My last thought was that there was no way I could be an illusion. An illusion could never hurt so bad.
And everything went black.
(CONTINUED)
IBARA
I was swimming again.
At least that’s what it felt like. I drifted, weightless, not sure of up or down or in between. I could breathe, too. For a second I thought maybe I’d grown those gills after all. In that dreamlike state, nothing seemed strange. I was hanging out somewhere south of nowhere, and not minding it one single bit.
It didn’t last. My first clue that I was returning to reality was the weight. My body felt heavy. Impossibly heavy. It was like I was living in somebody else’s skin. I didn’t like it much. I felt paralyzed. And hot. Very hot. It was like I was wrapped tight in an itchy wool blanket but couldn’t lift my arms to scratch. Not that I would have known what to scratch anyway. I was one, massive burning itch. I eventually became aware enough to realize I was lying down and my eyes were closed. It was too much of an effort to crack them open, so I decided not to try. I was afraid of what I might see. My head felt like some guy had his hands on either side and was squeezing. I thought about telling whoever it was to back off, but my lips wouldn’t open. They were stuck shut. I swallowed. Ouch. Sandpaper throat.
Reality slowly slipped in. I kind of wish it hadn’t. The more aware I became, the more I realized how hurting I was. I finally cracked one eye open. The light was painful. I forced myself to look around. I’m not sure why I bothered-there wasn’t much to see. I was on my back staring up at a sea of grass. Yes, grass. I tried to focus, but I was too uncomfortable to think about anything except how uncomfortable I was. Besides the head squeeze, I felt as if I had an Olympic case of poison ivy. No, poison oak. That’s worse. If there’s anything worse than poison oak, that’s what it felt like. But it wasn’t poison oak. It was the bees. The quig-bees. I was aware enough to remember those buggers. I looked down at my arm to see it was covered in red, hideous welts. Stings. Ouch. I had been stung more times than I could count. Note to self: Avoid mirrors. That would be ugly. I figured I’d look like that “It’s clobberin’ time!” guy from the Fantastic Four. I’d just as soon pass on that image, thank you very much. As bad as I felt, I realized there was something good in all this. I was alive. I would heal. I was good at that. What I didn’t know was where I had landed, and how I got there.
“You’re awake,” came a soft, feminine voice.
That was nice. Soft and feminine was nice. She didn’t sound like a fish, either. I cracked my eye open again and she came into view, looming over me, upside down. She looked into my eyes. Or eye. I first noticed her hair. It was long and dark red. She had it pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon. Very practical. Her eyes were green. I’d never seen such deep green eyes. They could have been colored contact lenses, that’s how stunning they were. She was pretty, I guessed. It was hard to tell, looking at someone upside down and with one eye.
As she looked at me, I saw the worry in those green eyes. Worry was good. I was pretty worried myself. At least we were on the same page.
“How long?” I croaked.
“You’ve been asleep for three days. We’ve given you medicine to make you sleep. You have to heal. You were very lucky.” “Really?” I groaned, trying to sound sarcastic. She smiled. She got it.
“The venom from the bee stings isn’t fatal, unless you’re allergic. I’m guessing you’re not, or you’d be dead.” Good guess.
“You’ve got to keep still until the poison passes through your system.”
Fine. Whatever. The last thing I wanted to do was get up. Or walk. Or talk. Or anything else that involved movement or thought. That pretty much ruled out everything but sleep.
“I’ve never seen so many stings,” she said with concern. “Did you do something to aggravate the bees?”
I wondered how she would have reacted if I’d told her that they were mutant bees sent by a demon from another territory to attack me because I was there to stop him from destroying her world. I decided to keep that to myself.
“No,” I croaked.
“Drink this,” she said, and held a small cup to my lips. I had to lift my aching head. Ouch. I took a few swallows, though more dribbled down my chin than my throat.
“You’re healing remarkably fast. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I had.
“A little more sleep and you’ll be up on your feet so we can begin.”
“Begin what?” I asked.
She leaned down and said, “We’ve got to learn who you are, and why you’re on Ibara.” Oh. That.
Whatever she gave me was already making me drowsy. I was swimming again. I liked it. Before I got back into the pool, I forced my eye open one more time and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Telleo.”
Telleo. Nice name. Nice hair. Nice to know somebody was taking care of me, whoever she was. “Thank you, Telleo.”
She gave me a warm smile. “And what is your name?”
That was an easy one. The tougher questions would come later. I was going to have to come up with some answers. But not just then. I had to go swimming. “It’s Pendragon. Good night.”
When I woke up, I felt much better. Not good. Better. The nasty, burning itch had settled into a seminasty, burning itch. The hundreds of bee stings had scabbed over. Sometimes it’s good to be a Traveler. I wondered how long it would take a non-Traveler to recover from that kind of an attack. Don’t get me wrong, I was still a mess. But I could function.
“Can you sit up?” came a familiar voice. Telleo appeared at the foot of my bed.
“I think,” I croaked. “How long did I sleep this time?”
“Two days. I stopped giving you the medication this morning. It’s time for you to rejoin us.”
I was so stiff I could barely move. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the bee stings, or because I had been lying there for five days. Probably both.
“Oil can,” I murmured through clenched teeth.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” I had to stop making Second Earth jokes.
When Telleo helped me sit up, my head went light. “Whoa, not good,” I babbled.
She eased me back down. “Let’s try that again later.”
I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. It was made of woven, green grass. I hadn’t imagined it before. I really was seeing grass. It was a simple cottage with wooden walls. I was lying on a bed that was about a foot off the wooden floor. The mattress was comfortable, but thin. The door was crudely fashioned out of lengths of something that looked like bamboo. The furniture was simple, straight and wooden. There were a few chairs and a table made out of the same bamboo-looking stuff as the door. The table was loaded with earthen jugs of various sizes. I figured these contained the medicine Telleo had been giving me. From what I could see, there weren’t any other rooms. This was it. On first glance the place looked like a primitive hut.
On second glance I saw things that didn’t fit the rustic profile. There was a tube of light that ran the length of each wall near the ceiling, like a neon bulb. These people didn’t rely on fire for light. They had power. Though we were inside, there was a soft breeze. I looked across the room to see a series of fan blades, built into a frame, turning slowly. Again, they were powered. The final weirdness came when Telleo walked to the table of earthen jugs, reached to the far side, and picked up a small, cream-colored device that looked like a bar of soap.
She touched it a few times and spoke into it. “He is awake,” she said.
It was a telephone. I watched as she mixed together a concoction in the earthen jugs. She was a small girl, not much taller than five feet. She was light skinned, but tan. She wore a short, yellow dress that seemed to be made from the same material as my clothes. It was kind of the same style, too, with a loose, sleeveless top. She also wore the same kind of sandals. I guessed she was older than I was, but not by much.
