Unknotted

Detectors and Showers

Georgie

The sun beamed around the edge of Cenzia, giving some warmth to the morning of Tredema. I stepped out of the taxi. My legs felt as steady as a newborn giraffe’s. Hands also shaking, I handed the driver money and checked the sky.

“Are you sure you want me to leave you here?” He leaned out the window. His neon purple eyes marked him as an enchanter, but his short height and fine hair that stuck out straight around his backward ballcap suggested he had gremlin in him too.

He looked up and down the barren street. Since the Cenzia hemisphere blocked out the sun for a large part of the day, vegetation didn’t grow as high or as wild in Tredema. An expanse of brush and short trees lined the pothole-riddled road. The only sound besides the pounding of my pulse in my ears and the rumble of the idling cab was the hiss of insects.

The driver’s eyes caught on my throat where the dominant had bitten me. “I could take you to a hospital or something. It doesn’t seem safe to leave you here.”

Dried blood flaked off my skin as I rubbed the freshly healed wound. I forced a smile to my face and bent to look through his window. “This is the only place I feel safe.”

He chuckled. “If you say so, lady. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“You, too.”

Grin widening, he held up my tip. “I’ve already found it.”

I waved until he vanished around the bend in the road, only to hear the rumble of a car rounding the bend and approaching. Had that blasted dominant made it through the portal after me? Heart lodging in my throat, I ran down the embankment to the shrubs and kept going. The rush of the tide was coming up behind me. What would the Core try to do to me this time?

Spotting two moss covered rocks, hardly bigger than a toddler’s bike tire, standing sentinel on a game trail, I took a hard right. Thorny shrubs caught on my already torn clothes. I plowed through them, letting the momentum of the downward slope carry me faster. Having walked this path hundreds of times, I let instinct drive me through scraggly vegetation.

Something cracked behind me. I paused, uneasiness clawing up my spine. Another crack and another. A large shadow moved through the brush. Whiskers had found me. The crash of his pursuit drew closer. All thoughts but escape fled.

Fear iced through me with a fierceness wholly unfamiliar. I didn’t feel fear really. Not anymore, not since leaving home. Yet, the emotion was undeniable and only instinct to run kept me from crippling beneath it.

Ahead grew the soft lapping of waves on a secluded harbor. My feet hit the sand. Each step felt as though the ground was purposely slowing me so Whiskers could catch up. Muscles straining, I pushed through the drag of the soft earth into the salty water. I scanned the water reflecting the morning’s light, searching for the hidden trail beneath the surface.

The crack of more branches rose behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, saw the bushes shaking. He was almost here.

I leapt into the water. My foot hit a rock submerged an inch beneath the surface. I fixed my eyes on the island half a mile off the coast and sprinted. For any who didn’t know about the hidden rock path, it would appear I ran like a Ripple on the surface of the water. It sprayed around me, quickly soaking my jeans and flicking coldness up my back. Through the noise of my sprint, I couldn’t be sure if Whiskers was behind, and I remained too focused on staying on the path to check. One slip and I would fall. Then, he surely would catch me.

The island ahead was only about five hundred acres. It looked like a giant barren rock, but I knew better. I hit the shore and ran toward the rocky cliffs only to plummet through the hologram. The cliff changed into a giant glass biodome that rose sixty feet high. Behind the glass, fogged with condensation, grew a jungle as rich with life as any on Cenzia.

Ignoring the stitch in my side and the burn of my lungs, I pounded on the biodome’s door and jammed my thumb against the intercom button beside it. “Helt!” I glanced over my shoulder, certain Whiskers would be bursting through the illusion any moment. “Helt, open the doors!”

“Hello?” a deep, grandfatherly voice crackled over the intercom’s speakers.

I gripped the intercom. “Helt?” My voice was trembling.

“Georgie? I wasn’t expecting—”

“Helt, let me in! Please. Now, Helt!”

A loud buzz sounded before the first of the biodome’s doors opened. I burst inside and slammed my palm against a button inside. The second set of doors slid open automatically once the first closed. I only felt the smallest measure of relief being behind the protection of the glass though. The magic was minutes away, and Whiskers had already proven that, with magic, reinforced glass was hardly a deterrent.

I ignored the twenty-foot-tall treelike creature with hair of waxy green leaves who waved a greeting. I would apologize to the Twiggin for my rudeness later, if Whiskers didn’t kill me first. I raced up the ramp leading to the porch of a large cabin sitting in the branches and hanging roots of four large banyan trees. Light bled through the giant windows and spilled out over the damp forest.

The interior lights from the opened door silhouetted a man with a dusty white beard and hair that curled around his ears and brushed his collar. He was a few inches taller than me with a lean figure that was whittered slightly with age. I tugged him into the house and slammed the door, throwing the bolt.

“Core between, my dear, what is—”

I threw myself into Helt’s embrace, surprised to find breathing difficult around my sobs. His hands were warm, his arms protective as they held me. He smelled of cocoa butter and cinnamon and safety.

“Georgie?” His hands cupped my cheeks. His startling blue eyes shone with the metallic effect all gravitas had. “What happened, my dear?”

I sucked in a shuttering breath. “Your security cameras, have you seen anyone on them?”

Pulling from his arms, I marched across the living room furnished with comfy chairs and sofas forming a half circle around a fireplace and pushed open a door to the large side room. Two rows of red recliners made the room look like a home theater. A kitchenette ran along the back wall. Instead of one large screen, there were dozens of them, each displaying different angles in and around the biodome. Pacing in front of them, I scanned each for signs of the dominant’s arrival.

As I watched, waited, more unwelcomed tears fell down my cheeks. Why wouldn’t they stop?

“Is it the poachers?” Helt asked, resting a hand on my back. Worry added more wrinkles to his face. I had never been the emotional type. It took a lot to shake me up and even then, I usually took distress in stride. Poachers, explosives, death-defying stunts—I could handle, but the feeling of the magic tangling me in a knot… My very bones were quivering in anticipation of what would happen with the next tide.

I shook my head. “Not poachers. Or… Maybe a poacher? I don’t know.” Whiskers could very well have been the one Harhort and Wanddy had been waiting on.

On the screen showing the biodome’s doors, a shadow stretched across the ground. My heart kicked into a faster tempo.

Whiskers was here.

“Georgie…” Helt whispered, as if afraid the approaching shadow might hear. “Who is that?”

(Chapter continues in part 2)