We made short work of gathering my bags and then went downstairs to join the rest of the traveling troupe.
Abe Torrington was seated in the commons area waiting for me. He waved his hand when he saw me coming down the stairs.
"Good morning Nana!" He glanced at the rest of the gang trooping down behind me.
"So this is your little gang. Nice to meet you all. My name is Abe Torrington and I will be your driver and guide through this here Wastelands."
The guys greeted Abe Torrington and quickly got our supplies rounded up. A clean and fluffy Max danced around, getting tangled underfoot as they loaded the caravan up with the supplies we had just purchased.
As the morning sunshine began filtering through the trees, we climbed into the caravan and began our next leg of the journey.
Simon sat in the front seat, asking question after question, seemingly inquisitive about everything that was happening around him. He seemed to think he was on an adventurous summer vacation with a group of grad students rather than being on the run and trying to hunt down one lost boy.
Since Abe and Simon took up the two front seats, that left the two full bench seats in the back for the rest of us.
I took the middle bench seat with the twins on either side of me and Tarzan and Max piled into the back bench seat. There was plenty of space behind the third seat to store our luggage along with Abe's necessities.
By midday, we stopped to take a break and to eat something. I had bought some pastrami and roast beef baguette sandwiches from the hotel before we left, so I fed that to the guys along with some slices of their amazing frosted chocolate cakes.
Seeing the old man standing by himself by the side of the road while we were spreading out picnic blankets, I took a baguette and brought it to him.
"Would you like to share lunch with us? I'm sorry, but all we have are sandwiches," I said and held out the paper-wrapped baguette to him.
"Oh, thank you, sweet lady." He waved his hand in protest.
"I would be honored, except you see, I'm a long-time vegetarian!" He raised up a container of stewed vegetables and proudly showed me the contents of potatoes and carrots with some baby green peas thrown in for color.
Well, that threw my idea of Abe the driver being a blood-sucking, flesh-eating reptilian shape-shifter out the window.
It really wasn't that ridiculous of an idea, after all. Tarzan was an orangutan shape-shifter and there he was, sitting alongside with the guys on the picnic blanket, wolfing down a bag of oranges and bananas, skin and all.
"Where are we, exactly?" I asked him, hoping to find out more about The Wastes that we were traveling through, one which not even my crows wanted to fly over.
"We are in The Wastes."
"Why is it called The Wastes, as opposed to just a generic desert?" I wanted to know.
Abe scratched his head as he chewed on his potatoes. "Well, you see, this area was once a fertile green-space which was used as a breadbasket for the entire region."
His eyes grew mysterious. "But then something happened which changed the entire region."
He pointed to some twisted sickly-looking prickly pears along the side of the road that looked as if they could barely manage to cling onto for sustenance.
"Where folks used to grow huge ears of corn and fat wheat stalks, you can't even get cactus to grow straight."
I nodded, staring at the prickly pears with widened eyes.
It was obvious to me that the long term effect of attempting to survive in the wastes was a slow but sure devolution of their genetic material.
"Do you know what the cause of the catastrophe was?"
The old driver shook his head. "It happened so long ago in the past that nobody really knows any more."
He leaned closer to me in a conspiratorial manner. "But legend has it that there used to be a race of powerful beings." He waved his hands in the air, "Ones who could perform supernatural acts like levitation and walking on water!"
He leaned closer and peered into my eyes. "They could change their shapes whenever they wanted to and strike you dead with energy zapped from the air! They used to be worshiped as demi-gods in their own rights."
"Really?" I asked, my mouth shaped in an 'O' of amazement.
His eyes grew large with wonder. "Oh yeah. They could even talk to animals like witches do, and get these animals to do all sorts of wicked things."
He shook his head with amazement. "These demi-gods could fly through the air like they had wings. Some folks called them angels, but angels don't cause this kind of destruction."
He looked out at the wastelands. "Not unless they were fallen angels."
"Anyway, there was a war between them and the humans, and for whatever reason, they were finally defeated. Nobody knows where they retreated to, but sometimes, we still see traces of them." He laughed and shook his head.
"Maybe I'm getting old, and maybe I've been out here in the wastes for so long that my brain's been affected by whatever disease grips all the plant and animal life here, but I've seen strange stuff that, if I told you, you'd never believe me."
I nodded, trying my best to look impressed.
It was difficult to hear that my modest ability to communicate with the birds and the beasts were seen as something wholly evil that humans would be scared to speak about. In reality, it was barely considered a type of low-level magik among the mages.
I hung out with him and ate my lunch in his company until it was time for us to leave.
"Well, let's get this show on the road." He looked up into the sky. "Sun's midway up the sky and if we don't start soon, we're not gonna make it to our next stop."
As he turned to leave, he called out over his shoulder. "Hurry it on up. There's strange stuff that happens in these wastes. Lots of scary folks who'll change you into gophers if you look at 'em wrong."
I stared at his retreating back, remembering his words about the strange happenings in and about the wastes.
What if he had already met up with the mage community and was inadvertently telling us something? I had to find out more about what he knew, or thought he knew.
Our caravan was back on the road in less than fifteen minutes.
As we moved towards our next destination, my mind began to wander about the mages wandering around the world of humankind and the extent to which their influences were exerted on their environment and the people around them.
In all my life, I had only known of the small mage community living in and around the Academy but I knew mages lived in other areas. I was not naïve enough to think that Topaz City and the Academy of Magikal Arts was the only place that mages could live.
I knew there were other mage Kingdoms. I had heard my parents talk about the capital city of Jade and other cities like Sapphire and Diamond and Emerald.
But I also knew that we could not live freely among the human population. There were just too many differences in our ways of life and the misunderstandings and misapprehensions of the human population would grow against us.
And yet, what was a huge group of advanced-intelligence primates doing outside of the Academy? Who would want that work force and why?
As the questions mulled around in my brain, I tried to keep myself as still as possible. I had inadvertently found myself becoming a human pillow.
The twins were literally passed out.
Connor had his head on my lap, snoring away. His long body was curled up in fetal position and he was hugging my knee with his hands.
Corwin had fallen into an exhausted sleep. His head leaned into my shoulder and his face was buried into my neck.
Behind us, the orangutan and the malamute were also snoring peacefully.
Even Simon's head had begun lolling back and forth as he fell asleep on the front seat.
As I sat there trying not to disturb their slumber, I realized something which further strengthened my resolve to do what I could for myself so they would not have to extend so much of their energy to take care of me.
Even powerful mages reach the edge of their endurance and needed to rest.
It had been almost a week since we'd left the Academy and during that time, neither of the twins had been able to get much sleep.
Their strength had been severely eroded as they burned the last of their energies to power the group through the helter-skelter days of the escape through the tunnel.
It was my turn to take care of them and to protect them. We needed a hidey hole—some place to burrow into and regain our strength.
The day wore on. We stopped for a brief break towards evening, and then kept going.
For some reason, the closer we got to the border city of Zircon, the more anxious Abe became.
It could be that he was tired of driving the distance and needed to rest, but I had a feeling there was more to his apprehension than simple fatigue.
My answer came three hours before we were scheduled to reach our destination.
Abe had pulled over to the side of the road for a temporary pit stop and we were standing around the caravan trying to stretch our legs a bit before finishing the final leg of the journey when something started spooking Tarzan.
Looking less than human, he raised his nose into the air and sniffed, then growled at something dark in the distance. Max's ears were up, his hackles rising in alarm.
Connor, who was the nearest person to Tarzan and Max, observed the animals' strange behavior, then he searched the horizon in the direction that they were growling at.
Since the wastes was a large flat plain of sandy soil dotted with scattered scrub brush as far as the eye can see, there wasn't really anything that could sneak up on us unawares unless we were passed out by the side of the road.
I took several steps towards the strange darkness in the distance, intending to get a better view.
Suddenly, a dust devil formed within a short distance from me and began spinning in our general direction.
Within seconds, a dark ominous twister formed into a behemoth mass behind it, roaring and shrieking in its power.
It was coming at us, hard and fast.
"Everybody get down!" Connor yelled and pushed Tarzan and Max towards the ground, covering them with his body.
I turned back to yell a warning to the group.
Corwin, who was standing nearby chatting with Simon, looked up as he heard my scream.
He glanced at me and looked past me to the the dust devil. Then his eyes flashed to the caravan between us.
In a split second, Corwin jumped into action.
He took a running leap, vaulting forward with a handspring.
Bouncing off the top of the caravan, he sent his body over the vehicle, landing on his feet.
In two long strides, he had almost reached me when the dust devils slammed into my back, propelling me forward.
Launching himself into the air, Corwin stretched with his left arm, desperate to reach out and bridge the last yard between us.
He had no time to buffer the impact as he knocked me off my feet, twisting his body so that he took the brunt of the fall onto the hard ground.
In between one heartbeat and the next, he had rolled his body over mine and covered us both with a protection shield.
It was not a moment too soon.
The sky turned black and thick as gunk. Tar sands rose into the air, choking everything in sight, crushing everything down with its weight.
I could see nothing after that.