K. A. Applegate - Everworld 03, page 10
“I think not, good wizard,” Gawain said. “I’ll stay a while.”
I grabbed Jalil’s hand, guided it to Galahad. Pleaded, “Help me.”
We grabbed the knight under his arms. Christopher grabbed one of his feet. We began running, as fast as we could while dragging a man.
The tent burst into flames.
Running, and David joined us, and running, while Galahad protested feebly, and my ears were filled by Loki’s screams and the dragon’s explosive fire and tornado wind.
A door. I burst through first, walking backward. Galahad scraping behind. Into the clear, out of the heat, and down winding steps, down to where the dark woods pressed close. Woods that might yet be filled with trolls.
David dropped Galahad’s leg and stepped out in front, sword held ready.
Troll.
David raised his sword, Galahad’s sword. “You know, I’ve had it with you things,” he said. He ran straight for the troll.
The troll fell back, unwilling to fight. Why?
I heard Loki’s high-pitched cries. Screams at a supernatural volume. Screams of pain and rage but no fear.
Of course. The troll heard it, too. The troll saw the wild flames whooshing up above the tower walls. His lord and master was in some kind of deep trouble.
We kept going, running, staggering more like it.
“Stop. Stop. I have to rest,” I said.
We dropped Galahad, not gently.
“Now what?” Christopher asked. “Is Loki done for?”
“No,” Galahad gasped. “Loki can be hurt, weakened, but not killed by mortal man or beast.”
“He was looking pretty well-done back at the barbecue,”
Christopher said.
“Lose yourselves in the forest. Escape.”
“We’re saving your life, Galahad,” David said. “Just play along.”
“No. Find the witch. Keep her from Loki. Keep her from Ka Anor.
You have done all you can do, and more.”
I tried to see the wound in his belly, but it was too dark. I felt for it. Galahad took my hand and pushed it away.
“I have been wounded many times, my lady. I will survive.”
“We’re not leaving you here in the middle of nowhere. Period.”
“You cannot travel with me. This day is a terrible defeat. Merlin, if he lives, will be weakened for weeks or months. You must —”
His words trailed off, lost in the gathering wind that dropped down on us from the sky.
The dragon stooped like a bird of prey, talons out and down, ready to seize Galahad.
“Hey, leave him alone!” I yelled up at the monster. “He’s hurt.”
The dragon landed lightly, almost delicately beside the trail.
The fire dribbled from its mouth, illuminating my friends and Galahad in orange-black, Halloween colors.
“Hurt, is he?” the dragon wondered in its basso profundo voice.
“Hurt but not yet dead.”
“No, not dead,” I said.
The dragon rumbled, thoughtful, amused. His snake’s face twisted in a grimace that might have been a smile. Yellow cat’s eyes were greedy, triumphant. “Galahad, at my mercy at last. Too badly wounded to raise an arm against me.”
“Let him go,” I pleaded. “You’re on the same side. Merlin and Galahad are friends.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Jalil said. “The same should be true of friends. The friend of my friend is my friend.”
The dragon laughed, greatly amused. “Friend? Merlin is no friend of mine. What nonsense have you told these Old World fools, Galahad?”
“Give me my sword,” Galahad whispered tersely to David.
Then, in as loud a voice as he could manage, a hoarse shout, “The dragon fights for gold, like all his kind.”
“Yes, for gold. Why else? For honor? For chivalry? I will be paid for this night’s work. A king’s ransom in treasure, gold and silver and diamonds and rubies. I will be well paid for giving that upstart god Loki a lesson in humility, but Loki is no enemy of mine.”
The dragon half walked, half writhed to Galahad. The fire dripped from his lips within inches of Galahad’s upturned face.
“Farewell, Galahad, dragon-killer.”
“My sword!” Galahad cried, desperate. “My sword! Let me die with my sword in my hand.”
David darted in and placed the sword in Galahad’s weak hand. Galahad struggled to his feet, I rushed to help him.
“You can’t do this, he’s weak, he’s injured,” I said. “He can’t even fight back, it’s cowardly. If you want to fight him, wait till —”
Galahad put his hand over my mouth. “Hush, my lady. My story is at an end. At long last, my story is over. Yours is not.”
He pushed me back, hard, groaning with the pain of the effort, he shoved me back. I fell, sprawled.
The dragon breathed.
Chapter
XXIII
We tried to give him a decent burial. There wasn’t much time with us fearing the trolls and Loki. But we couldn’t leave him there by the side of the trail.
He was easy to move. He weighed very little after the flames burned themselves out.
We tried digging but had no tools except for Galahad’s sword.
So we found whatever rocks we could and piled them till he was mostly covered. He’d lived centuries. And now he was dead by the side of a path. A pile of rocks.
“We should bury the man with his sword,” Christopher said.
“Yeah. We should,” David agreed. “But it’s the only weapon we have.”
“He needs a cross,” I said.
“We’ve taken up all the time we can,” David said.
“He’s getting a cross,” I said.
Jalil used Excalibur to cut notches in some sticks. So Galahad got a cross.
When that was done the others all looked expectantly at me.
We were all tired. All jumpy. All sick with memories.
“I don’t know the words,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Sing him a song, then,” Christopher said.
“I don’t know any,” I said. “I mean, what do you sing at a funeral?
The masses I know, all choral, I mean.” I made a sound of frustration. David was anxious to get going, and he was right.
Then it occurred to me. Not a perfect song. Not something in Latin, the way it ought to be. But maybe it would do. It was a song from Rent
“Okay,” I said, just as David and Jalil were turning away. I took a couple of deep breaths. My voice was ragged. I sounded pretty bad, definitely not up for a solo. But it was something. And he deserved something.
So I sang “Without You.”
“That’s it,” I said. I was crying. “Not exactly right, is it? We barely knew him. And we won’t die because he’s dead. We barely knew him. So why … is it just that he was nice and good-looking and brave? Why does it hurt me, him being gone?”
“He was a legend,” David said. “We didn’t know him, but we knew what he represented. He was good standing up against evil.
He was the strong man defending the weak. He was brave when the odds were against him. What else is a man supposed to be?
What else is he supposed to do?”
“‘We shall not see his like again.’ Shakespeare, I think,” Jalil said.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t remember which play.”
David knelt down beside the grave. He held the sword out over the stones. “I’ll try to be worthy of your sword.”
I shook my head wonderingly. Every time I thought I understood David he surprised me. But I guess that’s true of people generally.
You never know them, not all the way.
“Let’s get moving,” David said.
And somehow, despite everything, despite all that had happened with Senna, we followed him.
We walked through the night. I was too tired to feel tired. My legs moved. That’s all I knew, my legs were stil moving.
We found a tiny creek and drank all we could hold, then we followed the creek. No idea where we were going, of course, no idea except to put Loki and his trolls and Merlin and Galahad all behind us.
We walked till I tripped on a root and just couldn’t get up again. I didn’t want to be the weak one, the official girl. But I was done walking.
“Let’s stop here,” David said, making the best of it.
Jalil and Christopher collapsed on the ground beside me. It was cold and damp and I was wearing a dress and little else. I lay back, staring up at the trees, realizing that I could see the outlines of the branches, which meant dawn was coming.
I lay there and felt the wetness seep through the thin fabric, and I just didn’t care. I wanted sleep. I wanted sleep. I slung my backpack under my head to make a thin pillow.
“Anyone wakes me up, I’ll … I’ll something,” I warned.
“See you on the other side,” Christopher said.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Not right away. I was cold, and then I started shivering. A light rain began to fall, barely more than dew.
I sat up on my backpack and wept with my face in my hands.
Why was this happening? Why was my life this way? Why couldn’t it just have gone on being the way it was?
The rain stopped. The sun came up above the trees. I resigned myself to never sleeping again. And then I was home.
Chapter
XXIV
It was Sunday afternoon. The same Sunday that had seen me yelling in church. There was no making sense of the synchronization of time between the real world and Everworld. It seemed to slip forward, back, faster, slower.
I crossed over and found I was at the bookstore downtown, the Barnes and Noble. I was upstairs at a table near the mythology section.
I had a book open in front of me, others piled up. I was reading about Galahad. Had been reading about him for the last hour.
The realworld me received the updated news from the Everworld me. Galahad dead. Merlin, no one knew. Loki? Still presumably looking for Senna, who had managed to slip out of camp while everyone was busy fighting to keep her from Loki.
I was embarrassed by the emotion I’d felt over the death of Galahad. Glad to still be alive. Even glad that Senna was still alive.
My memories merged, becoming the mind of a single person again. Memories of reading the story of Galahad, and memories of seeing its final chapter.
What was I doing reading about him? Everworld shouldn’t matter to me, the real me. Let that other April deal with that. I wasn’t going to let it seep into my life, eat away at my life.
And yet, I’d been reading about Galahad.
“I told them we’d find you here,” Jalil said. He and David and Christopher all sat down. David grabbed a chair from another table.
They looked strange. They were dressed like normal people.
So was I, for that matter. We were warm and clothed and dry and there was no cut under Jalil’s eye. Clean hair and faces, brushed teeth. They looked strange.
“We all here?” Christopher asked.
“I’ve been here. This is me,” I said a little tersely. Then I softened.
“But yeah, I have had an update.”
Jalil tapped the book. “What did that tell you?”
I shrugged. “I know why he and Gawain had the same memories of the Holy Grail. The story originally had Gawain as the quester. But Gawain was seen as a more pagan figure, so it was rewritten with Galahad as the star.”
“And there never was a real Galahad?” Christopher asked.
“I don’t know. No one does. Maybe they were all real, or partly real. Or maybe real doesn’t mean what we think it does, I so totally don’t know. I don’t know much of anything anymore.”
I closed the book.
“So now what?” Christopher asked.
No one answered.
“Now what?” he pressed. “Come on, we need to think about what we’re doing. We can’t just keep walking around over there.
We can’t just keep stumbling into one mess after another. Sooner or later our luck runs out. We need a plan.”
“You have a suggestion?” Jalil asked.
“I suggest we find Senna and make her send us back here.
Permanently. Simple. David, you can stay over there. I know you love all that. Me, personally, I’m for getting out. Hey, it’s been fun hanging with the Vikings and almost getting my heart cut out by the Aztecs and playing hide-and-seek with Loki, but vacation is over.”
“We don’t know where she is,” Jalil pointed out. “Senna. We don’t know where she is.”
“Okay, so we find her,” Christopher said. “That’s my point. We need a plan, a goal. She’s the goal. She’s the only way this all stops. We get her, keep her from Loki, and bye-bye, Everworld. It’s the only way, man.”
“What about the people there? The people in Everworld?”
They all looked at me in surprise. I’d surprised myself.
“Say what?” Jalil snapped.
“Look, it’s stupid, I guess. I mean, I guess it’s stupid. But here’s the thing: Galahad was a good person. So is Gawain. And maybe Merlin, too. I mean, Everworld isn’t all just psycho gods and cannibals and trolls and —”
I fell silent as a girl I knew slightly walked past.
“I mean, those are real people. At least over there they are. And some of them are good people.”
“So what?” Jalil asked.
“So maybe that changes things,” I said.
“Changes nothing,” Christopher said in a warning tone. “Listen: It changes nothing.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do we do after we force Senna to let us out?”
“We get some beer and party, and we get on with our lives,”
Christopher said.
“And Senna’s still there? Still in Everworld? Still a gateway for Loki or Huitzilopoctli?”
“Oh, no. No, no.” Christopher was shaking his finger at me, back and forth. “No, no, no.”
David, on the other hand, was grinning. “You’re right. We get through the gate and then leave it open? That means we don’t escape Everworld, Everworld follows us here. We have Huitzilopoctli stomping around Old Orchard Mall ripping hearts out. Dragons on the loose. Loki.”
I nodded, hating what I was thinking. But unable to avoid thinking it. “There are some good people over there. Maybe Merlin’s right. The good people can get together, get the bad guys to at least go along, stop Ka Anor, which means the creeps like Loki aren’t looking to escape.”
Jalil was giving me serious fish-eye. “So all we’d have to do is solve all the problems of Everworld, take out Ka Anor — who is so bad he scares Loki half to death — and then we can come home, pat ourselves on the back, and no problem?”
David nodded. “Yeah. That’s exactly right.”
Christopher leaned forward across the table, his voice low and intense. “We have one sword, a backpack with a few pathetic pieces of junk, we’re lost, we know nothing, not even how long a day is, or what the land is like, or … are you crazy? Are you nuts?”
“Christopher, we’re there anyway, okay? I don’t like it, I wish it hadn’t happened, but we’re there. Senna is our way home, but our way home is everyone else’s gateway to the destruction of our world. There is no escape. Not really. So we have to change the world. We have to change Everworld.”
Christopher said something rude. David laughed happily and slapped the table. Jalil looked down at the book, then at me.
“That blood transfusion. Guess it went both ways, huh?”
We split up after that. No one wanted to talk. No one was happy with me, except for David, and his happiness just depressed me.
We went our separate ways. Me to my home to hook up with my parents. We did a barbecue in the backyard and had some neighbors over. I ate grilled vegetables.
I talked on the phone to Mario. We made a date for the next weekend.
I did some homework. Then I rehearsed some of the numbers from Rent in front of my mirror. And when I tried to sing “Without You” I cried.
I stayed up late watching TV. And when I went to bed at last I knew that I would wake up right there, warm and rested in my room. And that I would also wake up wet and miserable and scared in a place that could not possibly exist.
But did.
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Enter The Enchanted, K. A. Applegate - Everworld 03
