Close Encounters of the Magical Kind Read online

  Sarah had a disturbing thought. What would happen if their griffin friends became exhausted? It’s not like they could simply fly back to the safety of the island floor. Would they become stranded? If she couldn’t teleport then how would any of them get down safely?

  “What happens if you get tired?” Sarah quietly asked Nyx as they ascended another dozen feet. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask that question sooner.”

  “You believe I will deplete my strength?” Nyx asked, puzzled. “Why?”

  The griffin’s response confused her. What an odd thing to say!

  “Well, think about it,” Sarah continued. “You’re climbing straight up with at least a hundred and… let’s just say some extra weight, alright? You have a number of extra pounds clinging to your back. It can’t be easy on you.”

  “It’s not easy,” Nyx confirmed. “I have to be certain of my footing. However, I am more concerned about your welfare than my own.”

  “Why?” Sarah wanted to know. “I realize that if something happens to you then I will also be affected, but why aren’t you concerned about what will happen to you? Let’s say, for example, you slip and fall off. I can always teleport myself back to safety. Granted, it won’t be on Ranal, and it would end my quest, but I would still be safe. What about you?”

  “What about me?” the griffin curiously inquired.

  “What would happen to you if that happened?” Sarah asked.

  “Nothing. I imagine I would shake myself off and go about my business.”

  “After falling hundreds of feet? I don’t think you’d be able to walk that off, Nyx.”

  “You’re assuming I’d be hurt?” Nyx dryly asked. “Or perhaps killed?”

  Sarah’s eyes widened as she realized why her griffin friend wasn’t worried about suffering any physical harm.

  “You’re already dead. No wonder you’re not concerned.”

  “You can’t die twice,” the griffin smugly told her.

  Just then Nyx stumbled again. Once more broken rocks hailed down on Loryss and Steve’s heads. Nyx squawked with alarm.

  “Look out!”

  One particularly large stone smashed into Loryss’ right front leg, knocking it loose. Off balance, Loryss squawked in fear as she tried to throw her weight forward to gain another foothold on the mountainside. However, the damage was done. Her front left leg was torn loose as the much larger griffin began to tip backward. Sarah watched helplessly as Loryss flailed about with her avian front legs, desperately looking for something – anything – that would arrest her fall. Sarah’s scared eyes locked on to her husband’s. She was ready. She brought up a mental picture of their cabin back on the ground. She wouldn’t risk her husband’s life. She didn’t know how she knew for certain, but she knew with utter clarity that both Ria and Tivan would have understood.

  Just then she watched her husband try to lock his ankles under Loryss’ abdomen. He must think he’s going to fall off! Steve started to slide down Loryss’ back, past her wings, when thankfully his long tail wrapped itself around one of the griffin’s wings and brought him to a sudden stop. Not complaining about the circumstances, Steve extended his arms away from his sides and blasted jets of fire from both hands. The blasts were more than enough to push the two of them back to the wall. Loryss sank her talons into the rock and shuddered. Sarah gasped with shock.

  “You blasted fire out of your hands! You’re not supposed to use your jhorun! We could be expelled!”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Steve grumped, adjusting his grip on Loryss’ back. He tried to pull his tail free but it remained wrapped around Loryss’ wing. He smacked it a few times, as though he was trying to get its attention, and it finally released its hold. “There was no time to think about it. We started to fall so I gave us a push to get us back into position. If I hadn’t then Loryss would have taken a nasty spill and you’d end up teleporting us to one of your safe zones. Am I right? I decided to risk it.”

  “I am grateful,” Loryss told him, turning her head almost completely around to look directly into his eyes. “That was quick thinking.”

  Steve gave the griffin a smug smile before looking victoriously over at Sarah.

  “Did you hear that? She complimented me on my quick thinking.”

  About ready to agree, Sarah suddenly remembered the predicament they were in. Her husband had used his jhorun! Shouldn’t there be some type of retaliation? Would the island disappear? Would they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a free-fall?

  Sarah brought up the mental picture of their cabin back on solid ground and braced for the inevitable. After a few uncomfortable moments of silence she hesitantly looked around. They were still on the side of a mountain. Steve and Loryss were directly below her. She could see the ground and the base of the mountain several hundred feet below.

  “Umm, not that I’m complaining,” Sarah slowly began, “but shouldn’t something have happened? I thought for certain that the instant Steve blasted out those flames then we would have been kicked off this mountain. What happened?”

  “Nothing, obviously,” Steve answered. He shifted his grip on Loryss’ back and looked up at her. “We’re still stuck on the side of this damn mountain. Let’s figure out what happened later, okay?”

  Sarah shook her head, “Steve, this is important. We need to figure this out. Why were you able to use your jhorun here and not get penalized? I thought for certain this Usol character would have noticed that.”

  “He probably has,” Steve finally decided.

  “And?” Sarah prompted.

  “Sarah, think about it,” Steve answered. “If this Usol character truly wants us off the mountain then all he has to do is switch this place back to a cloud. Do you follow me?”

  Sarah nodded, “Yes.”

  “Now, if that were to happen, yes, we’d be falling to our deaths. But what about the griffins? They have every right to be here. They belong on Ranal. We don’t. Usol would be evicting Loryss and Nyx off of this sanctuary, too. Remember, he has an affinity for the griffins, right?”

  “You’re assuming everything we’ve heard about Usol is true,” Sarah reminded him.

  “For the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s correct. All of it. I think the last thing Usol would want to do is to cause any harm to befall the griffins. Us, sure, but not the griffins.”

  “What are you saying?” Sarah asked.

  “I think that as long as we remain on their backs then we’re safe. If we lose physical contact with them then I think we will be… what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, yes. Screwed.”

  Sarah was quiet as she considered. Could her husband be right? Were they only still there because of their proximity to the griffins?

  “I’m surprised Usol isn’t a little more annoyed,” she decided. “Too bad there isn’t a way to tell if he was or not.”

  Loryss squawked with alarm. “He is. We have awoken the mountain! It trembles!”

  “What?” Sarah gasped. She leaned forward, intent on touching the side of the mountain but was too far away. “Are you sure? When did it start?”

  “Just now,” the griffiness answered. “Nyx, do you feel it?”

  “Aye,” Nyx agreed. “The mountain shakes.”

  “Is it growing stronger?” Steve asked, leaning to the side to gauge the distance to the ground. “I don’t feel anything.”

  The two griffins were silent as they waited. Loryss finally shook her head no.

  “Fear not. Not only is it not getting stronger, it now appears to be receding.”

  “Confirmed,” Nyx reported. “In fact, I cannot sense it any longer.”

  “Nor can I,” Loryss said.

  “So does that mean the threat is over?” Steve asked. “That wasn’t too bad. I thought for sure Usol’s retaliation would have been worse than that. So, do you think it means we can use our jhoruns now? Sarah, can you tell if the restrictions placed on you are gone?”

  Sarah closed her eyes and tried to vis
ualize the lake shore where they had first arrived on Ranal. As before, nothing appeared. She let out an exasperated sigh.

  “I tried, and I can’t.”

  She heard her husband grunt with frustration.

  “I don’t get it. I can use mine but you can’t use yours? How come… wait. Why’d it get so quiet all of a sudden?”

  Sarah paused. Steve was right. It had suddenly become eerily quiet. Realization dawned and she sucked in her breath. The water! The ever present sounds of falling water coming from their left had suddenly vanished. Were the griffins right? Did Usol really exist? Had he somehow stopped the flow of water?

  “It’s the waterfall,” Sarah reported. “I can’t hear it any more. Why?”

  Both griffins had cocked their head to one side as they listened. Nyx gave a tremulous squawk. Sarah could tell that the young griffin was scared. They all were. Falling water didn’t suddenly disappear, as if someone had flicked a switch. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. She looked back down at the ground and suddenly the absence of water became the least of her worries.

  “Ummm, we have a bigger problem! What happened to the ground?”

  Steve’s head jerked up, “What? What was that?”

  “We started up on the right of the waterfall, remember? About fifty feet. We’ve been going up in a fairly straight line. How come when I look down I can’t see the river anywhere?”

  Both griffins paused in the midst of their climb and craned their necks to look down. Sarah heard Steve grunt with surprise. They could see a solid expanse of tree tops to their left, but directly beneath them? Sarah shuddered. It was proof that Thinian had been right. They were definitely up on a floating island because now there was nothing directly beneath them but open air. This mountain, Sarah realized with a start, was sitting on the northern most point of Ranal. Accessible from the south and the west, the northern and eastern faces looked out over a vertical drop-off of what had to be thousands of feet of open air. From her vantage point she could even see several small clouds far below. So, what happened? How could the mountain’s topography have changed? Was Usol responsible for this?

  “What do we do?” Nyx wanted to know. “Do we continue to climb?”

  “We still need to go up,” Sarah decided. “I say we keep climbing and try to figure out what happened along the way. I really don’t like continuing on, knowing the ground is now thousands of feet away, but what choice do we have? We are on a serious time crunch here.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Steve agreed. “What are the chances the mountain will move us around again?”

  “Unknown,” Sarah said. “It’s anyone’s guess at this stage.”

  Steve groaned, “My back is killing me. Loryss, let’s keep moving.”

  The griffins resumed climbing. Astonished that the island floor had somehow vanished and they were now for all intents and purposes climbing up a different side of the mountain, Sarah started to consider the problem at hand. What had happened? Obviously it had something to do with Steve helping to keep Loryss on the side of the mountain. Less than ten seconds later they had felt the mountain tremble. That’s when they noticed the waterfall had gone silent. Only then had she looked down and noticed they weren’t where she had expected them to be. If she didn’t know any better then she would have accused the mountain of spinning them around so that they were now on the opposite side.

  Curious, Sarah twisted about as she tried to locate the sun. It should have been on their left. Her eyes widened. The sun was now directly behind the mountain! She had been correct in her earlier assessment. The mountain had somehow spun them around and they were now on the eastern face of Usol Peak! How was that even physically possible? Since when could a mountain spin around, like a top?

  “We’re on the eastern side of the mountain now,” Sarah informed them, raising her voice so that everyone could hear her. “Thinian, you’ve been quiet for far too long. You’ve been on this island longer than we have. What’s going on?”

  “There’s a reason why this mountain is called ‘Usol’s Peak’,” the former Fae dryly said as he poked his grubby head out from within Sarah’s pocket. He looked down at the distant ground, belched, swallowed nervously, and then disappeared back into Sarah’s pocket. “I’ve heard many a griffin mention this mountain and not once have I ever heard of anyone ever stepping foot on it. If we’ve angered Usol then I shudder to think what he’ll do to us. Whatever it is, I know it won’t be good.”

  “That’s very helpful,” Sarah sarcastically said as she briefly considered giving her pocket a thumping. “Care to offer anything useful?”

  “Be prepared to return us to the ground,” Thinian advised, scratching his thick unruly beard. “I think you’re right. Usol wants you off this mountain. He will do so the instant he feels it won’t harm the griffins.”

  “What about the fact that we’re climbing up a mountain with no ground below us?” Steve asked.

  “I would say Usol is trying to hinder your progress,” Thinian answered.

  “Perhaps we should descend,” Loryss suggested. “We could at least try to return to the elevation in which the ground was as we remember it.”

  “We’d be wasting time we don’t have,” Sarah pointed out. “We can’t afford to lose any more than we already have.”

  “We could just go down maybe twenty feet or so,” Steve suggested. “If Usol wants us off this mountain then you’d think he’d help us down.”

  “Fine,” Sarah reluctantly agreed, clearly not happy about giving up ground.

  For the next ten minutes the griffins carefully backtracked down the mountain, only coming to a stop once it became clear that the mountain was not going to cooperate and shift them back to the southern face. Sarah sighed and looked back up. She sucked in a breath.

  “He did it to us again! Look! The peak has changed! See how the mountainside bulges outward about a hundred feet above our heads? That wasn’t there before.”

  Steve turned to scan the skies. He shook his head.

  “Are you sure? The sun is still behind the mountain. That means we’re still on the eastern face.”

  “I’m sure,” Sarah confirmed. “Only the top half has changed. What that means, I don’t know.”

  “It means that only part of the mountain turned,” Loryss announced. “I have no idea how something like that is even possible.”

  “Think about it,” Steve told the griffin. “If we go under the assumption that this Usol guy is real and could pick up several islands to squish them all together to make Ranal, then finding a mountain on that island capable of rotating in place really shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.”

  “That really doesn’t help us, dear,” Sarah pointed out. Her grip was tiring and she was actually starting to feel somewhat dizzy.

  “Let’s just make it to the top of the waterfall and then we’ll figure out what to do from there, okay?” Steve suggested. “My arms are getting tired and I’ve got a nasty kink in my back.”

  “You and me both,” Sarah agreed. “However, there’s a problem with that.”

  “What?” Steve wanted to know.

  “We were climbing up with the belief that what we wanted was directly over our heads.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “Steve, look up there. I don’t see the waterfall anywhere. It means that we’ll have to climb around this stupid mountain until we’re back on the right track.”

  “Fine. Let’s do that first, okay? Let’s get back to where we’re supposed to be and then we’ll continue up.”

  Loryss nodded her head, “Agreed. Nyx? After you. Start side-stepping to the left. Careful now.”

  “How far should I go?” the younger griffin inquired.

  “Until we can hear the falling water,” Loryss answered.

  Nyx hesitantly took a step to the left and then sank her claws into the stone, moving only when she was certain her talons were firmly anchored to the mountain’s side. Sarah looked down and watched her husba
nd’s progress on Loryss’ back. Like Nyx, Loryss was cautiously moving to the left. She could only assume that climbing sideways was more difficult than climbing straight up. If they…

  Sarah’s thoughts drifted off. She suddenly smiled. The sound of falling water was back. It was working! Only… Sarah’s smile melted into a frown. That was too quick. And it was coming from the wrong direction. The waterfall now sounded as though it was on their right, when it shouldn’t be. What was going on? It was almost as if Usol – provided he did exist and was ultimately responsible – was spinning the mountain in whatever direction they weren’t looking. Logic would suggest that since they were all progressing to the left then they had all been facing that direction. Was that the trick? Wherever they weren’t looking would change next? That should be easy enough to test.

  “Everyone hold up a second,” Sarah called out. Both griffins came to an immediate halt. “Usol is messing with us.”

  “In what way?” Steve wanted to know.

  “Can’t you hear the water?” Sarah asked.

  “Sure I can,” Steve answered. “We started moving towards it and we started hearing it again, only… wait a minute.”

  “That’s right,” Sarah confirmed. “It’s on the other side of us now.”

  Both griffins turn to look back the way they had come. Neither could see the water but there was certainly no mistaking which direction the sounds were coming from. Loryss gave an exasperated squawk.

  “How could we have made a complete circuit of the mountain in less than a quarter of an hour?”

  “We didn’t,” Sarah told the griffin. “The mountain moved on us again.”

  “Why?” Nyx asked. “What purpose does it serve?”

  “If the purpose is to piss us off,” Steve grumbled from Loryss’ back, “then Usol is doing an admirable job.”

  “I have a theory,” Sarah announced.

  “I’m all ears,” Steve responded.

  “I’m fairly certain that all of us were looking left, in the same direction we were headed.”

  She heard her husband clear his throat.

  “So?”