Across from me, Loor was doing the same thing. It felt like we were doing homework together. As she scratched out her thoughts on the same kind of parchment paper, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was writing about me. I knew she thought I was a toady boy, but maybe having survived a brush with Saint Dane gave me a little more credibility. On the other hand, who cares? Tomorrow, I was out of here.
That’s how I spent the rest of the night. I wrote for a while and when my eyes got heavy I sacked out on the animal skins. I’d sleep for a little bit, then wake up and write some more. Loor did the same thing. Osa was in and out of the hut. She’d come in to put some wood on the fire, then leave again. I wondered if she was getting any sleep at all. I got as far as writing about Uncle Press being captured by Kagan’s knights, and then I crashed for good. The next thing I knew, Osa was gently shaking me to wake up.
“It is morning, Pendragon,” she said softly.
I was sleeping deeply and had to force my eyes open. There was light in the hut, but I could tell it was early because there were no shadows and the birds were singing. I looked around to see that the fire had gone out and Loor was gone.
“Give me your journal,” she commanded.
I sat up and gathered the pages I had written. She took them, rolled them up, and tied them with a leather cord. She then walked to the center of the hut, sat down cross-legged and placed something on the floor. It was a big old clunky silver ring with a gray stone mounted in the center. From where I was sitting I could see there was some kind of inscription engraved around the stone, but I had no idea what it meant. Osa looked to make sure I was watching, then reached down to the ring, touched her finger to the stone and said, “Second Earth.”
What I saw next sent a bolt of adrenaline through me so quickly that I was shocked out of any last remnant of sleep. The gray stone in the ring started to glow. It acted like the flume had when it brought me here. The flume was made of gray rock, just like the ring. When I said, “Denduron,” the gray rock of the flume had started to glow, just like the ring. Bright light shot from the facets of the stone and washed the walls of the hut, just like the lights in the flume. And like the flume, I started to hear the strange musical notes.
Then the ring started to twitch…and grow! The band actually stretched out and got bigger until it was about the size of a Frisbee. But inside the circle, where the floor should have been, was a hole. It was like this ring opened up a miniflume to…where? Osa took the rolled-up parchment pages and dropped them into the ring. The pages disappeared as if they had been dropped into a hole in the floor. Then the ring snapped back to normal size and everything ended. No lights, no sound, no hole. Just the ring. Osa picked it up and put it into a leather pouch that hung from around her neck.
“Your friend Mark has your journal,” she said and got up to leave. That was it. No explanation, no nothing.
I jumped to my feet to head her off. “Whoa! You can’t pull that hocus-pocus number and not tell me what happened!” I demanded.
“I told you what happened,” she said calmly. “I sent your journal to Mark Dimond.”
She tried to continue out of the hut, but I got in front of her.
“But how? Is that like a portable flume?” Obviously my mind was in overdrive.
“There are many things to know about being a Traveler, Pendragon,” she said patiently. “Once you are more comfortable, this ring will be yours and you will be able to send your journals to Mark Dimond yourself. Until then, be satisfied to know that the power contained in the ring is similar to the power found in the flumes.”
I wasn’t going to give up that easily. “But how can it find Mark?”
Osa took a deep breath like she was getting tired of my questions. Too bad. She knew how this stuff worked. I didn’t.
“I gave another ring to Mark Dimond,” she said.
“What? You saw Mark? No wait, you went to Earth? When? How? Did you tell him I’m here? Did you see my parents? Did you-”
Osa put a hand to my mouth to shut me up. She was gentle, but firm.
“I went to Second Earth and gave Mark Dimond the ring,” she explained. “That is all. I saw no one else. No more questions.”
She took her hand away and started out of the hut.
“Just one more,” I called after her.
Osa turned back to me, waiting to hear.
“Does this ring thing work both ways? I mean, if we can send things to Mark, can he send things to us?”
Osa smiled. It was the kind of smile I’d see from my mother when I thought I was being clever about trying to keep something from her. That smile said “I know exactly what you’re thinking, smart guy. You can’t fool me.”
“The rings can transport small objects, but they only work for Travelers,” was her answer. “Mark Dimond would not be able to send you anything. Now if you wish to bathe yourself, there is a river that runs a few hundred feet south of the village.”
She left and my mind went into hyperdrive. This ring business had just opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Maybe I didn’t need to get all the way to the top of the mountain after all. Maybe the ring could grow big enough for me to jump into it. And if I’m a Traveler, then the ring will work for me! Yes! For the first time in a long while, I felt as if I had a shot at taking control of my life again. When the time was right, I’d get the ring from Osa and punch my ticket out of here. That was the new plan and it felt good. Heck, anything would be better than climbing that mountain and getting past the quigs. So with a new sense of hope, I left the hut to start the day.
The suns were just creeping up over the horizon and I saw it was going to be a clear day. The first thing I wanted to do was find that river and wash up. Not that I’m a clean freak or anything, but the animal skins I was wearing weren’t exactly cottony fresh. I’m not sure which smelled worse: me or my clothes. A quick splash of water would be a good thing, so I picked my way through the Milago village in search of the stream.
The village was just waking up. Smoke drifted up from chimneys in all the huts. A few women scurried along carrying firewood. In the distance I saw farmers already working out in the fields. I also saw a pretty depressing sight. A group of men trudged into the village on a path that led from the woods. I figured they were miners since they were covered with dirt, like the miners who had brought glaze to the Transfer ceremony the day before. Could these guys have been working all night? I then saw another group of miners pass them going in the other direction. I realized this was some sort of change in shift. The day crew was taking over for the night crew.
As bleak as this scene was, it wasn’t the depressing part. The thing that really hit me was that nobody talked. Nobody. They didn’t even make eye contact with one another. They just went about their business, doing their work or their chores or whatever it is they probably do every single day, but with absolutely no human interaction. I guess it didn’t surprise me. After what I had seen the day before, I realized that these people were prisoners. Kagan’s army had stolen everything they could from them, including their souls. There was no joy in this place. No hope. They probably didn’t want to make friends with anyone because they never knew who might be Kagan’s next victim. So they kept to themselves, living in their own personal, tortured world.
It feels kind of weird to admit it, but as I stood there watching these people going about their dreary lives, I started to cry. Normally I’m not a crying kind of guy. Yeah, a couple of times I got weepy during a movie when somebody’s dog died or something. But this was different. This was real. I stood in the center of this village and it was like I could feel a huge weight of sadness press down on me. The thing is, no matter how bad somebody’s life gets, it can always get better. Things pass and life goes on. Like for me. As bad as things were for me right then, I had a shot at getting home. There was hope. But for these people, there was no escape. Their future was just as bleak as their present. This was their life, and the hopelessness of it brought tears to my eyes. For that one brief instant, I could feel their pain.