pavement and sides of the hangar. The once-pristine MG was crunched, scratched, smoking, against a pile of steel barrels. A single black Converse sneaker lay next to a puddle of blue liquid.
“Do I even want to ask what happened out here?”
“Egg! You’re ok!”
“Uncle Seb! I mean, it is you, right?”
“That depends. Are you going to make me spend my life savings on pie again?”
My face reddened. Yeah, it was my real uncle.
Uncle Seb trotted over to his plane; the pilot door was still ajar and the propellor slowly spun to a stop. He hadn’t lost any time getting out of it. He jostled with something behind the bucket seat. With a grunt, he yanked out a familiar brown duffle out and tossed it on the ground.
“There you are!” he said, satisfied, as he dusted his hands off against each other.
“You’re maybe a little late with my bag of deadly weapons,” I said as I poked the bag with my toe.
“They’re not for here.” Uncle Seb tossed the bag to me. I snorted as I caught it against my belly. “They’re for you. There. Now you better get going.”
Baert rounded the corner with the Kips. They strode mechanically but quickly, still impeccably neat and matching even after the great skirmish just moments ago. Baert half-ran, half-skipped to keep in stride with them.
“Lassie … [heave] … s’good tah see thah wee bairn up! … [heave] … I’ve just got tah … [heave] … check that th’other coast … [heave] … is right clear. Whoooeeee! I’m fair puckled.”
Dragon grinned and nodded at me.
“Oh, uh, that’s, um,” I looked confusedly at Dragon, hoping he’d feed me my line. “That’s fine work, Leftenant. Thank you.”
Dragon nodded approvingly. Nodding in time, the Kips all murmured “mm-hmm,yep, mm-hmm!” in affirmation. They saluted their small, sweating, heaving commander who was now picking a stray dandelion out of his beard.
I looked searchingly at Dragon as I cradled the duffle. There was a bad feeling in my gut. And not because I was just healed from a bloody concussion by a galactic gemstone my stunning billion-year-old librarian gave me. The kind of bad feeling you get when you realize grownups are withholding crucial information.
“Guys?” I said, looking at each of them. Dragon, Baert, and Uncle Seb all looked up to the sky, over to the trees, down at their feet. “Come on, guys. What is it?”
Baert met my worried gaze first.
“We discussed it, lassie, and, well…” he trailed off.
“We’re going to travel via Fortis Librae,” Dragon interjected.
“That’s awesome!” I brightened. “That’s what you were talking about doing anyway. Way to step up, you sly dog.” I patted Dragon on his scaley muscled shoulder. He looked disgusted.
“I am no dog,” he spat indignantly.
I giggled and began to explain. But Uncle Seb stepped forward and cut me off.
“You’re going with them, Egg.”
There it was. That feeling in my gut was spot on. Behind them, the spinning of the plane’s front propellor finally halted. The air was still. The afternoon sun cast long shadows of my motley group onto me.
I sat down in their shadows, the cradled duffle making a little cooing sound as I lowered it onto my crossed legs. Dragon gently sat down beside me.
“You understand why you can’t travel with your uncle, Evechild.”
“No,” I sniffed, feeling my whole body fall into an exhausted pout.
“They’ll be looking for his plane now. We can’t risk your being in it,” he responded quietly.
“What about cloaking? With Dragon?”
“That nanotechnology is only as strong as ol’ Drahk, here. And only viable through specific portals where we can surmise the spectrum of electromagnetism present. If there are too many variables, we can’t reasonably know light will bend around an object when it’s supposed to.”
“The portal has been compromised, Evechild. We shall travel via Fortis Librae, while Sebastian and Baert –”
“Go in as a distraction,” I finished. “Absolutely not. That’s insane!”
“We must get back to the Seventh to get your family. If you go in the plane, you’ll be destroyed. Shot down. Captured. Any number of awful outcomes, Evechild.”
“That’s exactly my point!” I shouted. “So you’re just sending them to get destroyed or shot down or captured or, or ‘any number of awful outcomes’?” I stuck my nose up as I mimicked Dragon’s accent.
“Egg, it’s fine. I can handle this,” Uncle Seb stepped forward. But his eyes were moist, and his voice had an uncharacteristic quiver to it.
“It’s not fine,” I dropped my head. I don’t know what I felt. I hated him, I loved him. Whatever the case, I didn’t want him going on a suicide mission.
“I dinnae be a callous radge, but we got tah skedaddle,” Baert piped up anxiously.
“He’s right, Egg. I want to do this – I’ve got to make things right with your mom, with you.”
He looked so earnestly at me. I wanted to hug him, but I was interrupted by a terrible realization.
“Wait a minute,” I said, looking suspiciously at Dragon, “you said you didn’t know if travel to the Seventh was even possible through forty lemurs or fortress libra or whatever that crazy book is. So we don’t know if we’ll make it … or if the plane will make it … ?”
No one answered. My heart pounded. Thoughts of my mom trapped somewhere in another dimension pelted my brain; images of Philippa being tortured in that tube city jabbed at my heart.
“There’s no sure way of rescuing them? Some other weird, spacey, sciencey thing from ancient-whenever that you haven’t told me about? You’re honestly leaving the rescue of my mother and my sister up to chance, which involves a book, a tiny plane, some glowing rocks, and bag full of magic bouncy balls?”
They were silent. Even the duffle at my feet had ceased its twittering and lay perfectly still. At some point the Kips had retreated inside the hangar. I saw one of them pop his head out of the giant open door with a frown and duck back inside. I stood there with my chest heaving and fists clenched waiting for a grownup to do a grownup thing and offer a reasonable alternative. I wanted to withdraw into my own lungs.
“We’ve got tah try as best we can, lassie,” Baert said finally.
Uncle Seb produced Fortis Librae ceremoniously, bowing a little as he handed it over to Dragon.
“Look, Egg, we didn’t plan it to go down this way. Or really any way, for that matter. But we’re working with what we know and what we’re able to do here and now.”
“You’re saying nothing. You’re literally just saying words that have no meaning,” I grumbled. I looked away from him.
“I daresay that is enough of that,” Dragon’s voice changed suddenly from gentle to brusque. “Baert is right. We must be going. They’ve had ample to time to warn them. These sentiments, while valid,” he looked cautiously at me, “must be shelved for a later time. Rumination must make way for action.”
“Whose had time to warn who?” I asked.
“Whom,” said Dragon. “Come on, then. Join Baert and I at the book, if you would, please.”
“Aye?”
“No sense in taking chances with me. Keep an eye on Egg,” Uncle Seb said quietly. Baert saluted him and jogged over to us, clapping.
“That’s my cue. I’ll be off, then,” Uncle Seb grabbed his signature leather jacket out of the busted MG. “Victory, yes?” he said, looking at me as he straightened his collar. “Stay focused. We’ve got this.”
I stood dumbly in the same spot all along beside the spheresaii duffle. Dragon and Baert placed Fortis Librae, open, at my feet. I looked up at the sound of rotors turning and engines whirring.
“Uncle Seb! Wait!” I started forward, but his hand popped out of his window with an open palm, stopping me in my tracks.
“We’ve got this, Egg! We’ve got science on our side!” he called over the droning motor. “And YOU!”
With that, he shut his window, smoothly reversed the little white and red Cessna, and readied for takeoff beyond the hangar. The Kips dutifully populated the runway. One did a backflip. Another pumped his fists high in the air. One more flipped. They held their flags excitedly and flourished their lights with such flair that they were less like air traffic controllers and more like dancers making their big theater debut.
I felt a lump form in my throat. I shook my head back and forth hard, trying to physically shake the thought from my mind that this might be the last time I ever saw my uncle, and that his unwavering faith in me might be the last words I hear from him.
“Evechild,” Dragon said tenderly, “he is an expert pilot and wonderfully experienced in dimensional travel.”
Baert pulled my hand down to the book’s open page.
“We gonna kin do this? Aye, Lassie, then close yer wee eyes and focus on that Seventh landscape.”
I didn’t ask questions. I knew I had to just do as they said. I was shaking. A lot. Shaking so much that nerves even my trembled my eyelids.
Focus. Find the point in the Seventh beyond the tubes where you first rescued me. Can you visualize it? Can you remember being there?
I nodded. Dragon’s voice in my mind was calming and centering. I saw again the swirling purple mists, the churning pastel colors of the sky that never seemed to find day or night, the twinkling bog, the shadowed corner where Dragon was prisoner.
Yes! Wonderful, Evechild. We’re there with you. Hold that location. Keep your hand pressed on the page – yes, like that, good – and now Baert will lay his hand there just so, yes, right. Deep breaths, everyone. Hold that location. Focus, see it. Right, here we go!
Dragon whispered something in Latin; Baert chimed in. Within seconds I felt my breath catch in my throat and then a feeling like the wind was knocked out of me. Space corseted about me; my limbs were stretched and pulled and compressed. My toes tingled and my fingers felt smashed and I really, really needed to sneeze.
Do not pull your thoughts away from that spot!
Dragon’s voice came to me from within a tunnel, only a tunnel that warped its pitch back and forth like the static between AM radio frequencies.
I didn’t dare open my eyes, but I focused all of my being on that one location, pastel and creepy. Flashes of light sparked outside my eyelids.
“Esse quam videri, esse quam videri, cogito ergo sum,” I heard Baert and Dragon reciting together, two, three, then four times.
The pressure left my body, I felt cool air fill my nostrils. I opened my mouth wide, pushing my jaw side to side, and felt my ears pop. And the most welcome feeling of all: ground beneath my feet. We made it! I blinked and gasped.