Changing the Prophecy Chapter Eleven

 

Chapter 11 Labyrinth

A rough tongue licking his ear woke Denzel. He found himself lying on his side on the ground and breathing a foul odor. When he opened his eyes, he saw towering walls of garbage rising up around him and framing a patch of sky glowing with the early morning light of sunrise. He must have remained unconscious for a whole night.

Bisc whimpered softly and continued to lick Denzel’s ear. He still wore his backpack, for which he was grateful. He had a headache, felt a bit dizzy, and ached all over as if someone had picked him up and dropped him in this spot, which most likely was exactly what had happened. When Bisc saw Denzel’s eyes open, the great white wolf sat back on his haunches and watched Denzel attentively. Denzel raised himself up to a sitting position. His head throbbed.

The tigers were nowhere in sight, but he saw Maia, Elena, and Guhblorin sprawled on the dry, raked dirt nearby. Honeydew sat up and smiled weakly at Denzel. “We’re alive,” she said.

“And they didn’t take our things. I’m guessing that some pea-brained soldiers tossed us in here at Compost’s orders. Maybe, since there are four of us, Compost thinks he captured the Four,” Denzel speculated.

“Probably. I doubt he bothered to pay close attention. He’s sloppy. I think you might be right, that he had his soldiers handle us, and that he doesn’t realize that we’re not exactly the Four,” Honeydew replied.

“Let’s hope he thinks we’re the Four and let’s hope that Sonjay and Doshmisi are out there somewhere making trouble for him,” Denzel said. He cast his eyes over the mountainous walls of trash and junk. “Where do you think we are?”

“Bisc, go wake Maia,” Honeydew instructed the white wolf as she pointed in Maia’s direction. The sun slowly rose in the cloudless and cheerfully blue sky. Bisc proceeded to lick Maia’s cheek until Maia opened her eyes and sat up with a dazed expression. “Inside a garbage labyrinth,” Honeydew answered Denzel’s question. “It must be large and convoluted, or Compost would not have depended on it to contain us.”

“He has the most perverse idea of entertainment,” Denzel said, as he rolled his eyes.

“Seriously. Why didn’t he just imprison us like a normal villain?” Honeydew complained. “Wake them too,” Honeydew instructed Bisc as she pointed to Elena and Guhblorin.

“Do we have to?” Denzel asked.

Maia gave her brother “the look” and chided him. “Just stop. Remember how long it took us to get used to things here last year? Give Elena a chance. She’s trying.”

“And the geebaching?” Denzel asked.

“He has barely been out of his cave a few days. He’s trying too,” Maia insisted.

Denzel sighed. He hoped the geebaching wouldn’t begin hollering the minute he regained consciousness. Bisc gently licked Elena awake and then sat back on his haunches, clearly refusing to lick a geebaching. Maia patted Guhblorin on the shoulder until he opened one eye cautiously.

“Quivering fish shivers, this place stinks!” Guhblorin announced.

“Where are we?” Elena asked.

“Inside a labyrinth that appears to be made of garbage,” Honeydew stated.

The walls of the labyrinth contained every imaginable used-up broken-down worthless decomposing or cast-off piece of junk, and all of it jammed together this way and that. They could see shoes, clothing, bottles, cans, paper, machine parts, scrap metal, sticks, stones, furniture, toys, food waste, wood, bags, boxes, and unrecognizable broken-off bits of things that had lost all semblance of usefulness long ago.

“Where did this stuff come from?” Guhblorin asked incredulously.

Honeydew scrutinized their surroundings and plucked a bent and corroded metal shield from the wall next to her. She held it up for the others to see. “I think a lot of this stuff comes from Compost’s occupying army camped out at Big House City. The People of the Mountain Downs have a reputation for limited skill at organizational management,” she informed the others disdainfully.

“I suppose we have to give Compost credit for thinking of something creative to do with their garbage,” Maia said.

“Why?” Denzel grumbled.

Guhblorin pulled a dinged and dented trumpet out of the wall beside him, and in the process he dislodged a few odd objects, which tumbled down at his feet. He puffed out his cheeks and blew into the trumpet. It squawked like a goose trapped in an elevator. Guhblorin grinned. Honeydew reached for the trumpet with a stern expression and Guhblorin handed it over, crestfallen.

“Let’s try walking,” Honeydew suggested. “Maybe we can figure out how to get out.”

Denzel’s amulet began to glow red against his chest.

“Yay,” Maia exclaimed as she pointed at the amulet. “Denzel has an ingenious idea.”

“Did he get the idea from that necklace thingy?” Elena asked.

“No. He got it from his brain. That necklace is called an amulet. I have one too; so do Dosh and Sonjay. We inherited them from the previous Four and sometimes when we use our greatest talents, our amulets glow," Maia explained.

“Like when you played your flute in the caves,” Elena noted.

“Exactly. And Denzel’s glows sometimes when he invents something or figures out a scientific or engineering problem.” She turned to her brother and asked, “So what do you have going on in your head?”

“See if you can find clothing with buttons. I want to make a button-trail through the labyrinth so we can keep track of where we have been as we walk through it,” Denzel explained.

Before long, they had pulled a large assortment of jackets and shirts from the garbage walls and had torn off a sizable stack of buttons. Denzel put the buttons into a can. Then they began to walk and as they went Denzel dropped buttons on the ground so they could trace their steps. Unfortunately, they did not get far before they discovered themselves back in a passage marked by the buttons, indicating that they had already walked there.

As they looked dejectedly at the buttons that they had placed in the passage only a short time before, Elena announced, “I’m hungry.”

They had not eaten any breakfast and had, instead, spent a couple of hours collecting buttons and then wandering in the labyrinth. “I have some bread and peanut butter in my backpack,” Honeydew offered. She sat on the ground and foraged in her backpack for the food. She unwrapped a large drumstick and gave it to Bisc, who chomped off all the meat and then chewed greedily on the bone, grunting happily. The rest of them ate the bread and peanut butter. Guhblorin said that geebachings could go for several days without food if necessary and not to worry about him.

“That’s helpful,” Maia told Guhblorin, “because we don’t have much food left.”

Denzel stared up at the sky, but it yielded no clue as to which direction would take them out of the garbage labyrinth. After they ate, they wandered in the labyrinth for the rest of the day, placing the buttons to mark their path and crying out to each other in dismay whenever they turned a corner and discovered their button trail staring up at them.

“I think this labyrinth might have an enchantment on it,” Honeydew suggested finally, as the violet shadows of twilight began to creep across the ground.

Elena encouraged Denzel by telling him, “The buttons were a great idea. They could have worked. It was worth a try.”

“Yes, well, they didn’t work, did they?” Denzel couldn’t conceal his frustration after wasting an entire day wandering the labyrinth. He felt disappointed that the buttons had not proved more useful. He also worried about what they would eat and drink if they remained trapped in the labyrinth for days on end.

“The buttons might work yet,” Maia suggested hopefully.

“Not if the labyrinth has an enchantment on it,” Honeydew warned. “Do we have anything left to eat?” They combed through their backpacks and found several bruised pears, a couple slices of bread, a good-sized chunk of cheese, and some chocolate. They shared the dregs of their food, with the chocolate being the prize. Honeydew made them give some of the cheese to Bisc.

“When we run out of food for that wolf, will he eat us?” Elena asked anxiously.

“No, he won’t eat you. He’s a tame wolf,” Honeydew answered patiently, trying to keep her annoyance out of her voice. Sometimes she wondered how people could go through life with no comprehension of the nature of the many other creatures with whom they shared the land.

“We’re out of water,” Maia mourned, as she peered into her empty canteen.

“That I can do something about,” Honeydew told her.

“You can?” Maia asked.

“I just need a container, like a bucket or a pitcher or something,” Honeydew answered.

Guhblorin pulled a tin watering can out of the wall of garbage beside him and handed it to Honeydew. “Will this work?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. She put the watering can in front of her on the ground and she aimed three fingers at it. Concentrating hard she said some unintelligible words. Water began to bubble out of the watering can. Honeydew picked it up. “Quick, bring the canteens,” she instructed. The others hurried to hold their open canteens out to her as Honeydew filled them with clean, clear water that amazingly bubbled from a rusted, dirty can. After they refilled the canteens, Honeydew set the watering can on the ground for Bisc, who drank his fill.

“Hecka cool trick,” Denzel complimented Honeydew, as he took a refreshing swig from his canteen.

“No trick,” Honeydew responded. “The water is real. I summoned it to our need.”

Dark descended quickly and they could do nothing more until the sun rose again in the morning. They had worn themselves out repeatedly walking the same passages in the labyrinth, but sleep did not come to them easily; except for Guhblorin, who curled up inside a discarded sink and snored softly. The others lay awake, each one silently pondering their predicament. They knew they would wake up hungry and they had nothing to eat, but at least they would have water.

In the morning, Guhblorin hopped up bright and early. He carefully studied the wall of garbage before him and then he pulled a box from the mess of trash, grinning broadly. When he yanked out the box, he dislodged other items surrounding it and caused a small avalanche of junk that fell into the passage with a racket that woke everyone else. As they blinked in the blazing morning sunlight, Guhblorin giggled. “Chocolate cookies for breakfast,” he said.

“That’s not funny, amigo,” Elena complained.

“Don’t start,” Denzel warned.

“Seriously,” Guhblorin insisted. He giggled again, with a giggle that verged on becoming contagious in that dangerous geebaching way, as he held out a large box of chocolate chip cookies and offered them around to the others.

“Where did you get that?” Honeydew asked in amazement.

“I found it in the wall,” Guhblorin told her.

The cookies seemed none the worse for the wear after being trapped in a wall of garbage. The closed box had protected them and they tasted delicious.

Maia gazed up into the clear blue patch of sky visible high above the labyrinth walls. Little bits of something unrecognizable began to fall down from above, like confetti. She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked more carefully, wondering what caused the confetti. Then she laughed with delight.

“What?” Denzel demanded, a bit gruffly. He felt responsible for getting them out of the labyrinth and he had no idea how to do that. He knew it was in his own head and that no one held him responsible, but he was the oldest, and a boy, and so he had expectations for himself. But here they remained, another day in the labyrinth, and he didn’t know what to try next.

“Look,” Maia said, as she pointed to her arm, on which several bright orange, red, and turquoise butterflies perched. Maia had befriended the butterflies the previous year and they had once protected the Four from discovery when they hid from Compost. As she held her hands up in the air, butterflies descended and surrounded her. They poured into the labyrinth from above. Although she couldn’t think how they could help in this situation, Maia felt cheered by their presence.

The butterflies swarmed around Maia’s head, and then they flew to Guhblorin. As the number of butterflies swelled to hundreds and thousands, they perched in the hair that covered his body. Suddenly Guhblorin screeched in alarm.

“Don’t be afraid,” Maia reassured him. “They’re my friends. They won’t harm you.” Just as these words left her lips, the butterflies completely engulfed Guhblorin, making him no longer visible, and they lifted him off the ground, into the air above the labyrinth, and flew away with him.

“What in the heck?” Maia exclaimed as Guhblorin disappeared overhead. She glanced at Denzel, who shrugged. Bisc let out a mournful cry and Honeydew stroked his chest comfortingly. Many butterflies remained nearby, flitting about, circling Maia’s head, and occasionally landing on Maia’s arms and shoulders.

Bisc cocked his head to one side, his ears erect, as he heard something. Honeydew watched him intently, and then she grinned. “Listen,” she told the others. They stood and listened. The sound of uncontrollable, side-splitting, breath-taking, gut-twisting human laughter reached them. It was the kind of laughter that only a geebaching attacking its human prey could cause. It was not a pleasant sound and they winced as it reached a wrenching crescendo and then stopped cold.

“Do you think he killed them?” Maia asked.

“No!” Elena replied emphatically. “He wouldn’t. He swore he would never do that again.” Stunned by what she had heard, she began to truly comprehend the deadly power of a geebaching.

Within minutes, the swarm of butterflies returned with Guhblorin, but they did not place him back in the labyrinth. Instead they hovered overhead with him. The travelers gazed up in wonder at the sight of a multitude of butterflies packed so tightly. All those tiny creatures working together were keeping a geebaching in the air.

“Are you OK, amigo?” Elena called to Guhblorin.

A slightly muffled voice emerged from the mass of butterflies. “I think so.”

“Did you kill them?” Denzel asked.

“No, of course not. But they’re passed out pretty good,” Guhblorin answered.

“Who are they?” Maia asked.

“Special Forces,” Guhblorin replied. “About a dozen of them are guarding the entrance to the labyrinth. From up here I can see how to get out. I’m good at mazes. I grew up inside the Amber Mountains and they’re one big maze. Follow me.”

The captives on the ground followed Guhblorin while the butterflies continued to hold him aloft. With Guhblorin’s guidance they soon arrived at the entrance to the labyrinth. “From up here I can see our tigers coming around the side of the labyrinth,” Guhblorin informed them. “They should turn up in a couple of minutes.” The butterflies gently lowered Guhblorin to the ground. They swarmed around the heads of the travelers, while Maia and Honeydew called out their thanks to them.

“Can butterflies hear?” Denzel asked.

“Not really,” Honeydew replied, “but I think they can understand gratitude if we intentionally focus on sending it to them.” Denzel sent grateful thoughts to the butterflies, in case Honeydew was right and they could sense his intent.

 The tigers had not arrived yet, but the guards had begun to regain consciousness, groaning and holding their aching sides.

“Walk along the garbage labyrinth that way. And don’t look back,” Guhblorin instructed with grim determination. “Go now. I have to do these guards again. You’ll meet up with the tigers in a few minutes. By then you can safely come back for me, OK?”

“You got it, little fella,” Denzel said. He took Elena’s wrist in his hand and led her away with the warning, “He means it. Don’t look back.”

But Elena was curious, and following orders was not her strong suit. “Are we holding hands?” she asked Denzel, who quickly released his grip on her wrist as if it had burned him to touch her. When the guards began to laugh uproariously, Elena snuck a quick glimpse behind her. She saw Guhblorin dancing a mangled version of ballet. He looked so comical that Elena could not resist snorting with laughter. Maia and Denzel both reached out at the same moment, whirled Elena around, and propelled her forward. They ran toward the approaching tigers and when they reached one another a joyful reunion ensued. Since no sounds of laughter from the guards met their ears, the travelers mounted the tigers and rode back for Guhblorin.

“I think we should drag these guys into the labyrinth,” Denzel said, as he gestured to the unconscious guards. He produced his can of buttons and created a trail into the confusing twist of garbage walls. Following the buttons, and with help from the tigers, the travelers dragged the guards inside the labyrinth. Denzel picked up the buttons as they made their way out of the labyrinth for the last time. “That should hold them for a little while,” he said.

As they emerged from the garbage labyrinth, Honeydew pointed in the direction of Big House City. “That’s the way to the Whispering Pond,” she said. “I can find it from here. The pond is surrounded by trees that will provide us with a place to hide from Compost and his army. We can sleep there tonight.” With those words, she urged her tiger forward and the others followed her lead.

            

Changing the Prophecy Chapter Ten

 

Chapter 10 North Coast

Jasper crept silently through the undergrowth and toward the compound with Jack floating alongside and Doshmisi stepping softly behind him. They managed to work their way around the beach and close enough to the compound for them to catch a clear glimpse of the activity inside. Crouching in a dense collection of young tree sprouts, cottonwoods, and brush, they observed. A few women and many children scurried about within the confines of the fenced area. The women spoke in small groups or tended campfires in front of the tents scattered throughout the enclosed encampment. The children ate by a campfire or played with one another in the open spaces between the tents and campfires. Many creatures in white jumpsuits, all equipped with guns of some kind, stood guard. A high fence topped with barbed wire encircled the compound. A group of women rounded up the children and herded them to a cluster of three tents. The babies and toddlers remained behind with their mothers.

“School,” Jack whispered. The children had gone to some type of school for the day. These women and children apparently lived in the compound, at least for the time being.

A group of men emerged from one of the buildings adjacent to the fenced area. Under heavy guard, they marched to the beach and boarded small boats, which headed out toward the oil derrick. After that, not much happened. Doshmisi tapped Jasper’s arm and whispered, “Let’s go back into the forest so we can talk.” Jasper turned and led them to a secluded and sheltered spot.

“Those people are being held prisoner,” Jasper said.

“But don’t you think it odd that their captors leave them to themselves to hold school and cook over their campfires and all that?” Doshmisi asked.

“They left the women and children to their own devices, but they took the men to that machine in the ocean,” Jasper pointed out.

“I recognize that machine,” Doshmisi told him. “We have them in the Farland. It’s pumping oil out of the ocean floor. How can I explain it? The oil under the ocean has a powerful energy locked in it; energy that can run machines without the need for batteries. In the Farland, lots of machines run on that kind of oil. I didn’t know you had that kind of oil here. But those creepy things in the white jumpsuits knew about it and they built that machine, as you call it, that oil pump, to extract the oil.” She had the feeling that if she thought on it long enough and hard enough she could figure out what was going on, but so far she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“If only we could find Mole and have a conversation with him,” Jasper wished.

“How can we do that without getting caught or even killed?” Doshmisi wondered. “If we get caught then we can’t help anyone trapped inside to escape.” Although, even if the creepy creatures captured them, she thought, they might still figure out a way to help the others escape, but it seemed unlikely.

“I wonder if they took Mole to that oil pump to work,” Jasper speculated.

“Watch,” Jack commented.

“Jack’s right,” Jasper said as Doshmisi nodded in agreement.

The three of them spent most of the day on their bellies in the brush, watching the compound. The children came out of the school tents for lunch, then went back in. The women tended the fires, talked with one another, cared for the littlest ones, and prepared food. In the evening, the boats returned from the oil pump and the guards marched the men into the compound at sunset, where they joined the women and children for the night. The guards dispersed. As Doshmisi, Jasper, and Jack observed attentively, the fence burst into glowing orange light.

“A heat boundary,” Jasper said.

“What’s that?” Doshmisi asked.

“Anyone who touches that fence will burn up instantly,” he explained.

“Not a wall,” Jack blurted excitedly. “Not a wall.”

“Not a wall?” Jasper repeated, puzzled.

“He means that you can see through it even though you can’t pass through it,” Doshmisi interpreted.

“Right, so that means?” Jasper scrunched his eyebrows together in concentration as he tried to understand.

“We can talk to them through it even though we can’t touch it. If we can sneak down there,” Doshmisi said, as she pointed toward the heat fence. “Almost all the guards have left. Couldn’t we sneak down there? Like over there?” Doshmisi indicated a spot where the bushes came close to the fence.

“Sneak. Talk,” Jack urged them.

They waited until the sun had set completely and then, under cover of darkness, Jasper led the way down the gentle sloping hillside to the compound and directly to the bushy area that Doshmisi had pointed out. The bushes concealed them where they squatted, close to the glowing fence, which cast a dim eerie light. No one inside the compound was near enough for them to safely call to them, but a group of children clustered around the entrance to a tent not far away. Jack picked up a round stone and threw it deftly between the wires of the fence so that it landed beside the ring of children. Several boys looked up curiously. Jack threw another stone. The boys whispered to each other anxiously. Jack threw a third stone that bounced into the fence and sizzled. Doshmisi glanced furtively along the fence line to see if any guards had noticed the sizzle. No guards saw it, but the cluster of boys did. They approached the fence cautiously.

Jasper whispered loudly, “Over here.”

The faces of the boys glowed with wonder in the orange light of the fence. None of them spoke.

“We’re friends,” Jasper whispered. “We want to help you escape. Do you know Mole? Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s here,” one of the children confirmed.

“Do you think you can bring him to us without attracting attention?”

“We can do it,” another child assured them determinedly.

“Tell him Jasper wants him to come to this spot without attracting notice.”

“We can find him,” the children promised.

“We won’t go anywhere unless the guards come,” Jasper told the boys. “But you mustn’t stand by the fence. If the guards see you, it will cause suspicion. Go back to what you were doing.” The children left the fence and while some of them continued playing as before, others faded into the encampment to find Mole.

They didn’t wait long. Mole appeared soon afterward. He brought a couple of boys with him and they squatted on the ground next to the fence, pretending to play a game with stones in the dirt. Mole focused on the children and did not so much as glance in the direction of Jasper, Doshmisi, and Jack.

“What you be doin’ here?” Mole asked, without looking up from the game.

“We came to find you,” Doshmisi replied.

At the sound of Doshmisi’s voice, Mole laughed softly, his dreadlocks quivering with his laughter. “Doshmisi,” he said softly with delight. “Yah mon, that be a good thing. The Four is come back.”

“It’s just me right now. I mean just me here,” Doshmisi told him.

“That be good enough for me for now,” Mole replied.

“What’s up?” Doshmisi asked. “Tell us quickly.”

“We’ll try to help you escape soon,” Jasper added.

“Escape be tricky,” Mole warned. “We have the children to consider. The Corportons took these women and children hostage…”

“Corportons?” Doshmisi asked.

“The creatures in the white jumpsuits. We call them Corportons. They kidnapped us along with the women and children. Sissrath has an agreement with them, to help them drill for the black oil under the ocean. They needed workers with skill to help them. That be us battery makers. The Corportons be clever. They force us battery makers to work because of the women and children hostages. If we don’t work or we refuse to do what they tell us, they will hurt the hostages.”

“Where did they come from? Why did they come here to drill for oil?” Doshmisi questioned Mole.

“They come from some other land far away where this black oil be extremely valuable. They have sophisticated tools that I have never seen. They sent out a universal search for the oil with one of their tools and it told them to come to Faracadar. So they came. They call the oil drill in the ocean the New Beginnings Well. They have a weapon that shoots a piece of metal and it can kill a person instantly. Terrible device.”

“We have these weapons in the Farland. We call them guns,” Doshmisi interjected.

Mole continued. “We must do as they say because we fear these guns. They plan to transport this oil to their land after they pump it from our ocean. Sometimes I imagine maybe I hear the ocean scream because it be drilled deep by that machine at the well.” Mole tapped his head with his middle finger, “But that scream be in my head. Not real. One thing I tell you for sure, mon, no good can come of this.”

“No good,” Doshmisi echoed.

“Why is Sissrath helping them? What does he get out of it?” Jasper asked.

“Prophecy,” Jack said, in his typically cryptic way. Doshmisi wished that once in a while he’d give a straight answer.

“Sissrath believes the land be destroyed soon. Be gone. The Corportons will take him away with them when they have all the oil they want. They talk about it at the well. They talk as if we battery makers be stones, not people; as if we can’t hear them. They promise Sissrath power in their land because of his talent for enchantment. He will escape with them before Faracadar be destroyed,” Mole informed them.

“Why does he think Faracadar will be destroyed?” Doshmisi demanded in alarm.

“Prophecy,” Jack repeated.

“I don’t know, mon,” Mole replied.

Jasper turned to Jack. “What prophecy, Jack? Did Sissrath hear a prophecy?”

“Prophecy from Khoum,” Jack stated earnestly.

“Yes, well that explains everything,” Jasper announced in exasperation.

“He be what he be, mon,” Mole reminded Jasper. “Don’t be getting angry with Jack. I need to go before the guards notice.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow night. Same time. Be here,” Jasper told Mole.

“I’ll try, mon.” Mole stood and walked back into the compound with the children.

After Mole left, the three renegades returned to the barn under cover of darkness. Doshmisi had picked a few apples earlier in the day and she cut them into pieces and fed them to Dagobaz while she pondered the information Mole had provided. Jack fell asleep instantly in the comfortable hay, exhausted from attempting to communicate his visionary thoughts and from climbing down to the compound and back.

“I keep thinking about this prophecy. Sissrath must have heard a prophecy about the destruction of the land,” Jasper said, his expressive brown eyes filled with worry.

“Possibly. Tell me what you know about this Khoum,” Doshmisi requested.

“They taught us about it in history class in school, but I can’t remember what they said. Something about a prophet and an enchanted book. I guess I should have paid closer attention to that lesson,” Jasper noted regretfully. “When I was in class, my mind wandered to the fields and forests, and the guiding skills I needed to learn.”

“Tomorrow morning I’ll talk to the trees,” Doshmisi promised. “Oil is dangerous stuff. I wish we had Denzel here. He would know more about oil wells and drilling for oil in the ocean. It scares me. I remember times when oil spilled into the water in the Farland and it killed a lot of sea creatures as well as birds. I hope these Corportons know what they’re doing out there at that New Beginnings Well. The Corportons have definitely not earned popularity points with the whales.”

“We’ll find a way to free Mole and the others. If the Corportons don’t have the battery makers to work for them then maybe they will have to stop drilling.” Jasper put his arms around Doshmisi and gave her a hug and then he kissed her lightly on the lips. She kissed him back. The kiss made her feel so good that she forgot about Mole, the New Beginnings Well, the Corportons, and pretty much everything else in the world, for a quick minute. But then Jasper released her. “G’night,” he said self-consciously as he flashed her his smile, that smile that lit up his face like the sun.

“G’night,” she echoed.

Jasper climbed into the hayloft with Jack and bedded down while Doshmisi curled up with Dagobaz in his stall, running her fingers through his beautiful dark mane while she thought about Mole, the Corportons, and the oil well.         

Doshmisi woke early, just as the first glimmer of dawn slipped through the cracks in the barn walls. She collected her belongings and put them quietly up in the hayloft with Jasper and Jack, who slept peacefully. She slipped out to the surrounding forest and proceeded purposefully into the heart of a stand of old trees, where she sat down on the mossy, leafy forest floor.

Safe in the embrace of the trees, she unbuckled the carry case that she wore around her waist and took out the herbal. She held the enchanted book in her lap and it opened to a page. On the page she read:  “Fear of change prevents creative thought. When hope explodes, take me to the water and start again from the beginning.” Doshmisi sighed. The herbal had her pretty worried. It seemed broken. She used to understand what it instructed her to do, but now it made no sense.

She shut the herbal and focused on her mission in the forest. She closed her eyes and visualized her spirit dancing to the tops of the trees, where it intertwined with the tree spirits. She cherished her ability to communicate with the trees in their way as perhaps the greatest gift she had received as the keeper of the Amulet of the Trees. She rejoiced with them in the beauty of the dewy fresh morning. Nothing loves a fresh new morning like a tree.

The trees had helped her solve problems in the past, so she placed a question to them in her heart. She asked them what was wrong with the herbal and if the strange words that appeared in the herbal connected to the New Beginnings Well, the Corportons, and a prophecy. She didn’t ask the question in words, but instead let the images of these things pass through her mind and out to the trees. She felt herself enveloped in the comforting embrace of the trees’ spirits and her amulet glowed warmly, emanating a green light. The image of her grandmother, Clover, came to her as it had at the Garden; and Clover appeared even more unwell than before. The trees still wanted her to go see Clover. She wondered if she had made a poor choice by coming to the North Coast before attending to her grandmother. But the trees did not seem to mind her choice. They were happy to have her among them. They distinctly planted in her mind the thought that everyone was needed for some task that lie ahead. Everyone needed to come together. Then she had the reassuring feeling that the whole confusing puzzle of circumstances and events would work out in the end, that just around the corner a perfectly wonderful resolution awaited, and that she would eventually find it, like finding a star buried under the hay in a barn, uncovering its unspeakable brilliance in a shining moment of unexpected discovery.

She opened her eyes and retreated from the heart of the forest with a welcome sense of calm. Her amulet no longer glowed. She patted the trunks of trees she passed as she walked back to rejoin the others. But her calm shattered as she neared the barn. A group of Corportons had gathered in a corral in front of the barn where they were attempting to control Dagobaz. They had thrown four lassoes around his neck and he rebelled against their efforts to tame him by alternately rearing on his hind legs and then pawing frantically at the ground. He snorted and screamed in outrage.

Doshmisi couldn’t bear to see him mistreated, but she didn’t dare reveal herself. One of the Corportons tried to throw a saddle across the frenzied horse’s back, but Dagobaz sidestepped the saddle and kicked at the Corporton. She wondered how the Corportons communicated with one another from inside the jumpsuits. They didn’t speak aloud so they either talked directly into each other’s brains with telepathy or they used some type of device embedded in their face masks to communicate. She wondered if they had ears.

One of the Corportons touched a metal rod to Dagobaz’s hind leg. The horse shrieked in pain and leapt forward. The Corporton continued to torture Dagobaz with the charge from the metal rod as he forced the horse forward onto a ramp that led into a round vehicle resembling an enormous golf ball on wheels. Every time the Corporton touched Dagobaz with the metal rod, the horse screamed in pain and moved forward. Tears streamed down Doshmisi’s cheeks as she observed helplessly from the shelter of the forest. The Corportons followed Dagobaz into the golf ball and folded up the ramp. Then the wheels folded into the golf ball and it flew into the sky where it soon disappeared over the trees.

Doshmisi sobbed after the Corportons left. Jasper and Jack emerged from the barn and hurried to her side.

“What happened?” Jasper asked as he gently pulled her to her feet and handed her a handkerchief from his pocket. Doshmisi wiped her tear-streaked cheeks and blew her nose.

“They hurt Dagobaz. I think they wanted to ride him, and that they were trying to break him. He fought them. They forced him into a flying machine by torturing him with electric shocks from a metal rod. It was horrible.” Doshmisi shuddered again at the recollection. “They left in the flying thing. Were you hiding in the hayloft? ”

“Yes. We heard them come and we burrowed into the straw. Luckily they didn’t think to search for anyone in the barn. They came for Dagobaz,” Jasper replied. “I bet they took him to the compound by the New Beginnings Well. That’s their base camp. We can try to free him when go to free Mole and the others.”

“That sounds great when you say it,” Doshmisi told him, with a sniffle, “but we don’t have a plan for how to free Mole and the others, let alone Dagobaz.”

Just then, Jack hopped on his skateboard, which instantly became a hoverboard under his feet as he floated above the ground. “Diversion,” Jack pronounced excitedly. “Diversion, diversion.” He swooped up into the air in a loop, kicking the board out from under his feet in a flip and then deftly landing back on it perfectly.

“Someone’s been practicing,” Doshmisi complimented the intuit.

Jack continued to swoop through the air like a large bird until Doshmisi could grab his attention and convince him to stop swooping and listen to her. “They have guns, Jack. Real guns that shoot bullets. They can shoot you out of the air in an instant. You’ll be no help to anybody dead.”

Jack drooped and shook his head from side to side. “Diversion coming,” he said, pointing out toward the ocean. The others ignored him and he shrugged, then popped back into the air to practice his skateboard moves.

“Mole knows the routine and how the Corportons do things at the compound,” Jasper said. “Mole’s resourceful and so are we. If we put our heads together, we can come up with something. We can at least get Mole out of there and then we can go back for the rest of them when we have reinforcements.”

“A nonviolent march won’t work against the Corportons,” Doshmisi pointed out. “They come from outside of Faracadar and they would kill every last one of us within gunshot range in a heartbeat.” The previous year, the Four had led a nonviolent march on Sissrath and had defeated him because the army had joined the people and turned against Sissrath. “I wish I could see what they look like under those jumpsuits,” she added. “If I could see them then I might figure out if they have a weakness that would work in our favor. They seem familiar to me but I can’t put my finger on why.”

“After nightfall, we’ll talk to Mole again. Maybe he has seen them without the jumpsuits and face masks,” Jasper said hopefully.

They spent the day close to the barn. Doshmisi went into the forest searching for food and came back with mannafruit, the apricot-sized lavender globes that tasted like whatever you imagined them to taste like when you took a bite. When you ate mannafruit, you had to feel grateful for the food, or else it tasted like sawdust. The mannafruit stayed good for weeks unopened, but once opened it went bad quickly. Because they filled you up with just a few bites, they made a terrific traveling food.

Doshmisi worried all day about Dagobaz. She wished the proud stallion would bend to the will of the Corportons and allow them to tame him for the time being so that they wouldn’t keep hurting him. Obviously they wanted to ride Dagobaz and he refused to allow them to do it. “They can’t tame you in your heart,” she whispered to Dagobaz, even though he could not hear her.

At twilight, Jasper, Doshmisi, and Jack once again went down to the compound. Doshmisi insisted that Jack wait at the edge of the forest and not come with them to the fence. She worried that he might try to do something crazy that would get him killed. He reluctantly agreed to remain behind while Jasper and Doshmisi crept into the undergrowth near the fence where they had talked to Mole the night before. Orange and pink light from the setting sun lit the clouds drifting over the ocean. The clouds slightly obscured the abundance of bright colorful stars that dotted the night sky. In a few minutes, only the light from the stars would remain visible as the sun’s rays faded completely.

Doshmisi saw Mole playing a jump rope game with a group of children. He and a woman turned a long rope while little girls chanted a rhyme and jumped together in rhythm. A few other children stood nearby and clapped to the rhyme. As she watched, the girls stopped jumping and Mole coiled up the rope. He lit a glow-lamp and walked over to the fence accompanied by a handful of children. They squatted down on the ground and proceeded to set up the game with the stones that they had played the previous evening. Without looking up from the game, ever so quietly, Mole spoke. “You be there, mon?”

“We’re here,” Jasper replied.

“I have hidden a tool I think will open the gate at the entrance,” Mole informed them. “But if I open the gate with all these guards around, they’ll shoot anyone who tries to leave. I wish we had an enchanter up in here. ”

“We could go get one,” Jasper suggested. “But that would take time.”

Suddenly the quiet of the night erupted with the piercing sound of a loud electronic blast in the form of Aretha Franklin singing about riding on the freeway of love in a pink Cadillac. The music emerged from Doshmisi’s backpack. The line from the song repeated in a loop as Doshmisi desperately fumbled with the front flap on her backpack, unbuckled it, and grabbed her cell phone, which she flipped open. The racket stopped instantly, but too late, for it had already alerted the Corportons, who descended rapidly.

“Who is this?” Doshmisi shouted into the phone furiously, while at the same time realizing that the situation was her own stupid fault for forgetting she had the phone in her backpack and forgetting to turn it off. But who would have imagined that the phone would work in Faracadar? It didn’t seem possible.

“Dosh? It’s me! Elena!”

“Why are you calling me? How are you calling me?” Doshmisi demanded.

“I have your number in my phone and we have this crystal thingy that Denzel…”

“Denzel? Are you in Faracadar?”

“Yeah, we’re at Big House City,” Elena informed her.

“Who is with you?” Doshmisi asked quickly as the Corportons closed in. She had to know that much at least from the crazy phone call before it ended.

“Maia, Denzel, and Honeydew.”

“And Sonjay?” Doshmisi asked. Time was short.

“No. We don’t know where he is,” Elena answered cheerfully, sounding thoroughly pleased with herself. “We thought he might be with you.”

Armed Corportons poured toward Doshmisi from all directions.

“I can’t talk right now. Tell Denzel the trees want us to go see Clover. Tell him Jasper and I will try to meet him at Clover’s. Tell him the Corportons have an oil well in the ocean at the North Coast and Mole is with us and…”

“Corportons?” Elena asked, uncertainly. “Jaspo? Clover?”

“This is really, really not a good time. I’m in the middle of something.” Doshmisi turned the phone off and slipped it back into the front of the backpack just as the Corporton guards surrounded her and Jasper.

“Show us your hands,” said a mechanical voice with the distinct tone of an unfriendly police officer. Doshmisi held her empty hands up over her head to show she had no weapons. The voice had come from one of the Corportons and it shocked her that she could understand the words, which were in English. She wondered where these aliens came from, but she thought perhaps she had an idea, insane as it seemed.

 

Changing the Prophecy Chapter Nine

 

Chapter 9 Snared in a Net

After an excellent breakfast at the Wolf Circle, the travelers assembled in front of the community dining room to meet the tigers they would ride. Goldenrod provided four sleek yellow-and-black-striped tigers. “I figure the geebaching can ride with one of you,” Goldenrod noted. Guhblorin looked crestfallen until Elena put her hand on his shoulder and told him, “I want you to ride with me, amigo.” He perked up at her words.

The princess gently stroked a large white wolf as tears stood in her eyes. She was famous throughout the land for her love of animals and this wolf obviously held a special place in her heart. He bumped her with his head and whined softly. “I’ll be back before you know it,” Honeydew promised the wolf.

“They’re splendid,” Denzel declared appreciatively, as he stroked the tiger he had selected to ride. “Thanks a million,” he said to Goldenrod.

Maia produced a jar of powder from her backpack. “I think we should use the color change powder. I wonder if it will work on Elena.”

“Color change powder?” Elena inquired with a note of curiosity in her voice. “Qué es?”

“You see how the people here have a bright color that glows in their skin?” Maia asked her friend. Elena glanced at Goldenrod, who glowed bright yellow. “Well royalty doesn’t have that color glow and it makes us stand out, which is a problem when we want to keep a low profile,” Maia explained. “Anyone can recognize Denzel, Honeydew, and me as royals because we don’t have a bright color in our skin. Grandmomma Clover made this powder for us. One tiny sprinkle and we have color like everyone else so we can blend in better. Watch,” Maia concluded. She sprinkled powder on Denzel, whose skin immediately took on a bright-red glow. Denzel grinned and took a pinch of powder and sprinkled it on Maia, who developed a deep-blue glow. Then he dropped a pinch on Honeydew, who glowed sunflower-yellow.

“Now your turn,” Maia told Elena.

Elena began to protest, but Maia ignored her and quickly sprinkled the powder on her before Elena could mount a full resistance. For a moment, nothing happened, and Maia thought perhaps the powder wouldn’t work on a Latina from the Farland. But then Elena sparkled with a shimmery orange color. She giggled.

“You like it?” Guhblorin asked.

“Kinda weird, but I like it OK,” Elena replied.

Denzel scrutinized her. “I think it looks pretty good.” Elena blushed a deeper shade of orange, but Denzel didn’t notice since he had turned and mounted his tiger. “Let’s get on up outta here,” he called to the others, who each mounted their tigers. The enormous white wolf remained at Honeydew’s heel.

“Stay here,” Honeydew told the wolf, who looked up at her with sorrowful eyes.

The travelers rode out of the circle.

“We go this way.” Honeydew pointed to a path that led through a stand of fir trees. As the travelers started on the path, they heard Honeydew shout, “Biscuit!”

Denzel motioned his tiger to stop and he turned around to see why Honeydew had shouted. The large white wolf had followed them and it stood beside Honeydew.

“Oh no, Bisc, please go back.” Honeydew remembered the year before when her father had foolishly called his white wolves to their aid and Sissrath’s Special Forces had killed many of them.

“It might come in handy to have a white wolf as a traveling companion,” Denzel pointed out, hopefully.

“I don’t want to put his life in danger,” Honeydew responded.

“He looks capable of taking care of himself,” Elena noted. The wolves still made her nervous, even though she understood that the people of the Wolf Circle kept them as pets. “He looks a lot fiercer than we do.”

“Let him come with us,” Maia pleaded. “He wants to. He won’t be in any more danger than we will.”

“That doesn’t set my mind at ease,” Honeydew replied, but she relented. “His name is Biscuit,” she told the others. “But I call him Bisc for short.”

“What kind of a name is that for a wolf?” Denzel asked.

“How would you know the right kind of name for a wolf?” Honeydew demanded indignantly. “I raised him from a pup and when he was little he stole my biscuits off my plate. He would do anything for a biscuit, especially if it has raspberry jam on it. It’s the perfect name for him.”

Denzel shrugged as he headed down the path and into the fir trees. Bisc trotted happily alongside Honeydew. He stood as tall as her tiger and in fact Honeydew could have sat on his back, but no one would dare to insult a white wolf by suggesting that they ride it.

The group of travelers hiked all day over the Amber Mountains, with Honeydew guiding them. They eventually had to dismount from the tigers because of the rocks and rough scrub that filled the landscape. They wound up walking for much of the time and were so weary by nightfall that they ate their dinner quickly with little conversation and went straight to sleep after dividing the night into shifts during which each of them took a spell keeping watch.

They awoke refreshed and anticipated finding Guhblorin’s smelly passage soon. He promised that it would cut a whole day off their overland journey. They chatted cheerily over their breakfast of pears and cheese.

As they set off, Guhblorin pointed the way to the passage, and by late morning they reached the opening leading into the mountain. The travelers peered cautiously inside as they caught a whiff of a scent far worse than just old seaweed. It smelled like a fish left outside in the sun in a paper bag for a week. Elena and Honeydew cast anxious glances at the others to see if anyone else found the smell as offensive as they did. Meanwhile, Denzel produced a canvas bag and withdrew from it a stack of sachets filled with orange peels, cinnamon sticks, and cloves. He handed them out to the others. “Hold this under your nose to help get through the tunnel.” The tigers didn’t seem bothered by the strong fishy smell and Bisc appeared to love it as he ran in joyous circles and yipped. Once they entered the mountain, Bisc stopped every once in a while to roll around on his back, as if trying to absorb the stinky smell into his fur. He poked his nose into every nook and cranny, obviously delighted to sniff the repulsive aroma.

Fortunately, it took less than an hour for the travelers to make their way through the mountain. The foul odor wasn’t unbearable and the scented sachets helped considerably. Denzel couldn’t wait to share the knowledge of the smelly passage with Jasper, who would appreciate the significance of it to shave time off the journey from the Wolf Circle to Big House City. The group emerged amid scrubby brush and large gray boulders in the foothills of the Amber Mountains. They found themselves on the edge of a meadow that melted into rolling hills covered with low brush and heather-like plants bursting with tiny pink flowers. On the other side of the hills lay Big House City and its surrounding fields and forests.

“We’re going home,” Honeydew told Bisc, as she reached over to pat his neck. “This way,” she instructed the others, who followed her as she rode out. She knew the route, having traveled back and forth between Big House City and the Amber Mountains many times. The travelers rode for a couple of hours before stopping to eat the lunch that the people of the Wolf Circle had provided them for the journey. While they ate, a flock of skeeters arrived and circled above their heads. Denzel quickly examined his surroundings for a place to hide, but could find nothing in the landscape large enough to conceal them from the sharp yellow eyes of the birds, those eyes that didn’t miss a single detail. They gazed up at the skeeters in grim silence.

“What are they?” Elena asked, watching the skeeters swoop menacingly.

“A nasty bird with terrific eyesight that does scouting for Compost and Sissrath,” Maia answered.

“What kind of a name is Compost?” Elena asked.

“Definitely not a geebaching,” Guhblorin said.

“Not Latino, either,” Elena added, with a giggle.

“Maybe a used salad,” Guhblorin suggested brightly. Elena laughed out loud.

Denzel glared at the geebaching, who mumbled an apology as he buried his face in his sandwich. “Don’t get him started, Elena,” Denzel cautioned.

“It’s the perfect name for a stinky person,” Maia answered Elena’s question. “Trust me, you don’t want to meet him. He makes the smelly tunnel look like a stroll in a rose garden.”

“Do you think the skeeters will report us?” Honeydew asked the others.

“Yeah, I do, but we can’t do much about it,” Denzel said. “They’ve already seen us. Look around. No boulders or trees or anything we could have hid behind.” The travelers packed up their lunch and rode out. The skeeters had disappeared and Denzel felt relieved that at least the nasty birds hadn’t taken to following them.

Late in the afternoon, as they began to near the outskirts of Big House City, they came upon a puzzling sight. In the distance they saw a large grayish wall blocking their path. They approached with caution. Surrounded by sparse, slender trees and low-growing plants, the landscape still provided nothing behind which to conceal themselves from watchful eyes. They had no choice but to press forward in plain sight.

Guhblorin wrinkled his nose. “What’s that funky smell?” he asked.

“Don’t start,” Denzel warned.

“Seriously,” Guhblorin said, without a hint of humor in his voice.

“He’s right,” Honeydew agreed. “Something smells bad. Not as bad as the smelly tunnel, but icky.” Just as she said it, the others began to smell it too. It smelled like bad broccoli and old milk cartons.

When they drew closer to the grayish wall, Elena gasped.

“What?” Maia asked.

“Basura,” Elena said softly.

“Garbage?” Maia translated, incredulously. She had been studying Spanish in school and she practiced speaking it when she went to Elena’s house, where Elena’s family spoke Spanish to each other. Practicing with Elena’s family had helped her pick up the language quickly. She knew that basura meant garbage, but she wondered why Elena had said it.

Elena pointed at the grayish wall. “That thing’s made out of trash.”

Maia peered more closely at the grayish wall and realized that Elena was correct. The pile of garbage rose before them, twice as tall as a grown man, and extended for quite a distance from left to right across their path. The tigers came up short as the travelers gazed at the wall of garbage. Maia wondered how deep the wall was. Perhaps they were seeing the edge of a huge mound of garbage.

“Maybe it’s a dump,” Maia suggested.

“You mean a landfill? But Big House City doesn’t use a dump,” Denzel informed her. “They don’t put their garbage into a landfill. I can’t imagine how this garbage got here, or why it got here, for that matter.”

As they gazed at the wall of garbage, a huge mass, like a black cloud, rose up over the wall and into their line of vision. The sky darkened as the mass moved in their direction. Denzel did not care to wait around for it to catch up with them. “Run back toward those trees!” he yelled, and the tigers turned swiftly and bounded back in the direction from which they had come. However, even though swift, the tigers could not outrun the approaching mass, which, as it neared, materialized into an inconceivably huge flock of skeeters with glittering black wings. The skeeters appeared strung together by something they carried in their sharp talons.

If the travelers had split up, then perhaps one of them would have escaped, but they remained bunched together as they fled. The skeeters swooped low and Denzel felt a weight drop on him. Crushed between his collapsed tiger, who sprawled beneath him, and the weight on top of him that pressed him down, he could barely breathe. His lungs felt as thin as paper and they refused to fill with air. The tigers howled. With great difficulty, Denzel struggled to dismount his tiger, whose legs had buckled when the large cat had been pinned to the ground. Denzel slid alongside the tiger, which relieved him of some of the weight, and, as he gasped for air, he realized that the army of skeeters had dropped a thick net on them from above.

“Get off your tiger and lie down next to it,” he called to the others. “They dropped a net on us. If you can relieve the pressure of the net, you’ll find it easier to breathe.” A few moments later, he could tell that the others had followed his directions because he heard Guhblorin hollering in terror and Elena crying, which they could not have done if they hadn’t filled their lungs with air.

“Honeydew? Maia?” Denzel shouted over the racket of the howling tigers, screaming geebaching, and Elena’s wails. “Are you there?” Honeydew answered from surprisingly close to him, but Denzel couldn’t see her and he could barely move with the weight of the heavy net holding him in place.

Over the din, he heard Maia pleading with Elena, “Hey, chica, get it together. And make Guhblorin shut up. Calm your tiger. We’re under a net and we have to get out before Sissrath or the Special Forces show up to capture us. I can’t hear Denzel over this racket.”

“How do I calm my tiger?” Elena sobbed.

“Stroke her neck and talk gently in her ear,” Honeydew instructed.

Elena’s sobs became subdued while Guhblorin’s panicked hollering died down to a low whimpering.

“I have a knife in my backpack and I think I can cut through this net with it, but I’m having trouble getting to the knife,” Denzel informed the others. The heavy net pressed down on him so hard that Denzel could barely move. He noticed that the skeeters circled in a giant swarm overhead. They blotted out much of the daylight and caused a darkness that resembled that of an approaching rainstorm.

“I see them coming,” Honeydew called to Denzel.

“Who?” he asked urgently. “Who’s coming?”

“Look to the edge of the garbage wall. Whoever trapped us is coming,” she elaborated with grim resignation. Within moments of Honeydew’s warning, she, Denzel, and Maia figured out who had caught them in the net. Even stronger than the nasty smell of the garbage wall was the familiar decomposing-vegetable-smell of Compost, Sissrath’s second-in-command.

Denzel frantically tried to get his hands on the knife in his backpack, but even as he struggled to reach the knife, he realized that he could not escape Compost, who was nearly upon them, accompanied by a phalanx of Sissrath’s loyal Special Forces, the fierce warriors from the Mountain Downs.

Their captors pulled up short at the edge of the net. Compost was the filthiest character Denzel and Maia had ever met. He had nappy uncombed hair, a film of grime covered his skin, and his fat belly hung over the top of his pants and wiggled when he released his sinister laugh. His brown skin had a yellowish tint to it, like the skin of all the Mountain People, but Compost’s skin was a sickly acid-yellow color that looked nothing like the healthy golden-yellow glow of the people who came from the Wolf Circle in the High Mountain Settlement. Elena and Guhblorin peered out from underneath the net in fascinated horror.

“So nice of you to drop in,” Compost rasped gleefully. “I figured the Four would turn up right about now to save the day. Too bad, not going to happen this time.” A pair of boots clomped over the thick netting and came to a standstill in front of Denzel’s face. Then a gloved hand placed a foul-smelling rag over Denzel’s nose and he slipped into unconsciousness.

Changing the Prophecy Chapter Eight Episode 2

 

Chapter 8 Sense of Direction -- Episode 2

In the morning, before joining the others, Doshmisi remembered that she had marked that page in the herbal. She pulled the book into her lap and opened it to the page cinched by the rubber band. The words from the previous night had disappeared. The only word on the page was adaptability. She had barely read the word when the rubber band broke and the book snapped shut. “Stubborn book,” she muttered in frustration as she placed it back in the carry case, gathered her belongings, and set out to find Jasper.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and sweet melon, Doshmisi, Jasper, and Jack took their leave of their friends in the Passage Circle and got back on the road. Doshmisi suggested that they ride north along the beach, but Jasper vetoed that idea. He said riding on the beach would leave them too exposed. He took them instead on a route further inland that followed the shoreline while remaining under the cover of trees. The trees whispered to Doshmisi and made her feel optimistic about getting to the bottom of things at the North Coast. The three travelers rode hard all day. By evening, they had arrived well within the boundaries of the North Coast region, but they had no idea where to look for Sissrath and his encampment.

“We need to find shelter for the night,” Jasper said, as he rode alongside Doshmisi.

“Can we camp in this forest?” she asked.

“An enemy could see us here too easily. I want to find a cave or a structure or something that will hide us,” Jasper replied. Suddenly he drew up his tiger abruptly. “Stop,” he ordered. “Stay completely still.”

Doshmisi obeyed. In the distance, through the trees, she saw what Jasper saw. A small group of human-type figures rode between the trees on horses. The sight of the horses made the hair on the back of Doshmisi’s neck stand up because there were no horses in Faracadar, where people rode tigers instead. The sight of the horses, entirely out of place, frightened her. Jack whimpered. Jasper, who had never seen a horse, turned to her wide-eyed.

“Horses,” Doshmisi whispered to Jasper and Jack. “We have them in the Farland.”

The appearance of the riders disturbed Doshmisi even more than the appearance of the horses they rode. The riders resembled people. They had a head, two arms, and two legs, but from head to toe they wore white jumpsuits that hid every part of their real selves. They wore white gloves, helmet-like head coverings, and gray face masks. They carried some type of guns. Doshmisi wondered if the creatures were slimy or perhaps misshapen under their white jumpsuits. Maybe they had no solid substance to them, like light or water, and the jumpsuits contained them. Or maybe the jumpsuits concealed a hideous form that she could not imagine. She thought of them as aliens.

Doshmisi, Jasper, and Jack remained hidden in the undergrowth and as still as stone until the creatures on the horses passed by and disappeared in the distance. Jasper pointed after them. At first Doshmisi didn’t see what Jasper saw; but then, as her eyes adjusted to the rapidly increasing darkness of night falling, she identified a clearing ahead and in it the outlines of a series of large, barn-like structures. The creatures rode past the barns and into the forest beyond without stopping.

The travelers quietly dismounted from their tigers and left them in a thicket on the edge of the clearing where they could graze on greens and pass the night concealed from sight. Watching for the figures-in-white, they cautiously crept inside the first barn they came upon. Large and empty of all activity, it contained heaps of hay, which would make it a comfortable place to bed down for the night. Jasper took a glow-lamp from his bag. He handed it to Doshmisi, who held it up as she wandered to the back of the barn. She opened the door to a stall and found herself face-to-face with a large chestnut stallion. The stallion snorted through his nostrils loudly. Doshmisi heard Jack cry out in alarm. The stallion tossed his midnight-black mane and whinnied.

Doshmisi murmured in awe, “You are the most handsome horse I have ever laid eyes on.”

The stallion emanated a wild energy that made Doshmisi’s breath quicken. She felt around in her bag and found an apple. She bit off a large chunk and spit it out into her palm, then offered it to the stallion as a gift. He sniffed the apple and then picked it up delicately with his large lips and ate it. Doshmisi repeated this again and again until she had fed the whole apple to the stallion. Then she tentatively patted his nose. He nuzzled her. “Such a beauty,” Doshmisi cooed. “Can we be friends?” She stroked his long neck and buried her face in his mane. He smelled like sweet alfalfa. His presence comforted her.

“It’s OK,” Doshmisi called softly to Jack and Jasper. “There’s a horse in here. He’s magnificent. I’ve befriended him. I know all about horses because Aunt Alice has horses at Manzanita Ranch. I’ve taken care of them and ridden them. He won’t hurt you. Come see. In the Farland people ride horses the way you ride tigers here.”

Jack and Jasper peered cautiously into the stall, where Doshmisi continued to stroke the stallion and talk to him. “I don’t know your name,” Doshmisi said to the stallion, “so I’m going to call you Dagobaz if that’s OK with you. I read about a horse named Dagobaz in a book once. The Dagobaz in the book could only be ridden by one who tamed him.” The horse nodded his head and snorted, as if in approval. Doshmisi crooned the name Dagobaz lovingly to the stallion.

She would have stayed with Dagobaz, but Jasper insisted that she come out and have something to eat with him and Jack. They ate sandwiches that Cinnamon had packed for them at the Passage Circle, which seemed years in the past even though it had only been that morning. Then they took out their bedrolls.

“I’m going to sleep in the stall with Dagobaz,” Doshmisi informed the others.

“Is that safe?” Jasper asked worriedly.

“It’s fine. That horse and I have a connection, a sort of understanding,” she attempted to explain. “Kind of like the connection I have with the whales and the trees.”

“If you say so,” Jasper replied, although he still looked a little worried. “If you need us, Jack and I will be in that stall across the way.”

“Sounds good,” Doshmisi said. She took her bedroll into Dagobaz’s stall and rested her cheek against his neck. She stroked his side and his back and ran her hand down the front of each of his front legs. He nuzzled her. Her amulet began to glow green.

“What is it?” she asked him. “Why do I feel like I know you so well?”

Dagobaz tossed his head and folded himself down into the hay. Doshmisi stretched out beside him. She rested her head on his side and pulled her bedroll over her like a blanket. Dagobaz nudged her glowing amulet with his nose and then snorted at the ceiling. She soon fell asleep with a smile on her face.

In the morning, Dagobaz woke Doshmisi at sunrise when he stood up and visited his water trough for a cool drink. Doshmisi, Jasper, and Jack shared half a loaf of bread with cheese and prepared to depart.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back for you,” Doshmisi promised Dagobaz as she sadly took her leave. She needed that stallion and he needed her. They were meant for each other; she could feel it in her blood.

Jasper found the tigers, well-rested and safe. They decided to leave the tigers where they were and proceeded with caution on foot toward the ocean, which was so near to them that they could smell the salt water on the air. They did not walk far before they reached a vista point from which the ocean spread out before them sparkling like diamonds in the mauve-tinted morning light.

As she took in the panoramic view, Doshmisi’s gaze fell abruptly on the incongruous sight of a frighteningly enormous metal oil derrick pumping up and down less than a half a mile out from the shoreline. Several boats bobbed between the beach and the oil well, coming and going from the site.

Jasper pointed to a place up from the beach and said, “Look there.”

Where he pointed, Doshmisi saw an open area carved out of the trees and the undergrowth, about a quarter of a mile up from the sandy beach. She saw several low buildings and what appeared to be a compound full of people, like a large outdoor pen. Smoke from cooking fires rose in thin ribbons from the compound.

“Let’s investigate,” Jasper said.

“Hostages,” Jack stated.

“Really Jack? That does not sound good,” Doshmisi responded.

“Stay alert. We can’t let ourselves be caught,” Jasper ordered.

Doshmisi knew from painful personal experience that avoiding capture was easier said than done.

Changing the Prophecy Chapter Eight Episode 1

Chapter 8 Sense of Direction -- Episode 1

Jasper, Jack, and Doshmisi rode into the Passage Circle at dusk. The previous year, Sissrath’s Special Forces had burned the Passage Circle nearly to the ground. As Doshmisi gazed around in amazement, she saw how much of the circle the people had rebuilt in only one year. Her sister Maia’s buddies, the drummers, had begun to assemble in the central plaza for an evening of drumming. Several of them rushed over to greet Doshmisi as she rode in on her tiger. They immediately asked about Maia and Doshmisi was sorry to disappoint them when she told them that Maia had not come with her. “She’s in Faracadar somewhere,” she said, optimistically, “so you’ll probably hook up with her before long.” Thinking about the botched passage worried her. Had Maia and the others really made the passage?

The drummers smiled and tossed their heads so that their long dreadlocks or long braids (whichever they sported) bopped and popped about. “We’ll drum in her honor tonight and perhaps that will bring her closer to us,” one of them said.

“I feel certain it will,” Doshmisi agreed. The drummer’s words comforted her. After speaking with the drummers, she turned to follow Jasper and Jack through the plaza and toward the side of town nearest to the beaches, where their friends Ginger and Cinnamon lived. Ginger and Cinnamon and their many daughters had once had a large, beautiful house with a spectacular view of the ocean. But the fire had destroyed it. In eager anticipation, Doshmisi rode up the hill to where the house used to stand. She hoped to see it rebuilt, like so many of the other houses she had passed. To her delight, she discovered a periwinkle-blue house with coffee-brown trim in the exact same location. It was not as big as its predecessor, and the plants in the yard were small compared to the mature flowering shrubs and large sage and rosemary that had grown there before the fire. The fig tree had survived and it greeted her with an abundance of lovely new leaves.

Doshmisi hopped off her tiger and bounded to the door, where she knocked twice before opening it and calling, “Ginger! Cinnamon! Anyone home?”

Cinnamon appeared in the kitchen doorway at the end of the hall. She wore a pair of sturdy overalls and she wiped her hands on a towel. Her face lit up at the sight of Doshmisi and she called to her family to come see who had arrived as she ran to embrace her friend. Doshmisi and Cinnamon laughed with pleasure.

“You rebuilt it so fast,” Doshmisi remarked.

“Well, we had many hands applied to the task,” Cinnamon explained. “And of course our men came home when you freed them from the prison at Big House City. Although Ginger and I have still not decided yet whether the help they provide outweighs the extra work they create for us,” Cinnamon joked.

“Hey, hey,” Cinnamon’s husband boomed behind her, “none of that slander. You missed me when I was gone. Admit it. You know you did.” He gave Doshmisi a hug, shook hands with Jasper, and then put his arm around his wife’s waist affectionately.

Doshmisi smiled at the sight of the two of them together. They had spent many years apart while Sissrath imprisoned Cinnamon’s husband for resisting the enchanter’s rule. “Where’s Ginger?” she asked. “And the girls?”

“The girls went to the plaza for the drumming,” Cinnamon’s husband replied.

“And Ginger isn’t feeling well,” Cinnamon informed her.

“What’s the matter? Maybe I can help,” Doshmisi offered.

“She went to lay down in her room. Come, I’ll give you the grand tour of our new house and take you to see her,” Cinnamon said.

“How about some chocolate ice cream for the intuit?” Cinnamon’s husband suggested to Jack, with a twinkle in his eye.

Jack bobbed up and down in the air energetically and echoed gleefully, “Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.”

“Maybe some for the guide too?” Jasper asked.

“I think that can be arranged,” Cinnamon’s husband agreed with a chuckle.

“I’ll go settle the tigers and then I’ll be right back,” Jasper said.

Doshmisi followed Cinnamon upstairs. The previous house, before it burned, had been considerably larger, with an open center and a balcony that went all the way around the inside of the second floor. This house had no such thing. The stairs led to a second floor hallway. Cinnamon went to the first room on the left and knocked on the door, which she then opened a crack as she said, “You’ll never guess who just arrived. Doshmisi. She travels with Jasper and the intuit. Can we come in?”

A rustle of clothing and bedding whispered inside the room and then Ginger replied, “Yes, come on in.”

Doshmisi followed Cinnamon into the bedroom. The sun had set and night was falling quickly. Through the open window, Doshmisi could hear the waves washing on the beach in the distance. She loved Ginger and Cinnamon’s house. Both the old one and now the new one. They had the sort of house that felt cozy and safe, the sort of house that you could lean into softly and rest for days, dozing in bed, reading, eating soup, and not worrying about Sissrath plotting to ruin people’s lives and hurt whales.

Doshmisi held her hands out to her friend. “Ginger, what’s wrong? I have the herbal with me.” Even as she said these words, Doshmisi could feel the anxiety mounting within her as she wondered if the herbal would behave properly or do something strange and puzzling again instead.

Ginger took Doshmisi’s hands in hers happily. Her eyes sparkled and she didn’t appear sick. “I feel ridiculous,” Ginger told Doshmisi. “I have some foolish kind of rash on my stomach. I can’t tell if it’s an infection or an allergic reaction to something or a symptom of something else. I’ve been taking a homeopathic remedy to keep it from itching. I had planned to see a healer tomorrow because it won’t go away. My skin is so sensitive that I don’t like to cover it so I’ve been up here by myself with my belly bare, trying to get some relief.”

“Well, let’s see what the herbal says.” Doshmisi unbuckled the front of the carry case and removed the enchanted book. As she lifted the herbal, she tried not to register her anxiety in her face or her movements, even though she wondered what the herbal would do when she tried to use it. “Do you mind if I have a look at the rash?” she asked.

Ginger peeled back the blankets and lifted her shirt. Angry whitish-yellow bumps covered her stomach. Doshmisi recognized the rash. She had seen one like it the previous year when she worked in the clinic behind Ginger and Cinnamon’s house. She remembered what the herbal had said to do about it, thank goodness, because if the herbal misbehaved then she could still treat Ginger. But she wanted to see what the herbal would say if she tried to use it. So she placed it on Ginger’s chest and waited for it to open.

Doshmisi felt a rush of relief when the herbal actually opened to a page like it was supposed to do. She took a rubber band from her pocket and put it around the book to hold her place. Then she read the page and her heart sank. Only a few sentences of information appeared on the page and they had nothing whatsoever to do with Ginger’s rash. The herbal read: There once was a land fueled by oil. The people of the land failed to think ahead. They resisted evolution. When their oil started to run out, they killed each other to possess more of the remains. They failed to seek new ways or to build new paradigms. They were not adaptable like the insects. Insects survive. The people will vanish and insects will inherit the land. Cockroaches are adaptable. They like to eat grease, but if no grease presents itself, then cockroaches will eat something else.

That was all it said on the page that opened for Doshmisi and she could not force the book to turn to the next page. She closed it gently and hoped that the rubber band would hold her place and allow her to study the page more carefully later. The herbal was transforming itself, but what was it transforming itself into? Ginger sensed Doshmisi’s alarm caused by the mysterious story in the book, but she mistook it for alarm at the problem of the rash.

“Is it dangerous?” Ginger asked anxiously.

“It’s nothing serious, is it?” Cinnamon chimed in.

“No, no,” Doshmisi responded. “It’s not serious. It’s kind of icky, though. It’s not an infection or an allergy. It’s a fungus. You can make it go away by creating a hostile environment that kills it off. I’ll write down the recipe for a paste that you must spread on your stomach for the next few days.”

“A fungus?!” Ginger repeated in horror, as she wrinkled her nose. “Ewww. How did I get something as disgusting as that?”

“Probably from the garden,” Doshmisi told her. She knew that Ginger spent long hours working in the fields and gardens. “It might have happened if you were lying on your stomach in the dirt. It’ll go away fast with the paste. I saw the same ailment on several gardeners here last year. It’s actually pretty common.”

“Come, let’s go mix up the paste so Ginger can start getting better,” Cinnamon suggested. “I’ll be back soon,” she assured her sister as she headed toward the door.

Doshmisi stood, replaced the herbal in the carry case, and followed Cinnamon from the room. She joined Jasper and Jack in the kitchen, where Jack had his head buried in a bowl of ice cream. She was distracted by her concern about the bizarre story appearing in the herbal. She didn’t want to talk about it, though, so she forced herself to behave as normally as possible.

“Do you think it wise to feed an intuit chocolate right before bed?” Doshmisi asked Cinnamon’s husband. He laughed and replied, “He might be an intuit, but he’s also a little boy and he deserves the opportunity to be a child now and then.”

Doshmisi agreed with that. Intuits didn’t often get to play and have fun like other children, and they burned with an intense energy that burned their life right up at a young age. Sonjay and Denzel had made skateboards for some of the intuits, including Jack, the previous year. As it turned out, when intuits stood on skateboards they turned into hoverboards and intuits, especially Jack, were exceptional skaters (or hoverers, as it were).

“So where are you headed?” Cinnamon asked Doshmisi and Jasper.

“To the North Coast,” Jasper informed her. “Sissrath has something going on up there and we want to find out what exactly that is.”

“We heard that he sent Compost and an army to lay siege to Big House City,” Cinnamon’s husband said. “I’ve considered getting together a group to ride over there to see what we can do about it. But I couldn’t get a message through to the Crystal Communication Dome. Do you know what happened at the Dome?”

“We came through the Dome Circle on our way here,” Jasper replied. “Sissrath’s Special Forces shut the Dome down. He left them there to guard it and they have terrorized the people of the circle, killing some of them. They have a lethal weapon.”

“The weapon is called a gun. We have guns in the Farland,” Doshmisi chimed in. “The guns shoot a metal bullet that can kill or wound a person instantly. I don’t think you should ride to Big House City or the Dome until we figure out why Sissrath went to the North Coast and what he has concealed there.”

“Doshmisi thinks he created the siege to distract everyone from this project of his at the North Coast,” Jasper added. “We intend to ride up there first thing in the morning.”

“In that case, you could use a good night’s sleep,” Cinnamon suggested and Doshmisi suddenly realized that she was indeed exhausted from the long day of travel. She wrote out the recipe and directions for the paste for Ginger’s rash and then followed Cinnamon to a guest room where she collapsed into a cozy bed and fell into a deep sleep.