Wiley searched over the grasses and the hollows for any sign of Yini. The oval flying vehicles approached at a fast rate, faster than he could run. Trapped, he had no place to go, and his heart pounded.
The alien craft with narrow cockpit windows landed nearby on extended legs. They set down without bending a single weed, and Wiley wondered what powered them. A door opened on each one, folding down, and with it, stairs dropped. Soldiers came running out wearing armor, the hugest men Wiley had ever seen, Myn, as Yini called them.
Their helmets had sharp lines on both sides from brow to crown and golden wings over the ears. Their breastplates had angular pectorals, and their shoulder armor had layered overlays, pauldrons. The set of gleaming armor moved like a second skin over these enormous, musclebound Myn. Each stood over eight feet tall and had arms as robust as tree trunks. Wiley stood gawking at them while they came at him.
The soldiers drew swords that had square, LED windows on the blade above the pummel. What sort of control a sword would have, Wiley could not guess? The Myn raised their swords, and their massive arm muscles rippled.
The thousand-foot-tall thundercloud moved near him. Amora’s face appeared on the side, a hundred times larger than life. “You cannot escape me, creature!” Amora said. The oversized, projected front of Amora threw her head back and laughed.
Wiley’s knees shook. With his head swiveling and his knees flexed, he searched left and right for a way out. He swallowed and looked up at her. “Um, hello, Mom! It’s good to see you again!”
The soldiers slowed, stopped, and lowered their blades. They looked up at the cloud. “A Prince?” one asked.
Amora amplified her voice, and as she spoke, she made thunder. “He is not my son!” Lightning struck a tree across the Piens road, sending sparks, and thunder boomed. The soldiers ducked and crouched, scowling at Wiley and raising their swords.
“Liar!” one of the guards said, glowering at Wiley.
“He has my ruby. Guards! Seize him, but do not kill!” Amora smiled. The gigantic, Myn guards circled Wiley, pointing their long swords, and stepping closer.
Piano music began, and Wiley’s smartphone buzzed from out in the meadow. Zzzzzz. Dum-dum, dum-dum, Ahooo, Werewolves of London, dum-dum, Ahooo, Werewolves of London.
A soldier shouted, “Wolves!” and the Myn turned and crouched, swords forward.
“What strange manner of music, and from where does it come?” Amora asked with an indoor voice.
Yini knelt in tall grass a hundred tensteps from Wiley with the Queen’s forces surrounding him. She put both hands over her “Pool of Fire,” as she called it. “Shush!” She closed her eyes and purred, “hoodle, oodle, oodle, oodle….” Blue tendrils leaped from her puckered lips and wrapped the Pool to shut it up, but the music would not stop.
Zzzzzz. Dum-dum, dum-dum, Ahooo, Werewolves of London, dum-dum, Ahooo, Werewolves of London.
Yini stood from her hiding position in tall grass and held the phone above her head. “Wiley? You how do you make it quiet!”
“Oh, hey Yini! I thought you’d disappeared!” Wiley said, glad to see her.
Zzzzzz. Dum-dum, dum-dum, Ahooo, Werewolves of London, dum-dum, Ahooo, Werewolves of London.
“That’s a call for me!” he yelled across the Great Meadow at the small Rabbit figure holding his cell over her head. He looked up at the enormous cloud and yelled, “Sorry, Mom, I have to get this.” Wiley used this momentary befuddling distraction to get out of the trap, and he ran toward Yini. The guards stood looking up at Amora for orders.
“Idiots! Get them both and bring that device to me.”
“Yes, Your Highness!” The soldiers ran after Wiley. Yini held the cell in front of her while she ran toward Wiley. It had stopped playing that odd song, and she sent her blue tentacles inside the glass screen while she ran. The Pool of Fire’s screen burst into blue fire.
Thick blue ropes burst from it, winding above her head while she ran and created a lasso over the soldiers. Yini waved her hand and dropped the snare around the group of thirty huge Myn!
“Wow! You can do that?” Wiley yelled.
She tightened the thick cables squeezing them around their arms. “They are strong and will break free soon. We must hurry!” The massive Myn shouted, struggling against the bonds, but the Pool of Fire held, at least for now. It pulled them into a bundle.
Yini kept running across the vast meadow toward Wiley, waving the cell and shouting. “Now’s the time to run, Wiley! The Pool can’t hold them forever!” Wiley had never seen such a sight.
The blue appendage arched from it as thick as bridge cabling holding all the soldiers. Yini waved her arms over her head and shouted at him from a distance, “Run, Wiley! Amora is preparing her fireball!”
A fiery stream whooshed back and forth as Amora rolled a massive fireball inside the cloud.
“Run? Run where?”
Yini skirted to the left of the struggling soldiers, holding her forearm high. She looked as if she carried a shield while Amora worked her fire. “Come, young sorcerer! Run to your talisman while I try to make protection!”
“I’m not a sorcerer, and what about the Etter birds?” Wiley asked while he ran to catch Yini.
“You must choose the lesser danger! Run to it. Let me worry about the Etter birds while you work your talisman magic.” Yini flicked her fingers, and the blue rope around the soldiers tied itself off. Wiley ran with Yini alongside the Piens road, and she held the Pool of Fire, pumping her arms as she ran.
“Where did you go after we split?” Wiley asked.
“Not far!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Rabbits can halt and become stone-still, unseen,” Yini said. As they ran, tall grass and weeds whipped their legs. “It’s not magic,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought you would travel the road away from Amora unnoticed.”
Wiley smiled. “You watched me.”
“How is your pain?” she asked, touching her chest. Amora’s fireball came out of the cloud as fast as an arrow. “Look out, Wiley, she’s throwing! Jump!”
It warmed his neck and arms before he saw it, and his shadow grew longer. Wiley glanced back at the fiery bomb careening toward his back. He ran faster.
“AAAAH! Mom missed some of her therapy sessions!”
Then, the purple mist cloud returned. The violet fog that had fooled the security guard in the big box store now formed a shield behind Wiley. Amora’s fireball slammed against the shield, and sparks splashed in all directions. The bulwark held, and the fire angled into the ground at his feet.
The colossal flame ball ripped into the topsoil and heaved it upward. It swelled and exploded in a sphere of dirt and fire as big as a house, and the blast sent Wiley flying across the grass. He went upside down, waving his arms while watching the ground heave, then come up to meet him as he fell.
Thud! Wiley hit hard and tumbled through weeds, stopping beside the Piens road. His side and back flamed, and his clothes burned, and he rolled to extinguish the fire. He ended lying flat on his back.
Amora’s cloud had evaporated, and the tall Amora sashayed to him wearing a green gown with a high collar, smiling. She shook out her long black hair. “See? Do you think this is funny now? If you had given me my ruby glass the first time, there would have been less PAIN!” She threw her head back and laughed!
Now free of their bindings, Amora’s soldiers ran to join her. Amora spoke to the writhing Wiley again. “If that Witch-Rabbit hadn’t diverted my fireball with the pretty shield, YOU would’ve burned and died.” Amora laughed. “Where is she, by the way?”
He turned his head to find her. Pain shot through his left side, and he didn’t see Yini. Wiley’s clothes had burned away on his left side, and the skin on his back and left leg had reddened and bubbled. He tried again, rolling over to find Yini. The grass stuck to his burns, and he groaned, giving up and turning to his back.
Amora held out her palm, and the glass ruby shard began wiggling out of Wiley’s pocket, reaching the top, but stopped. Amora snarled, “What kind of sorcery is this?”
She reached down, and her hand hit an invisible wall, like glass. Tink! She tried again, and her hand hit the same barrier. The obstruction morphed into a pale blue crust around Wiley, and Amora stepped back. “This is witch work. Where’s the Witch-Rabbit?” she asked.
***
Yini laid on her backpack among tall grass with her long ears stretched behind her. The blast had thrown her twenty tensteps away, but she remained conscious. She closed her eyes. Using her mind’s eye, she found Wiley. Amora stood over him, looking down, trying to steal the glass shard! She gasped. Drawing on her Pool of Fire in her left hand, she purred, “hoodle, oodle, oodle, oodle….” She sent trickles of blue from her puckered lips to the glass on the Pool, from there to Wiley’s prone body.
Amora tried pulling the ruby shard from Wiley’s pocket with magic, but Yini’s barrier stopped her. Yini concentrated, and the Pool responded by sending larger and thicker blue strings. They covered Wiley and strengthened the blue shield.
Amora could not touch Wiley or get to the ruby shard. Yini rolled over to her hands and knees and climbed to her feet. “Queen! A vision of events showed me what would happen once you obtained the final ruby piece.”
“There’s the Witch-Rabbit. You speak to me at last. And what did your vision tell you, witch?” Amora asked.
Yini stumbled forward toward Wiley. “The shard will fix the pendant on your necklace. The pendant’s power will grow, and it will give you brand-new magic – the magic of mass compulsion – a Queen’s Command. No one could refuse even your smallest wish. Everyone would bend and scrape to fulfill your every whim.”
Amora laughed. “Correct! You have power in your visions, witch, and I can take your magic with my siphoning spell. Tell me how you diverted my fireball at the last second with the purple shield. It will drain off the purple power from you, too!”
“Purple? I don’t know what you’re talking about, witch! I didn’t do it.”
***
Wiley managed to turn enough to raise himself on his hands. “Yini, escape from here. Don’t stand between us,” Wiley said, pointing at the gathering soldiers. “Save yourself.”
“Such a brave creature. Wiley wants you to save yourself,” Amora said, and she snarled. “But let’s put your powerful magic to the test, Witch-Rabbit. First, you must save him from this!” Amora shoved both palms out and released two long fire streams toward Wiley. The soldiers’ faces brightened from the heat, and they backpedaled.
Yini threw up her right forearm an instant before the flames reached him and formed a broad blue barrier. Amora’s fire blasted Yini’s wall and splashed against it, but it repelled the fire. With the aid of blue streams from the Pool of Fire, her shield held steady against Amora’s fiery torrents.
“Yini! Get out of the fire! She’ll kill you!” Wiley said.
“The Pool of Fire will hold back her flames,” Yini yelled above the roar.
Amora bared her teeth and increased the fire stream to a howling flood, but Yini’s defense held strong. Yini side-stepped, straddling Wiley. Amora dropped the attack, the fire died, and steam trailed from her hands. Amora shook her hands. She chuckled. “Poor thing. Your She-Rabbit has saved you with her extraordinary magic, but she cannot attack me or kill my guards. Her master forbids it. Tell him the truth, Witch-Rabbit.”
Yini held her shield between them with grim determination. She glanced down at Wiley and back at Amora and her guards. “She’s right, my new friend. I do not have permission to attack with my magic, but I can defend myself and you, and I will!”
“Oops!” Amora said with a throaty laugh. “You’ve caught feelings for this off-world creature, yes?”
“Um, of course not,” Yini said, and her face went red while Wiley lifted himself. His questioning face stared up at her. “You weren’t there when he did what he did,” she said to Amora, then looked down at Wiley, and her face went redder.
“Yini?” Wiley asked.
“Oh, my heart’s still tender from the wave thing you did, Wiley, and you’re young, and I’m not sure of my feelings.” Yini sighed, still holding the shield. She crouched beside Wiley and examined him while holding her forearm high. Yini kept the protective shield between them and the Queen. “Your burns don’t appear critical. Can you walk? Do you need help standing?” The fire burned away one denim jeans leg and half his shirt. She offered her free hand.
“How sweet,” Amora said and pooched her lips.
“Thanks, Yini,” Wiley said, and he strained as he pushed himself to his knees. He watched Amora over his shoulder while Yini helped him stand on wobbly legs. The blue blanket Yini had placed over him, the one that kept Amora out of his pocket, drained from him as he staggered. But Yini twirled her fingers grabbing up the fading blue and formed it into a blue crutch under his arm.
“Mom,” he said as he put his weight on the crutch. “You never told me what you did with Dad, Albert. Remember him?”
“So, Amora is your mother,” Yini said, gasping wide-eyed and breathless, a statement not a question. “If so, the Elven healing machine has changed her body.” Wiley looked deep into Yini’s knowing eyes.
“Albert, I’ve heard the name,” a guard said.
“The King, hundreds of seasons past,” another guard said.
Amora spun, snapped her arms straight down, and doubled her fists. “Shut it!” she said to the guards. “Albert died long ago, as the history books say!”
“I don’t get it. How does time work here? How have you reigned for so long?” Wiley asked.
“Everyone knows how she’s done it, Wiley. We don’t have the time for history lessons,” Yini said.
“Indeed! Give me my ruby piece, and that flat white thing you hold, witch, or I can take it from your dead hands!” Amora said. “Guards! Put your weapons on the kill setting! Shoot through the barrier and kill them both!” The guards changed the settings on the LED screens on their swords and leveled them at Wiley and Yini. The guards fired lasers.
“Stay close, Wiley!” Yini said as the shots pinged off the shield in a flurry.
The swords’ designers intended them to fire stunning shots first, then kill with a thrust. But Amora had them altered. These swords fired, killing laser shots into Yini’s shield. None penetrated, and the rounds ricocheted straight back. The returning blasts penetrated two guards’ breast armor. Amora jumped behind a big Myn and screamed for them to stop. They stopped firing.
Yini scoffed at Amora’s ineptness. “Now, sorcerer, while she cowers, put your arm around my shoulder, and I will walk you into the forest.” She and Wiley began stepping toward the Piens road.
“Why do you keep calling me a sorcerer?” He put his arm around her neck.
They walked sidestepping, and Yini held her shield aloft while she spoke low. “You traveled through spacetime on a piece of glass tied to a string. You made your heart ring out through the forest, making me cry for you. Now you make a purple shield from the mist, young sorcerer. If you don’t do magic, then I’m not a witch.”
Wiley shook his head. “I didn’t do the purple mist, and I can’t explain it.”
“You need self-confidence, and I can help!” Yini said. They stood face-to-face, his arm around her, and Wiley leveled his gaze deep into her big blue eyes and held it. She gasped, parting her kissable lips, “You give me a steady, loving gaze, Boy-Myn.” Wiley kissed her, and Yini pulled him to her by the back of his head, letting the kiss linger, then broke away. “I did not expect a kiss,” Yini said, licking her lips.
“Oh, enough! Charge them!” Amora said. “Hammer her shield. Get in there!”
The huge Myn attacked the blue barrier and hammered it with their swords, forearms, and fists. One giant soldier caught Wiley’s eye, leaned his big head close, and said low, “Rumors tell of Albert alive.” Then he continued hammering on the shield.
“Alive?” Wiley asked in a whisper. The soldier cut his eyes at Amora and returned his face to a look of scowling anger as he beat on Yini’s barrier. He had to do it to stay in good graces with the Queen, Wiley figured. Wiley also realized these big brutes had opinions. Wiley didn’t build the tripod to find Albert, but if Albert were still alive, he would not pass up the chance to speak with him.
The soldiers tried to encircle, so Yini bent the blue shield. She wrapped it into a slender cylinder around them as they walked. The Pool of Fire fed the protective tube with a steady blue power stream. Neither the soldier’s swords nor their huge fists affected it.
Wiley and Yini crossed the threshold of the forest’s Etter distance. Amora’s soldiers stopped short. Overhead, Etter birds squawked and circled as the pair moved toward Wiley’s tripod. They dove, one and two at a time, at the thin blue shield.
“Get in there and get my ruby!” Amora said. The soldiers shook their heads and did not enter.
“You try,” one soldier said to Amora. “You have the fire.”
The great, white-feathered, long-billed birds attacked. They bit and clawed at the blue shield as Yini worked to wrap the tripod within the cylinder along with them. Her brown hair stuck to her forehead from sweat as she strained, and her long ears fell on her shoulder and back. Wiley tied the ruby shard to the string below the can.
“I don’t want to leave you, Yini,” he said.
“Please hurry,” she said. “The shield cannot hold much longer. I didn’t even know I could make this shield until a few t-ticks ago.”
Wiley snapped his head around, astonished at Yini’s capability. “The t-tick must be a brief time,” he said. Yini smiled, and her dimples came again. He loved those. “Setting the clock,” he said. Wiley set the twin bell alarm for one minute. “Done,” Wiley said.
“Not yet,” Yini said. Yini turned Wiley’s face to hers and searched his eyes. He leveled his stare, locking onto her eyes. “Keep looking at me like you do, and I’ll never leave you!” She pulled on his shirt, and they kissed hard and deep.
The twin bell alarm rang, and the tin canister resounded. The ruby shard snapped toward Polaris, the North Star. Yini sensed the tripod’s magic building, and she broke off the kiss. “A sorcerer and a witch can have each other’s back, you know. Treat your burns, then come straight back to me!”
“Do you mean it, or is it leftover feelings from the power blast?” Wiley asked.
Yini looked at her feet, then back up at him. “It is my sincere heart.”
“In that case, yes! I promise I’ll come back as soon as I can!” He turned and lowered his head, making sparks as he pushed into the rainbow membrane.
Yini flinched at the sparks as she slipped the Pool of Fire into Wiley’s back pocket while he pushed. When she let go of it, her blue shield fell, and she whispered, “Pool of Fire, bring him back to me.”
Wiley shouldered into the multicolored membrane, groaning and pushing until it tore. He glanced back, and Yini had an Etter bird by the throat. Her forehead and arms bled from talon wounds.
She snatched her long knife from her belt sheath and gutted the bird. Its entrails spilled onto the ground, and Etter birds gathered to eat the entrails in a flurry of squawks. Another big Etter bird swooped and sunk talons into Yini’s bedroll and lifted her. She fought the bird, turning and slashing at the bird’s leg. Wiley caught sight of her legs licking and her white furry tail as it carried her over the treetops to the south.
No! The membrane popped, and Wiley vanished.
