Manipulator's War

Chapter 1: An Unanticipated Destination-2

Linh rushed under the archway. The landscape didn’t change. She still stood on dried leaves, ferns brushing her legs.

“It was here!” she insisted, wringing her hands as the others caught up. “The space between wherever the hell this is and Noriyong Island, the connection, or wormhole, or whatever the hell we just came through, was somewhere here!”

Fiona stopped beside Linh and traced a strange script spiralling up the arch in rounded letters ending in a spiral or two with a shaking hand. Her features narrowed with uncertainty as she said, “This script isn’t in my Atlas of the Ancient World. The letters are nothing like cuneiform or hieroglyphs, and they orient differently to English and don’t look like any modern language descended from the scripts in my book.”

Troy moved closer and probed bits of the pillar with his fingers.

“I can’t see any buttons or levers,” Michael told him.

“Then how does it work?” Troy asked, his voice rising. “How the hell did a stone archway get us here?”

Linh turned, scanning the forest for signs of technology, people, anything that could answer Troy’s question. But there were just leaves, ferns, and forest giants. “There’s nothing here.”

“So it’s self-operating?” Troy asked sceptically. “How are we supposed to get back?” he added, his voice rising.

“I doubt that,” Michael replied, scratching his bristled chin. “My mob have been visiting Noriyong Island for thousands of years. If people have been disappearing from it now and then, there’d be stories, and I’d know them. Someone must have done something to bring us here. I don’t think the universe has glitches like this.”

Troy cracked a nervous smile, but Linh heard nothing reassuring in Michael’s words.

“There’s someone down there!” Fiona called from the far side of the ridge, pointing beyond the clearing to golden grassy plains. “A man in a red cloak walking towards the castle.”

Linh tensed.

“I’m asking him what’s going on,” Troy said, and he walked to the edge of the ridge.

Linh blinked. They potentially stood in another world, and he wanted to approach the first stranger they saw? She ran after him. “You can’t just walk up to him! He could be dangerous!”

“Then I’ll take a good look before I say hi,” said Troy.

Linh gazed through the clearing. A long, thin object hung from the red-cloaked man’s hip. “He’s carrying a sword!” she objected. “What if he attacks you?”

Troy tripped on a tree root protruding from the leaf litter and fell. He cried out as he hit the ground. The man in the red cloak turned to face them, and Linh’s entire torso tensed. The man raised an arm in greeting, then turned and kept walking towards the castle.

Troy stood and called out, “Hello down there!”

The man kept walking.

“Hey! Can you hear me?”

Anyone without a hearing impairment should have heard him, but the man in the red cloak didn’t acknowledge a word.

“I wonder if he’s reporting to someone at the castle,” Michael said as he stepped beside Linh. “He may’ve been close enough to see us arrive if he left this hilltop as soon as we got here.”

Linh ground her teeth. “With what intention?”

“We won’t know unless we go down there,” Troy said, gazing after the man.

“And risk walking into an ambush!” Linh objected.

“Or we could watch what he does next and stay close enough to go back, in case the archway turns on again,” Fiona suggested.

Linh sighed and tried to rein in her anxiety. She had no idea how Fiona was always so calm, always offering solutions. But Fiona was good at both, and when her best friend offered solutions, Linh listened.

Eventually, they all agreed to wait. Troy stood with both fists stuffed into his pockets. Linh divided her attention between the archway and the plains while Fiona and Michael watched the man and the castle. As the shadows grew shorter and the sun moved directly overhead, the man continued walking. Then he disappeared inside the castle. After that, there was neither sight nor sound of people, just the damp forest, leaves rustling in the wind and stomachs rumbling.

“I’m going down there,” Troy said finally. “Waiting isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“What if the archway does activate when we’re not here?” Fiona asked.

“I wonder if someone activated it to test if they could bring us through,” Michael replied. “If that man told someone at the castle that it worked, and they used us as guinea pigs. It’s the only logical explanation I can think of.”

Linh gasped. Troy shook his head but didn’t seem phased by Michael producing a theory so quickly. Linh wished it wasn’t a chilling one.

“We can’t wait forever and we should stick together,” Fiona said, stepping beside Linh.

Fiona’s logic did nothing to counter Linh’s powerful urge to wait, just in case. But their lunch boxes were in their backpacks with Mr Gentile. And it was warm, and they had all started drinking from their water bottles. Dehydration would set in soon, and they had no reason to expect the archway to activate.

“Are you coming?” Michael asked Linh and Fiona.

Linh nodded, and she and Fiona reluctantly followed the boys as they snaked around tree trunks and bush-bashed downhill. The smell of grass, the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, and soft ferns and grasses brushing against her legs all seemed real. Time passed, and they remained dwarfed by mountain ash trees, crunching through dried gum leaves with each step. Linh’s heart rate gradually slowed, but her senses remained alert to any sign of danger.

They left the forest giants behind, passing smaller gum trees and yellow grass. The trees gradually thinned, and Linh gazed across rolling hills sprinkled with wildflowers. She glanced reluctantly back at the ridge, but the slope obscured the archway.

Troy ploughed through grass up to his chubby thighs, and everyone followed him uphill towards the grey stone castle. Linh shivered. “We should cross these plains slowly,” she cautioned. “We’ve no idea who’s in that castle or what’s in the grass.”

Michael nodded and slowed. But Troy maintained a restless pace that made Linh nervous. Her clothes stuck to her sweaty skin under the hot sun, and she took small sips from her water bottle, emptying it by the time they neared the castle. She scanned the battlements carefully, but Troy’s long legs carried him to the front door before she spotted anyone.

Troy paused, gazing up at doors rising twice his considerable height, and Linh wondered why they were so large. Then Troy knocked on the double doors, and Linh and Fiona hurried to catch him and Michael up.

Troy shifted restlessly as they waited for someone to answer.

“Is Red Cloak ignoring us?” Fiona asked.

“I’m not giving him a choice,” Troy replied.

Linh shuddered as he pushed the door open. Late afternoon sunlight shone through an archway with golden luminescence spiralling up it, in the far wall of a large, empty room.

“Hello?” Troy called, his voice echoing through a vast marble chamber.

Linh peered in at empty corridors running left and right. Before her, a white marble floor spread towards a balcony lined with stone arches, including the sunlit arch. The room was the size of a cathedral, with unadorned walls and a high ceiling, consisting only of bare marble. There was no sign of Red Cloak.

“Where is everyone?” Troy asked, looking around.

Linh hesitated as Fiona entered the room until she saw the inscription Fiona was approaching on the wall on their left. It was the same round script carved into the archway on the ridge, with many letters ending in spirals of different sizes. As Linh moved closer, Fiona gasped. Most of the spirals vanished. The words became: Welcome, visitors from afar. There was no room for us in your world, but with our retreat to our world’s warmest locations, our world has room for you. It lacks the wars you fled around the inland sea, and it shall be what you make of it. Use your chariots for transportation, knives for food preparation, bows and spears for hunting, and axes for chopping firewood. This world can be the refuge you seek if you make it so.

Fiona gaped.

“No one’s used that combination of weapons in our world for centuries,” Linh said, bracing herself for more impossible revelations as the history-loving part of her mind engaged.

“The Near East?” Fiona suggested.

“It can’t be,” said Linh.

“The ‘inland sea’ could be the Mediterranean,” Fiona added. “We’ve read about centuries of war around that area, and the Hittites and Egyptians both used chariots in battle.”

“What’s up?” Troy asked as he approached.

“We’re wondering if people from our world settled here a few thousand years ago,” Linh replied.

“No way!” Troy objected. “Who wrote that?”

“Giants, by the look of it,” Michael called across the room. “Have you seen how high the stairs are? Each step’s twice the height of ours, and the railing’s almost up to my elbows. Maybe humans settled this place, too. And learnt how to activate the archways and bring us here. What I don’t understand is why, if someone brought us here, they’re avoiding us.”

Linh shivered at the suggestion of giants, but she couldn’t hear any movement beyond the hall-like room, and when she turned back, there was no sign of anyone.

“That archway is glowing,” Fiona whispered, pointing with a shaky hand to the day-lit archway in the back wall. “Maybe Red Cloak’s still here.”

Troy rushed up the balcony stairs to investigate, followed by Michael, but with their short legs, Linh struggled and Fiona fell further behind. The archway was triple the height of an average human. Linh squinted against the glaring sunlight shining through it. This archway was also made of circular, mortared stone blocks, encircled with a yellow glow. As her eyes adjusted, Linh gazed through it over rocks, a thin strip of sand, and open water, to an island across a channel fenced with stone. Further right, open water stretched to the horizon.

“Where’d the mountains go?” Troy asked, looking around. “And the giant trees?”

“I think that’s somewhere else,” Michael replied. “Another island.”

Hope flared inside Linh, then swiftly dissipated. There wasn’t enough sand for it to be Noriyong Island, and there was no sign of the mainland, or her classmates or teachers.

“I wonder if this is where Red Cloak went,” said Michael.

“Well, I’m not following him,” Linh insisted. “Does he think he can lead us down a rabbit hole and we’ll just follow?”

She heard footsteps as Fiona caught up. Linh turned back. Fiona stumbled. Linh reached for her too slowly. Fiona fell, and her forearms hit a sandhill on the far side of the archway, sending her skidding down the slope, her clipboard and notes flying, her empty drink bottle rolling ahead.

“Fi! Can you stand?” Linh called. She hesitated, not wanting to step through the arch. But when Fiona didn’t answer, she bit her lip and ran after her.

“I feel dizzy,” Fiona croaked as Linh knelt in dry sand beside her.

“She’s dehydrated,” Michael said, leaning over her. “We should get her out of the sun.”

“Is she ok?” Troy asked.

Linh turned back as Troy approached the arch, his wide-eyed gaze on Fiona. “Don’t!”

She was too late. He stepped through onto the sandy beach, and the yellow glow spiralling around the arch vanished, as did Linh’s view of the balcony and the castle’s interior. She stared through the arch across a few sandhills and rocks, then at the sea. The new island was small, consisting only of sandhills and stunted trees, the waves lapping its low-lying shore in every direction. Across the channel, on her right, lay a larger island fenced with stone. But there was no Red Cloak, and they were cut off from the archway which had apparently transported them out of their world.