D. J. MacHale
The Lost City of Faar
FIRST EARTH
Hi, guys. I gotta apologize for taking so long to write. So much has happened since I left you two, Mark and Courtney. I’m not really sure where to begin. First off, one mystery is solved. Remember the giant shark that nearly ate me down in that mine shaft on Denduron? Well, now I know where it came from. The territory I’m on is called Cloral and it’s entirely underwater. No kidding. Underwater. The quigs on Cloral are giant, flesh-eating sharks. Nice, huh?
Now let me tell you about some of the new trouble I’ve been getting into.
I was almost eaten, again; I came dangerously close to drowning; my arms were nearly yanked out of their sockets; and I think I cracked a couple of ribs — all in the first hour after I got here. Sounds like a fun place, no?
I’m writing this journal now because things have finally calmed down and I need the rest. I think it’s best to start my story at the point when I last saw you two. Man, that already seems like years ago. Time sure flies when you’re out of your mind.
I still have tons of questions about what’s happened to my life, but two jump to the top of the list. Why is it that I, Bobby Pendragon, have been chosen to become a Traveler? I don’t think that’s a lot to ask since I’ve had to risk my butt about a thousand times over while performing my Traveler duties. The second is that I want to know what happened to my family. I keep asking Uncle Press these questions, but getting info out of him is like squeezing blood from a turnip. (Not that I’ve ever tried squeezing a turnip, but it seems like a tough thing to do.) He keeps saying, “It will all come clear with time.” Great. Meanwhile, we keep jumping from one disaster to the next, and the best I can hope for is that I’ll stay alive long enough to figure out why the heck I’m in the middle of all this when all I really want to do is go home and hide under my bed with the dog. C’mon! I’m only fourteen! Is that too much to ask?
I guess it is, seeing as my home isn’t there anymore. The last time I saw you two, you were standing in front of the empty lot where my house used to be. It’s hard to describe the emotions that were banging around inside me back then. I was nervous about going on another adventure with Uncle Press and bummed to be leaving you two guys again. But the worst part was the fear of the unknown.
Uncle Press promised me I would see my family again. Mom, Dad, Shannon, and even my golden retriever, Marley. But he stopped short of telling me where they had gone. He told me that they had raised me and prepared me for the moment when I would leave home to become a Traveler, but he didn’t tell me why. Was it planned from the moment I was born? Was my family part of some secret plot? He also told me that he wasn’t my real uncle. Meaning, a blood relative. But he hadn’t yet answered the single most important question: Why? Why are there Travelers who blast through time and space, helping the territories through dangerous times?
Who chooses them? Most important, why me?
To be honest, I’ve stopped asking these questions because his answers are always so freaking elliptical. It’s like he’s some kind of Jedi master who only drips out information on a need-to-know basis. Well, I need to know bad. But I guess I’ll have to be patient and learn as I go along. I think Uncle Press is afraid if he lays it all out for me in one shot, the truth will make my head explode and I’ll end up lying in a corner someplace, drooling. He’s probably right.
When I said good-bye to you two, I got into the car with Uncle Press and Loor, my partner from the adventure on Denduron. I was leaving my two best friends to take off with my new friend and partner. At least I considered Loor a friend. We had been through hell together on Denduron and even though I wasn’t the warrior she was, I think I had earned her respect. At least I’d hoped I had.
I squeezed into the back compartment behind the two seats of the Porsche without being asked. Obviously Uncle Press was going to drive, and since Loor was bigger than me, there was no way she could fit in the back. She may have been dressed like she belonged on Second Earth, but she looked like no classmate I’d ever seen. I’m guessing she was around sixteen, but with her zero-body-fat, muscular bod, she looked ready for the Olympic decathlon. Her cocoa-dark skin made her look as if she were African, but I knew the truth. She was a warrior from the territory of Zadaa, which exists in an entirely different time and place from here. I think one of the first requirements for the Olympics is that you have to be from Earth. She didn’t qualify.
“Comfy?” asked Uncle Press.
“Not even close,” I answered.
With a laugh, Uncle Press hit the gas and once again we screamed away from my hometown of Stony Brook, Connecticut. I didn’t even ask him where we were headed, because I knew. We were going back to the abandoned subway station in the Bronx to find the gate that led to the flume that would take us… somewhere.
The last time we traveled this route I was on the back of Press’s motorcycle, with no clue of what lay ahead. This time I had a clue, but not much more.
We blasted along the turnpike, out of Connecticut, headed for New York City. Within half an hour we had gone from the leafy-green suburbs of Stony Brook to the concrete pavement of the borough of New York called the Bronx. It’s the home of Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, and a secret Traveler flume into the unknown.
As Uncle Press maneuvered the quick little sports car through the city streets, people turned to stare. This was a rough neighborhood. They weren’t used to seeing a sleek sports car screaming through their ‘hood. Or maybe they were staring in wonder at the guy riding in back who was turning blue because his knees were jammed into his throat. That would be me.
With a final spin of the wheel, Uncle Press brought us right up to the curb next to the small green kiosk that was our destination. As I looked at that little building and the peeled paint on the sign above it that said SUBWAY, only one thought came to mind.
Here we go again.
I hadn’t expected to see this place again so soon. No, I had expected toneversee this place again. Uncle Press and I had come through this way only a few hours before, having returned from Denduron. My plan was to get back home, and do my level best to forget about this whole Traveler business. But things changed. I discovered that my family was gone, along with the life I knew. I think Uncle Press brought me back to Stony Brook to see for myself. It was a smart move, because if he hadn’t, I never would have believed it. I would always be thinking about how to get home. But there was no home to get back to anymore. The cold, hard reality hit me that my destiny was to go with Uncle Press and learn more about being a Traveler. What a difference a few hours can make.
So there we were again, back in the Bronx, on the verge of starting my new life. I wanted to cry. Yes, I admit it. I wanted to cry. If Loor wasn’t there, I probably would have.
Uncle Press hopped out of the car first, leaving the keys in the ignition. Loor and I crawled out after him. Actually, I did most of the crawling. I was so mashed up in the backseat that my legs were now totally asleep, and when I tried to stand, I fell over. Loor caught me and held me up until I got the feeling back. How embarrassing is that?
Uncle Press didn’t stop to see if I was okay. He headed right for the stairs that led down into the subway.
“Uh, Uncle Press?” I called. “You sure you want to leave the car here?” I remembered back to our first trip here. We had left the motorcycle and the helmets right where the Porsche was now. I thought for sure that somebody would pinch them, but when we returned that morning, the bike was right where we had left it. The helmets were there too. Unbelievable. Pure luck. But this was really pushing it. A hot sports car sitting alone with the keys in the ignition was too tempting a prize. Worse, it was in a no-parking zone. If thieves didn’t get the car, the cops would tow it for sure.
Uncle Press said, “It’s okay. The acolytes will take care of it.”
Huh? Acolytes? That was a new wrinkle. I looked at Loor to see if she knew what he was talking about. She
