?” she asked straight out. The joyous reunion was over.

I nodded and looked at the sky. “They won’t reach the mountains before dark. I’m guessing the earliest they would attack is sunrise.”

“How many?”

I took a breath before answering. She wasn’t going to like what I had to say.

“It’s an army.”

She shrugged and sighed. “We’ve been expecting this. We’re ready.”

“You are?” I asked, surprised. “How?”

“Come with me,” she said, and started to walk off.

I reached out and stopped her. “Wait. Are they here?”

“Who?”

“The rest of the people from Second Earth who were pulled into the flume. The exiles.”

She looked at me for a moment, as if trying to understand exactly what I had asked. I held my breath. Her answer was going to determine the future of all that ever was or would be. Whatever she had to say would be kind of important.

“I don’t know what happened to the people who went in with Mark and me,” she finally said. “We somehow scattered. That’s why I lost touch with Mark. I haven’t seen him since that day.”

“But the others,” I asked, getting anxious. “From Yankee Stadium. There were thousands. Tens of thousands. Do you know what happened to them?”

Courtney looked me square in the eye and said, “You should see something.”

I wanted to scream out, “Just tell me!” But I was on Courtney’s turf now. However she wanted to play this was fine by me. Sort of. She turned to look at the gars that surrounded us. I’d almost forgotten that we weren’t alone. There were around a dozen of the little people. None of them were much taller than five feet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Boon and Kasha were being held tight by several of the small gars. After all the excitement, and the sudden appearance of klees from the sky, it probably didn’t make sense to them that Courtney and I would have hugged each other like that. You could see the confusion on their faces.

Courtney stood up tall and announced to them in a bold voice, “They are friends.”

The gars stared back at her, dumbfounded.

Courtney walked up to the gars who were holding Kasha and Boon.

“Let them go,” she ordered.

They didn’t. Courtney added with more authority, “I said let them go; they are my friends.”

The gars finally followed orders and released the two klees, though reluctantly. It was strange. Courtney acted like she was in charge. She had always been bold and confident, but now it seemed she was the leader of this band of gars. The image was completed by the fact that she stood nearly a foot taller than most of them.

“Hello, Kasha,” Courtney said awkwardly. Unlike the confidence she had shown to the gars, with Kasha she seemed tentative. “I don’t know what to say about what happened to the flume. I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologize. You could not have known. You came here to help us, to help Pendragon, that is all that matters.”

Courtney added, “It’s a relief to see you. I thought you were, I mean, Bobby wrote that you had been, you know…”

“Killed?” Kasha asked. “I was.”

Courtney started at her blankly. “Uh… what?”

“My body died. My spirit didn’t” was Kasha’s answer.

Courtney shot me a questioning look, as if to ask, “What the hell is she talking about?”

I shrugged and said, “Long story.”

“Hi, Courtney,” Boon said.

“Hey, Boon. Sorry for shooting you all out of the sky. I thought you were klees. The bad kind, I mean.”

I jumped in and asked, “You shot us out of the sky? How?”

Courtney gave me a sly look and said, “I told you we were ready.”