Chapter 21

Se-le-ni

Hamid hadn’t lied. We really did have to wait in that room. It had been several days already, and we had slowly begun to go on each other’s nerves. Albin was the worst. While the rest of us tried to do the best we could in the situation, it hadn’t taken him long to start to moan. I’d tuned him out, and stopped listening, but there was only so much you could do when he was constantly grumbling. What a baby.

It was what must have been the fifth day that Hamid finally said,

“It’s safe, we can move.”

We all got up, and even Albin stood quiet as we looked at Hamid, waiting for him to continue.

“We’ll travel again”, he announced.

“Where?”, Joshua asked.

“I’ll show you.”

We gathered around Ka-ma-la, and I heard Hamid whisper something to her before my feet were swept from the ground and we travelled. It was strange this time, and not how it used to be. It felt like we were pushed this way and that, until we finally landed, and I felt solid ground underneath my feet.

“What was that?”, Na-sh-dara asked the moment we opened our eyes.

“Bo-lo-to”, Hamid grunted.

“Bo-lo-to!?”

“It seems like he knows how to control the weave, and it affects us travelling through it. It’s not a good sign. We don’t have as much time as I thought we would have.”

“But has he discovered us?”, Joshua asked.

Hamid shook his head.

“No, we would know if he had, so we are safe so far.”

I looked around. We were standing under a star-filled sky, somewhere in what looked to be a desert.

“How much time until we can move again?”, Joshua pressed.

“A day, not more. We need to get closer and do it faster than I had hoped for.”

There was nothing else to do, and we spent the rest of the night in silence, each in their own thoughts. I wondered where Me-la-ni was, and if she would soon be finished with her mission from the Seed. I barely slept, and as the sun rose, Hamid gathered us again.

“We might meet him soon, I do not know. The weave…”

He sighed and glanced up at the sky.

“It’s changing, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s not as it should be.”

He turned back to us.

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to control exactly where we will land this time.”

He nodded for us, and I took a deep breath, reaching for the sleeve of Joshua, and closed my eyes.