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Vernon’s eyes flickered in recognition just before his arms broke through the water and he disappeared beneath the surface.
“Vernon!” Elliot called again.
Only bubbles answered.
“Ohmigosh! Ohmigosh!” Clifton buzzed in swelling panic. “We can’t let the Queen’s Liaison drown!”
“Can you swim?” Elliot asked.
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Accepting that Clifton would be his constant companion for the foreseeable future, Elliot followed him to the Baths. The splashing of ruffled feathers and exuberant bathers triggered memories of deep water panic, and Elliot hesitated entering the pool.
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In his dream, Elliot reclined on a bed of rose petals in a field of jasmine. He could feel Cassandra’s kisses on his lips.
He woke on the floor of the bower in Fen to find her wiping the last of his regurgitated breakfast from his mouth. The scent of jasmine drifted in and gagged him. Rolling onto his side coughing more violently than the ancient wasp, he caught a flashing glint of brown surrounded by feathers in the doorway.
Shifting impatiently from foot to foot, Pierce, the hawk who’d brought them back, preened a chunk of glistening, ocher something from his shoulder, and fixed a smoldering one-eyed stare on Elliot.
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With a skyward lurch, Elliot’s breakfast threatened to return for lunch. Only the soft comfort of Cassandra pressed against his side kept him from taking his chances and diving for the safety he’d left behind when he climbed onto the hawk’s back.
“Don’t you just love flying?” she asked, her eyestalks waving gently in the slipstream.
Trying to make eye contact put his gut into a spin. He focused on the horizon, the only fixed object in the world, and confessed, “I love you more.”
“Everything is so clear up here,” she effused. “The ground just rolls away and takes every bit of trouble with it.”
He didn’t want to contradict her, but he was sure he’d brought some of the trouble with him, and it was about to erupt.
“Look at that, Elliot, my love — we’re soaring with the majestic Travelers!”
He looked. The sky and earth blurred just before they went black.
To be continued. . .
Previously, on Elliot’s Adventures . . . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Next time . . .
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“Arturo, son of Miguel and Valeria, regarding the charges that you are responsible for the return of the rebels and the devastation they spread throughout our people’s homes in the Freelands, we find it is possible the rebels would not have come back if they had achieved their goal to begin with. Therefore, we find you are inextricably connected to the massacre.”
Arturo closed his eyes.
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Leaving his post at the Box’s door, the guard became the ancient wasp’s support, speaking quietly into his ear as he led the speaker to the platform to deliver the verdict.
Arturo’s whisper shook. “What do you think he’s saying to the old one?”
Elliot’s attention snapped back from the unanswered question still hanging in the air. “No matter what it is,” he assured Arturo, “you have our support. We can ask Queen Lilian to—” A concussive blast of coughing cut Elliot off.
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“Hey! Watch it, up there! Prisoner down below!” The indignant cry exploded from the Hole as Elliot clung to its edge, grabbing for anything secure to keep from slipping into the abyss.
Time stopped.
“Cassandra?” he ventured.
“Elliot…? Is it really you?”
“You there!” yelled the guard zipping back to his post from a brief trip to the bushes. “Step away from the Hole. Who are you and what is your business here?”
Drawing up to his full height and dignity, Elliot countered, “I might ask you the same thing.”
Cassandra’s advice drifted up from the depths. “I wouldn’t, Elliot.”
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Sometimes you must go back to catch up. She who is unnamed.
“How could anyone be so barbaric?” Cassandra and Arturo had helped his family cleanse their nest, and were once more on their way to Fen.
Arturo shrugged. “Spike was angry and bitter. It’s no excuse, but all he wanted to do was cause as much pain as he felt. D’Arc — well, he’s cold evil. He actually enjoys terrorizing and killing. When the leaders of a group are like that, they get two kinds of followers: people who feel the same way they do, and people who are afraid they’ll be the next victims.”
“They’re bullies,” Cassandra insisted. “We need to stand up to them.”
“That’s what my parents did. Look how that turned out.”
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The vision imploded to a whirling point of light, spiraling a widening hole into the ground, spraying soil to the sky, vanishing with Cassandra’s voice. Elliot was back in the nighttime woods reclined against the fan shaped fungus, the taste of dirt and mold in his mouth. Every muscle ached.
“What did Queen Reishi show you?” The words fell from the trees.
Startled, Elliot looked up to see the orange-eyed creature smiling down at him.
“Where did you go?” he asked her.
“Nowhere. Where did you go?”
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Following a golden line threading its way through leafy trees and brambled bushes wasn’t as easy in his altered state as Elliot had anticipated. Sometimes the light seemed alive and beckoning. Then it might taunt him by vanishing down a burrowed tunnel to shoot into the sky several yards away as the barely visible trail of a manic firefly, only to fall into a puddle or pool like a disillusioned star. (It was impossible for him to tell which it was, pool or puddle, or even if there really was a body of water there at all.)
The minutes stretched to hours, the hours to days, and the days to years that lasted only seconds. I’ve been here forever, he thought. Why hasn’t the sun come up?
Space, Time, and Raspberries 
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