Simon Bloom

Owen was closest; when he reached Simon, he knelt into the mud and did his best imitation of a TV-drama paramedic. He checked Simon’s pulse, listened to his breathing, and pried open his eyelids to check his pupils.

Alysha knelt beside Simon, too. “Look, if you got smacked around by a giant mammoth, drowned in a lake, and then miraculously healed a sabertooth wound, you’d need a nap, too.”

“Not healed—undid,” Flangelo said, pointing at his undamaged clothes. “Maybe that was too much for him, though.”

“He’s got two Books on his side and a ton of power,” Alysha said. “There’s probably nothing that can stop him. He’ll wake up when he’s ready.”

Flangelo frowned. “I hope you’re right. But if being in the Union has taught me anything, it’s that even the weakest can hurt you and the strongest can get hurt.”

Owen looked around at the mammoths and sabertooths scattered across the smoldering ground. He noticed several pairs of eyes staring out from the tree line and remembered the many other types of megafauna they’d seen before. “Maybe we should go someplace safer to talk about this?”

“More of a shame to get eaten,” Alysha said. “Dealing with Sirabetta will have to wait until Simon recovers.”

“If we want speed, let’s just fly with Owen’s velocity,” Alysha said. “No offense, but he can move us much faster than you can go.”

Owen and Alysha put on their backpacks and gave Simon’s to Flangelo to wear. The kids grabbed Simon’s arms and Flangelo put his hands on Owen’s shoulders; Owen used velocity to lift them, and his octopus camouflage kept them hidden. They soared into the air, keeping high above the ground to avoid any further danger or bad weather. They soon reached the border of the desert and landed outside one of the huts.

Owen closed his eyes and concentrated on sensing velocity. He pointed to a hut. “That one. I can’t sense any movement inside; it’s either empty or everyone’s asleep.”

“Wait here,” Flangelo chirped. He shifted to sparrow form and flew around the hut. He changed back to human form and entered. A few moments later he came out and waved to the kids.

Moments later Alysha led the way while Owen used velocity to float Simon into the hut. It was, to put it mildly, quite nice. It was considerably larger on the inside; they’d walked into something the size of a small trailer made of mud and found they were in something the size of a spacious, well-decorated one-floor house.

The temperature was perfect, but it took my link to my Chronicle subjects to fully appreciate this. To Flangelo, it was like the climate in a shady, slightly moist forest. To Alysha, a big fan of tennis, the air resembled the fading warmth of late afternoon on a sunny day. For Owen, happiest parked in front of his television, there was a slight chill to the air and a flat, still quality to the room that basically screamed naptime.

In other words, rather than adjusting the room to the inhabitants’ needs, the hut was adjusting each inhabitant’s body to make them feel comfortable. Quite a neat trick.

Flangelo walked up to a large window on the wall opposite the door. He tapped the side of a large black box beneath the window; the box unfolded like a flower’s petals. Something vaguely like a steering wheel formed, and Flangelo tapped the center. He touched his foot to a raised rectangle on the floor, and the entire hut jerked forward.

After that initial sense of movement, there was no indication that they were going anywhere. Only the window-view of barren ground and windswept dunes whipping by made it clear that they were crossing the desert.

Flangelo talked to the kids over his shoulder as he drove the hut. “There are things like these in a few other biomes, too; they’re all very cozy inside. Some Order members live in the midst of nature, some have real houses like Gilio’s. Almost nobody lives in these cruisers; they’re mainly for comfortable travel.”

“I’m sure Gilio got Ralfagon and some folks from the Craftsmen’s Guild to change the space inside of them and make them move around.”

Flangelo looked away from the window, and for a moment, the hut veered wildly to the side. He quickly turned his gaze back to the window and spoke over his shoulder. “The pools go between biomes, not within them. Places like the forests or mountains don’t have these cruisers; they can’t exactly fit between trees or boulders. But for the tundra, the polar region, the grasslands, and especially the desert, they’re essential.”

A few minutes later, Flangelo parked the cruiser-hut behind a large sand dune; he tapped the center of the steering wheel-thing and turned away from the window.

“We should be safe here. There aren’t many animals that would or could look for us here. I’d like to see a mammoth try to cross the desert.”

“And thanks for saving ours,” Alysha said to Flangelo. “If you hadn’t stepped in front of that sabertooth . . .”

She smiled and nodded. “I’m not in a hurry to try it again, but yeah. I guess we all kinda kicked butt.”

“That sort of happened underwater,” Simon said. “I might have a few more tricks,” he said, thinking of how he threw that last sabertooth. “If I can figure them out.”

Simon looked away for a moment, his mind abuzz. He did have a lot to figure out about the changes he was going through, but he knew one thing: he was doing okay. Better than okay—he was getting stronger and more capable. Was that enough?

“Hey, Flangelo, we still haven’t seen this tough new formula you were bragging about,” Alysha said. “But you did nice work distracting those things, at least.”

Simon turned his attention to the part of his mind that could sense space-time. By concentrating he felt that distinctive Sirabetta signal; he was almost positive she hadn’t been restored to her normal age. Yet. “I think you’ll have a chance to prove that,” he said to Flangelo. “We all should eat and rest up; our formulas won’t be much use if we’re exhausted.” He thought about Sirabetta and whatever other surprises were waiting for them. “And we’re going to need our strength tomorrow.”