To Return Home

Thanks to Malady for his help editing and for ideas.

Cover image from Unsplash

Chapter 3.5

The dryad had made its way back into the woods, out of sight. There weren’t many sounds, except the crying of Rachel as her world was turned upside down once again.

Daddy and John seemed to have put the loss of Ralph behind them, or at least realized that dwelling on it wouldn’t get us through this mess we were in. It seemed as though they were talking to the pixie. I wasn’t sure what they hoped to get from her, but I quietly joined them.

“You used Paula’s and Marc’s names,” Daddy pointed out. “Do you know who all of us are?”

“Yes,” the tiny girl said. Her voice was as small as she was. She looked around at everyone and gave all of our names. Finally, she looked over at Rachel. “I’m so sorry that Rachel lost Ralph. He should come back, though.”

“We don’t know that,” I said, wondering who the diminutive fairy actually was. “There’ve been a lot of changes made. Amos isn’t in control anymore.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, jumping back and fluttering her wings to keep herself at eye level. “Who is?” She looked back and forth between Daddy and me.

“We’re trying to figure that out,” Paula said as she and Marc joined our little group.

The pixie nodded her head sagely, then said, “Too bad we can’t just sit on the rocks and discuss it this time, eh Paula?”

My sister’s face went white, and she seemed like she was going to fall over. “Fred?” she asked, quietly.

“Well,” the pixie said, taking in her appearance. “Once upon a time.” She made a chirp like a cricket “Our link is gone, but I can see a link between you and Marc. You thought I was dead?”

Paula started to slide down to the path, and Fred exclaimed, “Hold her up!” She flew down to the ground and sprinkled something on a blade of grass which withered away completely, then said, “Okay. It’s safe now.” Daddy and Marc lowered Paula to the ground where she sat, taking deep breaths.

Finally, Paula said, “We found your head in the command center.”

Fred nodded. “Yeah. I get it. Wasn’t mine, though. Amos can make anything he wants with the bots. He must have made a copy of my head.” She thought about something for a bit, then said, “I can see the bonds between people. I see the bonds between all of you. I can even see Rachel’s bond with Ralph heading to the dryad. The bond is fading, though. That happens when someone ‘dies’.”

She made little quotes with her fingers when she said the word, as if it didn’t really happen, which seemed to be the way of things.

Mamma and Rachel had moved to our group and Fred turned to her as she hovered. “Did you ever sense the bond end before?”

“No!” Rachel exclaimed. “I’ve felt it fade, just as it’s done now, but I’ve never lost it.”

“So how do you explain me losing your link?” Paula asked.

“I suppose that was something he wanted to do to our families.”

“About that...” John said.

“Yeah, I know. You, me, and Amos. We’re brothers.” She looked down at herself, then amended, “Or we were.” She chirped like a cricket again, and I realized it was her tiny equivalent of a giggle.

Rachel was frantic. “Never mind that! I saw Ralph killed. Will he come back?”

Fred turned to her in midair. “I really don’t know, Rachel. The fact that the link hasn’t disappeared is a good sign.”

“You can still see it?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s still there. I’m not sure what is going to happen.”

“But you said when someone ‘dies’ it fades.”

“Yeah. It does, but it never completely disappears.” She chirped again and then said, “Okay. Sometimes it does. It did between Paula and Me. I don’t see anything leading from Marc to Kari either.”

“How do you see a link?” Mamma asked. “You can see in different EM spectrums?”

“I suppose I can. I can see bots too.” She produced a different sound, much like a keen. “Amos used that ability to purge some people who couldn’t be affected by the bots.”

It was interesting seeing Fred so emotional. I’d never seen this before, but I wasn’t as close to him as Paula was.

“He made you identify them?” John asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t have any choice.” The pixie’s voice was completely despondent. “The man who ‘owned’ Rose was one of them I helped him purge.”

“Hal,” I said glumly, remembering him. “I wanted to thank him.”

-=#=-

We were making our way through the forest with more speed, now that Freddi, as I couldn’t help thinking of her as, was leading us. With her help, we were able to cross between twists and turns in the path. What seemed to have been made for a full day’s travel through a few bays turned into a couple of hours at most.

Suddenly, Freddi held up her hand, and called out to us to stop. John and I were on either side of her, and looked down into a deep pit ahead of us. The path we were on went through a few switchbacks to the bottom. There was a dark cave in the wall to our left as well. On the other side of the pit was another path, leading up the hill and over a rise.

There was a breeze blowing across the pit, and it carried with it a nauseating mixture of smells. The most prevalent was death and rotting meat, under that was a sulfurous smell, and then there was a hint of something that tickled at the back of my mind, and suddenly I had it! It was salt air! There was an ocean somewhere near here, or what I took to be an ocean.

“Are we near a sea?” John asked Freddi as if reading my mind.

“The other side of that rise is a beach that would rival Pipeline¹ for surfing waves,” Freddi told us.

“A beach, Freddi? How?”

Freddi chirped her laughter and said, “Freddi is rather a diminutive name, dontcha think?”

I simply stared at her, and she suddenly doubled over in laughter while hovering in front of me like a hummingbird with hiccups, or at least how I imagined a hummingbird would be, if struck with a serious case of hiccups. Finally, she stopped chirping and straightened up to say, “I suppose it’s quite fitting now, isn’t it?”

“Well, I can’t really call you Fred, can I?”

This sent Freddi into another paroxysm of chirping, and once she recovered, she motioned for us all to have a seat. Daddy and Mamma both verified that the rocks they intended on sitting down upon were safe, then they sat.

“A few things I want to explain before we descend,” she told us.

“We know that it’s Kari down there,” Marc said.

“Yes, it is, but you need to have a few things explained first. I don’t know how she’ll react to you. She keeps knowledge of her former self, as do I, but there are changes.”

“What do you mean?” John asked starting to rise. “I sure as hell don’t want to cut off her head!”

“John,” I urged, pulling him back down to the ground beside me. “I don’t think we’ll have to do that, will we?” I asked Freddi pointedly.

“No, you won’t. For a couple of reasons.”

Freddi glanced at a tree stump that appeared to have been broken by lightning, then flew over to it. She broke off a couple of splinters, making a flat place to sit, then smoothed out her pixie skirt and landed, drawing her legs up under her. It was the first time I’d seen her not hovering since we’d met her, and the display of colors in her dragonfly-like wings was mesmerizing.

“While you smell sulphur here, don’t be fooled. There is no brimstone about this place. No fire that Kari will send your way.” She took a deep breath, then took another tack in her explanations. “There are many people here, in these woods. I want you to see something.” She stood and gracefully flew over to Rachel. “Amos was always a fan of classic literature. The medieval stories thrilled him. The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings. But also, fairy tales. Even those that were modified in their later incarnations.” She looked disgusted and said, “He wanted to change Hal into a wooden boy whose nose grew if he lied, until it was determined that any bots Amos could throw at him would be defeated by Hal’s immune system.”

“I’m based on a pixie from a story as well. Peter Pan. I even have something of a magic “dust” that I can use.”

She addressed only Rachel now. “Don’t be afraid, please.” Then, she sprinkled a pinch of something over Rachel’s head. Something that glittered with its own light! Then, something sprouted from the Psychologist’s back. It grew and grew, seeming to take its substance from the air around, which started glowing. After a moment, Rachel had two sets of wings, exactly like Freddi’s, except in size. She spread them open, and they were each at least six-feet long.

She stared at the pixie for a moment, looking as if she was scared to death.

“Wait a minute!” John said as he realized what Freddi had done. He stood and pulled out a huge knife. “You may be my brother – sibling – but you’d better explain real pronto what you’re doing! What are you planning to do to the rest of us?”

Freddi held up her hands and exclaimed,”I want to show you what is possible right now. As you know, there is no connection between Rachel and the computers here. As Rose’s mother and father explained, that connection has been turned off, even for me and Kari. Nothing is going to reprogram her mind.”

“Rachel has wings right now, but I can remove them just as simply as I put them on her. My ‘pixie’ dust is controllable to a point.” She frowned as she looked down. “But there’s something I need to explain regarding me and Kari.”

“Go on,” John said, dangerously.

“Both of our bloodstreams are full of bots.”

“So’re ours.” I could tell John’s patience was wearing thin, and I put my hand on his arm, urging him to stay seated. He gave me a look that said he was trying, but it was getting hard. I understood. We’d been in this dangerous forest for nearly twenty hours with no sleep. We, and our bots, needed some downtime.

“Freddi,” I urged, “What’re you trying to say?”

“The ‘fire’ Kari breathes… Well, it’s bots, but it’s more analogous to acid. It will do the same thing to you as the grass.” She paused for a moment then continued. “Kari has never killed anyone with her ‘fire’.”

“So why are you warning us?” Paula asked.

“Because she’s never had an ex-husband show up.”

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--Rosemary