“You feeling all right?” Courtney asked.
“You don’t look so hot,” Mark added.
“Pendragon doesn’t know what he’s stepped into,” Seegen said weakly. “I must find him.”
“Tell us,” Courtney said.
“I believe I’ve discovered how Saint Dane plans to decimate Eelong,” Seegen said. “He’s going to poison the territory.”
“Poison?” Mark said. “The whole territory?”
“I’ve already seen the signs. Tangs have been dying, by the hundreds. I believe they ate crops that were infected by this poison. Pendragon needs to know!”
“How do you know Saint Dane poisoned the tangs?” Courtney asked.
“Because nothing like this has ever happened on Eelong,” Seegen answered. “Mass deaths? It’s unnatural. It can only be the work of Saint Dane. No one else but Pendragon will understand that. I must tell him before-“
Seegen didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t move. The big cat sat there like a freeze-frame, his cat eyes staring forward.
“Before what?” Courtney asked.
No response.
“Hey, a-are you okay?” Mark asked.
“Seegen?” Courtney called out. “Hel-lo?”
The cat didn’t answer. Courtney took a step toward the Traveler. Mark followed close behind.
“Maybe you should go back to Eelong,” Courtney told the cat nervously. “Bobby is there looking for you. You can tell him all about the poison.”
Still, Seegen didn’t move. Courtney reached out to touch him, but Mark grabbed her arm and screamed, “Stop!”
“What’s the matter?” Courtney asked.
“Look,” Mark said. He was pointing to Seegen’s mouth. A thin line of bright green liquid had dribbled out and trickled down his fur. Mark cautiously held his open palm in front of the cat’s nose. He held it there for a moment, then declared, “He’s not breathing.”
Courtney took a surprised step back. “Whoa, no way!”
Mark waved his hand in front of the cat’s glassy eyes. They remained fixed. Staring. Unseeing.
“He can’t be dead!” Courtney yelled in a panic. “He was fine a second ago. You don’t just…stop living!”
Indeed, Seegen didn’t look any different in death than he had in life. Nothing had changed, except that life had left his body. Mark turned away from the big cat and looked to the ground, his mind lost in thought.
“Mark!” Courtney called. “What are we going to do? This is… this is…bad!”
“It’s worse than bad,” Mark answered.
“How’s that?”
“I know Bobby’s journals inside out,” Mark explained. “I’ve reread each one a dozen times. I remember everything. Every event. Every detail.”
“Yeah, so?” Courtney said anxiously.
“We’ve read about this,” Mark continued. “Think. Seegen suddenly died, with no warning, and there’s green liquid dribbling from his mouth and-“
“And there’s a deadly poison on Eelong!” Courtney interrupted, realizing where Mark was going. “Like nothing they’ve ever seen. It infects crops and makes them poisonous. You don’t think-“
“Yeah, I do,” Mark said solemnly. “Saint Dane said the walls between the territories were crumbling.”
“Cloral,” Courtney said with finality.
“Yeah, Cloral,” Mark echoed. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but somehow the poison that Saint Dane tried to destroy Cloral with is still active, and it found its way to Eelong.”
“And a Traveler is dead,” Courtney added. “What if he’s the only one who knew the truth?”
“He isn’t,” Mark said.”Weknow.”
SECOND EARTH
(CONTINUED)
Courtney grabbed Mark’s arm, pulling him out of the root cellar and back into the big, empty basement of the Sherwood house. Once outside, he yanked his arm back. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“I couldn’t stay in there with a dead, a dead-“
“Klee,” Mark snapped. “He’s called a klee. And he was the Traveler from Eelong.”
“Whatever, it was…creepy.”
“Creepy is the least of our problems,” Mark said.
“What are we going to do, Mark?” Courtney asked quickly, her normally calm exterior showing signs of cracking. “Saint Dane has brought that poison from Cloral to Eelong, and we’re the only ones who know it.”
Mark paced. His mind was full of possibilities. None of them were good.
“It’s wrong,” he muttered nervously. “He’s not supposed to mix things from the territories.”
“Saint Dane’s not supposed to do a lot of things,” Courtney said. “But that hasn’t stopped him. Bobby’s gotta know!”
“And I know how to tell him,” Mark exclaimed.” We can send a note to Boon, the acolyte from Eelong. Dorney showed us how to do that!”
“Good idea, except for one thing,” Courtney said. “What?”
“Boon’s not the acolyte. Not yet, anyway. I thought you remembered every detail?”
“Then who sent us the note?” Mark asked. “Seegen’s acolyte. That’s not Boon.”
“Well, we gotta try!” Mark exclaimed. He grabbed the backpack that he left outside the wooden door and pulled out a spiral notebook and rollerball pen. He nervously flipped through dozens of pages filled with notes from his classes (Mark loved taking notes), until he found a blank page. He spoke aloud as he wrote:
“This note is for Pendragon, the lead Traveler. Saint Dane brought the mutant poison from Cloral to Eelong. Seegen is dead. He was killed by the poison. His body is on Second Earth. What should we do? Mark and Courtney.”
Mark asked, “Anything else you can think of?”
Courtney shook her head. Mark ripped out the note and folded it in two. He took off his Traveler ring and laid it on the floor.
“Dorney said all we have to do is say the name of the acolyte we want to send it to,” Mark said, breathless. He held the note over the ring, cleared his throat and announced, “Boon.”
Nothing happened.
“Boon from Eelong,” Mark said louder. The two looked at the ring. It lay there doing absolutely nothing.
“Send this to Boon! The acolyte from Eelong!” Mark yelled.
Still nothing.
“Am I forgetting something?” Mark asked with a hint of desperation.
“Yes,” Courtney answered. “Boon isn’t the acolyte. Hello! I told you that.”
Frustrated, Mark picked up the ring and put it back on his finger. “Then I don’t know what to do.”
Courtney took the note from Mark, read it, then read it again. An idea was forming. “Mark,” she began softly. “Think about what I’m saying before telling me I’m wrong, okay?” Mark nodded.
“Saint Dane said that when the first territory falls, the rest will go over like dominos, right?”
“Yes,” Mark agreed. “And I’m getting sick of hearing that.”
“From what we’ve seen and what Bobby wrote, Saint Dane’s prediction is coming true. Veelox is doomed, and now weird things are happening. Like those images Bobby saw when he flew through the flume, and the way Saint Dane’s hair burned. I think he’s getting stronger, and if he gets another territory, there’s no telling what might happen.”
“I’m with you so far,” Mark said.
“Eelong is in big trouble,” Courtney continued. “It looks like Saint Dane’s got the klees ready to start killing off
