The Wicked Passage (A Blake Wyatt Adventure) (6 page)

CHAPTER 5

PASSAGES

Where the heck am I? Blake turned around. The door to the classroom was gone--everything was gone except for miles and miles of waist-high, waving bluish-purple grass surrounding him.

“Second lesson, Mr. Wyatt,” the chronicle said, still tucked under his arm. “Courage is simply fear without a place to go. Real powers lie within.”

“Holy cripe, what is this?”

“More like where
is this
. You’re in Saphir Pré, the sapphire fields of the Parabulls.”

“What happened to Hothead?” he asked, not really caring about the answer. He ran his hand over the soft, blue grass. It changed color under his fingers.

“Release my pages.”

Blake positioned the book in front of him and stepped back. The cover slowly opened as the chronicle drifted closer to him. The word Determination glimmered crimson at the top of the page.

Blake read the strange lyric. Something familiar and at the same time foreign resonated through his brain. A mysterious new world hidden inside him was revealing itself.

Determination

Much will be said of the man from Genoa

Sailing west with three little ships from Spain.

The words will be loud, and the results will be clear,

The words Prosperity, Progress, and Pain.

But another stands aboard this ship.

One who opens all
eyes.

Someone who sees, and knows, and understands,

And hears the other sailors’ cries.

Wyatt is the name,

Plucked from another time and place.

By winds and birds and compass points,

Delivering the Admiral from disgrace.

For when Columbus takes to the sea,

And unfurls Maria’s sails wide,

A secret evil walks her decks,

And destiny almost dies.

The journey is long for an Old World to take,

But the wings know the migration.

The Ancient Mariner with a dream to catch

Succeeds by Determination.

Blake Wyatt stared at the glowing page. He felt a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck. “Why is my name
--
”

The chronicle snapped its cover shut but remained hovering, interrupting the boy’s question.
“Your assignment, Blakemore.”

“What are you talking about?”

A sweet-smelling breeze whooshed through the blue grass. The scent reminded him of a plate of warm cookies, only better. Then he heard something squishing through the grass. He stumbled backward, looking for a thick patch of grass to hide behind. No way did he want to meet up with that hotheaded giant again. But from the tall violet grass a waft of glowing golden mist appeared, settling a few feet in front of him. Two English bulldogs emerged from the swirling vapors, their iridescent coats shimmering like stars in the nighttime sky.

“I present the Parabulls,” the chronicle announced.

“No way, a pair of bulldogs?”
Blake knelt in the squish and ran his hands down their backs. His arms felt good as they brushed against the soft fur. Warmth rushed through his body.

The grass changed from blue to green to purple when he touched it. This was sweet. He could really get used to all this superpower stuff once he figured out how to use it. “What are their names?”

“Guinevere and MacArthur.
They’ll take you to a time and place of great importance. You’ll understand the lesson by the time you get there.”

“Get where?”

“Where you’re going, of course.”

“Oh, that helps.” Blake pinched off a length of the tall sapphire grass, which re-grew instantly. He wadded it into a ball and tossed it to the ground. “I don’t even know where I am now.”

“You’re in the den of the Parabulls, Saphir Pré.”

“Wherever that is.”

“That’s here.”

“But I don’t know where here is.”

“Here is here,” the book said.

Blake grunted out an exasperated little aarrgh. “I know here is here, but where is here? Wait, don’t answer that. Let’s start with all this lesson stuff you keep babbling about. I’m completely clueless.”

“History’s lesson.
We’ve been trying to tell you about the Tolucan spies who are--”

“Wait. These Tolucan people are the bad guys, right?”

“Bad guys?”

“Bad guys, like we’re the good guys, and they’re the bad guys.”

“This is not a game, Blake,” the book said. “You’re underestimating the seriousness of this threat. Their goal is to destroy history.”

“All right, just chill a minute. Maybe I’m messed up with all this time stuff, but who really cares if they destroy history? It already happened.”

“Did it? What if history never happened?”

“There’d still be some kind of history. Maybe not the same history, but something would be there. Wouldn’t it?”

“I’ll try to make this very simple. There would be absolutely nothing. No past, no present, no future. Time can never be divided. The past, present, and future are all happening right now, simultaneously.”

Blake stood, scratching his head. “All right, Book, now I’m totally confused.”

“Blake, look at it like this. What would happen if you took the wheels off your dirt bike? Could you ride it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“’Cuz it wouldn’t have wheels.”

“So what?
You have the rest of the motorcycle.”

“Ya couldn’t get very far without wheels.”

“Exactly.
You need the whole motorcycle, right?”

Blake took a deep breath and listened to his stomach rumble. None of this time stuff was making any sense.

Maybe I just need some food. “So tell me again what I am supposed to do.”

“Protect history.”

“But I don’t know anything about history.”

“You will. But, beware. Evil stops at nothing, and the wounds of the past are deep. The Parabulls cannot protect the future without the past.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No more time for questions. We must proceed.” The book tucked itself gently under Blake’s arm. The Parabulls glanced back at him before they headed into the sapphire grass.

“Wait!” Blake scrambled after them into the weird grass. “Hey, don’t leave me here!” Panicking, he shoved the strange grass aside. Tall blue grass waved in the silence. “Hey! Come on. How am I supposed to find you?”

He stood for a moment when he heard a man’s voice directly in front of him. Pushing back more of the grass, he heard the voice again, louder.

“Lord, grant that our voyage is not in vain and that my death does not come at the hands of my own men.”

Blake moved closer to the voice. “Hello?
Someone else here?”

“Please forgive me, Lord. I never meant to kill these men.”

CHAPTER 6

ONE SMALL PROBLEM

Kill what men? And whose voice was that? It didn’t sound like Dragonbreath’s, but no way was Blake going to hang around to find out. He tucked the chronicle under his arm and plowed butt-first through the thick grass until his foot stuck in a pool of purple squish. He tried pulling away from it but instead landed on his back in the spongy mud. Purple gummy clay caked his hair, his clothes, and probably the chronicle. He looked up as he heard the book speak.

“So sad, just so, so sad.”
The chronicle hovered above him.

Blake rolled to his side. Muck dropped off the book’s binding in clumps and splattered on his face. The slime oozed down his forehead and into his eyes. Blake wiped it from his face.
“Some superhero, huh?”

“A tragic funeral in the darkness.
All because of the frailty of the last sapphire traveler,” the book said.

Blake struggled to his feet. “What are you talking about?”

“We had so much hope for you, Blakemore. Now I fear the end is upon us. Dagonblud will succeed after all.”

“Quit calling me Blakemore. My name’s Blake. Can’t ya just talk normal for once? I almost got my butt kicked by Dragonbreath, and now I have to listen to you talk like a dictionary.”

The chronicle floated quietly about a foot from his face, as though it was staring at him, thinking.

“My apologies, Blake.
Your ignorance is not your fault.”

“Gee, thanks.” He wiped more purple goo from his face.

“You do not yet understand the science of your world--but soon you will.” The book flipped its cover open and flattened the sapphire grass around them in a fraction of a second. Tall blue grass fluttered in the distance. The breeze blew sugary air across the field.

The bulldogs appeared from the waving blades. They padded through the mud toward him, occasionally stopping to sniff the ground.

“The invisible made visible,” the book said. “The unknown made known.”

“You knew where the bulldogs were all along?”

“In Saphir Pré, nothing is as it seems.”

Blake snorted. “Yeah, like tell me something else I didn’t know.”

The Parabulls trudged closer.

The blue grass changed into bright misty blobs of red. He stumbled backwards. Green mist appeared to his right and yellow mist to his left. Blake turned around. The fog was dark blue. He tried to touch the colors, but his hand moved through the mist. “Cool trick, but I’m done with all this.”

“It is pretty cool, isn’t it?” MacArthur emerged from the red fog. His bulldog voice resonated strong and sure, like that coming-attraction guy at the movies. “This is how the world looks from the inside out.”

Guinevere appeared from the green haze.
“Poor boy, so much to learn.”

“You guys talk?” Hey, the book talks, too, he thought, so why should I be surprised.

Guinevere surveyed the haze. “This beautiful, strange place has always been here.” She turned to Blake. “You were just never able to see it.”

“So is this like magic or something?”

“Magic?
Of course not,” MacArthur said. “It’s science.”

“This doesn’t look like anything I ever saw in a science class.”

MacArthur grunted. “Maybe it should’ve been. This is how all science begins--quantum physics, the smallest particle that you can’t see or hear or touch. You should know about this.”

“But now you can see it,” Guinevere said.
“Knowledge.
Truth.
Energy.
Matter.
Each tiny bit makes up the whole. It’s how things work. You’re just seeing it up close.”

Blake looked around.

“All things have energy, Blake, a flower, a bird, you . . . everything.”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?”

The bulldogs looked at each other.

“Everything,” MacArthur blurted out. “It’s the power that commands this universe.”

“Yeah, right.
Like a flower or a bird commands the universe.”

Guinevere said, “In a way, you all do. Where do you think all this energy comes from?”

“I don’t know. I never really thought about--”

MacArthur interrupted. “Maybe I can explain it this way. Let’s start with the sun. There’s a lot of energy in the sun.
Right?”

“Yeah.”

“So when the sun sends out all that energy to our planet, what do you think happens to it?”

“It fades away?”

“No, more like the energy gives itself away.” MacArthur glanced at Guinevere. “He won’t be able to understand. He doesn’t understand time, either.”

“Yeah, I do.” Blake squinted.
“Sort of.”

“See what I mean, Guinevere?” MacArthur sat and with his hind leg, began vigorously scratching one of his ears.

Guinevere turned to Blake. “Let me try again.” An amazingly beautiful flower grew from the ground in front of her. It looked like a daisy, but each petal was a different color. “This flower is borrowing the sun’s energy to grow, just like everything else in the universe.”

“Borrowing?”

“Of course.
The flower doesn’t keep all that energy for itself. That’s not how things work.”

A large brown rabbit with droopy ears hopped out of the red mist near Blake and ate the flower.

Guinevere looked up at Blake. “Now do you see? The flower borrowed the sun’s energy so it could grow into a beautiful plant. The rabbit ate the flower. Now the rabbit has the sun’s energy.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“This energy doesn’t stop at flowers, Blake,” MacArthur said. “The knowledge of the past gives energy to the future.
Time and space?
Just part of the whole enchilada.”
MacArthur tilted his head and looked at Blake.

He sighed and inspected the colors around him. An enchilada sounded really good right now. He needed to eat.

Guinevere sat next to MacArthur. “You’re inside light, Blake, in the middle of a particle.”

He looked around. “How can I be inside a light particle?”

“It’s just a matter of size,” MacArthur explained. “You’re just a speck right now. Actually, you’re less than a speck.”

“The power of the Rellium starts with the smallest particle, invisible but still there.” Guinevere dug a peephole in the purple squish. “Look. It’s your house.”

Blake dropped to his knees in the gunk and peered through the opening. His mother was reading the back of a bag of chocolate chips while the kitchen TV
blared
some talk show about how not to look fat.
“Hey, Mom!
Mom!”

“She can’t hear you,” the chronicle said from nearby. “You’re just a particle in the invisible space above her.”

Blake sat hard in the squish and cradled his head in hands. “I never asked for any of this.”

MacArthur turned to Guinevere. “I think he needs to see it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. The last time we opened it, we almost couldn’t close it again. Dagonblud’s damage to the membrane was so extensive that--”

“He needs to see it.”

“See what?” Blake asked quickly.

Guinevere paused. “All right,” she said finally, “but let’s
hope
there’s enough power to close the membrane.”

MacArthur turned to the chronicle. “If it can’t be closed, your service to the Rellium will forever be remembered.”

“What are you talking about?” Blake persisted. He was getting frustrated.

“The membrane of the Rellium.
It’s the barrier that separates the dark energy or antimatter of the Tolucan world from the light energy or matter of your world,” she explained.

“Open it,” MacArthur said to Guinevere.

She moved toward the peephole. The colors around Blake swirled down the hole where he had seen his mother. Misty gray darkness replaced the light and filled the air with a disgusting stench. He’d smelled it before. Where?

He buried his face in his sleeve and tried to hold his breath.

“When the power of the Rellium is gone, dark energy consumes everything around it. Light is gone. Lessons are over. We are left with darkness and ignorance.”

“Have you seen enough?” Guinevere asked.

Blake gagged. “What am I seeing?”

“You’re getting a glimpse of your world if the Tolucan steals the Rellium’s power. Your world will become their dark world.”

Blake struggled to get air. “
Whatever,
just make it go away!”

“You must understand this,” MacArthur said. “It’s crucial.”

“I get it! We can’t let the bad guys win.”

The bulldogs vanished into the mist. The stench intensified.

Blake hacked out more foul air. “Guine--” he called out, and sank onto his knees. The mist thickened.
“Book!”
He tried to pull himself to his feet but collapsed. “Everything’s gone black! I can’t see!”