20 Galaxies - Legend in the Sky - Chapter 6

20 Galaxies - Legend in the Sky - Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Caeri shifted, and light wisped off its surface like thick steam. A thin beam shot out from its core and grazed Ru and Jayson's pendants, filling them with the star's deep blue. "I told you before," Caeri said, "you shouldn't be afraid of me. This will help."

The fear did melt away as the pendants' glow took on their original colors. Ru touched her pendant. Strangely, the light was not interrupted by her fingers. It shined straight through, very warm and the same pure, royal blue.

"I've come for you, " Caeri continued. "Please keep in mind that I will not force you to do anything, but you must not take any of what you see lightly. This is very serious. Follow me."

There was no doubt in Ru's mind as to what she was going to do, for once. Jayson, however, stood where he was, his dark eyes red with pendant light and gleaming in the shadows of his hat. Caeri waited silently and still for his answer. Ru wondered how Jayson could deny the warmth of this pendant light. It was now creeping deep inside her, giving her a steady strength and comfort she only knew from the best days of her life.

Jayson smiled and lifted his head, drawing the shadows away from his eyes. "Well, since we are seriously dreaming, we might as well get going."

"Are you kidding me?" Ru mumbled.

Caeri seemed annoyed, and fresh fear welled up in Ru's chest before it was thoroughly squashed by the pendant light. "Move quickly," Caeri said. "Time is not on our side."

The unusual silence of the evening streets slipped into Ru's mind. All light that reached the three of them was blue. The streetlights had dulled to navy, porchlights dim and icy, shining on concrete walks like moonlight on snow. Even the stars, appearing from time to time at the edges of thin clouds, were tinged with blue. There was no wind, none of the chill of the forty-degree air. The smell of wet, decaying leaves remained just outside the star's bubble of light, Ru and Jayson's footsteps silenced. Not once did either of them ever think of what would happen if a car came along or someone looked out their window. It was impossible.

Caeri floated off to the side of the road, over a culvert and to a gate. Ru wobbled, unfocused, and came back to reality in front of the Nuthatch House. Colleen was waiting there, grasping the steel bars of the front gate. The rosy glow of her dolphin pendant illuminated her face, somehow making her seem more alive than she had ever been.

"What are you doing outside?" Ru asked in a low tone. "Won't you get in trouble?"

"I had a dream," Colleen said with unearthly softness.

The star moved down the gate towards her. Colleen didn't even glance at it. She kept her eyes on Ru, who remained out in the street. "One of those dreams?" Ru asked.

Colleen nodded. "It's all happening here. Even my pendant's glowing. All we need now is," she raised her head. "a little boy with red hair."

"Okay, look. I'm not little."

Randy sauntered up to the group, holding his dragon pendant up by the string. It blazed with neon green light. "And I'm not an expert on jewelry or anything - "

"Could've fooled me," Jayson snickered.

"Shut up." Randy glared at them and tapped the pendant, causing it to spin. "Skaeya pendants are supposed to be special, but I know they don't glow. And what is this?!" he said loudly, gesturing at Caeri.

Colleen cringed and motioned for Randy to quiet down. "You will find out momentarily," Caeri said. "We must first go to Warbler Parkway."

"But the gate's locked," Colleen said. "I can't get through, the bars are too close together."

She jumped as the bulky lock to her right gave a piecing clink, and the gate slid open with rhythmic clanking. She took a slow, small step out of the yard, looked all around, and joined the group on the street.

Colleen did not see Misty, who had been watching from a second floor window with a scowl. She gripped the edges of the faded windowsill so hard that it began to splinter, her teeth clenched and mind wheeling. The blue light, shining straight into the dark room, was as paralyzing as frigid air. Her muscles locked up and she shivered. She did not think much of the footsteps in the hall, or the light from the doorway being blocked, but the sober voice that followed startled her.

"You should be more aggressive, Mizst. Sitting up here won't get anything done."

"Kestrel!" she shrieked. She regained her composure in a rush of anger, but avoided his eye by turning back to the window. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

He slipped through the door, arms crossed. "If you were more alert, you wouldn't have to make such demands."

"I could have killed you, Commander."

Kestrel had heard a hundred excuses from Shryke in a week. To hear them from Mizst was an annoying change of pace, but he kept his tone light. "I doubt it. The Skaeya are here?"

Mizst clenched the windowsill again. "I can't go down there now. The Caeri's with them."

A legitimate excuse, Kestrel thought. The difference between Shryke and Mizst. She heeded his warning about the Caeri's attacks. Still, her evasiveness and tone was treading on his nerves. "You sound like you're whining in that form."

Mizst flinched and narrowed her eyes. "All right, all right, fine."

The room flickered and colors reversed. Negative light spun up and covered Mizst, changing her to a white silhouette. The silhouette bent and flowed higher with the whirling light until Mizst stood in the same adult form as she had been in the night she met Ru and Jayson.

Only the Nuthatch uniform remained, somewhat in it's original size. The blouse collar had split, the straps of the dress snapped, the pleats of the skirt only reaching as low as a short shirt. Mizst screamed and hunched over, her face nearly as red as her hair. The laughter in Kestrel's head broke his stony expression with a very faint smile, but he looked away. "You know, there is a way you can change clothes with your transformation," he teased. "Or is this a new look for you? I don't think it will fit well here on Skae."

"Give me a break! I forgot, okay?"

Kestrel turned his hand over. The area around it flashed negative, and a wad of black clothing and metal appeared. "Be happy it wasn't Shryke here," he said, half-laughing. "He wouldn't give you a new uniform."

Mizst snatched the clothes and stormed to the door, closing it just enough to let a little light in. "I bet Shryke had something to do with this."

Kestrel turned his back to her and walked to the window. "You just told me you forgot."

"With all due respect, Commander, shut up."

Kestrel's smile disappeared when he caught sight of the star some distance away, and the four figures following it. He felt a number of chills, familiar ones, one that shouldn't have been there. The blue light stopped him from recognizing it entirely. He dropped the thought when he recognized the four. "Those children again?" he murmured, searching the street shadows. "Where are the Skaeya?"

Mizst was dead silent. Without thinking, Kestrel turned his head to look at her, but she was in full uniform already, Triad belt, shin guards and all. She looked confused, with a hint of nervousness that spread to his own mind. "Kestrel, those children are the Skaeya."

"What?" Kestrel's voice elevated, and he felt hollow. He remembered how small the two boys had seemed, creeping through the forest in the dark. "Them? They can't be. They aren't any more than ten years old."

"One's eleven, two are ten, one is nine," Mizst said evenly.

Kestrel watched the star move out of sight in rigid stillness. Mizst approached him from the side. "That must be why the Caeri interfered," he said, lowering his head into his hand. "I was wondering what you had in mind with the Skaeya pendant trend."

"Yeah," Misty said. "Trends are so easy to start on this planet. It's no wonder it's called unawakened."

"It didn't work," Kestrel snapped, looking up sharply.

She jumped again. He didn't understand why she looked so startled at first, but soon realized he was seeing her through both eyes. He shook his head. His hair halved his face again, and she relaxed. "So I didn't get the real pendants traded to me," she said, with a little tremble. "Big deal. We know who has them, right? They've never been much of a problem before."

"No, they haven't," Kestrel said. "But this time it's different. You even said so when you felt the pendant's power surge. It overwhelmed the girl."

The star and the four had moved out of sight. What could be seen of the world outside faded back into dull orange and brown, a wind passing like a breath released. Kestrel tried to take in the present scene and shake the image of the blue and the children from his mind. Children playing carelessly out in the street. It was something he had seen many times since he arrived, something he never paid attention to. "It would be best to stop this all as soon as we can," he said.

The closer the star lead the children to the parkway, the more the wind had picked up. The chill soon reached them through the star's light, rustling the leaves in the tree tunnel around them. The children huddled close together as the walked, looking in all directions. Ru didn't feel particularly fearful here, though. She gazed up at the tunnel ceiling, catching glimpses of the sky beyond.

The star reached the end of the tunnel, where its light turned white. As Ru arrived, she saw that the star itself hadn't changed color, but its shine had been overwhelmed. There was a softer but larger glow coming from the Warbler Stone. She rubbed her eyes and glanced at Jayson. He looked intrigued, but calm. He still thought it was a dream, she guessed. It didn't seem like a dream to her.

"In this town, this stone is known as the Warbler Stone," Caeri said. "Elsewhere, it is known as a gatestone. Stand on it as it instructs you to."

"Instructs us?" Ru asked. She looked over the engraving on the surface, made faint by the light. "But we can't read the writing on the stone. No one can."

"Stand near the edge, and I will make it clear to you."

All but Randy suddenly backed away. He shot the others an annoyed glance. "Isn't this the part where people disappear?" Colleen asked quietly.

"So? Who cares?" Randy shrugged. "The legends also say the star sounds like a monster. Doesn't sound like one to me."

It didn't sound right to Ru, either. Caeri's voice, though somewhat distorted and penetrating, was gentle, and the light from her pendant took her fear away once again. "Come on guys," Randy said. "Even if we do disappear, we'll be like the only people in town that know the truth."

"If we're not disintegrated," Jayson scoffed.

Randy gestured towards the star. "We already know the star exists. You can't tell me you don't want to know more."

"It's a dream," Jayson said flatly, staring at the stone.

Ru felt like the comment was aimed at her, and Jayson's calm resistance was starting to wear on her nerves. "If you're so sure it's a dream, why are you worried about being disintegrated?" she snapped.

Jayson opened his mouth, but Colleen spoke first. "It's not a dream."

Ru was surprised to hear Colleen's tiny voice. Colleen clasped her pendant tightly, biting her lip. The others gaped at her, waiting for an explanation.

"I know what the inside of a dream feels like, " she said. "This isn't it. Whatever happens to us here is real. But I don't want to be -"

"Colleeeen." Randy tapped his foot.

"I want to know what happens," Colleen said. She was standing straight, actually looking Randy in the eyes, but she looked like she would shrink away at any moment.

Caeri interrupted. "There isn't much time. Take your places."

Randy stepped up to the edge of the stone with no other words. Ru followed, then Jayson, then at last, Colleen. The writing on the surface shifted with the change in perspective, suddenly filled with vivid color, and revealing it not to be writing at all. They were pictures in the shape of their Skaeya pendants. The images were so simple and plain now that Ru wondered how no one in history had never seen them before.

The four stood where their symbols appeared, each at a ninety-degree angle from the person next to them. The instant they were all standing over their symbols, the wind picked up dramatically, whirling up from below them. The leaves on the ground fluttered up and spun around the stone as its glow intensified.

Rainbow fire burst up from the edges of the stone. Ru cried out and raised her hand to shield herself, but realized she was totally numb. There was no heat from the fire, no cold from the wind, even the warmth from her pendant had gone.

A white beam of light shot into the sky, bright and pure as far as could be seen. Only one person saw it out of all the reporters and cameras at the edge of the park, all the paranormal investigators stalking in the forest, all the workers who wove their way out of rush hour traffic. An old man, sitting on a porch not far from the Nuthatch House, shook his head sadly at the sight and trudged inside with a newspaper in hand.

~*~*~

The four found themselves facing the opposite way they had started, with their backs towards one another. They were suspended as they were for a moment, everything frozen but their minds. Then the freeze was broken and they stumbled away from each other. The stone was gone.

The first thing Ru did was look up. The weather had changed abruptly, it was now warm, humid, and windless. The sky was dazzling, more stars than Ru had ever seen, even away from the city. She was mesmerized, looking for a better view through the shadows above, until she came to the moon. She was certain the moon had been in new phase, but here was a crescent, and a bit yellow for its height.

"What was that?" Colleen gasped.

"Wait a minute," Randy said, staring up with Ru. "Where are we? The park?"

They explored their surroundings in tentative steps. It was dark, but the moon and starlight was bright enough to make out a bit of what was around them. The ground was smooth, somewhat powdery but solid. They were in a clearing surrounded by trees with curved, ridged trunks. Some leafy bushes, uneven hedges, bordered the clearing at the ground level.

"No, these look like palm trees," Ru said, squinting at the broad leaves above. "The park is too far north for them. I've never seen a palm tree forest before."

"This is this only land of the planet Arrika."

The squeaky voice accompanied a light that had come upon the group very quickly, behind Jayson. As Ru's eyes adjusted, she made out a small bird with a long black bill, watching them out of one eye. It gave off a sharp, glittering glow of all colors, its shape reminiscent of a hummingbird. Ru noticed Jayson looking all around the bird, probably searching for its owner.

"I think that bird just said something," he concluded.

The bird bobbed its head. "The planet Arrika," it chirped.

The four crowded closer to it to get a better look. Colleen ducked down behind Randy, peering over his shoulder. "Maybe it's a parrot," Ru said.

Jayson lifted the bill of his hat. "Parrots don't glow."

"Neither do pendants," Randy said.

"I'm a lytrabird," the bird corrected, springing into the air. Its wings were wide, but moved like a hummingbird's, only more slowly. As its flapping picked up speed, the light the bird was radiating became brighter, until it was dissolved in a light similar to Caeri. Soon it became too bright to look at. Ru shielded her eyes, still trying to watch the bird.

"My name is Fuse," it said, "but I can see I'm disturbing you as I am, so this might help."

The light expanded and vanished into sparks. Glowing feathers littered the ground. In the bird's place stood a tall human. Like the hooded person on Cardinal Street, Ru could not tell whether Fuse was male or female, even without obscure features. She looked at Fuse's hair, which was long and black, with spiky, multicolored ends, and decided on female for the moment.

Still, it was hard for her mind to stay with that decision. She had never seen a person like this before. Fuse was somehow sturdy and slender at the same time, wearing a sleeveless turquoise shirt, dirty black pants, and boots with no features. Her skin was dark, slate gray, and there seemed to be rainbows shifting in her narrow eyes. Something about her had Colleen rigid and wide-eyed, Ru noticed. It may have been the transformation, which Ru realized she should have been surprised about, but after the pendant light her mind seemed numb to it.

"They can't track me like this," Fuse said. "Please listen to what I have to say, and don't ask questions yet. In the future, no one will notice you missing from home, but as of right now, we only have a short amount of time."

She spoke quite similarly to the blue star, with gentleness and even some kind of great respect. She had a slight accent to her words, something that sounded very familiar to Ru, but she couldn't quite figure it out. This and the very still way she was standing made them listen in silence.

"As I said, you are no longer on Earth. This is the planet Arrika. It orbits a star on the opposite side of the galaxy from Earth. You call this galaxy Milky Way, I believe. We call it Floraesah, Galaxy of Life." She swept her hand in an arc above, tracing the stars. "Floraesah is the third of a system of twenty galaxies."

She began to pace. "All the galaxies have leaders, and ours has been missing for some time. I have taken her place until she is found."

"You mean you're the ruler of the galaxy?" Ru asked. It didn't seem likely, this rough-looking woman in shabby clothes.

"I told you not to ask questions," Fuse said, shaking her head. "Galaxy leaders don't rule as you would think - they're more like advisors or representatives. They go to a Council once in a while to talk about what they can do for the galaxies, but no one commands their people."

Fuse resumed pacing. "Your planet, Earth - we call it Skae - is not aware of the twenty galaxies or any aspects of the Accilean System. It is the unawakened planet. This is the reason you four have been brought here."

She seemed to look all four of them dead in the eye at the same time. "You are the Skaeya-cyu - 'flying fighters' in Accilean - guardians of the galaxies. You have been brought here because the Accilean Galaxies are in danger. You are to learn through the Accilean System - the thing that binds these galaxies together - how to harness powers that will keep the galaxies safe. It is not an easy task, but you will not be alone."

Fuse stopped and stood as still as she started out. The four responded with a stare.

"Yeah, right," Randy snickered. "I gotta hand it to you, this is a pretty good prank."

Prank, dream - the words scrambled in Ru's head. She pressed her palm against her chest, trying to sort things out aloud. "D-defenders of twenty galaxies?" she said. "That - that -"

"I don't care if this is a dream," Jayson cut in. "Something isn't right here. Let's see if we can find a way back."

He was already walking off. Randy turned to follow.

"WAIT!"

Fuse's tone rose frighteningly, and it startled them all into looking at her again. Ru thought Fuse might cry. "Please don't go. I know it is a lot to ask of Skaeyans your age. We really do need your help."

Colleen that spoke up next, looking straight at Jayson. "It's not a prank, I know it. Can't we just try?"

Jayson's sturdy tone knocked any other words out of Colleen. "Okay," he said, straightening his hat. "Let's say, for some reason, we're not dreaming. Why us? Why not people from the Secret Service or the Army or police?" He opened a hand to Fuse. "Or you?"

Fuse regained her composure, but her tone was still quiet. "I am not allowed, as an Accilean leader, to fight," she said. "I am also not the one who chooses the Skaeya."

Jayson's scowl deepened, unsatisfied with the answer. The others teetered between him and Fuse.

"You don't seem to realize how serious this is," Fuse said gravely. "If you refuse to fight, then you, everyone on your planet, everyone in this galaxy, will certainly die."