Chapter the 5th
“Wake up, Gwion! Come on, wake up!”
“Get off, will you!” I grumbled.
My universe was little more than a fog at that moment. It was a pretty bright fog, though. The bright light trying to get through the blinds was odd.
“Gwion, it’s important,” Gwen urged me. “Marakel is waiting for us.”
“Who’s that?”
“Come on, Gwion, you know who Marakel is. He’s the one who’s helping us find Kerry. He says we can’t waste any more time. Mommy’s just gone out to do some volunteer work and she’s got Sherman with her. We’re supposed to stay here and wait for the police to come to question us some more. Now wouldn’t you rather go look for Kerry than talk to the police again?”
The flood of horrible memories that question brought back answered the question. I saved us a lot of grief in some ways by saying that Margot, Gwen and I were kidnaped, but it also made things awkward. That’s the trouble when you tell a lie to get out of trouble. You have to tell a lot more lies and it gets harder to keep from contradicting yourself. On the other hand, not even Gwen thought that telling the truth was a good idea.
After getting smothered with kisses from parents I hadn’t seen much in months, and getting checked out by Margot’s father, who’s a doctor, we were thrown into a bear pit where the cops were waiting for us. Being grilled by police after an adventure like that is no fun, especially not in the small hours of the morning. I think some of the officers would have kept us up all night, but one of the women on the staff insisted on letting us go on the grounds that the questioning was pretty stressful for poor little kids like us. The three of us didn’t have a chance to have a pow-wow and make up a story and so we had to say as little as possible and hope for the best. I’m kind of proud of how disoriented I pretended to be so that I had no idea of what was going on or even what our captors looked like or anything. Actually, I really was pretty disoriented by what really happened, so I wasn’t acting all that much. I was so exhausted by it all that I fell straight into my bed as soon as I got home and went out like a light. The next thing I knew after that was Gwen’s obnoxious voice telling me that Marakel was waiting for us.
“How do you know Marakel wants us?” I mumbled.
“He sent me an e-mail. He probably sent you one, too, but you were too lazy to wake up and read it. Margot got it and she’s on the way here.”
“How did he know our e-mail addresses?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he just did a search for me.”
I heard the doorbell rang.
“That’s Margot,” said Gwen. “I’ll let her in. Get dressed and be ready to go in two minutes.”
That was an order. I still wasn’t anxious to get out of bed and traipse around some forest in another universe just to look for Kerry, but it was either that or try to explain to the police who kidnaped me and why when nobody really kidnaped me. I looked at my clock. It read: 9:34. I’d had a good sleep, but not good enough. I heard Gwen’s cheerful voice and Margot’s answering her. I still didn’t want to move, but I knew that Gwen was going to be back like an avenging angel if I didn’t get moving, so I got moving. I pulled on some clothes at random, splashed some water on my face in the bathroom and came out.
“About time,” said Gwen. “Let’s go.”
“I haven’t had any breakfast,” I said.
“Then have a Danish as you go,” Gwen ordered.
“Morning,” said Margot.
“Morning,” I said. “Escaping the cops, too?”
“Hope so. I hate sneaking out on my mom like this, but this is important.”
“Come on, Gwion,” Gwen urged me, “we don’t have all day.”
Just to spite my sister, I took my sweet time with taking a Danish out of the refrigerator and grabbing a fruit juice box to wash it down with. As soon as I had my breakfast in hand, Gwen just about pushed me out the door and down the hall to the elevator. That’s when I noticed she was carrying a paper back.
“What’s that for?” I asked her.
“It’s Marakel’s breakfast.”
“How come you’re feeding him?”
“Because he doesn’t have any food, Stupid.”
Gwen punched the Up button for the elevator.
“Is Marakel in this place, somewhere?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Gwen.
“How come he’s got a condo here, all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen replied. “You can ask him if you’re dying to know. Come on.”
The elevator door opened and we all stepped in. We went up one floor, and then Gwen pushed me out and down the hall to the room she was looking for. She knocked on the door and it opened immediately. There was Marakel, all right, looking very small and lost.
“Come in,” he said and stepped aside.
The place was empty with not a stick of furniture. Just a light-blue carpet. No wonder he didn’t have any food. The only thing in the place at all was an object about the size of a briefcase off in a corner.
“I brought you some breakfast,” said Gwen, as she handed Marakel the bag.
“I thank you,” said Marakel.
He tore into the Danishes as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Not surprising if the candy we gave him the day before was the last thing he’d eaten.
“How did you manage to get this condo?” I asked Marakel. “Did you have the money for the down payment or something?”
“Their computer said it was available for sale,” Marakel replied. “Now their computer tells them it is sold.”
You’d think a kid who boasted about a hacking job like that would have a wicked smile over it but, as usual, Marakel didn’t show any pleasure over what he had done, the little space alien.
“Marakel,” Gwen asked, “can you tell me something?”
“I don’t know until I know what you want me to be telling you,” Marakel answered, his mouth full.
“Were the people we saw playing that funny baseball game yesterday, fairies?”
Marakel stopped chewing and gave Gwen a cold look. This was the closest thing to an emotion I had seen in the strange kid.
“That is your word,” Marakel answered.
“Are they elves?” Gwen persisted.
Marakel repeated his cold stare.
“That, too, is your word.”
“Uh—what is your word for them?” Margot asked.
“They call themselves Lorakhienoi,” said Marakel. He sounded like he was clearing his throat in the middle of saying that word.
“Are you a Lorakhienoi?” Gwen asked him.
I was amazed at Gwen’s ear for language. She seemed to have gotten the word right the first time. I could never have done that.
“I am of the Lorakhienoi no more,” said Marakel, his voice and face expressionless once again.
“Did they throw you out?” Margot asked him with some concern.
By this time, Marakel had finished the Danishes and gulped down the juice Gwen brought him. He stood so still in the middle of the bare room that I thought he was feeling a lot of pain that he wasn’t about to show us.
“No,” Marakel answered, “I was the designated one.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gwen.
“Is this like the two children who had to leave their tribes when nobody won the war?” asked Margot.
“It is,” Marakel replied. “When the Lorakhienoi take a human, they must give one of their own in the human’s place. That one is the designated one.”
“Then you are a changeling!” Gwen exclaimed.
I winced at Gwen’s flat-footed question. Not even when Marakel gave her his cold stare for a third time did she seem to catch on how offensive she was.
“That is your word,” said Marakel.
“But I thought you guys couldn’t stand to be near iron,” said Gwen. “This building is made of lots of steel and that’s got lots of iron in it.”
“We—uh—we mutated,” said Marakel.
“And I thought elves needed lot of trees and stuff,” Gwen persisted. “Don’t you need trees any more? Or, is the park across the street enough?”
“Or did you mutate again?” I asked.
“We need trees,” Marakel answered. “We have not mutated to live without trees. There are few places on what you call your planet that have enough trees for us. For long lengths of time, most of us slept—you might say we hibernated—while a search party searched for trees. But each year, there were fewer trees and the Lorakhienoi who searched almost gave up and hibernated, also. That would have been the end of us. But just before they gave up, you Menarinen invented cyberspace. The searcher understood that many things can be made in cyberspace. They understood that we can make a forest with all the trees the Lorakhienoi must have. And so the search party woke them up and they made trees and new homes in cyberspace. The Lorakhienoi created the Forest of Windellynn.”
“Do you mean to say you took us into virtual reality yesterday?” I asked.
Marakel took such a long time in answering that question, I thought I’d finally stumped him on a computer matter.
“I think the Forest of Windellynn is not what you mean by virtual reality,” Marakel finally answered. “I think it is more true than what you call virtual reality. I have eaten my food. I think it is time to go and find Kerry.”
Marakel dropped the empty juice box and the paper bag on the floor, walked over to the far corner where the briefcase-size item was, and waved us over. At first I thought it was just a piece of driftwood, but when Marakel sat down and started to tap on the wood, I could see that it he was typing on a keyboard. The keys were pretty funny, though. They looked like they were made out of small bits of wood and they were marked with characters of some alphabet I’d never seen before. Marakel hit a larger block of wood with a sense of finality and leaned back from his keyboard. Suddenly, an image of a tunnel appeared and hung there like a 3-D holograph. The tunnel looked like a cylinder made out of twigs coiled around in circles as tight as a wire. A bit of reddish-yellowish light coming mysteriously from somewhere gave the tunnel a bit of light, but not much. The sight had a hypnotic effect on me that made me step back a little before it sucked me in to it.
“What’s this?” Margot asked.
My question exactly.
“This is the way to the game downloaded in Kerry’s computer,” Marakel answered.
“Is this virtual reality or real reality?” I asked.
“It is real,” said Marakel.
“What does it matter as long as we find Kerry?” asked Gwen.
By this time I was getting so many willies that I felt like running away and might have done that if I didn’t have to worry about the police asking me about the kidnapers I made up and then worry about the police asking me about Gwen and Margot if they walked into the computer tunnel and didn’t come back. Not that I wanted to walk into that tunnel with them and with Marakel and not come back, either. My only chance was to make Gwen and Margot see how absurd all this was before it was too late.
“If you are one of them,” I asked Marakel, “one of those whatever-you-call-them who kidnaped Kerry, why should we trust you when you’re leading us into a freaking tunnel like this where anything can happen?”
“GWION!” Gwen yelled, giving me a look filled with poison.
“If you want to go back home and sulk in your room, go right ahead!” said Margot, spitting out her words.
“Marakel,” said Gwen, “I’m sorry my brother is such a Dumblefumblebum.”
Marakel stood still as a stone for some time. You’d think his face would crumble the way crybabies do to make you feel guilty for hurting their feelings, but not even then did Marakel show any emotion.
“I am not one of them now,” said Marakel. “You are my tribe. Kerry is a member of our tribe. We will find Kerry together.”
Gwen laid a hand on Marakel’s shoulder.
“You can be in my tribe,” Gwen said to him. “I’m coming with you even if nobody else does.”
“I’m coming, too” said Margot.
The girls gave me a look that dared me to walk away from them as much as it dared me to go into the tunnel with them and Marakel.
“I’ll come,” I said, feeling like I’d just signed my death warrant.
“Come,” said Marakel.
The elf walked right into the computer image and kept on walking down the tunnel. Gwen and Margot followed promptly and I had no choice but to plunge in after them. The cylindrical shape of the tunnel made walking tricky and I almost fell flat on my face the first thing. Margot stopped to steady me and then we hurried to catch up with Gwen and Marakel. Up ahead, the two of them waited for us where a tunnel branched off from the one we were going down. A bright red sign lit up on the cave wall with letters or characters that meant nothing to me.
“This way,” said Marakel.
We followed him down the forking tunnel that was just like the first one until it ended at a yellowish door. It didn’t make me feel any better to recognize the door as the standard computer icon for a folder. Next to the door, or folder, was a lit up sign that was mostly made up of more characters that I couldn’t read but at the end, was the name “Kerry Blake” in English letters. The idea that we might be breaking and entering right into his computer was a little frightening. The thought that elves could break and enter my computer or anybody else’s computer gave me a heap of beejeebies.
“Is this the door into Kerry’s computer?” Margot asked Marakel.
“It takes us into the program Kerry downloaded,” Marakel answered.
Not much of a distinction, I thought. Marakel tapped on the door with a few keyboard-type motions and the door opened to a forest of twisted trees with tiny yellow and red buds just like the tree in Kerry’s computer game and just like the trees Marakel took us to the day before. Bright yellow arrows stuck out of several trees trunks just like they did before we got the game turned off. We heard a rumbling, grumbling sound that could have been the growling of a beast, maybe a dragon. We also heard some music with a flute part in it. It sounded like it might be the CD Margot played to wake Kerry up when the computer game almost nabbed him.
“What’s that?” Margot asked in a whisper.
“Something from Kerry’s computer,” said Marakel.
I desperately searched my memory for everything I could think of that I knew might be in Kerry’s computer. Dragons? Yes, there were some, but even the most hideous monsters that he drew looked kind of friendly. They weren’t the kind that would breathe fire on you and then chew you up. But then there was no telling what images Kerry might have downloaded that might not be so friendly.
“Is it a monster that’s going to eat us up?” Gwen asked cheerfully, looking like she thought getting eaten by a monster was tons of fun.
“Maybe,” Marakel answered.
But Marakel did not look the least bit scared as he walked through the open door in among the trees. The beast growled again with a sound that was something like gravel being crunched under a steam roller. Marakel turned his head and stared at whatever was making the noise with his cold eyes. Gwen looked, gasped in fright, and threw her arms around Marakel. Marakel made no motion to hold Gwen, but he didn’t shake her off, either. I would have thought that I would be brave enough to come right up, but when push came to shove, I wasn’t. I remained frozen in place while Margot caught up with Marakel and Gwen. She turned her head and her apprehensive face suddenly lit up.
“Slurpy Gurvey!”
Of course! And the answering roar confirmed it. I remembered how Slurpy Gurvey had put in an appearance during the computer game! Curious to see if it really was Kerry’s computer graphic, I hurried through the door to see for myself and there he was Slurpy Gurvey himself! His eyes were rolling around his face like a couple of big marbles and his tongue slid from one end of his mouth to the other as it always did. Slurpy Gurvey had one paw wrapped about the bow he’d used to shoot an arrow in the computer game just before we blanked it out. All this time, the music kept on playing with its sound seeming to come out of the trees themselves.
“You are recognizing him, I think,” said Marakel to Margot.
“It’s Slurpy Gurvey,” said Margot. “Kerry drew him. He—he popped into that computer game that he got from you—the game with the forest where you live—where you lived.”
Slurpy Gurvey raised his bow, opened his mouth wide enough to show off his fangs, and let out an exuberant roar. Marakel stood very still, like a toy waiting to be wound up, his cold eyes fixed on whoever or whatever was before him.
“Did that bow come up in Kerry’s computer game?” Marakel asked.
“Yes,” said Margot.
“That bow is not a computer generated image,” said Marakel.
“It probably comes from a digital photograph Kerry made at summer camp,” I said.
“Are you knowing the name of the file?” asked Marakel.
“No,” said Margot. “It might be in a folder named ‘photos,’ or something.”
Marakel typed on the nearest tree and a yellowish door with the word “photographs” appeared on the tree, looking like a shield nailed to the trunk. Marakel reached for the door but before he could touch it, the door opened and knocked Marakel to the side. Two girls hopped out of the door followed by a large misty cloud. The music stopped as abruptly as if somebody had shut off a CD player. The cloud was white, like an iceburg but it had gray and black shadows inside it. The girls hopped away like a pair of squirrels just before the tree with the door to Kerry’s photo files was devoured by the mist. It was suddenly so cold, I felt like I’d been thrown into a deep freeze. You wouldn’t think anything could be more chilling than that cloud but something was: the girls that hopped away were Gwen and Margot. Seeing the two girls still shivering next to me was creepy, to put it mildly.
“Wh-what happened?” asked Gwen.
“Were those photographs?” Marakel asked.
“Th-they could be,” Margot stammered. “Kerry takes pictures of us from time to time. B-but I have no idea what that white thing there is.”
“I am not knowing that either,” said Marakel. “Somebody else opened the file before I could.”
The cloud slowly curled itself up and began to slither through the trees like a snake in Slurpy Gurvey’s direction. As it moved, the cloud dissolved all of the trees in its way, leaving an empty swath behind it. The shadow inside the cloud seemed to get darker and it took on the shape of a human figure. Except for Marakel, we all took a few steps backwards. Slurpy greeted the cloud with an ineffectual roar. In reply, the cloud covered Slurpy Gurvey and the shadow inside the cloud wrapped itself around Slurpy Gurvey like a boa constrictor. It looked like the shadow and Slurpy were fighting each other with neither quite winning out. Later on, it looked like one big shadow with a few of Slurpy’s most distinctive features showing faintly in the cloud. The white nothingness hung in space close to us, giving me the feeling that the shadow inside was staring hard at all of us. Then the white cloud turned away and cut itself a patch through the trees as it moved out of sight. I looked back to the door we had entered, thinking I would chicken out right then and there, but I found that the door was no longer there! If Marakel had laid a trap for us, we were trapped.
“Is that going to hurt somebody?” asked Margot.
“I am thinking it will,” Marakel replied, his face as blank as ever.
“I don’t think that was a photograph,” I said pointedly.
“I am thinking it comes from a photograph if it came from the folder for photographs,” said Marakel. “I think it is a like a ghost—like a ghost of the photograph.”
“What about the photographs of Gwen and Margot?” I asked.
“They are not ghosts of photographs like the other photograph,” Marakel answered.
“And how does a photograph have a ghost?” I asked.
“If the photograph is empty, it is a ghost,” Marakel explained, if you call that an explanation. “We must find Kerry now.”
“And how do we do that” I asked.
“Did any more files from Kerry’s computer enter Kerry’s game?” Marakel asked.
I shook my head when I couldn’t think of any.
“We played a CD of his to wake him up and stop the game,” said Margot.
“What was the CD?” Marakel asked.
“I don’t know,” said Margot. “It had a flute in it. I think it was by a composer named Bach. He likes that music.
Marakel frowned.
“I will do a search for ‘flute,’” he said, “but it might be hard to find him.”
Marakel went up to one of the trees that had escaped the rampage of the destroying mist and typed on its trunk. As he suspected, a long list of entries flashed up and down the trunk of the tree. At the same time, the jarring sounds of flutes coming from all directions and playing different tunes filled our ears. Marakel frantically typed on the tree trunk, apparently trying to get rid of the horrible music. Before he could finish what he was typing, the tree shifted away from his fingers in one direction and then the other. Marakel lunged after the tree but, next thing I knew, all of the trees flattened in one direction like high winds were hitting them and then they flattened in the opposite direction the same way. If there was anyplace to run to, I would have run. As it was, there was nothing we could do but stay where we were. The trees pulled in opposite directions another time or two, with the tree with the search results eluding Marakel’s grasp each time. Finally, the trees opened up like a curtain and a circle of fair-faced, fair-haired men and women and children surrounded us.
Music and loud talking and laughter filled the air. I saw and heard pipes and drums and harps and trumpets and string instruments. Most of the elves moved in so many directions, they looked like a class of hyper-active kids. All the elves, for I assumed that’s what they were, seemed to go or sit where they liked, when they liked. Gwen and Margot and I clustered together as closely as we could. Marakel was no longer with us. As I had warned the girls he would, Marakel had betrayed us.