A Little Rhine Must Fall (8 page)

I was too busy freaking out and composing last minute messages to my daughters in my head that I missed the start of the chanting. Cecily shook our joined hands and I stumbled into the chant with everyone else.

“
Solutus portale. Solutus portale. Solutus portale.”
I peeked around the group and hoped that everyone else felt as stupid as I did.

The three WAND members were standing outside the main group, still chanting, but not holding hands with anyone. Bastet was sitting on the far side from them, obviously not holding hands, not chanting, and looking rather bored as she licked a paw and rubbed it on her head.

I had just enough time to realize that the WAND was
sending
us to the moon,
not
traveling
with
us, which seemed like a really bad idea to me, when the universe shifted.

Once, when Mark and I had first been married, we’d visited Vegas for a day. I’d really wanted to go on the
Star Trek: The Experience
ride and had dragged Mark along. The ride had started with everyone lining up on those dots on the floor that simulation rides always have so you know how many people will fit on each row. The lights had suddenly blinked out and when they came back on seconds later, the floor was different, the walls were gone, and we were all standing on a “transporter” pad. I still don’t know how they did it, but it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

This was almost the same experience. Except, instead of ending on a transporter pad, we were standing on the surface of the moon. Barren, grey, silent, and airless.

Chapter Seven:

Moonwalk

Sound waves need air to travel on. The vibrations in the vocal chords chop the air into little bits that travel through the air to vibrate on the receiving eardrums, which then translate the sound to the brain. If there is no air, there is no sound. (Tell that to all the producers of movie space-battles!)

I was on the moon.

Everyone knows that you have to wear a gigantic, bulky suit if you want to walk on the moon, preferably with a light that shines on your face inside the helmet so that all the TV viewers know which character is which. (As a Space Coast resident, I can tell you that
real
spacesuits are tinted and reflective, yet another thing that movie makers have wrong.)

Light or no light, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a suit. I was going to explode and die. My brain was going to pop out my ears and my frozen body would float through space for all eternity. It would happen any minute now.

“Piper?” Cecily sounded worried. She should be worried. Even vampire strength and speed couldn’t save her from the vacuum of space.

“Piper?” Cecily took my shoulders and shook me. She probably meant for it to be gentle, but I could feel my brain slamming against my skull.

“Stop it!” I cried, letting out all the air I had been holding in my lungs in a big whoosh. My hand flew up in a futile attempt to stop the air from escaping. Drat! Maybe I could at least save my eyes from popping out of my head. I covered both of them and waited for death to take me.

“Piper! You can stop holding your breath! It’s okay!” Cecily gave me another (not so) gentle shake.

It dawned on me that I could
hear
her talking to me. No air = no sound, ergo, sound = air! I could breathe! I gasped in a breath and cautiously lowered my hands from my face, then I gasped again. There was no color!

Everything was black and grey. Lots of black, black sky. Nothing like the night sky back home, this was the black of deep space, of nothingness. I couldn’t see stars, all I could see was black. It made my skin crawl. I was standing somewhere (
without a spacesuit
screamed my brain) where man was not meant to be. I wanted to go home!

Before I could break down into a hysterical, blubbering wreck, the UnSeelie Fae spoke. “This is why we should have left the
human
at home. Why the Bast insisted that we bring such a weakling, I will never understand!”

I straightened and turned to make a face at the woman. My breath was taken away again. Shining like a Christmas ornament in the black sky was Earth! It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I felt a lump rising in my throat as I looked at my home, glowing and perfect, the colors that we take for granted every day showcased to their best effect.

The Unseelie Fae rolled her eyes. “
Humans
!” she spat, disgusted with my emotionalism.

I finished my face by sticking out my tongue at her, then, in an extra display of childishness, added brightly, “Hey! I can see my house from up here!”

Jonathan leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Command her to pat her head, rub her tummy, and jump up and down on one foot.”

I grinned, tempting, but not really worth immortality.

Deerhurst was pacing around the outside of our little group. We were all huddled together in the middle of a huge plain. There were some SUV sized rocks, tiny craters and divots, and miles upon miles of grey, dusty landscape that met the black sky in a sharp line. I looked around behind me. Same scene, just missing Earth rising in the sky.

That was when I realized that Deerhurst was
pacing
. I looked around for Cecily but she was deep in conference with the Seelie Fae representative. Jonathan was the only one not glaring at me, talking, or pacing.

“Jonathan?”

He turned to me with a smile. “What is it?”

“How is there gravity here?” I pointed at Deerhurst, who was obviously
not
lightly leaping through the air in less than Earth gravity.

Jonathan shrugged. “Who knows how the WAND works? They did say that, as long as we stayed in the vicinity of the Zipline, that gravity should be close to Earth.”

I had another question. “Why didn’t a witch come with us? I thought they set this up in exchange for joining the party?”

“They decided that being paid for the Zipline in magic was a better deal.” He snorted. “Honestly, I think they couldn’t agree on who got to go.”

Hmm. I looked around some more, my initial fright at being
on the moon
fading. Funny how quickly you can get used to something. Now, weren’t there supposed to be some aliens about, bent on Earth domination? Come to think of it, there was a whole lot of landscape and nothing remotely alien-looking in sight. Anywhere.

Deerhurst had now joined Cecily and both the Fae. They were all talking in hushed voices and none of them looked happy. I drifted closer, followed by Jonathan.

“Problem?” he asked.

Deerhurst frowned. “These were the coordinates and the time given by the one transmission we received. Perhaps we were mistaken.”

“Or maybe it is a distraction!” The Unseelie Fae snapped. “A plot to learn of our weaknesses before destroying us!”

“Why would they ask us to meet if they intended to destroy us without talking?” Cecily retorted. “We must have misunderstood the transmission.”

“Nonesense,” the Seelie Fae joined in. “The Fae were extremely methodical in checking the coordinates. Unless you think that the
vampires
made a mistake?”

Things were quickly disintegrating into an insult free-for-all. I listened for a while, learning some very interesting new racial slurs, but grew bored with all the posturing. I decided to take home a souvenir. Something to show the girls when I was old and gray and could say words like “aliens” and “moon rock” and they would shrug it off as “crazy old mom.”

There was a great looking rock right in the middle of where we had first appeared. I bent to pick it up and realized that there were numbers scratched into the ground beneath it.

“Umm, guys?” I tried to interrupt the growing argument.

“Perhaps you will feel differently after I
drain your blood
!” Cecily was crouched, fingers like claws, eyes completely black, ready to spring at the Unseelie Fae.

“Hel
loo
!” I said louder.

“Take one step, bloodsucker, and you’ll be able to use your head as a soccer ball!” A sword was pulled out of nowhere and held like someone who knew what they were doing and meant business.

“Stop it,
everyone
!” I yelled, pouring all the Voice into the command that I could.

There was silence and five heads slowly turned to look at me. Deerhurst and Jonathan were smirking. Cecily was looking ashamed of herself. I couldn’t guess what the two Fae were thinking. Or, at least, I really didn’t
want
to know what they were thinking. It didn’t look too friendly.

“Do you have a suggestion, Mrs. Cavanaugh?” Deerhurst asked politely.

I held out the moon rock I had found. “I found this,” I started and was interrupted by one of the Fae. They looked so similar that when they were both scowling at me, I couldn’t tell them apart.

“Just like a
human
to be gathering souvenirs when the future of the world is at stake!”

“I’d like to
stake
you,” Cecily muttered, not soft enough to be unheard.

“Stop!” I commanded again before things could get out of hand. “This rock was right in the middle of where we appeared. Look at the ground underneath it.”

Four heads almost clacked together in their haste to examine the ground. Deerhurst was too cool for that and stood still, waiting for someone else to tell him what they were looking at. He caught my grin and gave me a wink. I got the feeling that, although he liked me, he would like eating me just as much.

“There are more coordinates written here!” Jonathan announced.

“And it appears another date,” Cecily added.

Deerhurst sighed. “Things are never easy, are they? Well, it seems that we will need to return to Earth and discuss things with the rest of the Synod.”

“How do we get home?” I asked, realizing that, if I really cared about the answer, I should have asked the question
before
I landed on the moon.

Deerhurst pulled out a palm-sized crystal. “We hold hands and all say
domus
.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked. I looked around. Everyone looked serious. “Come on guys, does no one else think that the WAND is
seriously
lacking in imagination?”

Jonathan made a face. “They have the Zipline. They make the rules. We’re just lucky they don’t decide that we all have to dance around a pole ‘sky-clad’ and sing the ABC’s.”

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Cecily groaned. “The chanting is bad enough.”

“Is any of this stuff really necessary for the ‘magic’ to work?” I asked.

One of the Fae shrugged. “Who knows? It works. Let’s get back to Earth and try to figure out our next step.”

I was between Cecily and Jonathan again. No one else wanted to hold hands with me. I refused to chant stupid faux Latin phrases and instead closed my eyes, clicked my heels and chanted, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

When I opened my eyes we were back on the top of the pyramid. Drat. I was hoping that if I pictured home in my head while I chanted, that I would arrive
there
and not have to climb back down the stupid pyramid. Did I say I thought Egypt was cool? I was so over that.

“Well?” It took me a moment to realize that Bastet was speaking aloud. Her whole body was quivering with curiosity. The WAND members were also waiting impatiently to hear our news.

“You weren’t gone long enough to negotiate,” one said, a look of horror crossing his face. “Does that mean that they are going to attack?”

Deerhurst shook his head. “They weren’t there.”

“What!?”

“The Synod will discuss the next step.”

Bastet appeared at my feet.
:You didn’t see any aliens?:

“Nope,” I crouched down to be at a closer eye level with her. “So what does that mean for your little prophecy?”

She closed her eyes.
:It doesn’t make sense. You were supposed to go to the moon and fix everything:

“Yeah, no pressure or anything. And when I say ‘anything,’ I mean like a plan, or a clue, or …” my sarcasm failed me.

She looked so crestfallen that I had to reassure her. “Don’t worry. It looks like there’s going to be a second trip. They picked up some new coordinates and a new date.”

Bastet stood up and ruffled her fur.
:You’ll have to go with them again, then:

I grimaced. “Anything you say, fluffy. Can we go home now?”

A gust of wind about knocked me off my feet. Deerhurst was gone and a giant winged shape was blotting out the stars as it flapped away. “Hmph,” I complained. “I notice that
he’s
not climbing down the pyramid.”

Cecily finished her conversation with Jonathan and joined us. “Are you ready to climb down?”

“Why can’t we just use the Zipline
here
to go home?” I asked. I wasn’t whining. Really.

“It’s not calibrated for that,” was the answer.

“Oh. Duh. Of course,” I said sarcastically. “Why didn’t I know that?”

Cecily gave me a blank look. “There is no reason for you to have known that.” I wasn’t sure if she was being dense on purpose to aggravate me, or if she had really missed my sarcasm.

She met my glare without blinking so I gave up and sighed. “Fine. Are you ready, your royal highness?” Bastet answered by leaping up on my shoulders. So help me, if she jabbed me
one more time
with those claws, I would drop her down the side of the pyramid.

I’m not going to talk about the climb down. It is not a pleasant memory. Climbing up was bad, but I could see where I was putting my hands and feet. Climbing down was like hanging over an abyss, feet dangling, and letting go with the hope that there is another block inches, or feet, below that will stop your bone-crushing fall. I
might
have said some things that were not appropriate for children’s ears. I usually try to watch my language and never say words that I wouldn’t want to hear my toddlers saying. In this instance, I was secure in the knowledge that they were half a world away, so I let it rip.

When I finally reached the ground I got that weird feeling when you think there’s another step but you’re actually on the landing, and I fell flat on my face. Bastet hopped off hissing.