8
“WHY WOULD THE FLINDUVIANS want to take over Earth?” I cried. (I suppose that wasn’t a particularly sensible question. It just popped out.)
“The other Wentars and I have often asked our selves the same thing,” replied the purple-eyed alien. “Considering the mess you people have made of this place, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want it. Of course, the planet’s basic structure is still sound; lots of water and so on. But everyone in the galaxy knows how much work it would take to clean up your world enough to make it suitable for civilized life. So there must be something else. We have some theories, but we still—”
Before he could finish the sentence, he spun as if he had heard something behind him—though what it was I couldn’t have said, since I heard nothing but the rain pounding against the windows. When he turned back, his eyes were wide. I wasn’t sure it was a look of fear (with an alien, who can tell?) until he whispered, “Quickly! Follow me! The Flinduvians are coming.”
The urgency in his voice made it clear: He was terrified—which didn’t do anything to calm me down, let me tell you.
I glanced at Gaspar to see if he was going to do as the Wentar said.
He was already heading for the door.
“What about the children?” he asked.
“They’ll have to come with us,” said the Wentar. “We’ll try to bring them back later. Hurry!”
Sarah grabbed my hand. Normally, I wouldn’t have put up with that, but this was not a normal situation. It didn’t make any difference. My fingers had barely closed over hers when I felt her hand being yanked out of mine.
“Sarah!” I cried, terrified that the aliens had snatched her. Then I saw what had really happened: Albert had picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder—the one without the hump. Moving amazingly fast, he scuttled out the door after the Wentar.
Bob the werehuman was close on their heels.
“Hurry, Anthony!” said Ludmilla, just before she turned into a bat and flew after them.
Melisande took my hand. “Sssstay with meeee!” hissed her snakes.
I did just that. Weird as she was, it was better than being alone. The two of us scurried into the hall. We hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty feet when I felt a jolt that reminded me of the time I accidentally touched the electric fence at Gramma and Grampa Walker’s farm with my head. Except this time was both less painful and about twenty times more powerful.
“What was that?” I cried.
No one answered. I had a feeling I knew what it meant, anyway. We had crossed some line—a line like the one we had crossed when we first entered the hallway.
Now we were somewhere else.
But where?
We kept running. I heard a shout behind us. When I looked over my shoulder, I was so startled that I stumbled and would have fallen if Melisande had not pulled me back to my feet.
Though the corridor stretched behind us, it didn’t go all the way back to the stairs, or even back to the place we had stepped through when the bookshelf had lifted out of the way. Instead, it ended at a shimmering wall of black. I figured that must mark the place we had passed when I felt that weird jolt.
Now, to my horror, that black wall began to bulge. Something from the other side was slamming against it. I could hear angry shouts. The blackness seemed to be stretching, getting thinner.
Melisande yanked me forward.
“Don’t sssstop!” hissed the snakes on her head.
And then we were there. The Starry Door.
There was no mistaking it. It was as black as the wall behind us, as if we were in some sort of long capsule, with a black wall at each end. But unlike the wall we had already come through, which was solid black, this wall was marked with a circle of stars that pulsed with silver light. The Wentar paused, glanced behind us. I heard a shout and turned to look, too.
The wall behind us had been sliced to tatters by thick, glittering claws. But the tatters themselves still had power, because the creature on the other side was struggling with them, trying to get through. I caught a glimpse of a face—large eyes and a bulging purple snout, with big fangs thrusting up from its lower jaw—that was both fierce and frightening.
The creature let out a cry of rage that seemed to scrape along my soul.
“Hurry!” cried Gaspar. “Hurry!”
The Wentar ran his fingers over the circle of stars, touching them in an order I couldn’t make out. With a musical shimmer, the door opened, revealing a great black void sprinkled with stars. I expected to be sucked through, destroyed instantly. But as if the stars themselves were only an image on a curtain, the Wentar reached forward and touched one.
“I want to go there,” he said, speaking to the door. Then he turned to us and said, “Follow me.”
He stepped forward. The black void rippled and seemed to swallow him.
Gaspar followed at his heels. Ludmilla went next; fluttering after her brother, she disappeared into the darkness. Then Albert stepped through, with Sarah still flung over his shoulder.
“Wait!” I cried.
It was too late; they were gone.
I glanced behind me. The creature I had seen before was pushing its way through the tattered black ribbons that were all that remained of the barrier. Though they clung to him and tried to hold him back, it was clear he would be free of them in seconds. Behind him were more of his kind, growling and snorting.
Then the monster locked eyes with me. I felt a coldness, and a strange glimpse of terror to come. I stood, frozen, like some helpless prey in the eyes of a great hunting beast.
“We musssst go!” cried Melisande, yanking my hand.
The spell was broken. Turning, I followed her through the Starry Door.
I FELT AS IF I were being stung by a thousand bees and kissed by a thousand butterflies, all at the same time.
My body was still tingling when I realized I was standing in a green field dotted with little red flowers. The moment of comfort I felt when I saw this didn’t last very long. Though the field was green, what grew on it was not like any grass I had ever seen. It looked more like a lawn of two-inch-high broccoli. It was the same with the flowers: Though clearly like flowers in general, they were just as clearly unlike any flowers I had ever actually seen. (And as the son of two florists, I’ve seen more than my share of flowers.) The stiff red petals that radiated out from the bumpy centers had a metallic look. I reached down to touch one, then cried out in pain. The edge was so sharp it had cut me, almost like a paper cut.
Putting my bleeding finger in my mouth, I looked up. The sky was as purple as wild irises.
“Anthony” said Sarah uneasily, “we’re not in Nebraska anymore, are we?”
“Nor are ve in Zentarazna,” said Ludmilla, who had turned back to her human form. She sounded as nervous as I felt—which made me even more nervous than I had been to begin with. “Just vere haf you brought us, Ventar?”
“To a place where we may be safe—and where we may be able to gather some information.”
“What about those . . . things?” I asked.
“We are safe from them for now. They cannot follow through the Starry Door. That is the law of magic”
“Good law,” said Albert.
The Wentar didn’t answer. Instead, he began turning in a slow circle. He was making an odd humming noise in his throat. The noise might have been nervousness. It might have been some secret call. Maybe he was just singing.
As I said, with an alien, who can tell?
Halfway into his second circle, he paused, then pointed. “This way,” he said. “Quickly!”
He began striding off across the field. The rest of us followed.
What else could we do?
The grassy stuff felt sproingy under my feet, and I almost bounced as I walked. It made a wonderful sound, too—a humming not unlike the sound the Wentar had been making. The air was clean and crisp, so sweet to breathe that I couldn’t help remembering the Wentar’s words about the mess we had made on Earth. I wondered what our own air was supposed to smell like.
After about fifteen minutes, we crested a hill. I could see an enormous lake ahead of us, its blue green surface rippled by gentle waves. As we ambled down the slope toward the sandy shore, something rose up out of the water.
I came to a dead stop.
Sarah grabbed my arm.
“What the heck is that?” she cried.