Chapter 8

New Version (as of 2/8/20):

"You awake?" Bear asked, softly.

"Yes," Sarah said.

"Whuh?" Georgie asked, sleepily. She groaned. "Oh, my legs are all cramped up. Do you think we'll stop soon?"

"It'll probably be another couple of hours," Bear said.

"I can't stay in this position for hours," Georgie said.

Jane heard her moving around, and then felt a boot against her leg.

"Sorry!" Georgie said. She made more shuffling noises, and then sighed. "That's better. Janie, you awake?"

Jane heart sped up. She was awake but she didn't want to be a part of whatever conversation was about to happen. She just wanted everyone to go back to sleep so that she could think for a minute.

"Jane can sleep through anything," Sarah said. "Jane. You awake?" she asked, raising her voice.

Jane tried to breathe evenly, and hoped that they didn't re-light the lantern, otherwise they would be able to see that she was wide awake.

"See?" Sarah said.

"I can't see anything," Georgie said. "But at least I'm more comfortable. Bear, Janie says you're suuuper old. Were you there when the world began?"

Bear chuckled. "I don't think I'm that old, but I have been around for a long time. Is there anything in particular that you want to know?"

"Mmm…" Georgie said. "Janie says there was a magical girl with a thousand auras and she saved the world."

"Ah," Bear said. "Actually, there was a girl, and her name was Aura. She had the ability to travel between worlds."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked. "There's only one world."

"Okay," Bear said. "So think of our world, but with a slight difference, like if Georgie's parents had been stone masons or nomads instead of shoemakers, would she still be a shoemaker?"

"Yes." Georgie said. "Maybe. What else would I do?"

"Oh, I imagine you could do a great many things," Bear said, amusement in his voice.

"Not me," Sarah said. "Iron is in my bones, fire in my blood. I can't imagine doing anything but smithing."

"Okay, but what if your ancestors had settled in another town, or if they'd even been born in another kingdom? Your life might be fairly similar or completely different, even if you ended up being a blacksmith."

"Okay," Sarah said. "So?"

"So imagine that there are multiple worlds, exactly like ours, and on those worlds, all of those possibilities play out."

"Are those the stars?" Georgie asked. "Cool…"

Bear laughed. "Not exactly, but if that helps, then imagine that each star is a world exactly like ours except that the history of the world is slightly different, and there's a different version of you on each of those stars."

"Wow," Georgie said. "I'd want to meet all of the other mes."

Bear laughed again. "Great. So, there was this girl named Aura, and she had the ability to -- let's say -- travel to different stars and meet the other versions of herself. And they could travel to each others' worlds."

"Sounds like a mess," Sarah said.

"Sounds amazing!" Georgie said. "Could I do that?"

"Of course not," Sarah snapped. "No one can. He's making this up." She sighed. "I'm surprised at you, Bear. Do you really believe this story?"

"I don't know that I believe it," Bear said, his tone thoughtful. "I just know the story. Do you want to hear it?"

"Yes," Georgie said.

"I guess," Sarah said.

"Okay. So, this girl Aura, was from our planet, before The Rift."

"The Rift didn't really happen," Sarah said.

"Of course it did," Georgie said. "How else could you explain why some kingdoms have skyscrapers and then others are stuck building houses out of mud and straw?"

"Money," Sarah said flatly.

Georgie snorted. "Shut up. I want to hear about Aura. Bear?"

Bear laughed. "May I continue, Sarah?"

"I guess." She sighed. "Janie really buys this stuff?"

"Stories help us make sense of our world, even if they're not true," Bear said. "I think Jane likes the stories. I couldn't tell you if she believes them."

Sarah seemed to accept this. "Fine," she said. "Proceed."

Jane could see the faint trace of Bear's smile. "Aura grew up in a world not very much different from ours, but her kingdom had a much more advanced technology than ours. When she was quite young, she figured out that she could travel to different worlds. Not all worlds are like ours -- or hers -- but some are. When she first started travelling, she only traveled to very different worlds."

"Like what kind of different?" Georgie asked.

"Worlds with three suns, or worlds where the inhabitants were intelligent, gelatinous blobs, or worlds where the people were smaller than her fingernail, or worlds where they were as big as skyscrapers, or worlds where they were half-horses, or intelligent moths, or worlds that didn't have any intelligent life but they were small enough that she could follow a sunset for hours."

"Wow," Georgie said. "I would want to visit that world."

"That was one of her favorites," Bear said. "She would go there to think."

"Wouldn't people worry if she just disappeared for hours on end?" Sarah asked.

"The greatest thing about being able to travel was that Aura could return to her own world at the exact moment that she left. If people were paying attention, it might appear like she -- flickered out and then into existence, but since that's impossible, they would play it off as a trick of the light or their eyes or attention."

"She didn't age?" Sarah asked. "Or get burned up by the radiation of three suns?"

"She didn't age unless she was on her own world," Bear confirmed. "And she was protected from any natural difference of the world, like if the world had too much radiation or the air was gas or water or what-have-you."

"So she was invincible?" Georgie asked.

"It was more like having an extreme adaptability to any environment. She reacted to the world like any other inhabitant would, albeit with a higher immunity to disease and poison than most inhabitants."

"Okay," Sarah said. "So how did she save the world?"

"When she was sixteen, the world, which was our planet was split into four equal parts. They had the technology to create a full and healthy atmosphere for each quarter of the planet. This separation was called The Rift."

"Why did they want to do this?" Georgie asked.

"Money," Bear replied flatly, echoing Sarah's earlier statement. Money and power," he amended. He sighed. "Anyway, Aura became aware of this plan. Not in time to stop it, but in time to make sure that it only happened on her world, not in any of the parallel universes."

"How?" Sarah asked.

"She gathered up a thousand Auras from a thousand parallel universes. Each world that the Auras lived on had this technology called 'slush'. The technology was advanced enough that it looked like magic, and nobody knew where it came from. Those few who even knew about it understood that it predated written history, but not how it came to be."

"What did the technology do?" Georgie asked.

"Slush was really tiny particles, think like sand. If you add water to sand, it'll stick together and you can form it into different shapes."

"Like a sandcastle." Georgie said.

"Or a mud hut," Sarah added.

"Yes," Bear said. "Except that slush wasn't activated by water, it was activated by your mind. So, say you had a pile of slush in your hand. If you wanted it to be a rose, it would form into the exact rose you had in your mind. But again, it wouldn't just be the shape of the rose. It would smell like a rose, it would have the same physical properties of a rose. It would be indistinguishable from a rose except that, if you wanted it to, it could become something else."

"So what does this slush have to do with the story?" Sarah asked.

"The Auras figured out that slush was the way that the atmospheres could be recreated for each planet. So, Auras on nine hundred and ninety-nine worlds gathered up all of the slush on their worlds, and brought it to our world. This would ensure that not only would The Rift be impossible on their worlds, but that the extra slush on our world would ensure that The Rift could happen without any loss of life. Without the extra slush, there would have been millions of 'acceptable losses'", Bear said, with a tinge of bitterness.

"Wow," Georgie said.

"Why didn't the Auras just get rid of all of the slush so that The Rift didn't happen at all?" Sarah asked.

"Where were they supposed to put it?" Bear asked. "They couldn't just dump it into a black hole without getting sucked in, and every other world they'd ever visited would have been ruined by that kind of technology. The way that Auras could travel through worlds was just to imagine a world, and if that world felt true, they could go there. None of the Auras could imagine a world where they could dump the slush where the slush wouldn't be exploited.

"So The Rift happened. The planet that ended up closest to the sun was called Summer, the furthest planet was called Winter, and the two in the middle were called Spring and Autumn. Aura lived on Summer and became a part of the government so that she could monitor the use of slush. After less than half a century, scientists were able to prove to the government that Summer was getting pulled into the sun's orbit too quickly, and Winter not enough. Both planets would die if they weren't able to reunite the worlds.

"Unfortunately, Summer and Winter had been at bitter war since The Rift. To be frank, they'd been at war much longer than that. It took decades to form a peace treaty. By this time, Aura was in her nineties. She was an expert on slush, but she knew that she couldn't control enough slush on her own in order to bring the worlds back together. So she gathered together the Auras who were still alive -- which, fortunately, was most of them -- and together, they brought the four worlds back together."

"Dang," Georgie said. "So, what happened to Aura?"

"I don't know," Bear admitted. "I assume that she died of old age pretty soon after The Reunion, if she even survived that."

"Hm." Sarah said. "What if she's still alive? What if she's the 'ancient evil' Janie is supposed to defeat?"

"Aura wasn't evil," Georgie protested. "She saved the world -- twice!"

Sarah snorted. "You think someone with that much power wouldn't have been corrupted by it? She can be the hero of the story because all of the people who would be here to disprove it would be dead. Besides, we don't know that she wasn't behind The Rift in the first place and then didn't realize her mistake until it was too late."

"That's stupid," Georgie said. "If she was evil, she could have just moved to Spring or Autumn and let Summer and Winter die."

"Who is to say she didn't?" Sarah said. "Maybe our planet is Spring or Autumn and someone just made up a story about reuniting the worlds."

Georgie huffed. "You can't -- what about -- ugh! You can't deny The Rift! The world is basically divided into four very disparate regions with vastly different levels of technology. The Rift is official history, confirmed by thousands of historians and scientists."

"Anyone can say anything," Sarah said dismissively.

Jane heard Georgie try to get her breath under control. "Bear," she said, her voice calmer but still irritated. "Like -- help."

Bear laughed. "It could just be a story," he said. He smiled at Georgie's grunt. "But to me, it rings true, and you get to decide if it rings true to you. In the end, it doesn't really matter, except in terms of putting your life in perspective. Whether the story is true or not doesn't change the fact that you are here now."

"But do you think that Aura was evil, like Sarah says?"

Bear was quiet for a moment. "I don't think so," he said, finally. "I think that she was probably a complicated person who had to make a series of tough decisions. I think that she probably hurt or offended people within her lifetime because it's impossible to live an entire lifetime without doing that. And maybe she should have been able to think of somewhere to dump the slush so that our would wouldn't have been put through The Rift.

"Or maybe, collecting all of the slush and bringing it to this world was a mistake. Maybe she shouldn't have interfered with The Rift on all of those other worlds. Who did she think she was, making that decision for the entire human race across a thousand worlds? Especially since over half of the world's populations at the time was in favor of it. More on some worlds, less on some."

"But --" Georgie broke off. "She did the right thing."

"Did she?" Bear asked, his voice quiet. His white eyelashes fluttered against the dark night sky. "Maybe."

Old Version:

Four horses are saddled and waiting just outside, saddlebags bulging. This explains where Bear has been all night. How did he know that we'd need to escape so quickly? Stupid question. Bear knows everything.

The soldier catches my arm and I turn back to her. "I can't go with you," she says, looking at the horses.

I don't have the heart to tell her that the fourth horse is for an invisible unicorn so I just nod.

She leans in close to me and whispers, "My grandmother used to talk to spirits."

"Oh -- um, okay," I say.

"There are places where the curtain walls open like this," she says, gesturing to the open passageway. She points to an iron anchor embedded in the wall next to the passageway. "You just press this and it'll open."

"Wow, okay, thank you," I say. I'm touched and chilled by the information.

She pushes me toward the horses. "Go, be safe. May the spirits travel with you," she says.

Ick, I hope they don't. "Thank you," I say. I moved toward the horses but then stop and turn back. "Wait," I call out. "What is your name?" I ask.

She has already re-entered the passage but she turns and laughs. "It doesn't matter," she says with a grin. The door slides closed between us.

I turn to Bear. "What a dramatic woman," I say. I thow my arms around him, suddenly so happy to see him. He laughs and hugs me back.

While the soldier and I were talking, Kate and Sarah have mounted two of the horses.

"Bear!" Kate calls out. "Glad to see you safe. I take it you arranged the horses."

Bear nods. "We need to go now," he says.

I nod, and mount one of the horses, and Bear takes the last one. "Follow me," he says. He takes the lead, Sarah and I are next, with Kate behind us.

"Lucky he showed up when he did," Sarah shouts, trotting next to me.

I nod and then focus on trying to stay on the horse. Moose isn't the most spirited animal and is getting older, so I rarely ride her anymore and I've never been on a different horse. This one's youthful energy is a bit difficult to manage. I fall behind Kate immediately.

I hear shouting behind us and see a dozen mercenaries run around the corner of the castle. They have spotted us. I kick the horse to spur him on and catch up to Bear. He glances at me, nods, and then spurs his horse into a gallop. Kate and Sarah do the same and we're speeding through the city. Fortunately, all of the nobs are in the castle for the celebration so we only run across some servants, but the horses hooves pounding against the stone street is enough of a warning.

When the curtain wall comes into view, we slow down to trots and then stop completely as the street comes to an end. Bear finds the anchor on the wall and presses it. The wall starts to slide open.

I look behind us. I can't see any mercenaries. It'll have taken them a few minutes to find some horses, but I'm sure they're not too far behind us. I can feel them. Kate and Sarah ride through the opening in the wall and I follow. Bear leads his horse through and hits the anchor on the other side. It slides back. I keep an anxious eye on the street. No one is in view, and I hope it stays that way. If the merceneries figure out that there are secret openings in the curtain walls, not only are we doomed, but so is this entire city.

***

The wall slides closed just as I hear the first shouts and hoofbeats. Even mounted, Kate and Sarah can't see over the walls, but they dismount quietly. We're on soft grass now, but the soldiers would still be able to hear four horses running from behind the wall. Bear leads his horse away from the wall slowly, and Kate and Sarah follow.

The shouting gets louder. "Where did they go?" I hear one of them shout. "Check the houses," I hear another one order. "If anyone is hiding them, kill everyone in the house." I hear hoofbeats canter off to my left and right.

My stomach revolts and I cover my mouth, feeling sick. The only people home are servants. I take a deep breath. The houses are all like citadels in their own right, I saw that when we rode in earlier. And it's foolish to underestimate servants. These thoughts help calm me enough that I can walk away from the wall on shaky legs and try to catch up to the others.

I'm lagging pretty far behind when, a mile later, we reach the next wall. "We can remount," Bear says quietly. He hits the anchor that is embedded in the wall. A grinding noise comes from the wall, but it doesn't open. Bear hits the anchor again. The grinding noise happens again, but again, the gate doesn't move.

"That one doesn't work," a voice says.

We all jump and then turn toward the voice. A man, about six feet tall, and the thinnest human being I've ever seen, leans against the wall. Next to him is a small wagon filled with wood. He's wearing a large hat that shadows his face. All I can see is the basic silhouette with an illuminated pipe sticking out, a red glow coming off of the top the bowl. We're in the section of the city where the artisans live and work. I'm not sure what the wood is for, but it's obviously a part of his trade. He doesn't seem to be either alarmed or excited to see us, and I appreciate that.

"So we're stuck here?" I ask.

"Naw," he says. "There's another anchor about a mile down. They're spaced out like that."

"What's wrong with this one?" I ask.

"Old," he answers. He looks me up and down. "You the hero?" he asks, with mild interest.

"So I'm told," I say.

He grins at this. "Speed ye on yer way, then," he says.

I nod. 

He pushes himself off of the wall with a small grunt and takes up the handle on his wagon. He ambles off.

If there is an anchor once every mile, it doesn't really matter what direction we move in but we all mount and move off in the opposite direction of the man.

Kate and Sarah take the lead, moving at a brisk trot. Bear and I follow. Bear looks grim, like he wants to say something but I'm glad that he doesn't because it's taking all of my concentration to keep up with my horse. I know that I can hurt her back if I move against her, so I focus on keeping my seat.

I can't keep from staring at Bear's profile in the moonlight, though. It's so funny. A unicorn named Bear riding a horse. I start to laugh. Bear looks over at me, and then his face fills with alarm and he reaches out to me. I don't know what's wrong now but it'll have to wait because all I can see is darkness.