Realm!
It looked so such in every detail like our bramble bower border hedge home. We found ourselves dumped on the floor of the main tunnel a scant few strides from the entrance to the Assembly Bower. In a jumbled daze I reached to touch the tips of thorns growing sharp along the tangled branches of the wall.
“Ripe,” I mumbled.
“Listen,” said Kar.
I listened and heard nothing, which was a significant strangeness. Ever and always in the hedge a soft chankling sound fills the tunnels as chonkas jiggle on the belts of bendo dreen moving about. Such is so.
“The hedge is abandoned,” I surmised.
“This isn’t the hedge. We are inside the purple, I bet. No bendo dreen to be heard. It’s a puzzle. Let’s look for the fleckrunner,” announced Kar with impressive confidence.
Kar led. I followed. We explored along all of the tunnels, every one of ‘em, and peeked into every Bower and nest. Empty. No fleckrunner. No bendo dreen. We had a lengthy sit down at the table in the Chonka Repair Shop and remembered such and so earlier times when we’d been apprenticed to Zinna, so and such long before we discovered Zinna was a jrabe and Kar was her daughter.
“Remember when you were just jark dweg Karro and not a jrabe or a jroon?” I asked, wrapped in the comfort of sweet memory.
“And you were Silent Bekka,” added Kar. “So such, then was then. Now is now. I AM a jrabe jroon, the first and only. And we are supposed to be looking for a Ramp. The final Ramp! When we find it, we will descend to the Realm Beyond Realms!”
“Maybe you should shift to a river again,” I suggested.
“I don’t feel it,” said Kar. “I feel … we should go under to the forge tunnels. I feel that.”
Kar led. I followed. We went down the cut dirt stairway to the caverns. Fires burned in every forge. Our shadows flickered on the walls. No fleckrunner. No bendo dreen. The only chankling was from my chonka as I descended the stairs.
“The fires mean something. They can’t be real,” said Kar.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Who started ‘em? Who’s tending ‘em?” she said, and before I could tackle her, she calmly reached out and placed her hand into the middle of an angry dancing yellow forge fire. She picked up a red glow coal and squeezed it, held it out to me. “See? Here. Hold it.”
“I believe you,” I said, backing away. She was a jrabe jroon. I wasn’t.
She tossed the coal back onto the fire and sat herself down on an anvil. She tapped the toes of her highboots on the floor and scratched her forehead. She looked at me and shrugged.
“Any ideas, Bek?” she asked.
“Only one little one,” I replied.
She tilted her head and threw out her hands as if so such to say, “Well?”
“I see chunks of bittem in that bucket. Did you ever hear of bittem being burned in forge fires? Why is that bittem there? It shouldn’t be there. Bittem burns green. Forge fires glow yellow red hot. It’s the only thing I’ve noticed out of place,” I said.
While I spoke, Kar abandoned the anvil to walk to the bucket. She stood over it and stared down into it.
“The only thing out of place,” she mused.
She lifted the bucket, crossed to the forge and without a word dumped the bittem onto the fire. Green flames shot high. The cavern walls turned into sliding red sand which flowed around me up to my knees. The ceiling parted, giving way to a high pink sky. The green flames became water, a green river drifting lazily by, a green river shooting up sparks of color, all the colors of the rainbow.
“Realm Beyond Realms!” gasped Kar.
“How do you know?” I spouted, struggling to free my boots from the sand.
“The last secret,” she hissed.