“I only learned how to put other people to sleep, not myself…”
The noise coming from three pairs of pursed lips changed from suppressed to barely suppressed laughter, indicating I had given the correct—in other words—the wrong answer. Finally Bibi spoke.
“Miriam,” he laughed, “There are lots of other people here who know the sleep spell. Practically anyone in fact could have helped you go to sleep if you were having trouble.”
“Oh… Right...I guess I didn’t think of that,” I mumbled.”
Zazkal who could not bear the thought of bumping around at the bottom of a bubble with two other people for a couple of days had gone all out. He had built three interlocking bubbles. One for each passenger.
“Most impressive,” Bibi said when he saw the huge triple bubble bobbing gently on the surface.
The bubbles were held together by three short fat pieces of hollow white plastic that would allow us to pass things between the bubbles.
“What’s that stuff that looks like PVC pipes?” I asked.
“PVC pipes,” Zazkal said, nodding towards my bag of inexhaustible delights.
I put my hand up to one of the bubbles to climb aboard, but instead of letting me in, it bounced gently away.
“Hey! What’s the matter with this bubble.”
“It’s not yours,” Zazkal answered. He put his hand up to the same bubble, and again it moved away. “It’s Bibi’s. Try one of the other two.”
I put my hand up to another bubble and this time, it went through. The skin of the bubble closed around my hand so that there was never any visible opening between me and the bubble, like putting your finger into a soap bubble when it doesn’t break. There was a slight tugging sensation. I relaxed and let the bubble pull me all the way in. Unlike the fairy lights that they’re based on, the traveling bubbles let you in but not out until you get to your destination.
Zazkal swam over to the third bubble and did the same.
Clearly nervous, Bibi watched until we were both in our bubbles. Finally, he gave his bubble a cautious poke with one finger. As soon as it went through the surface, he changed his mind and tried to pull it out. It didn’t work. The more he tugged, the faster his hand and then his arm was pulled into the bubble.
Bibi was only in up to his armpits, when the big triple bubble began to rise up and move forward, leaving his tail dangling foolishly in the air
Seeing the terrified smile on Bibi’s face, even Zazkal’s standard sour expression mutated into the crooked grimace that was as close as he ever got to a smile.
Eventually, we all got settled, traveling just above the tops of the waves. The bubbles got faster and faster until the ocean below was a gray blur.
“We never went this fast before,” I said.
“We never needed too,” Zazkal answered. “It’s a long trip.”
“How come we don’t go this fast all the time? It takes hours to get to Casalot from the reef?”
“Hmfpt.”
Translation, ‘I didn’t know how’.
Bibi was all bouncy and excited, but I was not a newbie to bubble travel and I was tired, really tired. I managed to pass out snacks from my sampo before I conked out.
When the water began to tickle my nose, I woke up. The bubble was leaking. I smelled salt and I smelled trouble.
We weren’t on the water anymore. We were in it. I pushed and pushed but the bubble wouldn’t let me out. We were trapped. Bubblephobia started to kick in.
“We’ve just stopped for a bit of a stretch,” Bibi said calmly, as if nothing was wrong. It was hard not to notice me thrashing around
“Stop eeling around like an idiot. I can’t concentrate,” Zazkal grumbled. He refocused on whatever random distant point he had been focusing on, and the bottoms of the bubbles suddenly ceased to exist. We were now comfortably under water again. Catastrophe averted.
“The longest I can get it to stop for is a quarter of an hour,” said Zazkal. “But I can do it as often as we wish.”
“You were asleep,” Bibi said, “but Zazkal and I have been sitting on our tails for almost four hours. My skin feels positively desiccated. My, this feels good,” he said as he somersaulted through the water. “I don’t mind breathing air, not really, but ahh, the taste of salt in your mouth, you can’t beat it. Air does the job all right, but it has no flavor. You can’t taste it.”
“Come on, I’ll race you to the bottom,” he challenged, and surprisingly, Zazkal came, too. He must have been really cramped. As soon as we touched bottom, we automatically turned and headed back up still going at top speed. It had taken us a good five minutes to reach the seafloor, and no one wanted to ‘miss the bubble’.
We took three more swimming breaks while the sun was out. It seemed that the longer we traveled in the bubble, the more frequently we needed breaks.
Finally, near dusk, we spotted land. Zazkal and Bibi stopped reading and we watched silently as our ocean shrank. Even though we had technically been out of the water all day, the ocean was always just below us with a comforting closeness. A boundary was being crossed as we passed over the surf and onto the beach, moving from one world into another.
Bibi was the first to break the silence.
“Look,” he called out excitedly, “a person with legs.”
The ‘leg person’, a man walking with a dog along the shore, looked up at the sound of Bibi’s voice. We all shrank back in our bubbles in a pointless but automatic gesture to not be noticed. I covered my mouth to soften the unrequested giggle.
“Be quiet,” Bibi whispered sharply
“It’s okay. He can’t see us,” I whispered
“Zazkal,” I hissed. “How come we’re traveling so slowly?”
“I didn’t want to miss anything, so I slowed it down,” came the hoarse reply.
Once the surprise of having the land person hear our voices passed, Zazkal and I calmed down. Only Bibi remained anxious. Finally, as we passed over more and more people who didn’t seem to notice us, Bibi lost his nervousness but we kept our voices low.
We passed into a large city as it was growing dark. Lights began to go on around us as the bubble, at first bumping gently off the buildings, gradually rose higher into the air.
Just past the city was a large oil refinery, the high girders covered with tiny lights. Zazkal did a double take and Bibi gave out a small gasp when he saw it. From this distance, the refinery, with its dainty lights hanging in the air, looked a lot like Casalot. They both turned wordlessly to me for an explanation
“It’s pretty, isn’t it,” I said. “But they’re not fairy lights. If you could see it during the daytime, you would be disappointed. Just a bunch of girders and big tanks.”
It was not long before even the outskirts of the city were behind us and we were passing over dark, invisible countryside.
“It’s not much to look at, is it?” Zazkal commented dryly…extra crispy dry. He managed to condemn the entire continent and push all my buttons in one short sentence.
“Like the ocean looks any different at night? Dark is dark,” I snapped. “Wait till the morning.”
“We should be well out into the ocean by then. I suggest you go to sleep. We’re safe enough in the bubble. I don’t think there’s anything interesting to look at in this place.
I turned my back and lay down, not to sleep—I was too annoyed to sleep—just to end the conversation.
CHAPTER 8
SPIDERS
We expected an ocean sunrise when we woke up the next morning.
There was water…and there was sunrise over the water. All true, but instead of the ocean, it was a lake sunrise.
The bubbles should have bounced off the trees and sailed above them when we got to the edge of whatever lake this was, but we were hopelessly tangled in sticky spider webs. The long-legged six inchers were all over the bubbles trying to repair the damage to their webs, or maybe they were just excited about the huge bugs they had captured.
I
’m usually okay with eight leggers, but this was serious creepy. The woods were covered with huge tree-spanning webs. Every web had its own little monster right in the center. You couldn’t miss them. Their long, skinny legs were striped red and yellow and they were everywhere. Visions of being wrapped up for spider supper were starting to penetrate my brain.
“What in Neptune’s ocean are those?”
Oh, good. Zazkal was awake. His yell woke up Bibi and drew the attention of some people working on a boat at the edge of the water.
“They’re called spiders,” I answered quietly, hoping he would get the hint and keep his voice down. “In the bug world, they are apex predators.
“They look so delicate,” Bibi said, more fascinated than scared. “The nets, I mean. How can they have stopped our bubble?”
“They’re super sticky. That’s how they catch things to eat.” I felt a ‘ghost walking on my grave’ shiver.
“Every time the bubbles try to bounce away, they get more tangled.,” I said, looking to Zazkal for confirmation, but he seemed to have lost interest in the specific nature of our predicament.
“Sit very still and keep quiet,” he said. “Those drylanders are coming over. Two heads, automatically disobeying, swiveled in the direction of the water, and then froze.
A man and a boy, maybe eight or nine years old, were walking this way. The man had his light brown hair in a short ponytail. The boy’s hair was the same color, but long on top and shaved on the sides.
They were wearing shorts and t-shirts and were ducking under and around the giant webs with their exposed arms and legs like it was no big deal. I shivered again.
“It was over there somewhere,” the boy said, “near that bunch of mixed up looking Banana spiders. It sounded like somebody in trouble.”
They had heard Zazkal. Well, he can’t blame me for this.
We may have been practically invisible, but the spiders were not.
All they saw were spiders walking around in the air, and webs that didn’t seem to be attached to anything. Some of the spiders had already started new webs, anchoring them to the bubble, making everything look even wronger.
“Stand back, Bob,” the man said.
He reached up with one hand, carefully pushing away the dangling bits of broken web. When he made contact with the bubble, it bounced ever so gently upwards a bit, and then back into place. The spiders all rushed around like crazy, and the two people moved even faster.
They crouched behind some shrubbery and watched us, probably waiting for something terrible to happen. If anyone had been looking at that moment, they would have seen five people—three with tails—sitting as still as possible, all five of us desperately trying to look invisible.
The man spoke first.
“It could be a giant kite made out of clear plastic? Or maybe a weather balloon? I bet it’s a weather balloon.”
He rose cautiously and began to come a little closer, but the boy did not move.
“What about the people, Dad? I think they can see us.”
“What people?”
“Those people,” he pointed at us. The father looked again and could now see what they had not been able to notice before.
“I think there’s a fish design on the kite,” he said. “Yes, I see it now. It’s some kind of mythical representation of sea gods, or something. They’re holding fish, I think. Quite impressive, actually.”
“Dad, they’re not pictures, they’re real. Look, you can see them breathing.”
We all automatically held our breath. Unfortunately, as this involved visibly expanding our chests and taking a deep breath first, it did the opposite of help.
Reluctantly, the father permitted his brains to register what his eyes had been seeing all along.
“Maybe they’re statues, statues of mermaids,” he said, weakly.
He really didn’t want to see us.
“Dad,” said the boy, “they’re not even girls, and besides you know there’s no such thing as a mermaid. They must be some kind of space traveler.”
Great, I thought. I’m a boy and I don’t exist, but it gave me an idea.
CHAPTER 9
DR. WHO?
“Land people have very funny ideas about what’s real and what isn’t,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. “Remind me to tell you about it some time.
“Don’t anybody move or talk,” I said quietly, trying not to move my lips. “No matter what I say,” I added.
“Listen,” said the boy, “I think one of them is trying to speak.”
“Ohhhh. Where are we?” I groaned, loud enough for everyone to hear. “What planet is this?”
“I knew it,” the boy said.
I looked right at him and spoke. “Oh, no! Humans! I forgot. We are on the planet Earth.” I turned to face Bibi and said,
“Doctor, Doctor Who, are you all right? Why aren’t you coming out of suspended animation?”
The boy looked confused, but his father’s eyes widened in recognition. “Dr. Who?” He looked around embarrassedly for the TV cameras.
“The cameras must be in the trees. Come on, son. We’re in the way, let’s back off a bit.”
I turned to them and put my hands to my face pretending to hide my mouth from the hidden cameras, and mouthed a silent thank you to the father and son as they moved off.
Then, I turned dramatically back to the still silent Bibi and hoped that it sounded like I was speaking from a script.
“I’ve got to get you back to the mother ship where you can get help.
“Here,” I said, opening my sampo. “Here’s enough food to last till you get there…in case you wake up on the way,” I kept pushing food from my sampo through the opening into Bibi’s bubble.
“…and don’t forget your scarf,” I said, pushing an interminably long wooly scarf through the opening.
I took a couple of books out of the sampo and pushed them through to Bibi. “…and here’s the data we collected on this planet. It contains all the information the mother ship needs to save the earth. I just hope it gets there in time.”
I gave Zazkal a look to make it clear that I was really speaking to him and only pretending to talk to Bibi.
“I noticed, Dr. Who,” I said, “that your space pod isn’t caught up in the spider webs like the other two. All I have to do is detach it, and it will return to the mother ship automatically.” Then I whispered to Zazkal,
“Can you do it? You and I will be O.K. if we can get Bibi safely away.”
He said nothing, but I could see his lips moving, and after a moment, Bibi’s bubble broke away and began to drift upwards.
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” I called to his anxious, looking face, “I have legs, and Zazkal has other resources. We’ll be fine, and we’ll meet you at the mother ship.
“If only there was a way of untangling the space pod,” I said, using my best stage voice. “I would be able to return to the Tardis and get help for my other companion.”
Waving my arms theatrically, I looked directly at the father and son. “Perhaps those humans I saw earlier could be persuaded,” I said rolling my eyes at them.
To their credit, not my acting ability, they seemed to get the message and slowly walked towards the bubbles looking around for the movie cameras.
“I don’t see any cameras,” the father said.
“They’re camouflaged,” I answered in a stage whisper.
“I’ll be happy to help you get unstuck from those spider webs,” he said, “but first I’d like to see the cameras.”
This was the tricky part. I kept my mouth shut and waited. Please, please let them figure it out.
“There aren’t any, are there?” he said at last.
“I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you the truth.”
“That was a pretty fancy trick you pulled when your friend sailed off into the sky like that. Is that what you propose to do after we get you untangled?”
“Yes. Only it wasn??
?t a trick. I really do have to get my other friend away soon.”
It was only half a lie. After all, we were on a mission, just not the kind I wanted them to think.
“Well, young lady, or whatever you are, when you get back to your ship or whatever it is, you had better arrange for a different disguise. Nobody would believe you were from another planet looking like that.”
Nailed it!
I relaxed and tried keep looking worried
“We didn’t expect to come in contact with any humans,” I was totally on a riff now. “We chose these shapes as ideal terran forms for visiting the sea bottom.”
He chuckled and said, “Well, I don’t know what picture book you got the idea from, but you look like mermaids and they’re just a made-up thing. There aren’t any.”
Zazkal flinched.
If I was ever going to learn telepathy, now would be a good time. ‘No talking. No talking. No talking.’ I thought at him as hard as I could. The two people on the ground couldn’t have missed my worried expression.
“Oh dear,” I said, “I guess we really messed up,” and if it rang true, it was because it was.
I took a big watch out of my bag and pretended to look at it and said, “the most important thing is for us to get back to the ship quickly.
“Can you help us? We’ll be in terrible trouble if we don’t get back before we’re missed. Our ships are only permitted in this sector as observers. We are forbidden by our government to have any contacts with the surface dwellers.”
“We thought it would be fun to visit your great oceans, but my friend needs to get back immediately. If we’re discovered, I’ll never be allowed off-planet again,” I added for good measure.
The father and son looked at each other for a moment.
“So,” said the Dad, turning back to me, “what about the great gifts you have for my people.”
Uh oh!
CHAPTER 10
HI-YO, SILVER! AWAY!
“Are you crazy? I’m just a stranded tourist.”
“Yea, I know,” he said, grinning. “In the movies, the bad guys all come bearing great gifts for humankind. Then, after the intermission, it always turns out that what they really wanted was slaves for their salt mines or something like that.”