‘The what?’ An’ Lawrence pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Blue-green algae.’ She sat up straight. ‘The balance tipped. The oceans became cesspools, and the solar shields—designed to filter UV—soaked up far too much light. It enhanced the greenhouse effect instead of lessening it…’
‘Greenhouse?’
‘Global warming,’ Kreshkali said, before An’ Lawrence could ask more. ‘Effectively, a sudden rise in temperature and a melting of the polar icecaps. The seas rose, tropical reefs expired, and the weather altered more radically than the natural course of events would have seen. Jarrod predicted it for them. They didn’t listen.’ She put the kettle on.
‘Jarrod?’ An’ Lawrence and Zero asked at the same time.
Before the kettle boiled she’d explained as best she could what a quantum sentient was. An’ Lawrence
closed his eyes and rubbed his face. Zero sat very still, staring at the wall.
‘That’s why we have a perpetually brown sky, acid rain, virtually no pure water, and a planet losing hundreds of species to extinction daily. Oh, yes,’ she said, almost as an afterthought, ‘the tectonic plates shifted, submerging and rearranging the continents. Millions of people gone…’
No-one spoke for some time.
‘I don’t begin to understand half of this,’ Zero said. ‘But why don’t they take the solar shields down, if they know they’re the cause?’
‘They don’t want to lose the power.’
‘Power?’
‘As long as the shields remain in place, ASSIST has the only viable energy source left. They don’t want to give that up.’
‘Better to reign in hell…?’ An’ Lawrence said the words slowly.
‘You’ve been reading Milton? Good.’
‘Your writers are interesting.’
She looked past him to the bookshelves. ‘They were,’ she said. ‘Now, back to logistics. We have to bring the solar shields down and we can’t do that without Jarrod.’
‘And he can’t come back until the worm is destroyed?’ Zero asked. ‘Right?’
‘You’re catching on, lad.’ She returned to the table with three new mugs of tea, the scent of cinnamon, clove and orange peel wafting behind her.
‘Kali,’ An’ Lawrence asked, ‘how long would he have from when he crossed over to that worm device getting to him? Days? Hours? Minutes?’
‘Good question. A day or two, three at the most, provided there are no witch-trackers about.’
‘And what’s the square surface of the ASSIST fortress?’
She wrote a set of equations and pushed them across the table to An’ Lawrence. He did some calculating of his own and pushed the paper back.
‘That’s a lot of explosives, Sunshine,’ she said.
‘But can you get it?’
She looked at the sparkling bottles of water stacked high against the wall. ‘I can get us anything we want,’ she smiled. ‘Are we going to blow something up?’
‘Seems that would solve the problem clean and simple,’ An’ Lawrence said.
‘Except for the fact that the worm is everywhere, in all the remaining global wires.’
‘I gathered that,’ he sighed. ‘A foxy creature. We just have to attract it back to its hole, and I know just the bait.’
She took a quick breath, her eyes levelled on the Sword Master.
‘You can’t risk the JARROD.’
‘What about a calculated risk?’ Zero asked.
She held her cup under her nose, steam wafting over her face. Her brows knitted tightly and then finally lifted. ‘If we could get him into his old mainframe, for just a nanosecond, it might work. We’d have to have one lightning-fast exit strategy.’
‘The mainframe? Where is it?’ An’ Lawrence looked through the drawings.
‘In Central Processing—ground floor of ASSIST.’ She tapped a small diagram.
‘Guarded?’ An’ Lawrence asked.
‘You could say that.’
Rosette sat under a date palm eating bananas and guava fruit, the juicy pink centres making her tongue tingle. Drayco was nearby, worrying the remains of an eel. Her lids were fluttering shut, when she shivered. ‘Did you hear that?’
The falcon?
It whistled again, the sweet high pitch of a black falcon. She stood, looking for the bird.
Could it be Nell?
Rosette! I’m here.
‘Nell? Nell! Where are you?’ she called.
‘Nell’s here?’ Jarrod said, coming up from the lagoon, his finger through an eel’s gill. ‘That’s good news.’
Over the sound of the falls, the cry of the raptor called again. It was coming from the cliffs above. Rosette and Jarrod shielded their eyes, watching the bird swoop down. It back-winged in front of them and morphed into Nell.
‘Rosette!’ she exclaimed, short of breath, ‘I
knew
you were alive, but by all that’s sacred it’s good to see you.’ She looked around the valley and sighed. ‘Jarrod, this is my favourite one. It’s beautiful here!’
‘What do you mean “your favourite one”?’ Rosette crossed her arms. ‘Your favourite one of what?’
Jarrod placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘Rosette, it’s okay.’ He took a breath. ‘Nell? Are we all right?’
‘For now. Give us a moment, will you, Jarrod?’ She held out her hand to Rosette. ‘Come with me. I need to show you something.’
‘Where are we, Nell? This can’t be any of the Rahana Island chain. How could we get this far out?’
‘Save your questions, daughter. I’ve got something for your visual consciousness. Give your mind a rest.’
‘Pardon?’
Nell put her arm around Rosette’s waist and led her to the edge of the pool, where they stood together. ‘Lean over with me. Have a look.’
‘There’s something in there, right?’ Rosette whispered. ‘I knew it! I felt it before; it was just like in Los Loma. Something dangerous.’
‘There was never anything dangerous for you in Los Loma.’
‘You weren’t there, Nell. It was plenty dangerous…’
‘Are you certain?’
Rosette frowned. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Just look. Look with me.’
Rosette scanned the clear surface of the water, containing her emotions for a few seconds before bursting out. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at, Nell? I can’t see a thing. Are we fishing for eels?’
The eels are delicious, Maudi.
Not helping, Dray.
‘Give it a moment,’ Nell replied. ‘Let the ripples settle.’
The water darkened beneath them as a cloud moved across the sun. Rosette squinted, peering at her reflection. She thought she looked a bit tousled, but not too bad considering the shipwreck, near-drowning and marathon swim. She gingerly touched her sun-cracked lips and brushed the damp hair out of her eyes.
‘Rosette,’ Nell whispered, bringing her daughter’s attention over to her side of the image.
Rosette stiffened and bent closer, springing back from the edge. It wasn’t her mother standing next to her, arm around her waist, leaning over the water. The person that looked back at Rosette from the limpid pool had short, pale, spiky hair and a wicked smile.
‘I know you!’ Rosette pulled further away, reaching for the sword that wasn’t there. She started to weave a banishing spell.
Maudi? What are you doing?
It’s Kreshkali, my captor from Los Loma. Why didn’t you warn me?
‘Calm yourself, Rosette,’ she heard Nell’s voice speaking as the words flowed out of the other woman’s mouth. ‘And put your hands down. This
doesn’t call for an expulsion. Do you want to shake the island apart?’
‘Jarrod?’ Rosette shouted, ignoring the woman, ‘Jarrod!’ Her voice rose above the sound of her pounding heart. ‘It’s…’
‘Kreshkali, after all,’ he said. Jarrod smiled at Kreshkali, the witch standing in the place where Nell had been seconds before. ‘You keep the surprises coming, don’t you?’
Rosette backed away, reaching for Drayco.
What’s wrong, Maudi? Why are you afraid of Nell? It’s just one of her glamours.
‘It’s not! Can’t you see?’ She grabbed her familiar’s scruff and gave it a shake, pointing his nose at the woman. ‘Are you all enchanted? It’s Kreshkali, queen of the underworld!’
She backed into Jarrod. His hand came up to steady her.
‘Why are you just standing there?’ Rosette asked. ‘Can’t you see the witch?’
Kreshkali stepped towards her, palms open. ‘No-one’s enchanted, daughter.’
‘I’m not your daughter! What have you done with Nell?’
‘Rosette, listen. I
am
Kreshkali. I’m
also
Nellion Paree—daughter of the daughters of Docturi Janicia.’
‘You can’t be!’
Kreshkali smiled. ‘I am.’
‘Clever,’ Jarrod murmured. ‘I didn’t detect it.’
‘Nor did any of the trackers,’ Kreshkali said.
Rosette searched their faces. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ve been living in two worlds for some time now, Rosette.’
‘Living in
two worlds?
What two worlds? Where’s Nell?’
‘Right here, sweetheart. I’m Nell. I’m Kreshkali. I’m your mother. I’ve been in two places at once, doing the work of two witches. I had to. There was no other way to keep you hidden from the trackers, watch over Passillo and continue the work on Earth.’
‘Earth?’ Rosette put both hands over her mouth. ‘My dream,’ she whispered. ‘I just remembered my dream. I had it in the cave that night. There was a portal. Another world,’ she gasped. ‘How is this possible?’
Kreshkali pressed her lips together and raised an eyebrow.
‘I know:
nothing’s impossible.
’ Rosette took a deep breath. ‘Just tell me, if you’re Nell, why was Kreshkali—why were you—hunting me?’
‘I was never hunting you, Rosette, but guiding! Guiding and protecting. The real threat is from witch-trackers. They’re who we’ve been running from.’
Rosette crossed her arms. ‘A little communication would have gone down a lot better!’ She glared at Kreshkali. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on? You’re as bad as Nell…ugh.’
‘For that, I apologise. For not raising you myself and not passing on the knowledge of your inheritance sooner, I apologise also. It was too risky. The witch-trackers were hounding us. After Jaynan…after the Matosh murders I had to keep everyone in the dark.’ She glanced at Jarrod. ‘They nearly got us all that time.’
‘That time?’ Rosette said.
Jarrod rubbed his neck. ‘I think I’d best get the horses. You two have some catching up to do.’ He turned to the temple cat. ‘Do you know where they are?’
Drayco rubbed his cheek on Rosette’s thigh before following Jarrod downstream.
You’ve got witches’ business, Maudi. I’ll be back soon.
Rosette watched her familiar walk away. If he said Kreshkali and Nell were one and the same, then they must be. He wasn’t alarmed. She took that as a good sign.
Kreshkali sat in the shade, patting the grass beside her. Rosette sat an arm’s length away.
‘You’re the first one of us to be born in another world.’ Rosette opened her mouth to speak, but Kreshkali waved her quiet. ‘Let me finish the explanation before you jump in.’
Rosette snapped her mouth shut.
‘You were conceived here, on Gaela, not Earth, but you’re of both worlds—you had to be. Only an Earth child from the line of Janis Richter can carry JARROD’s quantum CPU in her DNA, and Gaela was the only place I could hide you from ASSIST’s witch-trackers. They were stamping us out, one by one. They killed my mother and I swore they would never find you. I had to keep you in this world, and still be in both at the same time to carry on with the research.’ She brushed the sand from her hands and ran them through her hair. ‘That’s basically it. Now, do you have any questions?’
Rosette’s eyes were wide. ‘Huh?’
‘Questions, Rosette. Can I make it any clearer? We’ve got to get moving. Time’s short and everything’s at stake.’
Rosette straightened her spine. A warm tingling sensation started to course through her body. The feeling she’d had before—as if she was about to faint—was replaced with a hot flash of energy.
‘One question comes to mind.’ She stood up as she spoke. ‘What in the demon pit of souls did you just say?’
‘You’ve got very special DNA, Rosette. You have…’
‘Losing me again, Kreshkali,’ she interrupted. ‘What the spit does DNA stand for?’
‘Deoxyribonucleic acid.’
‘Oh, that just helped me a lot…’
‘You have special proteins in your blood. Think of it as a spell—
the spell
—only, on Earth, your other world, it’s called
technology.
It’s linked implicitly to Jarrod.’
‘Jarrod? What’s Jarrod got to do with it?’ Rosette’s face was flushed, her pulse pounding.
‘Rosette, I’ve wanted to tell you.’ Jarrod came striding towards her leading Wren. Drayco followed behind, lead rope in his mouth, the mountain horse in tow.
‘Wanted to tell me what?’
‘I’m not exactly the boy next door.’
‘You aren’t?’ She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. ‘I feel like I’m going mad. What are you people trying to say to me?’
‘Not mad, Rosette. Just uninformed,’ Jarrod said.
‘Then inform me. If you aren’t the boy next door, who then?’
‘He’s not anything you’ve got a word for, Rosette.’
She closed her eyes.
Drayco? You’ve been in his mind. What is he?
I told you, Maudi. He’s like no other.
The temple cat dropped the lead rope at Rosette’s feet. She picked it up, stroking the mare’s neck.
‘This is a portal,’ Kreshkali pointed her arm towards the waterfall. ‘A door to other places, and you’re right, it is just like the one under Los Loma. It can take us straight to Corsanon, where the split-apart Entity wanders. With any luck, the lost guardian will follow us through and we can reunite the thing. Are you ready?’
‘Am I ready? Are you kidding? I feel like I’m falling apart.’
‘Get a grip, dear. The sooner the better. Trackers are onto us. That storm was no accident.’
‘It wasn’t?’ Rosette looked at Kreshkali, understanding little of what she had said. Then her eyes found Jarrod. The proximity to him sent more waves of adrenaline coursing through her body, a strange mixture of fear and excitement. She thought she might explode. ‘You’re not human?’ she whispered.
‘My body is, and your bloodline and I are linked ceaselessly through time and space—through the portals and the corridors to the many-worlds.’