Billy: Messenger of Powers (20 page)

Billy looked up, and saw only a starry sky above him. It had been day at school when he left, so it may have been that wherever he was, was simply located on the other side of the earth, where it would be dark. He didn’t think so, however. He’d never heard of anywhere on earth that had such color-changing sand.

Also, wherever he was, he could see three moons above him. One was blue, and cold and forbidding as ice. One was red, a deep furious color that made Billy feel as though he stood below an angry eye. The last was white, and had rings around it like Saturn, rings of every color that Billy could think of. The ringed moon was so close that it took up half the sky, and Billy felt as though he could reach out and touch it if he wished.

He looked down, between the sand at his feet and the bejeweled sky above, and saw dark mountains all around. He was in the center of a small valley that curved upwards on all sides so that Billy essentially stood in the middle of a huge stony bowl.

He turned around and around, marveling at the sights, and wondering if he was supposed to be doing something. Had his test already started? He had figured that this wouldn’t be like tests at school, where he just had to make sure to bring a “Number 2” pencil and he would then be given instructions. But for the life of him he couldn’t figure out if he was supposed to try to figure something out, or just stand where he was and wait.

“Mrs. Russet?” he called out.

His voice sounded strange, empty and weak, as though it was only traveling a short distance before being snuffed out by some unseen force. If he screamed, he knew, the sound would not travel past his own ears. If he was in trouble, he could not expect help to find him.

“Mrs. Russet!” he hollered again, this time a bit more anxiously. He had heard her voice when he first came here, he knew it. So where was she?

“Mrs. RUSS—” he started, but this time was surprised by the sudden appearance of his history teacher. She was dressed all in brown, as she had been on the Diamond Dais. But this time she did not wear her cloak with the history of earth etched upon it in moving threads. Rather, she wore a simple robe, almost like a toga. He also saw that she, too, was surrounded by the strange thin blue glow that enveloped Billy.

“It’s the testing robe,” she said, in response to Billy’s questioning look at her attire. Her voice, too, sounded strangely disconnected, far away and thin. The teacher waved a hand. “I know, it’s old fashioned, but the Powers do go in for traditional looks on some things.”

She looked around, pursing her lips. “Well, this is a pretty place, if I do say so my self.”

“If you say so yourself?” Billy asked. “Did you
make
this place?”

Mrs. Russet shrugged. “I know, the shifting color sand may seem a bit gaudy to some, but as a Brown Power it’s so rare that I get to indulge in an all-out display of color.” She picked up a handful of the sand at their feet and let it sift through her fingers, watching as the tiny particles shifted through their range of color as they fell.

Billy saw that the sand fell somewhat slower than he had expected it would, drifting featherlike to the ground below.

“Where is this place?” he asked.

Mrs. Russet reluctantly shifted her gaze to him. “I already told you, it’s the place of your first test.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Make a sand castle or something?”

Mrs. Russet pursed her lips. Billy felt like smacking himself. Who did he think he was talking to? This was the Brown Councilor, one of the six strongest Powers in the world! More important, it was his toughest-grading teacher! So how could he even think of being sarcastic to her?

Mrs. Russet apparently was thinking along the same lines, since she said, “That’s quite enough of that tone, Mr. Jones. Unless you’d like to be left here forever?”

She raised her hand dramatically above her head, as though about to disappear. “No, wait!” Billy cried.

Mrs. Russet dropped her hand. “Manners?” she asked. Billy nodded humbly. She nodded her approval in response. “As to your question of what you must do for the test,” she said, “first and foremost, you must survive.”

At this, Mrs. Russet clapped her hands.

“
Survive
?” hollered Billy. He probably would have said it again, but what happened next was so stupendous and frightening it took his breath away.

The color-shifting sand beneath his feet started to pulse rhythmically, rising and falling as though it covered a huge giant who was breathing deeply. Then the sand at the center of the small valley started to swirl around and around, like a whirlpool. The whirlpool increased in intensity, and a hole started to open up in its center. The whirlpool grew wider and wider, steadily expanding until it was only a few feet from Billy and Mrs. Russet. Mrs. Russet started to move away from it. Billy didn’t follow for a moment, dumbfounded.

“I would seriously consider stepping away from the edge,” said Mrs. Russet, her dry tones goading Billy to movement. “It’s going to be quite deep.”

Billy managed to move, stumbling backward over red-green-yellow-blue sand, not daring to look where he was going, attention riveted by the display unfolding before him.

The whirlpool of sand continued swirling and whirling, until it was as wide as a football field. Billy looked down the funnel that the whirlpool had created, and saw that it went down as far as the eye could see.

“Mr. Jones?” said Mrs. Russet.

“Yeah?” answered Billy, his gaze still planted firmly on the sand vortex that spun downward to infinity.

“Mr. Jones, pay attention!” she snapped. Billy turned to face his teacher. “Good. Your attention is critical for this—and, indeed, every—test. I am your Sponsor, so I will tell you a bit of what is going to happen.”

“Thank you,” mumbled Billy. In his amazement and fear at what had just happened, he had momentarily forgotten that he was there for a test. Now he did his best to ignore the eddying sand behind him and focus on Mrs. Russet as she continued to speak.

“As you may have guessed, you are not on Earth,” she said. Billy didn’t respond. He
had
guessed that, but didn’t think it was a good time to show how smart he was. Besides, a two-year-old would have been able to tell that this wasn’t Earth. “Where you are,” continued Mrs. Russet, “is a small meteor created in another galaxy expressly for the purposes of this test.”

“How are we breathing?” asked Billy. “I mean, there’s no air in space, right?”

Mrs. Russet nodded. “Indeed,” she said. She pointed at the pale blue glow that surrounded both her and Billy. “This is an air supply,” she said. “The point of this test is to see if you have any control over the Element of Earth, so I have isolated you from everything else as much as possible. There is no water here, no life other than you and me, no fire, and no air other than this little bit that surrounds us. And that will be gone within a few minutes, so you will have only a limited time to pass this test.”

“So what do I do? What’s the test?” demanded Billy, his sudden nervousness at the prospect of suffocating on a meteor in another galaxy lending desperation to his question.

“Again,” answered Mrs. Russet, “the primary objective is to survive.”

“But survive
what
?” asked Billy again.

“Survive that,” answered his teacher, nodding over Billy’s shoulder.

Billy turned around, and his face grew pale.

Up out of the maelstrom of swirling sand, something had appeared. Something terrible and ugly, massive and strong. At first all Billy could see was two long legs, pulling the monster up from the bottom of the sand whirlpool at the center of the valley. Each leg was as long as a bus, with eight joints that allowed the legs to bend as flexibly as a monkey’s tail. The legs were a deep gray, thick and gnarled, and Billy could tell instantly that they were made of some kind of stone. The legs had no feet. Rather, each leg ended in a single, wickedly curved stone claw: a nasty hook that tapered to a sharp point.

The two legs sank their claw-feet into the mouth of the maelstrom, hauling up the beast that was behind them. The two front legs were followed by two more, then two more, then two more. When it had finally pulled itself to the surface of the vortex, Billy could make out a total of ten legs along the rock beast’s thick body. The horrible fiend looked like a great scorpion, but each leg had one of those terrible curved claws in place of a foot, and the monster’s body was the size of an eighteen-wheeler big rig.

Like a scorpion, the beast had a tail, and the tail was articulated so as to allow it to curve in any direction. Rather than a scorpion’s barb, however, the tail ended in a trio of spikes that pointed in three different directions. Billy could tell just by looking at it that the three spikes would enable the beast to strike someone standing in front of it, by stabbing forward over its head—or where a head would have been if it had had a head—as well as allowing it to skewer attackers that stood on either side by sweeping the tail back and forth and using the two spears that pointed to its right and left.

Billy did what he thought was sensible under the circumstances. He did his best to faint. Then, in the middle of the action—he’d actually gotten his eyes to roll back in their sockets and was halfway to the ground—he thought that fainting might not be a good idea after all: who knew what a giant ten-legged rock scorpion would do? Maybe it would leave him alone. But then, maybe it would eat him, and if that happened Billy wanted to be awake to at least try to make a run for it.

Billy knew that in space, there was no air, so no sound could travel, and therefore he was surprised that he could hear the sound of the scorpion’s ten legs thudding against the earth as it turned to face him. Then he realized that the vibrations were traveling through the sand, and through the very bones of his body. He gulped as the massive stone that constituted the monster’s head turned a baleful glare upon him. The beast had no eyes, but its rock-head was pitted and cratered in such a way as to make it appear as though the scorpion had dozens of them. All of them were staring their blindly unblinking gaze at Billy, and to make the horrific image complete, there were two car-length mandibles on the bottom of the thing’s head. Billy couldn’t see a mouth, so he knew that those serrated jaws would have no other purpose than to tear, rend, and destroy.

The monster was on the other side of the vortex, the subterranean sand tornado standing between it and Billy. Billy didn’t have any time to be relieved, however, for at that instant the whirlpool stopped its motion, and the many-colored sand rose back up again to a level plane.

Billy turned to run, and found that he had already gone as far as he could go: the bare stone cliff face that surrounded all sides of this valley was right behind him. He swung back to face the hideous rock scorpion, and saw it scuttling towards him with huge lumbering strides that were surprisingly lithe and quick coming from a monster made of what must be over twenty tons of rock.

The monster reared up on its back four legs, its mandibles snapping against one another so hard that tiny plumes of dust flew up from them each time it happened. It was only a few feet away, and Billy threw up his hands in a futile protective gesture as the monster threw itself forward, its front legs arcing in to hook into Billy’s flesh on both sides before tearing him apart.

Billy closed his eyes and waited for certain death.

And, surprisingly, certain death didn’t come.

He opened his eyes. The scorpion was as still as…well…stone. Its two front legs were only a few feet away on either side of Billy, but the monster was utterly motionless, appearing to be suddenly lifeless. It was as though some insane sculptor had crafted the nightmare creation, decided very sensibly that no one would buy it, and had catapulted it into space where it came to rest on this lonely rock.

Billy couldn’t believe his luck. Then he realized that Mrs. Russet—whom Billy had quite forgotten about in the terror of coming face-to-face (or face-to-rock) with the monster—was staring at him. She was tapping her foot impatiently in the sand, tiny puffs of dust coming up in a beautiful rainbow of particles before settling to the ever-changing ground.

“Are you quite finished?” she asked.

“But…I mean…that is…,” was all Billy could say. He felt, deep inside, that any terrified running and/or screaming and/or almost fainting he may have just done was totally justified under the circumstances. Apparently Mrs. Russet thought differently, though. She had the irritated look of a person caught in the checkout line of a supermarket behind someone who has coupons for everything and wanted to pay for it all with bags of uncounted pennies.

“Now, as I was saying,” she said when Billy had managed to stop himself from blathering, “this test is the Test of Earth. This creature,” she said, gesturing at the rock scorpion, “is a Fizzle. A Fizzle—”

“I know what a Fizzle is!” said Billy, almost triumphantly. “Ivy told me. When we were in the anteroom. It’s…,” he furrowed his brow, trying to remember exactly what Ivy had said. “It’s a non-living creature that some of the Powers can make out of their Element, right?”

Mrs. Russet nodded. “Very good, Mr. Jones. But I suspect she did not tell you quite everything about Fizzles. For instance, each Fizzle requires some energy on the part of its maker. Right now, I am concentrating on two things: holding this rock scorpion together, and keeping it from moving.”