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Heading West
By the light of planet Beyond’s two moons, a strange caravan crawled west across the Red Desert, following an ancient track that skirted thornbush and wiregrass thickets beneath towering dunes. Meerkat scouts led the way; desert foxes padded alongside; mountain cats guarded the rear. Owls flew overhead, scanning the dunes for enemies. Two dozen wagons creaked and swayed as they moved along, bearing animals, birds, and three humans.
They had good reason to fear attack. Eight days before, Dara Monahan, the girl who dozed in the lead wagon, had freed these animals and destroyed desert prison. Their former captors had vowed revenge.
A sturdy old man with a shock of white hair held the reins of the lead wagon with one hand and steadied Dara with the other as the wagon lurched and swayed. In the wagon behind them lay a boy curled beneath a blanket, deep asleep, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. An enormous cat watched the sleeper with suspicious eyes, tensed when he stirred, then relaxed when the boy’s breathing quieted again. In a hammock slung between two roof stays, a small green animal also slept—a prisoner the girl had rescued from the desert fortress.
The Red Desert appeared like a dark sea stretching to the horizon, its waves frozen by enchantment. A cold night wind sent sand skittering along the crests; creosote and wire grass scented the air. Lizards and desert mice watched and wondered as the wagons rolled by. But gradually the night sky faded to gray and the brilliant canopy of stars began to pale. The old man nudged the girl at his side.
“Dara,” he said softly, “it’s nearly sunup. We must make camp soon.”
The sun had just crested the dunes when the caravan halted and the meerkats fanned out in search of water. After more than a week of travel through these parched lands, little food remained and even less drink. The weakest and sickest animals were fed before the rest—deer and badgers, wild pigs and ocelots, squirrels and antelope and slim feathered reptiles with long tails that looked like survivors from another age.
Some of the liberated animals glanced hungrily at neighbors they might have eaten in the wild but resisted eating now. They were all too aware of their recent captivity and improbable rescue, knowing that if they broke the compact that bound them on this journey to their homes, they would be left to die alone in the desert.
Dara pushed back her long auburn hair and shaded her eyes against the rising sun. The Great Barrier Cliffs, glowing red on the horizon, barred their route to west. They seemed to have grown a fraction since yesterday.
“How much longer?” she asked.
“Another day, I think” Primo Paganini replied. “With luck, we should reach the cliffs by dawn tomorrow. Then the meerkats will guide the rest of the caravan into the Shining Forest and leave us to enter the cliffs.”
Dara gazed at the furred and feathered bodies resting alongside the wagons. I did this, she thought. They’re free now because of me. But this is still their planet, not ours. We’re just visitors. And the Shining Forest is their home.
Like Mr. Paganini, Dara was a magician. But this kind of magic was different, with no spells to recite or wands to wave. Instead, these magicians acted in concert with nature its the cosmic laws and by so doing, harnessed the awesome powers of the universe. They were pledged to protect all life. That meant understanding the web that linked and supported living things and, when necessary, intervening just enough—and in just the right places—to help them grow and flourish.
Over the past year, thanks to Mr. Paganini’s teaching Dara had learned to truly see and hear the world around her and begun to understand its complex patterns. Everything is connected, he often said. What happened to one group of animals affected the others. This held true of time as well: The past informed the present.
Once the Red Desert had been a lush grassland, she knew, teeming with life. Then human colonists from the planet Tartaros had invaded Beyond. Their misuse and neglect had destroyed the grasslands, rendering them a landscape that now lay parched and barren. Would the green ever return? Could their magic work here?
She was so tired. Dara crawled beneath the wagon to sleep, but sleep refused to come. Instead, she was assailed by horrible images of fire, captive animals, and the bloody face of her worst enemy, Eskros. If only her golden cat were here beside her; Dara longed to feel her soft warmth against her back. But Callista was still guarding the boy Peter while Mr. Paganini oversaw the distribution of food.
Finally, she crawled back out from beneath the wagon and found the old man sitting with his back against a wheel, legs outstretched, his cane across his knees.
“I can’t sleep,” she confessed. “These awful pictures keep clawing at my mind.”
“Mira can give you something to help.”
“No, just let me sit with you. I feel safer if you’re here. But it’s not just bad memories. Something about this place worries me.”
“And me as well,” Mr. Paganini replied. “I’ve asked the meerkats to double their guard, but now I will tell them to triple it.”
He placed two fingers in his mouth, produced a shrill whistle, and within seconds, a furry shape appeared beside the wagon. It was the size of a cat, with small ears and a long tail. Dark circles around its eyes resembled a mask. Mr. Paganini chattered at the meerkat in its language before it coughed twice and backed away out of sight.
“Nitta promises to add more sentries. All the same, we need to move our wagons to block the entrance and exit from this gully. Do you remember the ambush last time?”
Dara remembered all too well. A short month ago they had set out east across this same desert in search of the Refuge, Eskros’s secret stronghold,. But Peter had betrayed them and Dara, her cat, and Mr. Paganini were taken prisoner in a sandstorm.
She freed herself and Callista by killing a guard and had no wish to ever kill again.
Now with a creak of timbers and snorts from the draft animals, the two dozen wagons shifted into double rows, three abreast, blocking both ends of the gulley that was overshadowed by giant dunes. Under Mr. Paganini’s direction, meerkats spread broad red awnings between the wagons to provide shade.
“If you can’t sleep, then guard Peter,” Mr. Paganini said. “Callista can help the meerkats keep watch from the top of that dune. Her eyesight is better than theirs. Go tell her.”
Dara returned to the wagon where Peter slept. At her approach, Callista rose with a throaty purr. Like many animals on Beyond she was extremely intelligent. Thanks to Dara’s instruction, she understood English, though she preferred to communicate in her own cat language.
“Mr. Paganini says you should help the meerkats keep watch at the top of the dune,” Dara explained. “I have a bad feeling about this place. Please be careful!”
Callista yawned, stretched, and leaped down from the wagon. She rubbed against Dara’s leg before trotting off towards top of the dune, glowing red in the morning light.
But halfway up the slope she came to a sudden stop and crouched, ears forward. Small black shapes rushed down almost overran her in their haste. Callista scrambled out of the way and continued up the dune as a dozen meerkat scouts raced to the wagons and whistled alarm.
At the crest of the dune, larger shapes appeared, silhouetted against the rising sun, and swiftly descended the slope in pursuit of the meerkats. Red-clad men rode ostrich-like birds with enormous heads and murderous beaks. Their feet triggered avalanches of sand with every step.
At once the encampment erupted in alarm. The larger animals bounded out to meet the threat, while the smaller ones and the sick and wounded scurried to find shelter inside or beneath the wagons. Dara forgot about guarding Peter and ran out, armed with the short sword she had seized from a dead soldier in the Refuge. By now, the raiders had almost reached the awnings, shouting as they came.
“Cut the ropes!” Mr. Paganini cried. “Dara, the ropes!”
It was all a blur. Dara slashed at the ropes with her sword and saw one awning collapse on a bird and its rider. She stumbled through the heavy sand and cut the next before a glancing kick from one of the feathered mounts knocked her to the ground.
As she struggled to rise, a bearded rider reached down, seized her wrist, and jerked Dara to her feet. But the golden cat sprang onto the bird’s back. The rider was thrown from his mount and landed on Dara.
The shock of impact cleared her mind. She drove her sword up and into the body on top of her, heard the man scream, and felt his grip loosen. With effort, Dara pulled herself from beneath the dying rider, spit out a mouthful of sand, and saw Callista clinging to the back of the giant bird. It twisted and snapped and bit, but the cat stayed clear of its massive beak.
The beak had teeth.
Dara slashed at the bird’s neck and blood sprayed the sand. The animal gave a chilling shriek as Callista jumped clear.
Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the enemy riders rode off, leaving four men and three mounts lying at the foot of the dune. Several rescued animals lay there as well, and one wagon was burning.
I swore I’d never kill again, Dara thought, and I just did—twice.
She ran to where Mr. Paganini stood and joined him in throwing sand on the flames. Fire had charred the wagon’s two front wheels and its leather roof had a gaping hole, but otherwise it appeared undamaged.
“We saved the wagon,” Mr. Paganini said when their work was done, “but lost some animals. Now I must confer with the meerkats.” He hobbled off, leaning on his cane, and knelt to confer with a dozen small animals who crowded around him, before returning to report to Dara.
“The meerkats say their water scouts were ambushed, and the raiding party has taken some captive. Their mounts are fast, and they know the desert, but our falcons will try to overtake them all the same.”
“So they’re still out there,” Dara said in a voice hoarse with fatigue. There was no need to explain who “they” were.
“Yes,” Mr. Paganini replied, running his fingers through his thick, white hair. “The men who call themselves the Order will not easily forgive you for freeing the animals and destroying their citadel. None of us is safe, but you least of all.”
Hidden somewhere in this shimmering emptiness, her enemies were regrouping. Those who had escaped the ruined fortress had not abandoned the fight. They hoped to enslave the planet’s animals once again and rule as they had before.
With the battle over, her exhaustion claimed Dara at last. For the rest of the afternoon, she napped in the shade beneath a wagon while Callista guarded Peter. When she awoke at dusk, Mr. Paganini had already prepared a frugal meal.
“Our scouts say we should reach the Great Barrier Cliffs by dawn,” he reported. “And the falcons succeeded in freeing some captive meerkats, though they found several dead.”
One more night in this jolting caravan, Dara thought, one more night of danger, and then I can sleep in my own bed again. Once inside the astonishing Studio, hidden deep within the cliffs, that had belonged to the magician Hieronomos but now belonged to her. There she would be safe. But there she could reclaim three precious things she had left behind—a gold medallion proclaiming her a magician of the Avian Lineage; her other lightstone, crafted by Hieronomos himself; and Benjy, the stuffed bear she had brought with her from Earth.
She had missed them all.
“What happens when we get to the Studio?” Peter asked between mouthfuls of dried meat. Mr. Paganini and Dara exchanged glances. Whatever lay ahead, Peter was not to be trusted with their plans.
“I really don’t know,” Mr. Paganini replied. “But I expect we’ll have to improvise.”
As dawn broke, the Great Barrier Cliffs appeared at last in their full grandeur—the scarlet, rocky backbone of Beyond stretching hundreds of miles north and south, dividing the arid Red Desert from the lush forests and rich bottomlands to the west. Here in the east, low ridges pushed into the desert like grasping fingers, separated by narrow canyons. Stone ramparts to the west rose three thousand feet with a single leap. The cliff wall glowed, pulsing with color, its summit kindled by the first rays of the sun.
The caravan slowly inched up an incline and into a deep canyon that thrust its way into the heart of the cliffs and Mr. Paganini called a halt.
“Here our ways part,” he declared to the assembled animals. “But before we bid farewell, our council should meet again.”
Dara remembered their midnight meeting eleven days before, when two dozen animals had gathered to choose a route across the desert. There were meerkats and their queen, still on her litter. They were joined by a flying squirrel, a red mountain lion, a blue-crested heron, three ravens, four parrots, a fisher bird, two deer, a horned pig, a chicken with gleaming teeth, and a feathered lizard.
Now these animals had gathered again. As Dara and Mr. Paganini approached with Mira on his shoulder, they bowed in thanks to Dara. She had rescued them all.
Mr. Paganini spoke to them in Meerkat, the common animal language that all but Dara understood. If he had learned it, she thought, so could she someday. The animals nodded and the queen attempted to rise. Two of her attendants rushed to steady her, but when she spoke, her voice was strong.
“The queen thanks you once again, Dara, in the name of all,” said Mr. Paganini, translating. “They will never forget your bravery. But the queen also reminds you of your continuing responsibility to them and to this planet. You are heir to Hieronomos, after all. Despite all you have done so far, you must continue to help Beyond heal, just as he did.”
The queen then spoke a few words of farewell. Her voice was blue-green. Few people saw colors when they heard sounds the way Dara did. In this, as in many other ways, she was different.
But as she listened, Dara also knew that it was not just the planet that was wounded and in need of repair. Somewhere in the desert, her old self had vanished; the new Dara felt tired and hollow. She wondered when, if ever, she would ever again find the girl who had dared to challenge the Order against all odds—and won.