Glory Alley and the Star Riders (The Glory Alley Series) (42 page)

Th
ese tidbits
brought up more questions
than answers
.
She
cleared h
er
throat
again
.
“Why
can’t you use
magic to find the
Elboni
?”

“We just explained it
,” White Feather
huffed.
“W
eren’t ye listening?
”

“Silly
Tullah
ns don’t know nothing,” Bone said.

The group halted
u
nder a balding pine tree
.

“
T
he
Elboni
’s magic
be
everywhere, even on
an
indigo planet
like this one
.
” As Needle explained
,
Glory decided he was the more patient of the three. “
Therefore,
it be like
a
single
drop of water in an endless sea
, in plain sight yet impossible to see
.
Do ye get what I’m saying?”

“It’s cloaked
?
”

Needle
nodded.
“Exactly.”
He
dimmed his light
and
faced
Glory
.
“I’ve answered your questions
.
Now it’s time for you to answer ours
.
Should we bother checking the
mesa
or no?”

Glory
shoved h
er
hands into
her
coat
pockets
. The stars peeked through the canopy of branches. So…life on other planets existed and she was with some of their inhabitants now. In some ways
,
they seemed almost human.

“Well?
”
Needle said folding his arms across his chest.

“I thought you guys already checked the
whole mesa
?”

“Aye
.
But, it’s a big place, as ye well know.”

“That’s true,”
Glory
sighed
.
“I guess it won’t hurt to check again.”

Needle gave h
er
a side
longs glance
.
“Very well then, let’s be on our way.
”

“
Instead of walking,”
Glory
said.
“Why not draw a door with your magic feather and get us there lickety-split?
”

“
The
Paraplume
cannot open doors from one part of a world to another part of
the
same world
,” said
White Feather. “
It only opens doors between one
dimension
to another.
”

“
I see,
”
Glory
said, even though
s
he didn’t. “
L
ike a parallel universe
.
”

“Not parallel exactly.”
White Feather explained
.
“The
Elboni
transcends space and time, sending its colors throughout
the
universe
.
This
allows us
to travel from world to world
very
quickly.”

“
It hasn’t sunk in
yet
that I’m with genuine aliens.”

“Where I’m from
,
you’re
the alien
,” Bone replied.

“Wild,”
Glory
said.

The group
fell silent as they meandered through familiar territory
.
As
s
he thought about what it must be like to visit other worlds,
s
he forgot to be afraid
.
Clash
would love this
.
The
boy
was obsessed with
anything
having
to do with outer
space
.

“
Sounds like you
guys have
been
all
around
the universe
. Which planet would you say is
most like
Tullah
?”

“
Earth
,
probably,
”
White Feather
said
.
“
It’s younger than Tullah,
but everything seems to be rolling out the same way
.
Earth
be
a
place of
emerging
science, not magic
,
a
violent
place
full
of
suffering and sadness
.
I should think a
Tullah
n would feel quite at home there.
”

“I’d like to see
Earth
sometime.”

“Why bother?
”
Bone said gruffly. “Ye’ve seen one indigo planet, ye’ve seen them all.”

Glory
ignored
Bone
and continued to address
White Feather
.

“Could a spaceship travel from Earth to
Tullah
—
or the other way around?
”

“Dou
btful
.
For a physical contraption traveling through space
Tullah
and Earth might as well be an
infinity
m
iles apart, but
through
the
Elboni
they’re only a step away.”

“How can that be?”

“
It’s a great mystery
.
Best I can explain it is t
hat t
he closer worlds are in the color spectrum, the closer they are in appearance, lifestyle and history
.
Tullah
and Earth are barely a shade apart, suspended next to one another on the indigo side of the
Elboni
.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let me put it another way
,” Needle offered. “I
f a
girl
playing in a park on
Tullah
stepped into a park on Earth unaware,
s
he wouldn’t notice any difference
, b
ut when
s
he tried to return home,
a
different house would be standing where h
ers
should be
, a
nd a strange family would be living inside it.”

“Weird,”
Glory
replied and left it at that
.

H
er
pink puppy
pajama
bottoms
were no match from the frigid night air,
but at least
s
he could count on the temperature in the caverns to be
warmer than the outdoors
.

“The
Elboni
’s
tabernacle,” Bone announced, pointing
toward the shadowy mountaintop
. The
moon glowed behind it like a silver halo
.
Glory
had never
b
een
to the mesa
so late
at
night
and
s
he
thought
the place
never looked as majestic
or so sinister. Her st
omach felt queasy just thinking about going in there
.

“
Is the
Hoogula
...
uh,
Budd
...
still there?
”

“
Indubitably,” Bone
said
, “but
we can handle
the
likes of him."

“
What if I can't show you where I dropped the
Elboni
?
Will I end up like the rabbit?
”

Needle was about to reply, but was cut short by White Feather
.