It had been hard, but easy at the same time. Almost like we were being played. Well, not almost. We were being played. We were responding time and time again to the manipulations of Abbadon. First his Shrieks and Shatterskin, then the Deadsweep infection of thought-worms, and finally the burning and freezing of whole towns.

  We were always running after a problem to solve it when Abbadon was the real problem. We were going to have to change our tactics and go after him.

  Even the idea of riding in the Sound Bubble didn’t cheer me up. Preparing to say goodbye, I hugged everyone I could in the village one last time, with longer hugs for James and Liza. Liza had given us the answer, and I told her that she was the hero of the moment. She didn’t say anything, just held my hands and told me she loved me and that all was well.

  Liza was a wise girl, soon to be a wise woman. I had a feeling she would be playing a more significant part in finding Abbadon. When she winked at me, I realized she already knew that. I stayed longer in James’ hug, being Hannah for a few minutes. That helped too.

  The Sound Bubble arrived, and it helped a little bit too. The harmony reached deep into my bones, and vibrated through my blood, raising my spirits. Whoever had “invented” the Sound Bubble had done a wonderful thing.

  Anne and Garth had their own bubble. They were returning home. We had all asked them to come to the Castle with us so that we could thank them officially for their help, but they refused, saying they needed to check on their village. Garth added that now that we knew where to find them, they did hope we would ask them to help again.

  A second Sound Bubble descended over everyone except Suzanne and me. I thought it was a mistake and turned to ask Suzanne how we were getting back to the Castle. Instead of answering, Suzanne morphed into a dragon right before my eyes. No one in the village seemed surprised, but I still couldn’t believe that kind of thing happened as an everyday occurrence. A dragon. I stood and looked at her, not sure what was happening.

  Dolt that I am, it took a push from Liza to realize that I was going to ride back to the Castle on the dragon, on Lady. A bolt of happiness shot through me. It was just what I needed. A dragon ride. A dragon ride with no danger. Just the joy of flying. James had run back into the house and got a harness for me, but I shook my head. I was going to hold on. I could do it. I was Princess Kara Beth, dragon rider.

  Lady bent down, and I hopped on, tucking my legs in the crease of her wings and holding onto the red comb of feathers on her head. They were soft, so I could lie in them and hold onto her head that way if I needed to. But I had a feeling that Lady was going to take me on a leisurely trip and I wanted to see everything.

  Lady slowly flapped her wings, everyone stepping back to give her space, and lifted into the air with the same grace I had seen my pileated woodpeckers in the Earth dimension have. To my delight, as we rose, I saw that other dragons were waiting for us. We were going to fly together.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the glory of that ride. Lady took her time. We flew over villages and mountains. At times I was cold, but the joy I felt overrode any discomfort. I was part of something so much bigger than myself. I was a dot of a person flying on a dragon within the midst of a mighty crown of other dragons.

  The sky was vast, the sun played hide and seek in the clouds, and the land below us was fertile and green. Coro arranged a little storm for us off in the distance so that I could see its full majesty. Ariel gave us a tiny push of wind once in a while and played with the tree leaves as we passed over the old growth forests of Erda.

  The whole experience was like a dream. A beautiful dream. I knew that was Lady and her dragon friends’ intention. They wanted to give me back my hope and joy. It worked. When the roof of the atrium opened, and Lady and I dropped down onto the practice field, I felt like a new person.

  We had prevailed. Beauty and goodness were the King and Queen of the Kingdom of Zerenity, and I had the privilege of keeping it that way. Nothing else had changed, but I had a new viewpoint, and that made all the difference.

  Fifty-Nine

  The Castle was in full celebration mode. Suzanne and I could hear the laughter before we even touched down. By the time we made it to the atrium, we felt re-energized just from all the happiness weaving its way through the Castle.

  Beru was waiting for us. We slid our hands and wiggled our fingers in our familiar salute to each other and walked hand in hand to the table where everyone was already seated having dinner together. It had been a long day.

  I patted George, the metal toadstool, on the head, and he skipped a step almost knocking the drinks that he was carrying off his tray.

  Once I found my seat beside Zeid, I asked, “Where is Aki?”

  “She and Berta, along with your father, are supervising the rebuilding of Eiddwen. We’ve already sent a group of workmen to help, but it will take a while. Of course, a little magic here and there will make it go faster,” Professor Link answered.

  “Are you planning to visit?” I asked, knowing full well that Professor Link didn’t like traveling. He knew I was asking if he was going to miss Aki personally. When he answered, “I will,” we both knew what he meant.

  After lunch, and a brief visit to our bedrooms to get cleaned up, we all met back in the planning room. We knew that there was one more mystery to solve. It would have been so easy not to do anything and wait until the next crisis, pretending that the bigger problem was over, but all of us knew what was at stake.

  Once we were all settled, with the Priscillas sitting on the edge of the table in front of me, Niko stated the problem.

  “This is what we needed to know. Who delivered the walking sticks? Who was the spy in our midst, and are they still here?”

  “Since you used the past tense—needed to know—does this mean you have the answer?” Zeid asked.

  “Yes, I do. And the answer is disturbing, to say the least,” Niko answered.

  “Oh, let me guess,” I said trying not to be sarcastic and failing miserably. “It was Abbadon.”

  A chorus of astonishment and disbelief went around the room.

  “No, it couldn’t have been,” Zeid said. “We would have known. Besides he lives thousands of miles away in some castle, locked away all by himself.”

  “That’s what he has wanted us to believe, and we all fell for it,” Niko replied. “Instead, he was here, working in the Castle.”

  An appalled silence fell over the room. The idea that the man who had been causing all the death and destruction had been with us the whole time was too hard, and too awful, to contemplate. After what seemed like an eternity and when no one asked the next question, I did. I had something to tell them, but first I wanted to hear what Niko had to say.

  “How did you find out?”

  Niko nodded at Link, and he took over.

  “While you were all out taking care of the mess that Abbadon was making, I spent some time personally talking to every member of the staff. Eventually, I discovered that a person was working in the Castle that everyone saw once in a while, but had no idea what he did, or where he came from.

  “The problem was, no one said anything. They let it go, thinking that it wasn’t important. But once I started asking around, it became obvious it was someone who wasn’t supposed to be here. When I started putting the timing together, I discovered that the unknown person had left about the same time the Deadsweep infection began.”

  “Walking down the road as a tradesman selling walking sticks,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Niko answered.

  “One problem. Well probably more than one problem, but there is something that doesn’t make sense. How could Abbadon have made Deadsweep thought-worms while working in the Castle?” Ruta asked.

  “Or if he was here all along, how did he make the Shrieks and Shatterskin?” Beru chimed in.

  Niko shook his head. “That’s something I don’t have an answer for. Perhaps he made them all before he came to work here. Maybe he stored the walking sticks here until he was ready to release them. Or someone else brought them to him.”

  “Or that.” Link responded.

  Listening to everyone, I wasn’t sure if I was getting depressed or angry. I decided it would be better if I got angry. That way I might be able to do something. I could feel the depression creeping in, making me feel like going to bed, curling up in a ball, and pulling the covers over my head.

  In the end, what good would that do? Abbadon would still be out there. He would invent another thing that we would have to fight. The whole ziffering mess would start over again.

  It was Zeid who asked the question I didn’t feel like answering.

  “How did you know that Abbadon was here, Kara Beth? You weren’t surprised by what Niko said, so you must have known. Did you?”

  Everyone turned to look at me as if I had an answer for them. As if I was magic or something, and could tell them the answer to all the questions, and then fix the mess too. I didn’t have anything other than a piece of paper that I had kept clutched in my hand from the moment I had found it.

  Instead of answering, I opened my hand and let the crumpled paper fall out onto the table. Zeid looked at me with both love and pain in his eyes and picked up the paper. Opening it, he read out loud, “See you soon, Princess Kara Beth. To our future together. Abbadon.”

  “Where did you get this,” Zeid whispered.

  I dropped my head, afraid to look up, and whispered back, “It was on my bed when I went back to my bedroom.”

  The room erupted. Everyone was talking at once. Link left the room, and we waited for him to come back. Zeid had pulled me close, and I gave in and let my head rest on his shoulder. Really, at the moment I had no fight left in me.

  When Link returned, we stopped talking and waited to hear what he had to tell us. We knew where he had gone.

  “I checked with the staff. Every day someone went into your bedroom and cleaned it waiting for your return, Kara Beth. So if you found the note today, it was placed there today, after you left.”

  “Which means,” Zeid continued, “That either Abbadon came back, never left, or he has people working for him in the Castle.”

  Sixty

  We were back, standing on the bluff overlooking Eiddwen. The last time we had stood here we had found a burned out village. Now, only a week later, everything that had been burned had been cleared away. Even from where we were standing we could see the shells of homes going up all over the village.

  Eiddwen was bustling with villagers helping each other rebuild homes and gardens. Their time trapped in the portal seemed to have renewed their spirits. We had heard reports of people going back to their gifts of magic and skills and practicing again.

  Their joy and happiness were contagious. The closer we got to the village, the happier I felt, and I knew Zeid felt the same way. We were walking hand in hand as if we didn’t have a care in the world, and that was the way I wanted to feel for as long as possible.

  The ever-resourceful Ginete had supplied tents, and that’s where everyone was living until they finished their homes. We were heading to the tent at the edge of town. The only way I knew it was my father’s tent was the small flag flying from the point at the top of the tent. Otherwise, it looked the same as everyone else’s. That too made me happy. We were part of a community. Perhaps responsible for its wellbeing, but not above it.

  Zeid and I were there to say goodbye. Everyone else in the team, including Aki, had gone to say goodbye to their friends and family, too. We weren’t waiting for the next disaster. We were being proactive and going after Abbadon before he unleashed another catastrophe on the kingdom. That’s what we told people. But we weren’t naive. We were sure he knew we were coming, and had already planned on how to stop us.

  My father was standing at the open flap of the tent waiting for us. I let go of Zeid’s hand and flew into his arms. It had been so long since he had truly hugged me. It had been lifetimes for me in the Earth Realm, and now almost a year in Erda.

  When I had returned to Erda, I didn’t remember my Erda parents. What made it worse was my mom had died in a Shatterskin attack and my father fell into such a deep depression everyone thought he would die. There had been no happy reunion then. I was ready for it now.

  Berta was standing behind my father, and I fell into her arms too while Zeid and Darius did the male patting each other on the back kind of hug.

  The next few days were heaven. Berta pampered us all with delicious food. Zeid and I worked with the villagers to help rebuild their homes. I was thrilled to find that every friend that I had made while staying in Eiddwen had made it through Deadsweep unharmed.

  At night Zeid and I sat with Berta and Darius and listened to them tell tales about the Kingdom of Zerenity.

  What I most wanted was to gather my father’s knowledge of Abbadon. But he didn’t know much more than I did. They had never been brothers that lived together. If Aki’s story was true, both had been set in their separate Kingdoms by the bored brothers on the snake-space ship. I knew Aki had more stories to tell about those bored brothers from outer space. I wondered if they had ever come to visit again to see how their experiment had gone.

  But since my father knew so little, I put those thoughts away. I could wait and talk to Aki. Instead, I listened and immersed myself in what Berta and Darius had to share about the villagers, the Kingdom, and my mother.

  I let it fill me up so that it could carry me across the shattered lands and trees into Abbadon’s desert kingdom. Link had winked at me before we left and whispered to me that we were going to travel in a different way this time. But he wouldn’t tell me how. Link loved preparing surprises and took every chance he could to do so. I was happy to let him surprise me. I like surprises, as long as they are pleasant surprises.

  The day Cahir came to the village walking down the street without a care in the world and everyone smiled and waved at him, was one of those surprises. I had no idea that everyone in Eiddwen knew Cahir.

  Berta just laughed at me and said, “Of course, dear. He grew up here. Everyone knows and loves him.”

  Cahir’s arrival meant one thing. It was time for us to go. Cahir showed me where his family was staying outside the village. I told Berta, and she promised to watch over them and make sure there was plenty for his family to eat.

  After everyone said their goodbyes, and as the Sound Bubble came closer, Cahir took off in a loping pace. He would see us back at the Castle where our team would be ready to start our next adventure together.

  I promised everyone that we would be back. It was a promise I intended to keep.

  Author’s Note

  When the idea of the Return To Erda series came to me, so did the titles of the three books in the series. They popped into my head and there was nothing I could do to dislodge them. So I went with the titles and then figured out what each book was about after that.

  That meant that I knew that the title of this book was going to be Deadsweep. But I didn’t know what the danger was going to be. What was Deadsweep?

  While I pondered that question, there were more and more stories in the news about the terrible things people were doing to each other. Then I heard a Ted Talk given by the mother of one of the boys who was a shooter in the school killings in Columbine, Colorado, and it all came together for me.

  She explained how she had recognized no clues, no warning signs, that her son was going to go to school, murder people, and then kill himself. The mental illness that caused it was invisible to her.

  How does this heart-breaking thing happen? And her story is not unique. This disease is often not visible to most of us until it is too late to stop it.

  I know there is not an easy human answer to this illness. In Deadsweep, I talk about healing the rifts that we find in ourselves and between ourselves. Perhaps healing divisions between people would help stop the mental illness that can produce such horrifying results. It can’t hurt, and it might help.

  The other thing on my mind while writing some of the chapters about the infection called Deadsweep was the idea of contagion. For a week I had a cold. I was miserable. I would write for thirty minutes and fall asleep for another fifteen. Ugh. Plus, I was irritable.

  I asked myself, was I irritable before I felt sick? Which came first? What if I got sick because I allowed myself to be irritated? Or what if infections were manufactured? What then?

  Between those two ideas, mental illness and infections, Deadsweep as thought-worms that infected people’s behavior, was born.

  In the end, this is a fantasy book. I get to make up worlds, and people, and even the evil things that threaten that world. And then I get to make sure that evil never wins.

  My desire is to tell a good story, but if the story also shifts perception along the way, it’s an added bonus for me. I hope it is for you too.

  If you would like to read a short prequel to both these series I’ll send it to you for free.

  It answers a few questions about the brothers who seeded Earth and Erda, and a little bit about where Suzanne really came from.

  I’ll tell you a secret: Earl and Ariel are not Suzanne’s blood parents. And she has a sister Meg. More mystery. And another series, The Chronicles of Thamon.

  Get this free short story here: becalewis.com/fantasy.

  Love, Beca