The Misadventures of Annika Brisby (47 page)

“Konstantin brought you back from the dead!” Runa went on, helping him to raise her friend to a sitting position. Yuri seemed confused, but she had noticed that all the bite wounds on her own arms were completely gone. She looked up at Konstantin, and he gazed at her softly.

“Did you know that I kept every letter you ever sent me?” he asked, and a smile spread across both of their faces. “I have them all with me in my saddlebag. I read them every chance I get.”

“I kept yours too,” Yuri said, still looking delirious. “I read them every day.”

“My love for you must have brought you back from the dead. Nothing else could have done such a thing,” he murmured. This time he kissed her so passionately that the others respectfully turned around, towards the menacing cave. A teenage girl was kneeling over Draganos and his decapitated wife, with Talvi’s arrow still in the chest that she was crouched over. Loud wails came from behind her long brown hair.

“Which one of you did this?” she shrieked hysterically, covered in their blood. “Which one of you murdered my mother and father?” Hilda and Justinian helped Finn up to his feet while Takeshi and Natari led them over to the girl with his sword still in his hand. She didn’t try to run away from them, although she fought with Talvi bitterly as he caught her thin arms.

“You’ll be our little tour guide,” he said, immune to her attempts at escape. “If you’re the daughter of Draganos and Zagora, then you
definitely
know what we’re here for.”

the Pazachi’s invention

The girl struggled as Talvi began tying her hands behind her back, but his strength was too much for her. She glared at him with her icy blue eyes and dug her heels into the ground, but he only pushed her ahead. Annika tried not to cry as she saw a few women holding their sobbing children tightly, and they backed away from the group as they filed through. Sariel seemed incredibly disturbed as well, but she kept her sword ready in her hand as they delved deeper into the cave, leaving Natari and Takeshi to guard the survivors.

“Well, which way?” Justinian asked. The girl said nothing. Talvi jerked her around to face him, his eyes piercing hers. Annika knew that he was reading her mind, but for having just killed her father, he didn’t act very sympathetic. The girl glanced at his quiver of blue-tipped arrows strapped to his back.

“
You’re
the one who killed my parents!” she hissed. “I’ll have my revenge, mark my words!”

“Do you really expect me to be afraid of a naïve little thing like you?” he said without a shred of remorse. “Why, you’re just a little girl with a big mouth. You’re not even a woman yet, so I doubt there’s much you’re capable of.” The girl’s eyes opened wide as if she were ready to scream, but she said nothing. He pointed the opposite direction they had been walking.

“She was leading us the wrong way,” he announced. “It’s down the way we came, to the right.”

They wandered into a large bare room. The only things inside of it were the eerie looking mineral deposits that Finn had been so knowledgeable about at the vampire’s cave. Dardis and Chivanni flitted high above their heads, lighting the room with their blue and orange lights. There was indeed a strange wheel made of glittering red and blue stones, spinning quickly with an elaborate series of blue and red gears turning on both sides. In the center of the wheel was nothing, but as Annika and the others drew near, she saw that there was definitely something inside of it. The only thing she could compare it to was the swirl of soapy water when she used to blow giant bubbles with the children she baby sat on the army bases. The circle had a shiny, wet look to it, with swirls of color passing across the strange frame in which it was held. On either side of the bizarre wheel were twenty stones on their own pillar, with elaborate writing next to each of them. Healed by Justinian’s magic powers, Finn stepped close to read them.

“Dardis, come close, will you? I think I can read what this says,” he said. The blue-haired fairy zipped down and hovered near the stone, giving him plenty of light to read by.

“These say…these stones represent all of the gates that have been shut down. I think…” He wandered to the stones on the other side of the wheel and Dardis followed him. “I think…ah, yes. Here is the one from your cave,” he said to Hilda as he pointed to a stone near the back. “This was the last one to be closed.”

“Then what is this big wheel for?” Zaven asked. “Does it say anything about what it is?”

Finn scratched his head, reading the inscriptions next to each stone.

“It says this is the gate that leads to all gates. But it doesn’t say how to operate it.”

Justinian took possession of Talvi’s young prisoner.

“Your father built it, didn’t he? Surely you know how it works,” he demanded, trying his best to look intimidating. But the angry girl just sneered boldly at the large knight, completely unafraid.

“He never showed me,” she spat, glaring at Talvi. Her eyes glanced over to Annika’s left hand before resuming her hateful stare at him. But something had changed; now there was a gleam in her expression that shone just as bright as the platinum rings they wore.

“She’s not lying, not this time,” Talvi said. “She doesn’t know how to operate it. She knows that it’s made of gold and sapphire and ruby, if that helps you at all.” Finn held his chin in his hand, perplexed at the strange riddle of the wheel before them. Annika touched her wedding band, and had a thought.

“Chivanni, do you know where the diamond from my old ring is?” she asked him. He jammed his hand into a bag he was wearing over his shoulder and pulled it out, proudly holding it in front of him in his little hands. He was still hovering over the wheel with Dardis, lighting the room for everyone. The diamond looked even larger, being held in his tiny hands.

“I kept it because it’s so beautiful,” he breathed. “Look at it sparkle! It’s so pretty.” Annika ignored his remark, having just had been struck by a thought that made total sense to her.

“I just remembered something you told me at our wedding. You said magic couldn’t alter a diamond.”

“Yes, I’m afraid I can’t make it larger or smaller. It’s a pity. I would like to make dozens more of them,” Chivanni lamented while he gazed at the enchanting stone.

“But,” Annika said slowly. “If magic can’t alter a diamond, could a diamond alter magic?” Chivanni’s eyes grew wide and before she could ask him any more questions, Dardis spoke up.

“Give it back to Annika! It’s not yours to keep!” she demanded, holding out her little hand authoritatively. Chivanni backed away, fluttering his wings. Dardis reached her own little hands around the glittering stone and struggled with him. Chivanni whined while she argued with him, until they bumped into a stalactite, where it fell into the precious stone gears and was crushed to dust instantly.

“Stop playing around, you two, and just give it back!” Nikola said angrily, wincing as they bumped into a few more stalactites. They too fell into the gears and were crushed to nothing. The fairies were battling it out with each other, zigging and zagging back and forth in the air over everyone’s heads. They finally broke apart, looking at each other with confused expressions before noticing their empty hands. Neither of them had been victorious.

“
Oh no
!” Chivanni cried as he and everyone else watched the diamond fall right for the gears. Annika gasped, fearing that it would meet the same fate as the stalactites had. The whirring gears made a horrible crunch and jammed in place. The clear, soapy circle began to grow cloudy and dark at once.

“What did you do?” Zaven huffed angrily. “You two broke the machine, and now we’ll never know how to make it work!” Finn was frowning, but not in anger or irritation. The cloudy circle grew even darker, like a thick grey fog was lying behind it.

“They
did
break it…” he said slowly. “Diamonds are harder than sapphire or ruby. It’s harder and stronger than anything in existence. Perhaps Annika is right. Perhaps a diamond
can
alter magic!”

Annika gasped as a woman flew out of the giant murky circle, followed by another woman, and then at least a dozen other people before a tall man with curly blond hair fell through. He crawled to his hands and knees as a deer bounded over him, nearly landing on his back. He rolled off to one side and Yuri and Talvi’s eyes grew wide.

“Asbjorn! Are you alright?” the twins asked as they rushed over to help him up. The tall blond had barely enough time to stand before a shorter, dark-haired man was thrown out of the wheel.

“Pavlo, is it really you?” Konstantin cried. All the people that had been trapped on the other sides of the portals were now being spewed out in the order in which they went missing. More animals and even a few birds fell on the floor of the cave, scampering and flying away quickly towards the forest in a flurry of feathers and tails. Everyone scrambled about, trying to pull every person out of the way as more and more people were thrown from the void. At last it seemed the jewel-encrusted gate had emptied itself of all who had gone missing. Then Annika felt her ears plug up as the air pressure changed. The natural balance of the portals that had existed for all eternity was beginning to rectify itself.

“Annika!” called Talvi, while he desperately clutched her against his chest, but it was of no use. She was being pulled by a giant vacuum into the dark circle. She frantically looked to Talvi for help, but his terrified face was being encased in blackness. She reached out for him, and then suddenly there was no sound at all. She couldn’t even scream for help. It felt as though she’d dived too deep under water; her inner ears threatened to explode, and she was aware of something faint in the distance, but no clear sounds reached her ears. She hit her shoulder on something very, very hard before landing on her side. There was a foul, sour smell polluting the air, like cat piss and old garbage. There were strange noises bombarding her, sounds that struggled to identify their familiarity. She opened her eyes.

She was lying on concrete.

the girl who fell to Earth

Annika cautiously wiggled each of her fingers and toes, making sure she hadn’t broken any bones, and slowly rose to her feet. There was blood trickling from a gash on her left shoulder, but it wasn’t life-threatening. Looking around, she found herself in an alley beside a vacant lot in the coldest hours of the early morning. There was a dumpster just a few steps away; it was probably what she’d cut her shoulder on. As she stumbled around the corner, the signs labeling the buildings came as a relief to her. They were all in French.

Of the few languages I can understand, thank goodness this is one of them!
she thought in relief. She wasn’t even halfway down the block when she found a small café. She ducked inside and headed straight for the bathroom, trying to act as normal as she possibly could, but she still got some startling looks along the way. When she glanced at her reflection in the mirror, she knew why immediately. Her left sleeve was half covered in blood, and there were mud and blood spatters all over her face. Her amulet from Dragana was covered as well as most of her body. Her shoes were caked in mud and grass, and she was still wearing the sword at her hip, though it was hidden from view by her cloak. She locked the door and carefully removed her sword, cloak, and backpack, then took out her Fairy Poppins box and tucked them inside. She was half expecting it not to work on this side of the portal, but they disappeared without any trouble. When she inspected her shoulder, she saw that the wound had stopped bleeding and was now beginning to close up. She stripped down to her underwear, turned on the water, and splashed it up onto her face and her shoulder as best as she could. The gash was healing, but still painful. She took off her necklace and rinsed it under the faucet until the water ran clear. The garnet and sapphire looked dead under the fluorescent lights, as if their power had been used up.

Her hands rummaged through her bag in search of a clean pair of pants and a black t-shirt that was way too big to be her own. Her eyes began to water as she slipped it over her head and inhaled deeply of cinnamon and sweat. Talvi’s scent had stayed with the fabric, and now it triggered all of the thoughts that she’d pushed to the side for too long. The white letters on the front of the shirt caught her attention in the mirror, and she smiled for a moment as she read,
I’m huge in Japan
. It dissolved with the hot tears that immediately began to overflow. She knew she’d never again be the same person that she was just days ago, just hours ago, even ten minutes ago. She had a lover, in some realm. She had friends and a family history in that place. She’d developed a strange ability to heal herself, and her five senses were more acute than ever before. But she’d also killed in the name of battle, and being from a military family didn’t make it as easy to accept as she used to think it would. She wished she could erase the sight of those that had died in front of her, but they kept ambushing her thoughts.

She finally ventured back out to the café, where she dug around her pocket for one of Finn’s tiny rings to buy a cup of coffee. She asked the clerk where the nearest place to exchange silver and gold might be. The man behind the counter wouldn’t take the strange currency, and probably served her out of pity. She sat at a little table in the corner with her hot coffee and stared at the ring on her left finger.

Did this just really happen to me?
she thought.
I’m always having dreams that I bring something back with me, and each time I wake up, it’s gone. But it can’t be a dream, not when I have this.

She tugged at the ring a little, but like before, it only pulled her skin painfully. It hadn’t even been a quarter of an hour since she was standing beside Talvi and her other friends. Annika finished her coffee and began walking down the sidewalk, arriving at the small coin shop right as it opened for the day.

The sleepy clerk at the counter didn’t ask many questions, much to her relief, and eventually gave her two thousand Euros before sending her on her way. She was grateful for so much cash, but it would only get her so far. She could easily visualize her passport sitting on the nightstand in the second bedroom of Vince’s house. Stopping by a small sidewalk vendor’s booth, she bought a calling card and asked where the nearest hotel was.

Around the corner and nine blocks later, she was standing in the lobby of a posh hotel, the kind of place where everything was polished and immaculate and real, right down to the marble tiles. She shook her head as she realized she’d asked for the nearest hotel, not the cheapest. When she walked up to the front desk to get a room, the hotel manager himself appeared out of nowhere to inquire what she needed with no hospitality whatsoever. She glanced in a full-length mirror at herself, and understood why she’d received such prejudice. She looked like a broke Euro-trash hitchhiker, wearing the wrong thing and not fitting in at all. Just as the front desk manager was about to escort her out, she came up with an excuse about grabbing the wrong bag at the airport. Without hesitation the manager took care of her arrangements himself. In the meantime she dialed her parents’ phone number from the front desk; she was in too much of a hurry to make the call from her room.

“Uhh?” A deep voice groaned. “Whoisit?”

“Dad? Dad? It’s me, Annika?”

“What the…
Annika
? Is that really you, honey? Are you alright? Where are you?” she heard her mother growing hysterical in the background.

“Don’t worry dad, I’m okay!” she assured him. “I swear I’m fine. I haven’t been near a phone in months.”

“
Where are you
?” her mother screeched, having taken the phone from her husband.

“I’m in Paris,” she said, looking around the hotel until she found the name embossed on the doors.

“
Paris
?” the hysterical voice cried. “What happened? Where have you
been
? Are you safe?”

“Yeah mom, I’m fine, I need you to call Vince and tell him that I’m okay, but I need my passport to get out of here,” she said, trying to comfort them.

“Where have you
been
?”

“I…I can’t really explain over the phone, Mom. I don’t think I have that many minutes on this card.”

“I don’t care! How did you end up in Paris? Stay right there, and I’ll come get you!”

“I’m at
l’ hotel de Regent on rue Dauphine
. I’ll be waiting for you here.”

“I don’t want you to hang up! Oh please tell me that you’re safe and sound!” her mother said while choking back tears.

“I promise Mom, nothing bad happened to me. I’ll tell you everything when I see you. I promise!” She hung up, feeling bad that she couldn’t talk longer. She didn’t know what she would say when she saw her family as it was, not to mention the possibility of upsetting them more to know their missing daughter was reportedly running around Paris, out of her mind on hallucinogenic drugs.
Hello Mom and Dad…I fell into a broken portal and I’ve been hanging out with nymphs and elves and trolls and vampires for the past two months in a parallel universe. Sorry I haven’t called. They don’t have phones.
No, that wouldn’t do at all. They would show up with a team of emergency personnel brandishing syringes and straightjackets.

Still carrying her backpack, Annika followed the hotel manager to her room. He opened the doors to reveal the elegant quarters, with the windows letting in bright sunshine. There was a vase of fresh flowers on a little table, where a room service menu was set on the linen tablecloth.

“A bath has been drawn for you, mademoiselle,” he said. “And if there is anything you would like during your stay, please do not hesitate to ask.” With no hesitation whatsoever, she ordered a bottle of red wine, roast duck with boiled potatoes, asparagus, and cheesecake for dessert to be brought up in an hour. He nodded and left quickly, and she tossed her bag onto the bed, anxious for that bath.

She sank into the water, exhausted. It stung her shoulder, which was starting to heal at an expedient rate, and she was barely aware of her rich surroundings. The puffy down comforter and pillows on the queen sized bed didn’t really matter, as long as it was clean and warm. Lying in the soothing heat of the water, she tried to relax, but she kept seeing lightning bolts flying through the sky as weapons, and then turning the sky purple as her body was flooded with pain. She saw horned helmets sprayed in blood, and a girl crying over her parents’ warm bodies. It was the most unpleasant and non-relaxing bath she’d ever experienced in her life, and therefore it wasn’t that long before she got out and wrapped herself up in a soft robe provided by the hotel. There was a knock at the door. It was her dinner, carried in on a silver platter and laid carefully upon the table beside the window that overlooked the city. That must have been one hell of a tip she’d given the manager.

She sat down to eat, but couldn’t stand the silence. It allowed her imagination to run too wild, replaying the past few months over and over. She couldn’t stop seeing those green eyes with blue centers, or feeling her sword plunge into the body of a crazy Pazachi man and woman. She drank a full glass of wine before trying any of her dinner, desperate to numb the painful memories. She finished most of the bottle while she devoured the potatoes and asparagus, but after a couple bites of the perfectly roasted duck, she felt ill. Seriously ill. The rest of the night was spent watching television and throwing up, and it was definitely not the wine.

Early the next morning there was a knock at her door. She still felt nauseous, despite all the sleep she’d gotten.

“
Mademoiselle
, I am so sorry to disturb you at such an hour, but there are some people here to see you; they say it’s most urgent,” the voice said from outside the door. When she opened it, there stood her mom, dad and Uncle Vince. Her family hugged her tight, crying profusely. She started to cry too. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what they had gone through, wondering if she’d been kidnapped or killed, or joined a cult in Croatia.

“Where have you been for the past two months?” her father asked.

“Were you kidnapped?” her mother asked.

“Did you run away?” Vince asked.

She took a deep breath. She hadn’t thought up that perfect little lie that could excuse her absence, so she proceeded to tell them that yes, she’d fallen into a broken portal and had been hanging out with wood nymphs, fairies, elves and vampires for the past two months in a parallel universe. She conveniently left out the bit about killing a few demented nature-nut extremists, but she did say she was married, and showed them how her ring wouldn’t come off her finger.

“Annika…” her mother began, but she couldn’t finish her sentence. Instead, she sank into a chair with a distressed expression consuming her. Annika glanced at her uncle, expecting him to be wearing his typical lackadaisical grin now that he knew his niece was safe, but he only looked concerned.

“I think what your mother is trying to say, is that this is a bit much for us to handle right now,” her dad said. “The important thing is that you’re not hurt.”

“But I can prove it. I took pictures,” she said, and went to get her camera out of her backpack, which was sitting near the bed at the other end of the room. She dug around for a few moments, unable to find it, and then resorted to dumping out the entire contents on the down comforter. She unzipped every compartment, but the only thing she discovered was that her little music player was absent as well. She glanced at the ring on her left hand and immediately knew who had them.

“That has got to be the most elaborate story I think have ever heard,” her dad said in a bewildered voice, but he didn’t accuse her of lying. He was examining a few of the gold rings that she hadn’t given to the coin shop. They were the only proof that she had, besides the Fairy Poppins box and its contents, which had left her family speechless when Annika gave them a demonstration of how it worked.

“This really happened, Dad. I would never just take off like that and not tell you!”

“Annika,” he paused, baffled at her excuse, “I think maybe we should keep this just between us.”

“Well I can’t lie to my own brother or my friends!”

“Just don’t tell the whole world, okay kiddo?” Her father smiled softly at her, but he still wasn’t convinced that she was mentally sound. After seeing the Fairy Poppins box in action, he wasn’t sure he was mentally sound, either.

“We’re all leaving tomorrow evening,” her mother interrupted before Annika could respond. “We bought you a plane ticket and Vince was thoughtful enough to bring all of your things with him.” Annika’s stomach dropped. “That was a terrible scare you gave us. I know it’s not your fault. I really don’t know what to think about it yet, but it’s time for you to come home.”

“But what about Talvi?” she asked. “He won’t know where I am.”

“I think that’s for the best,” her father said. He looked deeply upset. She started to explain that Talvi had protected her from the blood-drinking trees, and saved her from Vaj’s first attack during the birthday party, but the skepticism on her family’s faces made her give up as an uncomfortable sensation of reality struck her.

She’d somehow thought that she could simply go back to Vince’s cottage and wait for Talvi to come find her, or even go hiking again and try to find him, but that was hopeless. She was lost when she accidentally found the samodivi cave and crossed through the portal. And even if she went back to Europe, it would take Talvi weeks to return. He still had to cross the Sea of Forneus and get through the Mesoyadna Forest without getting killed. And if he did pass safely through the flesh-eating trees and the sirens and monster that lived deep in the sea, they’d met each other in the oldest part of Sofia. He didn’t know that Vince lived in a cottage outside the city. Tracking her down would take an eternity.