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Newsflash: It’s rude to stowaway on interdimensional transit.
I hadn’t been expecting to carry James along with me. The extra mass threw me off-balance, her atoms vying for my attention, and I had no choice but to wrangle them like first-graders on a field trip.
The second my eyes remembered how to see, I toppled forward into sand. By far the sloppiest jump I’ve ever led and all because someone had tried to hop along without a ticket. I rolled onto my back and gazed into a cloudless, blue sky, trembling. My shoulder throbbed from where she’d taken hold of me.
“Oh, hi, James. Welcome to the universe,” said Zander.
“Sally! I told you to leave the agent!” said Blayde, letting out a heavy sigh.
“I tried to!” I spat sand from my mouth. Ew. I glared at James, who was sprawled on the sand beside me. She had taken advantage of me, used me as her taxi to the stars. An invasion. I took a deep breath, the deepest I’d taken all year. Despite everything, I wanted to scream at James. I felt better than I had in a long, long time.
“Do you feel that?” asked Blayde.
I stood up, brushing the sand off my PJs. The desert went on forever, impossibly flat, meeting with an equally impossibly flat ocean. An infinite beach—and a sizzling one at that. Out of the fire, into the boiler, I suppose.
“I don’t feel anything,” said Zander.
“Exactly,” said Blayde. “No Dread here. None. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Even so, Sally, take James back. This place isn’t safe for her.”
“Back?” James scoffed.
“I don’t think I can,” I said. “Meedian was already taking off when we jumped. If we go back there now, I’ll be dropping James from the sky into a pit of evil, fire-wielding cats. I think we’re stuck with her.”
“I’m right here, you know.”
“And that’s exactly the problem!” I clenched my fists. “You’re not safe here. You crossed a boundary, and now you’re going to get hurt!”
“What here isn’t safe?” said James. She threw out her arms, flinging sand. “There’s nothing for miles!”
“Except the sun,” said Blayde. “Look at you with all your skin out. You’ll pucker up like...a turkey on Thanksgiving. Is that analogy correct?”
“It’s impressively apt.” I dug my bare toes into the hot sand, probably burning them, but nothing lasts forever. The same couldn’t be said of James. Already, there were beads of sweat on her brow.
“So, where to now?” she asked, voice low, hoarse. “We going to find some shade or something?
“Can you shut up?” Blayde shot her a crispy look. “You’re not meant to be here. Go stand in the water. We’ll work out how to find the People.”
“The People?” I asked. “From the memory-vision thing?”
“The very same.”
The certainty with which she said it was oddly reassuring. I must have found the right place, the right time. But her ancient past could have been just yesterday. How had her time here ended? She pulled her red journal out of her pocket, flipping through the pages and frowning.
“James,” said Zander, “did you have anything to drink before we left?”
“You mean before or after the flaming cat fight? Sure, I drank like a horse,” she said, marching into the sea. I could almost see steam rising from where the water touched her skin.
“Just stand still while we work this all out, Juxley,” said Blayde, stuffing the journal back into her breast pocket. “It’ll keep you from drying out like an old sponge. In any case, the sun is lower on the horizon now compared to when we arrived; it’s setting. Not too long now until nightfall.”
“And I just stand here until then? Is that how you think humans work?”
“Felling, just...just...shut up.” Blayde ran her hands down her face. “I’m trying to keep you from dying, okay? This is exactly why we didn’t want you to come along.”
“Everyone, calm down, will you?” My face was hot, and not just from the sun. “Fighting isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“She’s right.” Blayde pointed to a random far-off place in the troublingly flat desert. “When the sun sets, we’ll start a bonfire and wait it out. If we’re lucky, the People will see the fire and come to us.”
James swallowed so loudly I heard it from here. “I hate to say this,” she called, “but I think something just swam past my leg.”
My body went stock-still as the sea behind James shifted.
The water pulled back, rising into one large mass as the crest of a gigantic new wave formed in midair above her. James twisted her head around so far her neck shouldn’t have held, eyes following the water rising, rising higher and higher until the peak was as thin as my temper. My breath caught as two huge, yellow eyes glared from inside the wave, larger than satellite dishes, followed by James-sized teeth.
You betcha I screamed.
A pointed head pushed out of the water—no, it was made of water—and the mouth opened wide, ready to swallow James whole. James dove out of the way, plunging under the surface as the serpent bit only sand. It reared, hissing loudly, and poised to lunge again. It spun its watery tail, thrusting it around James, blocking her escape to the beach.
“Why are we watching this?” I shouted, but Blayde was already running to the creature. She lunged at its thick trunk of a body with one of her trusty knives and stabbed the translucent surface, making it shriek a banshee cry that stiffened my hair.
“I’m going to jump you out!” said Blayde, pulling off her jacket and tossing it at me. It hit me squarely in the face. Ouch. I let it fall to the sand. “But you have to stop moving!”
“I can’t! It only hasn’t eaten me yet because I haven’t stopped moving!” James shouted, darting away.
“Just trust me!” Blayde bellowed. “You two, run!”
The serpent lunged. It hit the surf with a resonant splash, sending jets of water streaming all around. The spray was so thick I couldn’t see a hand in front of me.
In an instant, Zander grabbed my hand, and we ran from the serpent, down the long expanse of flat sand and as far into the desert as our legs would take us.
Behind us, the creature roared, but its voice quickly died down behind us. Still, we ran, putting as much distance between it and us as we could.
Before I could gather my thoughts, Zander’s hand was ripped from mine, leaving only his phantom touch. I screamed as I lurched forward, stumbling to a halt. I struggled to catch my breath and scanned the sand around me for any sign of what had happened, but Zander was simply gone. There was nothing but flat sand for miles and miles.
That was, until the sand ahead of me started to sink. Quicksand? Finally, after all those cartoons as a kid preparing me for what I thought would be a near-constant threat, I was finally going to be able to fight off quicksand.
“Zander?” I should probably move at this point. Where were the others?
The sand beside me exploded. I was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to do that. It scattered everywhere, raining on my hair, making me cough as I breathed it in.
A gigantic plant burst through, something crossed between a Venus fly trap and a dinosaur, the kind of thing some deranged scientist would make for Jurassic Park without stopping to think whether they actually should. Its teeth, longer than my forearms and dripping gloopy saliva, could have picked up and devoured a cow in a single gulp.
And it was staring right at me. At least, I think it was. It didn’t seem to have any eyes, and yet, the mouth was edging delicately closer, the sinewy trunk-like green stem holding the head steady above me.
“Nice doggy?” I said, squeaky as a chew toy.
Its mouth opened and closed, like watching Kermit the Frog, minus the flailing arms and jovial personality but instead with too many teeth. And then it spoke—actually spoke. “Well, what have we here?”
I should be used to this by now. All these planets, all these worlds, pretty much anything could talk. I once got life advice from living Jell-O and dated what turned out to be a sentient patch of gas. At the very least, I should be polite.
“Um, Sally. Sally Webber,” I replied. “Please don’t eat me. I just came from the beach, so I probably taste all sweaty and salty, and my meat’s all tense.”
“I do love food with some extra flavor,” it said, licking its lips with a stocky purple tongue. “The madrags are so leathery. And so many bones! You look like you might have some fat on you.”
“Well, thanks for that.” Where was Zander? Or Blayde and James, for that matter? I squared my shoulders and braced myself for whatever was coming.
The ground rumbled behind me. Another plant emerged a few meters away, throwing sand high into the air.
“Carl, don’t pick up food from the ground!” it said, towering over me and the plant named Carl.
“But Mom! It looks so juicy!”
“I’m not juicy,” I asserted. “I’m tense and full of stress! Not to mention pollutants. So many pollutants.”
“Great flame above, it speaks!” the more massive fly trap practically shrieked. It threw its mouth backwards, stem spirally wildly. “What sort of vegetation is this?”
“Not vegetation?”
“Don’t eat that, Carl. It’ll mess with your roots,” said the largest plant.
“But Moooom!”
“No buts. Go back to your cavernum this instant.”
“But Sven ate one, and he said it was the best meat he’d ever tasted.”
“Sven ate one?” the plant scoffed. “Sven! Sven!”
This time, the sand landed right on my chest and mouth, and I spat it out. Another plant interrupted my field of view.
“What is it, Maureen?” asked the new plant being. This one was a bit less green than the other two; more brown and leathery.
Maureen leaned closer. “Carl says you ate a... speaking thing off the ground.”
“Well, it wasn’t speaking when I first took a bite,” Sven replied. “But it got quite agitated once I finished with the roots.”
The wonkiest wave of relief washed over me. Zander. That would explain where he disappeared to. He was safe...inside the belly of one of these things. Did they even have bellies?
“And you ate it anyway?” Maureen scoffed.
“It was so good, Maureen. So many flavors!”
With that, Sven burped, which made Carl devolve into fits of laughter.
“Carl!” Maureen screeched. “Go to your cavernum this instant!”
“But, Mom!”
“What did I say about but Moms? Now!”
Carl grumbled but pulled in on himself nonetheless, diving into the sea of sand. I stayed silent. I had to plan my move—any move, at this point.
“I can’t believe you,” said Maureen, facing Sven. “I thought we raised you better than this!”
“Maureen, I am literally your offshoot. So is Carl and everyone else here. You are yelling at yourself right now.”
“Stop pulling out that argument every time, your rotten, overwatered—Sven!”
Strange lumps appeared in Sven’s mouth. He gurgled, trying to keep his mouth closed. Something was trying to push its way out.
“Sven? What’s happening?” asked Maureen.
Sven said nothing. Instead, the plant belched, far worse than it had previously. It belched up a man. Zander flew into the air, only to fall right back into Sven’s gaping mouth, impaled against a giant tooth.
I almost dropped to my knees. There he was, soaked with the gastric juices of an alien plant, clutched in a monster’s mouth, dead, but he’d been through worse. I took a deep breath, calming my shakes. I would never get used to the grotesque sight of my boyfriend’s mangled corpse. But he was here. Now I just needed to save him.
“Sven!” cried Maureen.
The ground around us exploded into a cloud of sand as dozens of other plants burst forth, each hissing and screaming at Sven’s predicament. I braced myself as the sand roiled in their wake, hands clutched in small fists.
“Get it off! Get it off!” Sven screamed, swinging wildly. “It’s stuck!”
“Hold still,” said his neighbor. “I’ve got you!”
Sven flicked himself at the plant, but he moved too fast. It was a disaster. The other plant’s head fell to the sand as all the plants roared.
“You hemping idiot!” screamed Maureen. “You killed him!”
“He’ll grow back!” said Sven. “I won’t if I don’t get this thing out of my teeth!”
This was my window. My mind went blank as I rushed forward, taking advantage of the screaming plants. Sven still had Zander between his teeth, dangling limply like that poor woman in King Kong. Oh boy, he was definitely dead now, his torso hanging at a ninety-degree angle. He needed help to get out of there and fast. Coming back to life in the middle of being impaled would kill him all over again. And if the trap swallowed Zander whole, the cycle would repeat ad infinitum.
I ran at the trunk, my muscles moving faster than my mind, and grabbed onto the thick pelt of fibrous hair I found there, pulling myself upward. The stem shook back and forth, trying to throw me off, but my grip only tightened, and I hoisted myself up.
“Sven! There’s another one!” shouted one of the plants, before swinging at me. It whipped me right in the chest—home run. I went flying backwards, crashing into the sand near the base of Maureen.
“How is it moving?” one of them gasped. “Its roots are...detached!”
With that, they all screamed.
“Just stay still!” I shouted. “I’ll get him out of your teeth!”
“Sway! Sway!” suggested Maureen. “It’s...it’s moving!”
I was a freaking plant ghost.
Well, they weren’t going to listen to me, so I jumped to the top of Sven’s head. He buckled and shook me about, an impromptu rodeo where I clung to his fibrous hide. Despite the swinging, I got to work on trying to get Zander out of the creature’s hold. His shoulder was completely speared by one of the fangs. I grabbed the fang with both hands, ripping it with all my strength from the creature’s jaw.
Sven was doing the plant equivalent of sobbing now, leaves going yellow and wilty as he thrashed around more violently than before. I held onto Zander’s arm, my other hand gripping Sven’s upper lip to try and avoid slipping. My hand found sticky goo, and I realized much too late that Zander wasn’t slipping at all. He was stuck tight.
It was then that he came alive.
“What the—Sally?” His eyes were wide. “Where are—oh, oh no, I’m going to be sick...”
He wriggled but couldn’t pull free. Zander’s entire back was stuck to the lower half of Sven’s mouth, while I’d gotten the entire front of my body stuck to the top as I leaned over to help him. With my left arm extended to hold Zander and my right stretched back, I could no longer move. We were stuck to Sven.
“Zander!” I cried.
“Sally! Where are you?”
“Up here!” I wiggled my hand over the creature’s mouth, reaching for him with the only body part that wasn’t currently bound by alien plant goop. He grabbed mine, clasping it tightly, and we formed a muzzle over Sven’s mouth “We’d better jump!”
“Shake harder, Sven!” shouted one of the plants.
“Where?” Zander replied, aghast. “There are more of them! And I can’t see Blayde!”
“We have to reach the ground!” My shout was drowned out quickly by the roar of the wind created by Sven’s shakes. I clutched Zander’s hand tight.
Slash. Maureen and the others dove into the sand, and we tumbled, Sven’s head no longer held by anything but air. We crashed into the sand Zander-first.
My head spun. I tried to pull myself up, but the glue that held me to Sven’s decapitated mouth was too strong. I was helpless, even as Sven was dead. Sucks to be a giant carnivorous plant in the middle of the desert, I suppose.
“Sal, you ok?” Zander asked from the other side of the green hide, his voice muffled by sand.
“I’m fine. Hold on...”
We shuffled our chins around the fiber until we were face to face, noses touching. His breath was salty in my nostrils.
“Fancy seeing you here.” He grinned, his body rigid under the plant.
“Hello, dear.”
“Hello, my star. Did you just save me?”
“Perhaps,” I said, before he pecked my lips. “Oh, you can thank me better than that.”
I dove headfirst into the kiss, relishing in the relief of having him back in one piece. It didn’t matter that we were stuck like bugs in the proverbial flypaper, not for the few minutes we had to ourselves, when our last almost-intimate moment was ruined by those awful cats. Kissing Zander made all that melt away and filled my head with sparks instead.
“Oh, here they are,” someone said from somewhere behind me. Blayde.
We pulled our lips apart reluctantly, and his taste lingered.
“Miro,” said Blayde in stride, “meet my brother Zander and Sally, his...well, I’m not exactly sure what she is. We haven’t discussed labels. Zander, Sally, meet Miro. They’re the one who so kindly got you out of this mess.”
We scrambled together so we could both be on our feet, front to front like flies on either side of the same flypaper. My hair tugged at my scalp, half of it caught in the sticky goop, worse now that we had the height difference to deal with.
“Thank you, Miro.” Zander kept a tone of respect. “You don’t, perchance, have anything that would get us out of this glue?”
“No,” said a new voice, maybe Miro. His accent was thick, heavy, and unlike anything I had ever heard before, especially with the translator that made everyone sound like they were somehow from New England. “The glue’s only solvent is their live saliva. The only way off is by shedding.”
Zander sighed heavily. “Oh, I absolutely loved this coat.”
His weight disappeared, and I fell flat on my face. A snicker traveled through the group. I looked up, and with a little shock I realized we were surrounded by at least a dozen people. James grinned sheepishly from Blayde’s side, already dry from her run-in with the sea.
“Miro, this is Sally,” said Blayde. “Sally, Miro.”
“Pleasure,” I said, pulling my head up, promptly dropping my jaw in the sand.
Miro was heavily built, tall, and muscular, every inch of his skin a soft brown. His long black hair was pulled back behind his head, shining in the sun like polished obsidian, outlining his sharp features. Everything about his face was sharp, from the high, sculpted cheekbones to the cut of his chin. He wore nothing more than a tight pair of shorts with a strap holding a long, curved blade in place on his hip. His entire chest was ripped like a gladiator's. His skin shone like bronze, outshined only by his dazzling smile as he stared down at me.
Holy hotness, Batman.
“The pleasure is all mine, Sally,” he said slowly. “Welcome to the Sands.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I tried to stand, but the glue held strong.
Zander stepped between me and Miro. “I’m sorry to bother you or your people, but could we have...?”
“Ah, yes. I’ll give you some privacy.” He turned around, and his people did the same. Without a word between each other, they marched off into the sun, going to work on some of the other fallen plants. Sven was not the only casualty today.
Miro’s people moved as one single unit. Every movement was fluid, the motion of one sliding into the other. All with the perfect, identical, resting bitch face.
“We’re going to have to cut this,” said Blayde, crouching so that she could tug at my trapped hair.
Oh no. “Will it grow back?”
“It’ll take a while.”
I held my breath as she sliced straight through. In a second, half my hair was gone. I watched the strands of gold drop to the gluey sand. Blayde ruffled what was left on my head. I tried not to think about my new look. Knowing how rarely Zander ever had to shave, I had a bad feeling about how long I’d have to wait until I ever reached that length again.
“Thanks.” I slipped my legs out of my gluey PJs. Blayde handed me clothes of simple fabric, woven from something like hemp, and with a start, I realized it was probably the same Sven-like plant fiber. I slipped the clothes on quickly, shocked by how light the materials were, even though they were hides. And by the sudden lack of hair on my shoulders.
“It’s cute,” said James, giving me a thumbs up. “You’re really pulling it off.”
“You’re not lying to make me feel better, are you?” I took a deep breath. Her saccharine grin was a little too wide for comfort. “I’m still mad at you. Just because you got attacked by a sea snake doesn’t mean this is over.”
“I’ll make it up to you?” She had the distinct look of a late-night TV host pretending his slipup wasn’t scripted. “I’m here to help.”
“Great.” I ran my hand through my too-short hair. “Then why don’t I go see what they’re up to? Alien cultures and all.”
“Can do!” With that, she dashed away toward the others.
“Do I... really look okay?” I asked, turning to Zander, who couldn’t have beamed brighter unless he was in active nucleosynthesis. He gently brushed my hair behind my ears, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead.
“You look radiant, my star,” he said, and my heart fluttered as it always did at his touch.
Miro cleared his throat, and the flutters shut right the hell up.
“We’d best be going,” he said. “My selves are tired, and we have a long way back to the village.”
Selves? Miro didn’t explain further, and the other people weren’t clones or robots—at least at first glance—so maybe I had misheard.
Blayde turned around, her face reverting to some odd neutrality, which we only occasionally saw from her. “How long...?” she asked.
“It’s been seven cycles, almost to the day, since you walked into the sand and disappeared,” said Miro. Had I imagined it or did his voice just waver? “It is good to see you so well, Slash.”
Slash—the name from the memory. So, this was someone she’d known from before, someone who’d known her well enough to not only give her a nickname but survive giving her a nickname. I looked at Zander for answers, but he carried his frown like a boulder. Blayde, however, had a face red as a hot chili pepper. She turned away from all of us.
“Let’s talk.” She strode off into the sand, Miro close at her heels.
“Great.” Zander sighed heavily. “Another goodbye. I thought we’d be so good together after falling for you all over again in Da-Duhui.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
He gently lifted a corner of Sven’s lifeless head. “What? This jacket was wonderful. Enough pockets for everything. It’s absolutely–-no, was absolutely—fantastic. And now...”
He reached down to empty the pockets of the abandoned coat. It felt mildly ironic that Zander would have lost his iconic jacket to the same creature he was wearing now. Circle of life and all.
“Goodbyes are hard,” I said. “Uh, don’t you think it’s a little odd between Miro and Blayde?”
“Odd?”
“She’s so... I dunno, off?”
“Wait, you don’t know yet, do you?” He frowned, still avoiding eye contact, distracted by pulling items out of his coat pockets. So many crayons. “Miro is Blayde’s ex.”
“Her ex?” I asked. “Before or after Jurrah?”
“Before. So long before neither of us can remember them. Which is pretty awkward, considering Miro is Blayde’s ex-spouse.”
