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9

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

I’m not sure how long I was falling through blackness when I started yelling.

All right. I was screaming.

I was falling rapidly through a shaft of pure blackness. I couldn’t even see my own hands, my nose, anything.

I could feel wind resistance, chapping my lips and rippling my cheeks and skin. My hair must have been flying wild as Vasco’s, if not as gray nor as long.

The air was cold. It felt chilly all the way to my lungs. And smelled like it was full of water vapor. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

Frankly, though, it wasn’t the air I was worried about. It was the ground.

Presuming that I wasn’t going to be falling forever — and that I’d been falling long enough to get past the screaming and on to actually thinking about my situation meant that maybe I would be falling forever — but if I didn’t, sooner or later I was going to hit the ground.

And I’d long ago reached terminal velocity. So when my poor body eventually slammed into the ground, I’d probably leave a splatter zone that could be measure in kilometers.

The pain was likely to go beyond anything I could imagine. Still, I did have the consolation that I wouldn’t feel it very long. I’d be pulp. Or a puddle.

Or maybe I was in space and I’d burn up on…

No. I couldn’t have been in space. There was wind resistance. The vacuum of space might not have been perfect, but it wouldn’t have given me wind resistance.

Also, actual space would have frozen me. I didn’t know that from experience, of course, but I couldn’t believe that all of my science fiction had lied to me.

Still, I wasn’t freezing. A little chilly, maybe, but not freezing.

I could breathe, too. Which meant I couldn’t have been all that high up, cosmically speaking. I mean, I’d read about special forces guys doing those high-altitude, low-opening jumps. HALO, they called them. They started at high enough altitudes that they needed oxygen just to avoid passing out, because the air was too thin to breathe.

I was breathing, but I wasn’t passing out. So I couldn’t have been starting as high as they did.

I couldn’t decide if that was a consolation. After all, I had no reason to believe I was falling towards the earth.

Some of the images I’d seen in mirrors had been out in space. And others, maybe entirely different planes of existence.

That line of thought didn’t help. In fact, I’d just reached the point of trying to scream again — just to see if it made me feel better — when my eyes finally detected a change in my environment.

Light.

I could see light.

Faint light, but white and straight ahead of me.

The light slowly grew stronger.

It began to spread out. Not in the way dawn rose, with a general lightening in the environment.

No, it began to spread out in two lines. Like a giant X. And at the center of the X, a yellow spot.

The light itself was so white it was almost blue, the way fluorescent lights could get. But in the middle, a warmer yellow spot. Like an area of incandescence in the center of all that fluorescence.

But the lines of that X were cut tight. As though the blackness allowed only so much light, and was determined to contain it within its specified zone.

I found myself wishing I’d tried skydiving. Maybe I could have controlled my fall. Slowed myself. Picked my landing spot.

Landing. Hah.

I did do what little I could think of to slow myself down. I forced my body to turn so that the wind resistance was hitting all of me at once, instead of just my face.

Didn’t help much. Now all of my skin was getting rippled, even what was covered by my shorts, shoes and tee shirt.

I tried not to think about that. Just focused on the yellow circle in the center of the outstretched arms of the giant X.

I found myself grateful that my stomach wasn’t nearly as full as it felt. I’d only had the one little restorative treat, and its key lime taste was still faint on my tongue.

The yellow zone grew larger and larger. I was getting closer and closer.

I could see more of that yellow zone now. It glistened. As though it were all yellow crystal.

So much for my vague hopes of a soft landing. Maybe a bunch of angels — or maybe giant eagles or something — catching me and lowering me gently to the ground.

If anything, I seemed to start falling faster. That was impossible, though. That…

I stopped that line of thought right there. As many impossible things as I’d seen today?

So, I was falling faster and faster as I got closer and closer to that yellow crystal zone in the middle of the giant X.

I shook my head. Closed my eyes. Began uttering prayers to a God I wasn’t sure I really believed in in the first place.

I hit that yellow crystal floor at full speed…

…and bounced.

I sank down into the floor as though it were made of rubber, and sprang right back out into the blackness.

I’m pretty sure I yelled a few expletives in there, out of sheer shock.

No idea how far back up I flew, but I came down hard enough to bounce a second time.

And then a third.

And then a fourth.

I think I must have bounced about sixteen times in all.

But on that last landing, suddenly, the floor wasn’t rubbery at all anymore. It was all hard, yellow crystal.

But I was falling so slowly by this point that I could get my feet under me and land with what I’d like to think was catlike grace.

I threw my hands in the air and yelled out, “Ta-daaaaa!”

Someone snickered.

I looked around.

The area nearest me all looked to be crystal flooring the color of ripe lemons, with a soft glow the same shade coming out of it.

Starting about thirty feet from me, though, crystals jabbed up through the smooth floor. Thick, they were, varying between one foot and three feet wide. Some of them came up only as high as my knee, others went up taller and taller until they seemed to form a crystal forest around me. Complete with branches coming off of them, and tiny crystal maple leaves.

From the clearing where I stood, I couldn’t see far enough through the crystal forest to tell where those channels were, that would have formed the branches of the giant X.

However, just between two of the nearer crystal trees, I could see a person.

Not a human, mind you. A person. And as of today, that was a distinction that I needed to keep in mind.

Humans were people, but they were clearly not the only people around.

This person was short. Maybe three, three-and-a-half feet tall. And he had a long, hooked beak. Kind of like a vulture. Under robes of yellow-orange, he or she looked to have more-or-less humanoid construction.

I mean, this person seemed to be standing on feet. Yes, those feet had dark purple talons, but they still wore worn leather sandals.

And those feet appeared to be at the end of legs, at least so far as I could tell under the thick robes.

This person had arms, too, coming out of the robe. Dark purple talon-like hands as well, clutching what I thought was a gnarled oaken staff.

A hood was drawn up over the back of this person’s head, but not far enough to obscure his or her facial features.

Big, oval eyes, taller than they were wide. With pupils that would have looked more at home on a lizard than a bird. Wizened cheeks of a rough, purple color, that went with the similar shades of the talons that I could see.

I caught myself starting to bow, and turned it into a half-bow. But that might not have been enough to be respectful, so I threw in an elaborate hand gesture, coming out from my head like a salute and trailing back until it looked more like I was bowing after all.

I stopped myself. Stood up straighter.

The bird-person tilted his or her head. Made this clucking, ticking sound. Not like a chicken, but more like the way a car engine ticks as it cools down. Especially on an older car.

“Um,” I said into the uncomfortable silence. “Hello?”

Nothing.

“My name is Scott Eagleson. I think Vasco sent me?”

Still nothing. Maybe a blink.

“I’m not sure I’m supposed to be here though. I took a chance, jumping into a mirror and … well … here I am?”

The bird-person started snickering again.

Then the snicker got louder.

Finally I found myself flushing a bright red while the bird person was wheezing with laughter, clapping the tip of its staff on the ground as though trying to get hold of itself.

“Right,” I said at last. “Clearly this is a mistake. Maybe the exit is down one of those branches.”

I frowned. Looked at the bird-person. “I don’t suppose you know the way back to the rainbow crystal cavern.”

“Smell,” the bird-person said, in a voice that could have been the muted cry of a hawk.

“The way back is—”

“Smell. The. Air.” The bird-person smacked the tip of his or her staff on the crystal. “Now.”

“Okay,” I said quickly, my hands coming halfway up in surrender.

I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils. Sure enough, there was a subtle scent to the air.

I was pretty sure the fragrance I could pick up was one I knew. Confirmation would help though.

“Honeysuckle?”

“Does that sound right to you? For this place?”

“How can a smell…” I frowned. Looked around at all the yellowish, slightly glowing crystal.

I shook my head.

“No. This place should have more of a … yellowish scent. Lemons, maybe, if I had to guess by the shade of the crystal.”

“Better,” the bird-person said. Then nodded, once, sharply. “Why doesn’t it fit?”

“Well, honeysuckle—”

The bird-person let out this godawful squak. So very loud that it made my ears buzz.

“No,” the bird-person said.

“I got that,” I said, shaking my head, and trying to pop my ears to get the buzzing to go away.

“Why doesn’t the smell fit?”

I frowned. “I’m not sure I—”

“The place is right,” the bird-person prompted. “I am right. So what is not right?”

“Me?” I asked, blinking rapidly and wrinkling up my face as I tried to make at least some sense of this. “How can I be wrong?”

“Wrong?” The bird-person smacked the tip of his staff onto the crystal flooring. Made this series of clicks though its beak that sounded like disapproval. “Who said anything is wrong?”

“But you asked what was not right. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not at all.” The bird-person began walking forward, and walking looked painful. Its foot talons moved with a shuffling kind of step that moved its hips back and forth in a way that made me wince.

Without that staff, the poor thing probably couldn’t walk at all.

But the bird-person continued to talk as it walked, and I tried to focus on its words instead of what looked like obvious pain.

“Right and wrong may be opposites in many ways, but to say that all that is not wrong is right, and all that is not right is wrong, that is to overlook the many variations that the universe has given us.”

The bird-person stopped in front of me. Reached out and jabbed me in the chest with the point of its staff.

“The universe is full of wonders. To break them all down into mere right and wrong is to overlook their potential.”

The bird-person looked up into my face. Those lizard eyes seemed to swirl for a moment.

“This was not the first place you should have stopped. That is why the scent and the look are not synchronized for you, as they should be at all training sites. Does that mean I should dismiss you as wrong? Should I overlook your potential?”

“No?”

“No,” the bird-person said, shaking its head once, firmly. “You came here first because your potential and intuition outstripped your understanding.”

The bird-person let out this series of caws that I would later learn to consider laughter.

I know. The bird-person was laughing earlier, and now it only issued that series of caws that seemed to amount to the same thing. Sometimes the bird-person laughed, and sometimes cawed. I never could tell when to expect one or the other.

“I am Trakatak. And though I was slated to be your third teacher, it seems I am to be your first.”

“I don’t suppose that means I’ll have an easier time with your lessons?” I asked hopefully. “All that potential?”

That series of caws again.

“Quite the opposite, I fear.”

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