Chapter Eight

Molly slumped sideways in her wheelchair. Dimly, she was aware she could hear someone choking and retching nearby. But she was more aware of tremendous pain in her left hand that pulsed up her arm in slow waves. She tried to move the hand but couldn’t. She had the same weak feeling that she had felt in her legs years ago as one of the first symptoms of her disease. Panicking, she forced her eyes open, to see two anxious faces hovering over her—Ariel and Joss. Somewhere the retching was still going on.

“My hand. My hand,” she whispered.

“Thank heavens. You’re alive.” Joss was almost in tears with relief.

Molly felt her fingers being pried apart, and the waves of pain turned to sharp agony. “Oh, jeez,” Joss said. “Don’t look, Molly.”

But she looked anyway. She had been holding the stick with its sky-blue stone weight cradled in her palm. Ariel had taken it from her hand, and the stone’s round shape had been burned into her skin leaving an angry red welt. The pain reached a crescendo as if someone were ringing bells and buzzers in her head. She closed her eyes again, trying to get her breath.

“Molly. MOLLY!” Joss’s voice was urgent.

“I’ll ... be ... okay ...” she tried to say, to reassure her. “Just have ... to get ... my ... breath.”

And shortly the pain started to become more bearable. The retching noises had stopped and, after a while, she heard Alasdair’s voice asking, “Is she unconscious?” Cautiously, she opened her eyes. Now all four faces were hovering over her, blocking the sky.

“Let her have some air.” Ariel’s voice was sharp with worry and fright.

“Where am I?” she asked, feeling foolish as soon as she asked the question. Surprisingly, the others didn’t seem to think it foolish.

“That’s the question of the century,” said Mark, waving his arm at the scene before her.

Gone was the stump and the figure that had appeared on it. Gone was the green grass of the lawn and the bushes bordering the ravine and the whole world that they knew.

They were surrounded by an expanse of open plain, covered as far as they could see in knee-high grass, pale gold in colour. The sky was no longer the luminous blue of a summer evening. Instead, it was pearly white and hazy, as though covered by a film of high cloud. Nothing broke the landscape to give them any sense of direction, except what might be a low ridge far off to the left. But it was so distant that it was only a slightly blue smudge against the horizon.

They all stared around in baffled silence. Words seemed inadequate, until Mark stepped back and put his foot where someone had been sick. “Yuck,” he said. “Let’s move away from here.”

Ariel turned on him, suddenly fierce with panic. “No, don’t move a step,” she said. “We’ve got to get back, back home. Right now.”

“Oh, not yet,” murmured Alasdair, but only Joss heard him.

“How?” Mark asked flatly.

“The same way we got here, whatever that was.”

“Ariel, we don’t even know how we got here,” Mark said wearily. “I had just shown Molly what I saw the wild woman doing. She was copying me. You walked over and joined us and that’s all I know.”

“So do it again. It will probably take us back.”

“It’s not that easy.” Molly leaned her head back wearily. “We don’t have those five pieces of crystal,” she said. “They’re back there on the stump.”

“We do have the stick, and your synthesizer though,” Joss said thoughtfully. “That’s two out of three.”

“We’ve got to try,” Ariel said desperately. “I’ve got to get you guys home right now. We’ve got to get Molly’s hand looked after before that burn becomes infected.”

Molly, reminded of the pain in her hand, winced. She pulled the synthesizer out wearily. Mark, seeing how tired she was, took it from her. But when he touched the playback key, nothing happened. The long black case stayed stubbornly silent.

“You must be doing it wrong,” said Molly. “Here, give it back to me.”

But when she touched the familiar keys, the box remained mute.

“Looks like one out of three,” said Mark grimly. “Maybe something happened to the batteries.”

His words sank slowly but ominously into Molly’s brain. “Batteries?” She pressed the button to make her wheelchair go forward. Nothing happened. Frantically, she pushed and pulled the steering lever. Still nothing. “Oh, no,” she said, almost in a sob.

They all took turns pressing and pushing, but the wheelchair stayed as stubbornly inactive as the synthesizer.

“What are we going to do?” she asked desperately.

“Like I said earlier, move away from this yuck,” Mark said. “C’mon, Alasdair, help me get this thing moving.”

It was difficult to roll the heavy chair over the tough grass stems. Molly clenched her teeth—the bouncing turned the dull pain in her arm back into sharp knives. Fortunately it didn’t last long. They rolled the chair a short distance away and stopped. Mark and Alasdair sank to the ground gratefully.

“It would be lighter if we took the battery out before we go any further,” said Alasdair practically. But Molly objected. “How will I get it recharged if we leave it behind?”

“I hate to break it to you, Molly, but where do you think we’re going to plug it in around here?” Mark waved his hand at the open, empty plain.

“I have to get it recharged.” Her voice was panicky. “Otherwise I’ll be totally stuck here.”

“And where is ‘here’?” Ariel asked despairingly.

A heavy silence fell over the group. The question was so utterly unanswerable, and they were all so utterly tired, that there didn’t seem to be anything to say.

Mark found himself staring at Ariel, almost as though he hadn’t seen her for a while. A few weeks ago, Ariel had gone and got her hair cut short in one of the avant-garde, spiky styles that some of the girls in their school wore. But she wasn’t an avant-garde, spiky kind of person. Her head seemed too small and delicate, and she didn’t seem to have the self-confidence to get away with the haircut. Instead, she looked lost, uncomfortable. She caught him looking at her and gave a small, quick smile.

He smiled back and absent-mindedly pulled at a stalk of grass. It didn’t come easily, but with a sharp tug he broke the stem at ground level. It wasn’t a kind of grass he’d ever seen before—at the end it thickened into what looked like a miniature head of corn with rows of seeds packed tightly together. The leaves were dry and rustling, but slightly oily to the touch. He sighed and, without thinking, put the end of the stalk in his mouth to chew at. Then spat it out.

“Yech,” he spluttered. “Tastes awful.”

Silence settled again. Ariel and Joss sat with their backs propped against either side of the wheelchair. Ariel put her head down on her knees. The two boys flopped on their backs and stared at the haze overhead. Molly was staring into the distance. Sitting in her wheelchair, she could see a little further than the others.

“Isn’t that smoke over there?” she asked abruptly.

Alasdair got to his feet and peered. A thin pencil stroke rose from the horizon, just beyond a slight rise in the ground. It looked almost too straight and unwavering to be smoke, and fanned out at the top to disappear into the silver sky.

“Should we go see what it is?” asked Joss.

Ariel lifted her head from her knees. “Hadn’t we better stay here? How will we know where to come to get back.”

“We can’t sit here waiting for the Wizard of Oz to tap us with a ruby slipper and send us back home,” her sister said practically. “You could wait here if you wanted.”

Ariel would have none of that. She wanted them all to stay together.

“We’ll just have to mark the spot somehow,” Mark said. “What with?”

They looked around aimlessly, trying to think of something big enough with which to mark the spot so they could find it again in the wide prairie.

“The wheelchair battery,” Mark said at last.

Molly protested.

“We couldn’t push that thing across this grassland,” said Joss. “We can come back and get it if we find somewhere to recharge it. With help.”

With difficulty, they figured out how to remove the bolts that held the battery in place, and eased it out of the frame. But even with it gone, the chair was hard to maneuver over the grass. Molly’s face got whiter and whiter as the boys pushed and tugged. Eventually, they stopped and Mark drew his arm across his sweating forehead.

“I think it might be easier on everyone if we carried you,” he suggested. Molly was in too much pain to argue. The boys rested for a while, then laced their hands together to form a seat that Molly could sit on. Embarrassed, she swung herself awkwardly into their arms with Joss’s help, and circled Mark’s shoulder with one fragile arm to steady herself. They set off in a slow procession over the rough ground. Molly’s thin body looked as though a wind might blow her away, but she was still fairly heavy to carry. Alasdair gripped at Mark’s hand desperately, afraid his grip would give way.

Joss went ahead at a faster rate, climbing the gentle slope. Molly saw her outlined against the sky, then saw her turn and come racing back.

“There’s a building or something down there,” she said.

Mark and Alasdair looked at each other. “We’ll have to put you down for minute, Molly.”

“Maybe we could carry her for a little ways,” Ariel proposed. Mark looked doubtful. “Well, try if you like.”

Joss and Ariel took their places at Molly’s side, and lurched along for a gallant distance. This time, the boys hurried ahead. When they reached the top of the slope, they saw that the ground fell away again in front of them at another gentle angle. At least it would be downhill a bit, Mark thought. Some distance away, a square shape rose out of the ground. If it was a building, it didn’t seem to have a roof. The column of smoke rose behind it.

They went back to help the girls up the last bit of the slope. Molly’s face had, if possible, become whiter than before. Ariel looked anxiously at her, then down at the deserted-looking walls ahead. “I hope there’s water down there, at least,” she murmured. Everyone else immediately realized how thirsty they were.

After a few moments’ rest, they reformed their slow procession. Now, even the boys could only carry Molly a short way before resting. The wall slowly grew higher as they got closer, and now they could see a square opening at the centre. But there was still no sign of life, unless you counted a narrow footpath that wandered off to the right of the centre archway.

A few meters away from the wall, they stopped and changed bearers for the last time. Mark and Alasdair linked hands again and moved slowly forward. But this time, no one went ahead. Without saying anything, they all walked together towards the smooth clay wall that towered overhead.

At last the group stumbled out of the grass onto a dusty square just in front of the opening. Through it, they could see green branches. Alasdair and Mark grimly held on for the last short piece of pathway, their fingernails digging into each other’s hands, and staggered through. Thankfully, they slid Molly down onto the soft grass at their feet so that her back would be supported by a square stone block standing on its own, just to the right of the entrance.

She sat with her eyes closed for a few moments, feeling pain surge into her hand and drain away, leaving her light-headed. Finally, she opened her eyes to look.

The towering wall sheltered a large square space—another world from the dry, grassy plain. In one corner grew a grove of pine trees, as tall as the wall itself. Near their roots, a small stream welled up and trickled through the garden, collecting in a pool at the center where a large, flat rock jutted over the water.

To the left of the rock, the pool broadened into a small, marshy area where sword-shaped leaves and bulrushes grew up out of the water. No flowers were blooming at this time and the sword-shaped leaves were a dull gold-brown. But even so, the garden felt green, cushioned with soft mosses, protected. Molly felt peace flowering inside her as she brushed her hair out of her eyes to look around.

The others seemed almost as enchanted, staring around quietly for a few moments.

“Water,” said Ariel at last, thankfully. “Let’s get that hand cleaned off, Molly.”

“Is the water clean enough?” Mark asked.

“I don’t care,” said Molly decidedly. “I just want to put it into something cool.”

They helped her over to the flat rock. She stretched out and dangled her hand into the water. The relief was exquisite. “Wonderful,” she breathed, moving her fingers gently. The others clustered nearby, still held speechless by the peace and the fragrance of the pines.

Until they heard a cry from the gate.