“SEE? THAT WASN’T so hard,” Favian said.
Rick looked at the sparkling man and they both laughed.
“Easy-peasy,” Rick said.
Moving unsteadily away from the tree, he stuck out his hand. Favian—also looking weak and shaken—put his own sparkling hand in Rick’s. It felt to Rick like he was shaking hands with an electric wire. It tingled on his palm.
This was the first steady look he’d had at Favian. The sparkling man was younger than he had thought, only a few years older than he was himself. He was thin, almost gangly, with an open, innocent-looking face, his hair sheared so close to the scalp it was barely visible. His eyes were big and gentle and anxious, and his mouth quirked upward in a strangely worried little smile. Close-up, Rick could see that the man’s sparkly quality came from the fact that his body was made out of tiny particles of light constantly shifting, coming together and drifting apart so that he solidified and then grew transparent and almost insubstantial and then became solid again, a ceaseless motion that made him seem to float and twinkle where he stood.
He was looking a little stronger now than he had before. He nodded toward the lake trail.
“Come on,” he said.
It wasn’t easy to follow his flitting figure, but Rick knew the way and soon they were both back beside the metallic water.
“Mariel,” Favian called in his soft, echoing whisper of a voice.
Rick looked toward the silver lake, eager to see her rise again.
Nothing happened.
“It cost her energy to come up—to give you the sword. The same way it cost me to use the power from the portal. We’ve each only got so much energy and each time we use it, a little more is gone. We can never replenish it completely.”
Rick glanced at him. “But that means . . .”
“We’re fading, yes. We’re dying, Mariel and I. We haven’t got very much time left.”
“Who . . . who are you?” Rick asked. “How did you get here?”
Favian turned his gentle, anxious eyes on him. “I don’t know. We’re just here somehow.”
“Well . . . you had to come here somehow. Did Kurodar create you?”
But before Favian could answer, a new voice said firmly, “No!”
Rick turned and, with a little hitch in his heart, he saw Mariel again.
She had risen back up out of the water. If she was weaker than before, Rick couldn’t see any sign of it. To him, she looked just as beautiful and impressive as the first time. He gazed up at her strong but gentle features, and caught himself wondering what it would feel like to touch the metallic surface of her cheek.
“Kurodar can create security programs—lifeless bots like the spider-snake,” she said. “But Favian and I—we have spirits. He can’t create those. Kurodar only thinks he’s God.”
Rick nodded. “Okay. So then, how did you get here?”
Mariel and Favian exchanged a sad look with each other. Clearly, they had discussed this many times.
“We don’t know,” she told Rick. “We only know we’re here—and that we’re dying—quickly.”
“Actually, we were kind of hoping . . . ,” Favian began. “At least, I was hoping . . . Well, we’ve always both sort of hoped . . .”
Rick waited for him to finish.
But it was Mariel who said, “We’ve always hoped that someone might come for us. Someone who knew where we belonged. Someone who could take us away from here, before the end came.”
“That’s why when I saw you, I tried to warn you,” Favian added. “That’s why I tried to get you into the safety of the woods before the guardian bot came after you. I was hoping—Mariel and I were both hoping—that you might be the one to help us.”
Rick opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He hardly knew what to say. “I would help you if I knew how. But . . . you said you can’t come through the portal . . .”
Favian shook his head. “We’ve tried. It’s closed to us. We don’t even know what’s on the other side, but anything would be better than this.”
“And I don’t know any other way out,” said Rick. He thought it over. Nothing very spectacular came to him. He said, “Well, look, I was sent here for a purpose. Kurodar is about to launch a new attack on my world. I’m supposed to locate his outpost and report back. When I do go back, I’ll tell them about you and see what I can do.”
Again, Mariel and Favian exchanged a look—a hopeful one this time. It made Rick feel a little nauseous to think they would be waiting for him, depending on him. He had no idea whether he could do anything for them or not.
“Meanwhile, we can help you,” said Mariel.
“Yes,” said Favian. “We don’t know what Kurodar is up to . . .”
“. . . but we know he’s up to something,” Mariel finished the sentence for him. “And yes, he’s been building a new fortress.”
“I think I saw it,” said Rick. “That dark building off in the distance.”
Favian nodded. “He only started it a little while ago. There’s never been anything like it here before. We don’t know what he’s going to use it for, but it seems to be almost done. If you want, I know how to get you there.”
Rick glanced at his palm, at the time: 29:07. He shook his head. “It’s too far. My time would run out before we reached it.”
“There’s even more beyond it,” Mariel said in her musical, resonant voice. “A Golden City, a haunted city of ghosts and creatures and dark passageways. That’s the center of this place. That’s where its real secrets lie. But it’s too well guarded. We can’t get in.”
Rick ran his fingers up through his hair. “Okay,” he said. “That’s all I need for now. I’ll go back and tell them I saw the outpost and maybe . . . maybe they’ll know a way to help you.”
“We haven’t got long,” said Favian. His anxious face seemed more anxious still. “We don’t know how much time, but not much.”
“Look, I’ll do what I can,” said Rick—it sounded lame even to him.
“I just wish you could take us back now,” Favian said. “You don’t know what it’s like here. The creatures always hunting us, and at night . . .” His voice trailed off.
Rick nodded sympathetically—but helplessly. He wished he knew of a way to help these . . . these people or spirits or whatever they were.
“It’s all right,” said Mariel after a moment. The look on her face practically mesmerized him with its calm and majesty and . . . something else. Something he couldn’t quite name. But it was familiar to him. He used to see it in his father’s face sometimes. Faith. That’s what it was. She had a look of faith. “Rick will come back,” she said to Favian. “He won’t desert us. He’s a hero, Favian. You only have to look at him to see it. He’s the hero we’ve been waiting for.”
“Whoa,” said Rick. “Whoa. Not so fast. I’m no hero, believe me. Back in the real world, I can barely . . .”
But before he could finish his sentence, Mariel had melted away, drifting down to the lake like rain, becoming one again with the still and silver surface of the water.
Rick turned to Favian. He saw the hope in Favian’s big, anxious eyes, and it pierced him. Why did Mariel have to say that about his being a hero? How could he ever live up to it? “Listen,” he said to Favian, “when you see her—when you see Mariel again, tell her . . . Tell her not to get her hopes up too much, all right? I’ll do my best for you, I swear I will, but . . . I’m not the guy she thinks I am. I barely know what I’m doing here myself.”
The sparkling Favian smiled his worried smile. “If you say so. But I don’t know, man. Mariel—she’s awfully smart, like wicked smart. She knows things. If she says you’re a hero, you probably are. Maybe you just don’t know it yet.”
Rick rolled his eyes. Just what he needed. More pressure. He had been a sports hero once, sure, but that was before the accident. And a sports hero—well, that’s not like a real hero, not like a soldier or a cop or a fireman or something. In fact, when he was facing that spider-snake, he had been so terrified, he felt like his arms and legs were made of cooked spaghetti. If the Realm held anything more dangerous than that, he didn’t know how he was going to handle it at all. It made him sick to think about it: even though he’d only just met her, he hated the idea of failing in front of Mariel.
“Well, like I said . . . ,” he muttered. “Don’t get your hopes up too much.”
But Favian held up one sparkling hand. “If you’re going to have a chance to do anything, you better get started. The portal should be ready for you now.”
It was. Back in the clearing, the purple diamond was fully bright again, floating in the air. Rick and Favian stood before it.
“Well . . . ,” said Rick. “Thanks—thanks for your help.”
“Don’t forget us,” said Favian. “Please. Don’t just leave us here. What happens to you when you die in this place, it’s . . . Well, it’s not good.”
Rick nodded and said, “I won’t forget.”
He turned and faced the glowing portal point. He took a deep breath. The purple diamond pulsed and throbbed as if it were a living thing. Rick gazed into the light of it and the light seemed to surround him.
He willed himself through the light and left the Realm.