A SOUND LIKE great blades shattering on a wall of rock came from a distant part of the cavern—Morgan’s attack diverted to another target somehow.
“Impossible!” she repeated.
“I do not think that word means what you think it means.” Dave laughed behind her. “Though it certainly wasn’t easy.”
I looked past Morgan and spied Dave at the entrance to the cavern where the stone wall had been pushed aside once again. A huge coyote stood beside him on three legs, the other held close to her chest. “Sorry we’re late, but that door was a tough open even for me.”
Oscar turned and made a pushing motion that sent a great wave of liquid rock rolling across the floor to crush the pair. But they were gone by the time it arrived—stepping through a bright circle in the air to appear beside me.
I’d never been happier to see anyone. “I love you, man. How did you know where to—”
Dave cut me off. “Lisa, but we can talk about it later. We’ve got like five minutes to win this fight. Speaking of which.” He made a sweeping gesture with his alien hand, opening one gate in front of us and another a few feet away. A great sledgehammer of wind passed through, turning back on Morgan in the process. She flicked it aside with a finger, though it knocked Cetius to the floor as it passed.
“Right,” said Oscar. “We’ll have to do this the hard way even if it risks the diagram. Cetius, get up!”
Through my feet and my connection to the stone beneath us, I felt the points of the star formed by Oscar and his companions grow suddenly active. My first thought was there was no way we could survive a blast like the one that had taken down the dome. But that was swept aside a moment later as stone brought me the message of more arrivals. Three of them. Sparx, my aunt, and …
“Mom, no! It’s too dangerous! Get out of here!”
A sort of sick horror filled me as my mother dashed toward us. Sparx could take care of himself, and Noelle was already dead, but my mom had no real power of her own. No way to protect herself from the oncoming doom. Even as that thought passed through my mind, Oscar struck, releasing another devastating lance of pure magical force—and my mother was between us.
There was nothing I could do except watch. Noelle, who was trailing behind my mother, on the other hand … With the slightest nod in my direction, she turned and stepped into the beam. I expected it to tear right through her and go on to devour my mother and the rest of us an instant later, but the dead are made of tougher stuff than the living.
When the power struck Noelle’s chest, light fountained outward from the point of contact, outlining her with an intense corona, like the halo around the moon at the height of an eclipse. It seemed for a moment that she might even survive, but then her edges blurred and burned away, and she erupted into a great column of fire that scorched both floor and ceiling—momentarily blinding me.
Trying desperately to keep track of Oscar and his followers, I shifted my attention entirely to the earth beneath us. The sense of presence that was my father trapped in his stone prison had grown enormously, acting like light in a dark room. Through him, I could feel the whole shape of the sealed gateway between worlds—its ins and outs and every piece of its functioning, right down to the way it might be opened again if I only had enough power.
There was so much weight of magic and information there I had to fight hard to “see” past it. First to where my aunt’s second death was slowly burning itself out, and then onward to put “eyes” on Oscar. I was surprised to find that his formation had suffered a momentary fragmentation.
As my eyesight returned, I saw why. Noelle had managed to reflect much of the blast back at those who had sent it. The hair of Morgan’s bangs and eyebrows was actively smoldering, and Oscar’s crown scar looked as red and livid as if he had only just received it. Deepest hate stared out at me through his eyes as he gestured for Morgan and the others to re-form the star.
“That was your last reprieve, boy.” Through my feet, I felt the power of the star begin to build again—slower this time, but much stronger. “Now we do it the hard way. Morgan, kill everyone but Kalvan.”
The girl spun her upturned fingers in a half twist. A wind rose in answer and began to circle the well where we stood, moving faster and faster as Oscar fed it power from the star.
Oscar smiled. “This will be a genuine pleasure.”
Before I could reply, my mother arrived with Sparx. Throwing her arms around me, she hugged me wordlessly. What I wanted to do was melt into her embrace and let her make everything better, but my whole life told me how that would end.
“Sparx?” I asked over her shoulder. The building whirlwind snatched the words from my lips and tugged at the air in my lungs.
“I can’t stop that. Nothing can.”
“Dave?”
“I’ve been trying everything I can think of,” he gasped, “none of it gets through.”
“Lisa?”
The coyote shook her head and let out a mournful howl, but the wind sucked it away an instant later. I could hardly breathe myself and I couldn’t see any way out.
Wait, see. That word … I still didn’t understand my earth powers, and that might be the reason for my failure to even think of using them actively thus far. I had been blind to the possibilities of my father’s heritage. Ironically, my aunt’s death and the temporary loss of vision it had brought was the thing that forced me to look beyond sight, if only for a time, and truly see.
I closed my eyes and reached down through my feet into the ground below, seeking desperately …
There!
The gate matrix. I had touched it earlier, but pushed that awareness aside in my desperation to find Oscar. I couldn’t open the gate with the power I currently had. Not fully anyway, but I might be able to crack it far enough to … yes!
I pushed on the matrix of the gate with everything I had, and it gave. Not much. Barely at all, really. But enough. For one brief second I opened my end of the gateway between two worlds. The floor beneath us faded away for perhaps thirty feet. Gravity took over and we fell. Or, began to. My strength was expended before we dropped more than a few yards, and the gate closed around us—sealing us in stone in the very second Morgan released the full force of her whirlwind.
It struck the magically hardened rock of the gate and rebounded harmlessly. I had saved us all from death at the cost of trapping us deep in stone … and more than stone. I felt the difference when Sparx tried to slip through the rock of the gate and failed.
How could I know all that? Because I was my father’s son and a child of the earth as much as I was my mother’s and a child of fire. The gate stone was no ordinary marble or quartz. It was as close to the pure heart of earth as it was possible to get. I understood now why my father had diffused his consciousness into that stone. Not out of fear or desperation, but out of wonder. It would be the simplest thing imaginable to join in the long slow thought of that ur-rock of which all other rock was but an imperfect reflection.
But I was also a child of ever-moving fire brightly burning and I had trapped others with me. Others who could not so easily join with the rock. I reached out, finding my mother, Sparx, Dave, Lisa … oh. I realized with a start Josh was with us, too, and alive. His slowly beating heart sent echoes through the matrix of stone and magic that held and healed him. For that was a gift of the ur-rock as well. Those it contained, it protected and cared for.
I could feel it working. Quickly on the burns that had nearly killed Josh—close to the stone and the surface as they were. More slowly on inner hurts like Lisa’s broken foreleg. Slower still on that which went the deepest, like Dave’s asthma—which his power had eased but not ended. Where Josh’s skin would recover in a matter of minutes or hours, it might take days to fully restore Lisa’s leg, and months to reshape Dave’s breathing. Sadly, my mother’s problems were beyond such simple healing.
I don’t know exactly how I knew that, only that I did. Perhaps, despite myself, some part of me was already thinking with the great stone mind that surrounded me. I understood then in a way I never had before that I couldn’t fix my mother. Her mental illness was a part of what made her the person she was and it could only be addressed to the extent she wished it. Even that had limits I had no part in setting. I might, if my magic grew in the right direction, help her, but only so far as she would allow.
But none of that would free any of us from the trap I had used to save our lives, and now I forced my mind away from the beautiful temptation of thinking the slow and gentle thoughts of stone—how had I ever hated this element? I had put us here, and I had the responsibility to free us, but I had no idea how.
Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, irresistibly, my attention was wrenched upward. Through the stone I saw Oscar limping down the stairs to the sealed gate, his scalp raw and blackened even where the Crown had not burned him all those weeks ago. His eyes were threaded with red lightning from broken blood vessels. Neither Morgan or Cetius followed as he crossed to the center of the stone well and knelt on the freshly smoothed rock. I could feel him shaking with rage as he ran a hand over the surface.
“So close,” he whispered. “So close, and now it’s gone.” He bent and spoke directly into the rock. “Curse and blight you, Kalvan. You could have walked away with a cure for your mother, but you chose ruin instead. Yours as well as mine.”
Oscar stood then, though the effort clearly cost him. Without so much as a glance at his companions, he limped across the stone floor of the cavern to the exit where the first rays of the rising sun peeked through.
The dawn had come.
DAWN
I felt a sudden pressure on my brow as the Corona Borealis answered the dawn. How do you describe the feeling of becoming one with a season? Sunshine. Green leaves. Warm rain. Flowers bursting. Frantic life racing to reproduce. But that was only the beginning. Summer is the season of heat and light and rot and sudden death on hunter’s wings. Summer is all that and so much more. Most of all?
SUMMER IS
And I was summer. But only for an instant. There is too much summer for one mind to hold. Too much for a thousand minds even. The rush of feelings and images and sounds and scents and every sense stuffed to the brim faded away, though it left many gifts. Not least of which was the sense that I was more alive than I had ever been, more than anyone had ever been. I was brimful of life and of the power that came with it. Too full. If not for the healing power of the stone encasing me I would have burst then—come apart in a thousand flaming fragments.
Even with that support, I knew I could not hope to contain this power for long. I needed to … wait. With the power of Summer came a deeper connection to the Crown and the knowledge it had been built to contain. Could I …
I reached for the structure of the gate. I had more than enough power to hold it open for as long as I needed now. Only … I couldn’t get at it from this side. With senses turned up a thousandfold by my ascension to Summer’s Throne, I could see things I hadn’t noticed earlier. When Oscar sprang the trap that sealed my father here, he had made certain no one within the gate could move forward into our world. But he had reckoned without the power of the Crown. If I wanted to, I could open the gate. Of course, I would die in the next instant, but at least I could free the others.
A last resort that. What else could I do? Didn’t doors open both ways? With a flick of my will, I turned my attention in the other direction, searching for the place where my father lay trapped. I still didn’t want to open the gate and die, but if it turned out that was the only option, I wanted to send my father through as well. Somebody would have to take care of my mom. Besides, I was beginning to get the inklings of another way, though I’d need help and a lot of luck.
So, could I … No.
The way was closed in that direction and I couldn’t hope to open it by myself. But, then, maybe I didn’t have to. Not all the way, at any rate.
Perhaps … yes.
With a wrenching effort of will, I forced part of the gate aside, pushing enough stone out of phase with reality to let me crawl to Dave’s side. I could feel the power burning brighter within me as I did so. Though the ur-rock still surrounded me, I was no longer in full-body contact with it and I could feel myself starting to cook from within. I would have to do this quickly. Dave was lying on his back, still and quiet.
—hibernating—whispered the voice of the ur-rock.
—bide—
—there, he wakes—
Dave blinked his eyes and looked at me. “Dude, has anyone told you you’re glowing?”
“Huh, am I?”
“Yeah, you’re shining all green and gold like, whoa. Especially the Crown. You look like something out of a commercial for unicorn hair spray. By the way, where are we?”
“Trapped in the gate between our world and my father’s. Long story and I’ll tell you all of it if we get out of here in one piece. But holding even a part of this thing open without lighting myself on fire is taking everything I’ve got and then some. I need help.”
“All right. What do you need me to do?”
“I … um, I’m not sure, really. The Crown and I had a quick convo and now we need to go down because my dad’s that way and if we go up I turn into a human fireworks display. That involves opening a path through this.” I waved my hands at the ur-rock. “I figured opening is your thing now, so…” I trailed off at that point because I didn’t know what came next.
“All right. I can work with that … I think. But you have to promise not to laugh.” I nodded and crossed my heart, and Dave turned his gaze toward his alien hand and began to speak to it. “You kind of showed up on your own, and you’ve usually steered me right when I ask, so, hey, let’s do this.”
Seemingly of its own accord, the hand reached up and touched the central gem of the Corona Borealis. I felt a sort of jolt that arced from head to heart to the soles of my feet and back again. Then, as if a door had opened in my mind, I saw what to do.
“Dave, touch your palm to the stone beneath us.”
Once his alien hand was in place, I knelt and covered it with both of my own, focusing my power through his just … so. Around us, a large circle of rock thinned and vanished, revealing the others. Most appeared to be in the same weird unconscious state Dave had been in when I’d first found him. All but Sparx, who gave me a look that told me I was in for quite the lecture. But when he opened his mouth, I shook my head.
“You can yell at me all you want later—I certainly deserve it. But right now I’m still working on getting us out of this mess. Hopefully, alive.”
“Fair enough. What’s nex—argh!”
Even as he spoke, I made a magical twist. The floor below us stopped … well, flooring, as stone shifted halfway into another sort of matter entirely, becoming something midway between solid and gas. That eased the stress the Crown was putting on my body as we began to sink, a bubble of clear space, moving a bit slower than a stone falling through water.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until, rather suddenly and unexpectedly, we hit a hard bottom and stopped. At which point I had a surprising realization. “That’s … odd.”
Dave looked at me. “I don’t like the sound of that. Why’d we stop?”
“We just crossed the line between being mostly in our world and being mostly in my father’s.”
“And?” he demanded.
“I’m not the Summer King on this side of the line. The Crown’s power doesn’t reach here. On the upside, I’m no longer a candidate for sudden conversion into messy special effects. On the downside, I’m running out of tricks…”
“Kalvan, son…” My father’s words preceded him out of the stone around our clear bubble of space. “You’ve freed me from my long imprisonment. But what’s this?” He touched the Crown on my forehead. “You’re far too young to bear this burden.”
“I am, but I’ve just had an idea.” I’d dreamed of meeting my father for years, and I wanted to say more, to do more, but it would have to wait. If I took the time now, we might all be trapped forever.
“What?”
“The structure I built to transfer the Crown is gone, and the moment to use it passed, but we’re kind of still attached to it through the memory of the ur-rock. I’m thinking we might be able to bend the rules here beyond the edge of the world if you’re willing to accept the Crown. Dave, do you think you could take the Crown from my head with your magic hand and put it on my dad’s?”
“Maybe … this hand is about halfway between a familiar and a part of me.” Dave touched his temple with the hand and his eyes went far away for several seconds. Finally, he nodded. “I might be able to at that. Only, it won’t be quite that simple. Both of you, kneel.”
I looked at my father, and he nodded. “Do it.”
We both knelt. Dave rotated his alien hand slowly through space while pulling it down and toward him.
POP … POP
A pair of circles opened in the space above our heads. As Dave reached his human hand into the one above my dad’s head, it came out through the one above mine and caught hold of the Crown. A moment later, he set it on my father’s head. I felt my connection to the Crown begin to fade, taking what little energy I had left with it. Maybe this would work …
My father extended a hand to my best friend. “I’m Nix. Dave, is it?”
“Yes indeed.” They shook.
“The thing you were doing with my son to move through the rock. Do you think you could do it with me? The power of the Crown may not reach here, but I have this.” He touched his ear and the sapphire there suddenly shone out as bright as any star.
“Yes.” Dave took my father’s hand again. “It was mostly the hand and Kalvan before, but I think I learned what’s needed.”
Sweat broke out along my father’s brow and we began to rise. I had about a million questions for this man, but I knew exactly how much what he was doing took out of you, and I didn’t dare interrupt. In fact, with the Crown gone and now that I wasn’t so focused on keeping us moving, the world was getting mighty dim around the edges …
A supreme effort of will allowed me to ease myself down onto my back instead of simply falling over.
“Kalvan?” Sparx sounded alarmed.
“’m all right. Everyone all righ’?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Even Josh?”
“He’ll live.”
“’s good, cuz ’m gonna take a quick nap.”
Lights out.