Chapter One Abandoned Worlds

I watched the rain streak down my bedroom window as my eyes stung with tears I kept holding back. Those tears were every word I couldn't speak. They were every feeling inside me that was screaming to burst out through my weakness. Today everything changed. I felt my entire world crashing down on top of me like a tsunami. The familiar world I loved shattered across the floor in shards of glass. I lost everything, my friends, my normal life, even the place I have called home. Now I step on it and it's bleeding through my feet. I will become an outcast on foreign ground. I don't think I can find friendship again. For years I have known that I am not like the others. I live a life on the edge of society, wanting to be heard but afraid of the ridicule. My soul was taken by their words and my battle scars though not visible, still sting from the inside.

 

I found out we were moving three days ago. Moving is not just relocation for my family, it's leaving my childhood behind. I am an adolescent now, responsibility will rest on my shoulders. I can no longer freely enjoy my adventurous spirit. I must learn to contain my want for freedom. I must contain my cry to be understood. I have dreaded the dawn of June 5th, 2077 for those three days. Today I come to the conclusion that my actions alone cannot stop time, nor reverse it. Wishing time to stop will only speed it up.

 

The walls of the bedroom I had been sharing with my twin sister, Crystal, seemed so empty to me without our posters on them. It was now an empty shell of the past we shared here. I didn't mind sharing a room most of the time, but sometimes, I did want some space to myself. I am both extroverted and introverted, I know how to have fun and I crave social contact but I also need my time to think and to create. Often, Crystal has been my only true friend.

 

Crystal continued to pack her books, but as she saw me in the window sill she stopped momentarily still holding a book above the box. She empathically looked up at me, probably thinking I couldn't see her. Crystal had a special way of making you feel like you were never alone in the world. That is what deepens my love for her every day. Fraternal twins and best friends bound together with a connection that can never be destroyed.

 

I started to fidget with the tassel at the end of my suitor necklace. My hands were slightly trembling. I felt the onset of an anxiety attack seeping it's controlling grasp into my body like a weed slowly choking a sapling. Anxiety is not about being afraid of the world like most people think, though. It is more about being afraid of myself, my own insecurity, and my failure to connect socially. Anxiety is a crippling sensation that I, though strong, struggle to defy its force. It is fighting a battle within myself that often cannot be seen.

 

Yelling burst from across the hall. Oh fireballs, here we go again. I thought. Alex and Jimmy always end up in a fight trying to work together. We should have known. Crystal let out a groan as she taped up her last box of books.

"Hey, those are my boxes to put my stuff in Jimmy!" Alex shouted. "Fill up your own boxes!"

 

  "Mine are full!" Jimmy whined.

 

"You know what Mom said!" Alex complained clearly annoyed by my younger brother.

 

"Mom said to put my stuff in boxes!" Jimmy said trying to shove his rock collection into his last box.

 

"Yah, but not my boxes!" Alex shot back at Jimmy.

 

"Guys stop fighting up there and get packing." Mom intervened in the chaos.

 

"Will they ever learn to get along?" I said, rolling my eyes asking Crystal sarcastically.

 

"No, it's Alex and Jimmy, they are always fighting." Crystal replied as she stacked her last box in the hallway rolling her eyes.

 

"You look worried, Kirstein." Crystal said, coming back in the room looking at me with my back turned to stare out the window again.

 

"I'm more scared out of my mind than worried," I replied, turning my head to look at her.

"Don't think they will accept you in the new school?" Crystal asked.

"Yeah, that… and I am going to lose so much here." I sighed.

 

"It's ok to be scared Kirstein, I'm afraid too." Crystal reassured me. “Sometimes being scared means we are about to have an amazing adventure, Kirsten.”

 

“Thanks for your positivity but, I don’t want a new adventure. I have friends here, there is a life for me here. How will I build that up again? I’m already alienated enough at school here, and everyone actually knows my name here.” I sighed.

 

"Loading up, bring all your boxes downstairs," Dad called.

 

Crystal and I grabbed our bags for the drive and the last of our boxes. My Mom walked out the door just in front of us carrying the snacks for the trip. I walked slowly looking back at our home for the last time breathing deeply with the last look back. I struggled to contain the tears I felt sting my eyes again as I climbed into the truck.

 

I am wearing a short sleeve teal shirt dress and a pair of dark denim capris that had rolled cuffs at the bottom. I had on tan leather laced sandals and packed my matching leather messenger bag with my phone, earbuds, sketch book, and pencil set.

 

I pulled out my earbuds and turned on my Pandora Playlists from the group's Owl City, Imagine Dragons, American Authors, Phillip Phillips, He is We, Jason Mraz, David Archuleta, Taylor Swift, Josh Groban and Epic Inspirational Instrumental Movie Soundtracks. I entered the numbers of my friends into my Android phone as we pulled out of the driveway. They will probably forget about me by next month, I thought as I put my hands to my face just as the song "I won't give up on us" by Jason Mraz came on.

 

Crystal, on the other hand, packed a few of her favorite novels in addition to her phone. She was quite the bookworm. Crystal loved the sensation of getting lost in a well-written novel. She said it was like entering a whole new dimension all inside your head, like walking right into a new universe. However, I never saw reading that way. To me, reading was playing a game to unscramble the words with a twisted sense of motion sickness. That's just what dyslexia does, turns books into the feeling you get in a jet with a pilot creating weightlessness.

 

The drive felt like we were going to be stuck in a time warp for eons. There were only vast flats of desert nothingness that seemed to stretch into the atmosphere. Nothingness, that's what I felt inside. There was nothing to think about but my fear and nothing to reassure me that my fears were not outrageous hallucinations of my imagination. Fear is often our greatest enemy hidden deep within our hearts.

 

Alex and Jimmy were slapping each other again fighting over a sack of Oreos. Jimmy kept bouncing around in his seat. He always has energy, if he could just learn to channel it he would be a good athlete someday. I thought. Alex and Jimmy didn't even phase Crystal. She learned to tune everything out but the book. I silently envied the way she could thoroughly ignore their antics. 

 

"Hey, you can't eat four Oreos!" Jimmy yelled breaking the somewhat calm environment of the truck's cab.

 

"Yes, I can!" Alex mumbled, shoveling them all in his mouth at once in a somewhat impressive gulp.

 

"Mom!" Jimmy whined.

 

"I don't want to hear it, Jimmy." She replied. "Go to sleep and he won't bother you."

 

A while later Mom and Dad started talking when night fell and they thought I was asleep with the others.

 

"Mark, are you alright with this job?" Mom whispered to him as she placed her hand on his shoulder affectionately.

 

"Our family needs the money, Megan." He replied nervously shifting in his seat behind the wheel of the truck.

 

"You're nervous." She said worriedly.

 

"I love the four people sitting behind us and I especially love the person sitting next to me. You know it is all for the family, my love." He said as he flipped on the wipers to clear away the drizzling rain.

 

"You provide them with a beautiful life of opportunity Mark." She replied.

 

"I do my best as their father." He said.

 

"You do so much for us." Mom continued.

 

"I do my best, it's all I can do." He sighed as they pulled up to the hotel for the night.

 

The next morning we enjoyed the hotel breakfast, pancakes, waffles, fruit salad, orange juice, and don't forget the sugary air marketers call cereal. I have to admit that the cereal and pancakes are the best part of a hotel stays breakfast. I took photos of the sunrise over the Nevada hills with my digital SLR camera. It brushed the sky with beautiful rays of red and orange.

 

When we arrived at our new house it had palm trees out front and a beautiful brick walkway leading up to the front door. There was a two-car garage facing the driveway made of the same light tan brick. The house itself was a light tan color too, made with natural stones. The fountain to the side of the porch was covered with a tarp surrounded by the flowerbed.

 

Alex and Jimmy ran to the back yard immediately to blow off energy. They ran over to the shed only to find it vacant with a few spider webs in the corner. They started to converse excitedly about all the new yard toys that it could hold. We didn't have a shed back in Utah. The yard had a huge pool with a view of the ocean, another couple things we never had in Utah. Thinking about it, I started to miss Utah. I loved the mountains and the coast. I am really going to miss the mountains; I miss my friends back in Utah already. I thought as I overlooked the shore. The house was on the top of a huge cliff. There was a fence facing the ocean to keep people from falling off the ledge. There was a gate in the fence that went to the enclosed staircase down to the beach.

 

The best part of the new yard, however, was the huge tree with a tree house inside it. The tree house had a rope ladder to climb up to the fort. It also had a balcony with a tire swing underneath and flower boxes lining the railing. There was a fully furnished room with a flat-screen TV, a ping pong table, and an air hockey table. Why would anyone leave something this amazing behind? I thought. Did they mean to leave it behind?

 

 "Hey, guys this tree house is amazing! Come see it!" I called out the window.

 

 "Hurry, I challenge the first one up to a ping pong match!" I added.

Crystal was the first one up the ladder. When she walked in she couldn't believe what she saw. I watched her with a gaping mouth and eyes huge with surprise.

 

"Crystal snap out of it, are you daydreaming again?" I asked.

 

"Sorry." Crystal said.

 

"Ready to take me on Crystal?" I asked waving around a paddle.

 

"You better watch out I won the school championship last year!" Crystal warned.

 

The two of us began playing unaware of what Alex and Jimmy were up to. Jimmy went out to the balcony where he discovered a ladder on the back side of the tree house going up another level. He stepped in the door and gasped. The entire room was a laboratory! He ran around the room in amazement. Drawings hung all over the walls. Some looked like time machines, others explained travel to alternate worlds in diagrams. The whiteboard was cluttered with mathematical equations and the laws of physics. Gadgets and tools were scattered across the workbench. There were blueprints tacked up to the wall above it.

 

Alex came into the room and walked up to Jimmy, jaw dropped. Alex ran his hand over the mural of the nearby star systems.

 

"Wow! What is all of this?" Alex asked Jimmy.

 

"That's what I wanted to know" Alex replied.

 

Alex looked around at the bubbling canisters in the middle of the room that changed colors. There was a marble track that went all the way around the ceiling's border and into the middle of the room winding around four sculptures of track that stood as four posts around the bubbling canisters. The marble track was self-activated when the door was opened just like the bubbling canisters. There was a bucket that lifted up the pulleys when the door opened and started the chain reaction flipping the switches on the bubbling lamps. It was a form of a Rou Goldberg Machine Alex had studied back in Utah.

 

There were models of time machines and space crafts across the workbench on the right side of the room. Each model was different and each of them showed evidence of being tested. A few of the models had been smashed and they all had some dings and scratches. One of the models was a shiny red spacecraft that had been obliterated into a lot of pieces. It had been put into a glass box.

 

 The mural of the universe across the wall opposite to the work bench. The milky way galaxy was offset on the wall to the right. Hundreds of galaxies and solar systems covered the entire wall with vivid blues, greens, purples, oranges, reds, and yellows. Each system and planet and galaxy was labeled in small white delicate ink penmanship across the black background. Each star system was circled in a fat yellow line with the name of the star system written in black calligraphy ink. A sticky yellow post-it note arrow was stuck to the wall pointing to a planate labeled: Shyelle. The star system was labeled: Kepler 7 �" K7

 

 The sticky note read:

 

 Shyelle �" Most likely to have alien life forms

 

Jimmy looked back at the world labeled Shyelle. His gaze shifted over to the big black box in the corner just to the side of the mural of the Universe. Alex pulled back the curtain of the black photo booth but realized it wasn't a photo booth at all. Instead, there was a computer monitor that had been mounted to the wall. A computer voice said, "Welcome to the Traveler, Engaging Departure to Shyelle."

 

The room spun into a tornado of color and light, it was a dizzying sensation, one that made you almost lose a sense of your identity. It was like waking up from surgery in that dazed state of anesthesia where you are not really aware of your surroundings. They feared for there life’s as his adrenaline levels spiked and his heart pounded rapidly against his chest accompanied by his shallow breathing. Their palms became clammy. Alex closed his eyes tight as nausea came upon him. Then it all jerked to a stop as fast as it began. Alex and Jimmy landed on a beach and the bright white sand stretched on as far as the eye could see in both directions. Behind him, he gazed up at the huge cliffs. They where lost.

 

“Did you see that?” I asked Crystal catching a blinding flash of light in my peripheral vision.

 

Together we claimed up to the second level of the tree house and walked toward The Traveler. The world suddenly flashed before our eyes; the room spun into a wild whirlwind of color and light. I felt like I was falling into a strange void of space. I became dizzy and disoriented as the seconds dragged on into minutes. My head pounded with a terrible headache as bass drums pounding within me.

 

 It all stopped as abruptly as it began. I felt as if I had just been pounded with a nasty strain of the flu. I landed in a disheveled heap on the sand of the beach, the same one Alex and Jimmy had landed on. A cool ocean breeze brought me the salty smell of the sea. I got up and slipped off my shoes. I walked along the edge of the water feeling the cold water splashing around my ankles and the sand ooze between my toes. The tide was high and the waves were huge.

 

Suddenly, I heard the terrible unmistakable scream of Crystal. Alex, Jimmy, and Crystal came sprinting around the corner of the enormous cliff behind me. The cliff stretched the entire beach and climbed as high as a four-story building. I stood up looking around trying to figure out what they were running from.

 

Then I saw the beast, it locked eyes with me and looked deep into my soul, paralyzing me with fear. Its eyes were a yellowish green that scowled at me. Steam puffed from its nostrils. It growled, baring its big sharp teeth. Two razor sharp horns rested on both sides of its rectangular and head. My breathing became heavy and frightened. The dragon had huge translucent wings lightly shaded green. Its body was a deep dark emerald green with scales that shimmered in the light. Its claws sunk into the sand with each step it took, claws sharp and big enough to puncture a full-grown blue whale. It used powerful legs rapidly closing in on us. My palms became sweaty and my mouth became dry as the desert sands. The sand on the beach was flying in huge clouds behind the beast. It let out an ear piercing growl and roar that seemed to break the sound barrier. It bounded off the ground and into flight with a powerful leap from its hind legs into flight with loud flap swoosh flap whoosh sounds as more steam arose from its angry nostrils.

 

“Run Kirsten!” Alex shouted as the dragon swooped down and attempted to pin him down on the sand.

 

He rolled away just in time as the dragon swooped down and sunk its razor-sharp claws into the sand. I sprinted away scanning the cliff for a cave to hide in. My siblings were about to become this dragon’s lunch!

 

“Hurry!” Crystal yelled as the dragon dove for her.

 

I ran around the corner glancing back at them. The dragon tried to ram into Alex again with its two horns but missed as he rolled away. I picked up to my top speed still scanning the cliff as I whizzed past. The sand had now changed to rock on the other side of the cliff the waves of the ocean recklessly crashed against them spraying me with a cool mist of seawater. Finally squeezed her way into the small opening between the cliffs.

 

            How long have I been running? I asked myself in thought. About a minute, that means Crystal didn’t have long. She had Asthma, two minutes of running would knock her unconscious.

           

Jimmy and Alex arrived a moment later squeezing into the small opening sideways. Crystal screamed as the dragon swooped down for her again. She made it to the opening just in time before the dragon could get to her with its razor sharp claws. Crystal wheezed hard trying to catch her breath as she pulled her inhaler from her pocket.

 

“Relax, it is I Uziel the King of Ice.” The dragon declared.

 

“What? You can talk!” Alex said surprised, his jaw dropping.

 

“Of course I can talk this is Shyelle! All the creatures can talk.” Uziel replied.

 

“Why were you chasing us?” Alex asked.

 

“I need you.” He explained.

 

Able to talk again now Crystal came back into the conversation.

 “For what?” Crystal asked. “Your lunch?”

 

“No, humans are not my taste, legend has told for over a century of your power and strength to take down the evil Fire King Ezekien” Uziel continued.

 

“So you don’t want to eat us?” Crystal asked.

 

“Nope” He replied.

 

“How did you find us so fast?” Alex asked.

 

“The traveler’s portal was opened. I could feel it’s disturbance in the magic of Shyelle” Uziel explained.

 

“Did you say power? If you did you have the wrong group of kids.” I interrupted. “We don’t even get along most of the time!”

 

“Our land is in desperate times! My kingdom needs you! You are my last chance to free my kingdom from the evil doings of Ezekien. Without you, I fear my lands will be under his horrific influence. Please, I beg you. You are my only hope of saving these citizens” Uziel pleaded.

 

“I don’t know about this after all Uziel is a dragon,” I whispered to Alex, Crystal, and Jimmy.

 

“Come on Kirsten! You’re always too careful about everything.” Alex replied.

 

“I need you all to come with me to my castle to start your training.” Uziel pleaded with us. “Please, don’t turn me down now, we have worked so hard and waited so long for our day of victory. My kingdom is falling under the influence of Ezekien and turning against me. My warriors have sacrificed their lives for our freedom. If you don’t fulfill the legend Ezekien could find a way to get past the magical barriers between our world and yours. He will get into your world. The fate of an entire planet could be in your hands!”

 

            “How can high school freshman twins, a seventh-grade boy, and a third-grade boy help you override the powers of evil?” I asked doubting Uziel.

 

“Sorry, Uziel we are only just a group of siblings. I promise you there is nothing special about us. We all have major weaknesses.  Just tell me how to get home and end this nightmare!” I said anxiously raising my voice a bit.

           

“Dragons can’t talk. They aren’t real. Dragons can’t talk. It’s just a dream.” I muttered under my breath.

           

“I don’t know how to get you home,” Uziel said. “The magical passages between our worlds have been hidden by Ezekien. He doesn’t want anything to get in or out, yet somehow you got in. You may not be able to get home without destroying Ezekien first.”

 

How could this happen? Why am I the legendary one? What makes me special? Why are we the only ones who can save this land? I thought. I was trapped and I knew it. The life of her sibling’s depended on my one decision. I felt sick. I felt stomach tightening into a million knots knowing they only had one option. I wanted more than anything to wake up and find this was all a bad nightmare. Unfortunately, I knew the challenge placed before her was real and it would define her future.

 

“We’re coming,” Kirsten said with fear evident in her voice.

 

 It was my only choice if I even hoped of returning home. and the thought of never returning home made me cringe.

 

“Climb on my back and let the adventure begin!” Uziel exclaimed, “Your training awaits you.”

 

I reluctantly climbed onto Uziel followed by Alex, Crystal, and Jimmy.

 

“This is going to be the best day of my Life!” Alex exclaimed in excitement. “I can’t believe we are on a real talking dragon!”

 

Uziel sped through the skies furiously. I listened to the pattern of his flapping wings. Flap, swoosh, flap, swoosh he flew with his main goal to train Crystal, Alex, Jimmy and I to be able to save Shyelle.

 

“Hold on tight!” Uziel yelled.

 

 He performed a full spin dive toward a waterfall. He flew right through the waterfall drenching everyone.

 

“That was so cool dude!” Alex complimented him.

 

“Just wait until you see my next surprise, Alex.” Uziel exclaimed.