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HAD I kept my eyes open, I would have seen the hands reaching out to me inside the balm layer, before I ran into them.
Surprised by the sensation of fingers pinching my arms, I gasped. I reflexively opened my eyes as my mouth filled with fluid—a thick, heavy balm that tasted of aloe, lidocaine and heavy perfume, similar to a spray I’d used for the worst sunburn I’d ever had. Instead of flowing into my lungs and easing the burning sensation, the balmy fluid caught in the back of my throat.
The hands pulled me forward.
I broke through the balm air, wheezing and choking, trying to spit the balm out of my mouth while attempting to suck in air through my nose. The process didn’t work very well.
I wiped my eyes and looked up at the person who’d pulled me through—Valcas.
“Are you all right, dearest?”
I looked around at the members of my team. All of them, including my father, were covered in blue-green goo. I grimaced. How were we supposed to climb vines when we were slippery messes?
“I feel ya,” said Ivory. “When you come through this way, it feels more like the healing balm of death, doesn’t it?”
I snorted what was left of the balm up into my nostrils, which got me choking again. I gasped for air and laughed. Ivory always knew exactly what to say during the most awkward moments.
“I’m fine,” I said, flicking from my fingers the balm I’d wiped from my eyes. It glopped onto the ground with a wet plopping sound. “How do we get this stuff off?”
“Do not waste it,” my father said. Because of my dramatic entrance, I hadn’t noticed that he was gathering as much of the balm as he could and collecting it in a glass vial. “The healing balm is precious. It may prove useful later during our journey.”
“So, then, we’re not going to go back to the TSTA to tell them we’ve completed our mission?” I asked.
“Over my dead body,” said my father. He whispered, but his words were wrought with fury. I rolled my eyes, realizing I was starting to think with the same type of words my father used to speak—wrought with fury. I couldn’t describe how weird that felt.
“But don’t you want to see Mom?”
“In time,” my father answered, a touch tightly. “Before I am delivered to the bowels of the TSTA, I would like to visit my homeland, to walk again through its soil, to once again breathe the air of my ancestors, to prepare—”
Ivory coughed. I could tell it was a fake cough, designed to catch our attention. It worked.
“You’re getting a bit dramatic, Healer,” she said. “What do we do about the bigger problem—the Uproar?”
“Seeing as trapping it did not work, I think we should figure out how to shoot it,” he replied.
Ivory looked at my father like he’d gone crazy. “We can’t shoot the Uproar. Why would you even say that?”
“Not with bullets, Chauffeur, but with fire.”
Ivory and I exchanged a glance. Maybe he had gone crazy.
“And where do we find this magical fire shooter?” she asked.
“We will need to track down the most powerful inventors we can find,” he said, pacing back and forth along the air space, adding emphasis to his words by balling his hand into a fist in front of him.
Okay. This was an interesting change of plans, not that we had fully formed plans to begin with.
“But, who?” I asked. “The only inventors I know are Edgar and Enta... and Edgar’s dead.”
My father stopped pacing. “Enta Vittor?”
“Yes. I don’t know where she is, but she has multiple pairs of travel glasses. Valcas and I can try contacting her, either here or at our next destination. Maybe we should visit her first, instead of Chascadia.” Frowning, I added, “Only, I don’t know if she’d be willing to help us.”
Valcas stepped back from me. He looked conflicted. “Why wouldn’t Nurse Vittor help us?”
My cheeks flushed. “As much as she tried to help me, I think she blames me for something.”
“What could she possibly blame you for?”
I lowered my head. “Edgar’s death.”
Valcas pulled me into a gooey hug. “You weren’t responsible for Edgar’s death, Calla.”
“But I didn’t gather the ingredients for his youth elixir in time. I got distracted. I fell asleep—”
“Well,” he said, “if Enta harbors hard feelings against you, there’s no better time to find out than now.” He slid his pair of travel glasses onto his face.
As Valcas tried to contact Enta, I noticed just how warm the air space was in between the balm and fire layers. Now that I had a chance to see the air layer for myself, I was surprised at how large it was. No wonder the burning sensation of going through the Fire Falls had felt like it lasted forever.
I gazed up at the vines along the wall. They were several inches thick in diameter and reached all the way from the ground to the top of the Falls. I couldn’t tell whether they’d grown up or down—they seemed to be either coming out of or going into the balm layer. I hoped they were strong enough to rope together and hold our weight.
To my left was the fire layer, endless licks of flame that reached out and baked the side of my body. I stepped as far back from it as possible. If we were to climb the vines and accidentally swing ourselves into the fire layer and fall, the result would be deadly.