Black Water

SECOND EARTH

The light from the flumeblasted into the root cellar of the abandoned Sherwood house, along with the jumble of musical notes. A second later Mark and Courtney came running out of the tunnel, safe. They turned around quickly to examine the flume.

“It’s still in one piece!” Mark announced.

The light and music quickly receded, leaving the tunnel dark and quiet. Courtney felt the stone at the mouth of the tunnel.

“Solid,” she proclaimed. “Mark, what happened?”

“I–Idon’t know! It was like an earthquake.”

“What should we do?” Courtney said, frantic. “Should we go back?”

“No!” Mark yelled. “We b-barely got out of there. Why would we go back?”

“But what about Bobby and the others?”

Mark didn’t have an answer. “Let’s just… relax. And think. We can’t go back. All we can do is wait. That’s what Bobby said, right?”

“But Bobby didn’t know the flume was going to collapse!”

“I know, I know! But, what can we do?”

Courtney deflated. “Nothing. This is going to be torture.”

The two changed out of the Cloral swimskins they had been wearing, back into the Second Earth clothes they brought to the flume so long ago. Courtney didn’t even make fun of Mark for wearing the bright yellow sweatshirt with the “Cool Dude” logo. They left the basement not even worrying if they’d run into a quig-dog. When they stepped outside the abandoned mansion, they discovered that it was nighttime in Stony Brook. They were able to scale the wall surrounding the mansion and get back to the quiet, suburban street without being seen. As soon as they hit the ground, their thoughts turned from what had happened on Eelong, to what was about to happen on Second Earth. By their estimation they had left for Cloral over a month before. Neither could begin to imagine how frantic their families were.

“Now what?” Courtney asked, as they walked. “You realize we’re about to catch hell.”

“I know,” Mark said. “I’ve got a plan. We’ve got to be together on this or it’ll never work.”

“I’m listening.”

“Let’s tell everybody we ran away together, you know, to go on an adventure.”

“Well, we did.”

“I’m not saying we tell the truth! Give me a break. I’m saying we tell everybody we got sick of having to be the good kids all the time and school was too intense and we were being pressured by peers into doing stuff we didn’t want to do and, I don’t know, all those things they say on TV talk shows make kids go crazy. We’ll say we needed a break before we did something really stupid, so we ran away to go to, I don’t know, to California. To surf!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Courtney said. “Why? Kids run away all the time.”

“I know, but nobody will believe you and I did it together.” Mark stopped walking and gave Courtney a sour look. “I’m kidding,” she said. “It’s a good idea, but it’ll get us in huge trouble.”

“Maybe. Or maybe our parents will feel sorry for us because we’re troubled youths.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Whatever. We’re in huge trouble no matter what we do. At least this way we might have a chance of sliding by without having to talk about flumes and territories and Travelers-“

“And get locked up,” Courtney said, finishing the thought.

“Exactly.”

“It’s a plan.”

They decided to go to Courtney’s house first, since it was closer and Courtney was already having big arguments with her parents. They figured her parents would buy it quicker than Mark’s, since Mark had never done anything remotely spontaneous in his life. At least as far as his parents knew. On the way to her house, they fabricated an incredible story of how they put enough money together to take the bus to California, then spent a few weeks on a beach just north of Mexico trying to learn how to surf and pretend like they weren’t who they were. They worked in every detail they could think of-the towns they went through, the food they ate, the people they met. Everything. It didn’t take long for them to feel confident enough with the bare bones of a story to run it by Courtney’s parents. Finally they made the long walk up the path to Courtney’s house.

“Let’s ring the bell,” Courtney said. “I don’t want to barge in and give them a heart attack.”

“Good luck,” Mark whispered.

She rang the bell. A few seconds later Courtney’s door opened. Mr. Chetwynde stood there, staring at them, as if he couldn’t believe he was actually seeing them. Mark and Courtney weren’t sure how to begin, so they didn’t say anything. They had already figured that it was better to react than to offer any info. They stood that way for a good thirty seconds, when Courtney’s father finally spoke.

“What happened?” was all he asked.

“It’s a long story, Dad,” Courtney said, trying to sound tired and remorseful.

“Very long,” Mark added.

“Was the library closed?” Mr. Chetywnde asked.

Mark and Courtney didn’t know how to answer that one. They had figured out answers for most every question that could have been thrown at them, but not that one.

“Excuse me?” Courtney asked tentatively.

“The library,” Mr. Chetwynde said. “Weren’t you guys going to the library?”

“You mean, like a month ago?” Courtney asked.

“I mean a half hour ago when you left the house,” Mr. Chetwynde said; confused.

Mark asked, “Courtney left here half an hour ago? Was I with her?”

Mr. Chetwynde frowned at Mark. “Unless you’ve got an identical twin. Am I missing something?”

Courtney said, “Well, yeah! We’ve been-“

“No!” Mark jumped in. “You’re not missing anything. The library was open, but we were starved so we went to McDonald’s first and ended up getting our work done there. It didn’t take as long as we thought.”

“Oh,” Mr. Chetwynde said, satisfied. “Not exactly a long story. I’m sorry to hear it though.”

“Why?” Courtney asked, still trying to understand what was happening.

“It’s not good to eat junk food for dinner. It’s not good for your health.”

Mark and Courtney gave each other a sideways look. “I can think of a lot of things bad for your health,” Courtney said. “Burgers aren’t high on the list.”

“Don’t be a wise guy. You know what I mean,” Mr. Chetwynde said with a half smile.

Mark tugged on the back of Courtney’s shirt and said, “Uh, I left something on my bike I meant to give you.”

He tried to pull her away from the door, but Courtney stood firm. “Bike? You don’t have a-“

“Yeah!” Mark interrupted. “The bike I left out front so we could walk together.”

Courtney was reeling. Nothing was making sense to her.

“C’mon, Courtney,” Mark said vehemently through clenched teeth. He turned quickly and hurried away from the house.

“Be right back, Dad,” Courtney said, and jogged after Mark. When she caught up, Mark kept walking. “What’s going on?” Courtney said under her breath.

Mark’s answer was to show Courtney his hand. The center stone of his ring was glowing.

“Oh man,” Courtney gasped.

Mark clapped his hand over the ring to hide the pyrotechnics. When they got to the street and out of Mr. Chetwynde’s sight, Mark ran next door and ducked behind a huge bush in front of the neighbor’s yard. By the time he got the ring off, it was already growing. Mark placed it on the ground and stood next to Courtney. The two watched it grow to Frisbee-size, opening up the conduit between territories.

“This is too much. I’m going mental,” Courtney gasped.

The bright light shot out of the hole inside the ring, along with the sweet musical notes. With a final brilliant flash, the event ended and the ring returned to normal. Lying on the ground next to it was a rolled-up piece of parchment paper. Mark moved to pick it up, but Courtney stopped him.

“Wait,” she said. “One thing at a time. Did my father snap or what? That was not what I expected from a guy whose daughter was missing for a month.”

“Because I don’t think we were gone for a month,” Mark answered.

Courtney gave Mark a blank look. “No way. That wasn’t someWizard of Ozdream we had. I’ve got the black-and-blue marks to prove it.”

Mark laughed. “No, we spent a month on Eelong, but I think we were brought back here only a few minutes after we left.”

Courtney shook her head, confused. “You mean, like time stood still while we were gone?”

“No. I think we went to a territory that existed in another time. When the flume brought us back here, it was to the same time we left.”

“So…we’re not in trouble?”

“Not with our parents, anyway.”

The implication was there. Parents were the last thing Mark and Courtney had to worry about. They both looked down at the rolled-up parchment paper.

“That was fast,” Courtney said.

“For us. Who knows if Bobby wrote it in the past, or the future.”

“Don’t go there,” Courtney scolded. “My brain already hurts.” Mark picked up the parchment. It was crunchy brown paper, wrapped and tied with leather twine. Mark’s hands were shaking as he untied the knot.

“What happened to the flume, Mark?”

“Maybe this will tell us,” he said, unrolling the pages. He took a deep breath and glanced at the first page.

“From Bobby?” Courtney asked.

“Uh-huh,” Mark answered.

“Where is he?”