Do you remember those stories I told you, about how when we were girls, Lexi and I found a portal to a world ruled by intelligent dinosaurs? That we lived there for a year, but then Lexi kicked me out and she stayed? How everyone said it was a coping mechanism, a story to process whatever happened to me when I disappeared for a year? Yeah. About that.
It’s all true, and I’ve been trying for years to get back. The Toothed-Ones always claimed that adults couldn’t pass through the portals, that they didn’t believe strongly enough in their magic, but that isn’t true. Yesterday, I slipped right through. I was following a six-year-old boy at the time—the perfect age for dinosaur obsession, the perfect age for the Toothed-Ones to approach.
When I emerged from the portal, I was in a familiar patch of jungle. Towering trees with leaves wider than my head, crimson and black and emerald vines snaking up the trunks. An opening in the trees onto a view of a waterfall plummeting off the opposite cliff, a hint of spray tickling my face. It was as magnificent as it was when I was five, and for a moment, I felt the same combination of fear and joy that I’d felt that day.
The little boy gawped at the waterfall—or, more likely, at the pteranodons wheeling around it—while the Toothed-One who’d led him through the portal laid out the rules of the Mesozoic Kingdom, unchanged from when I was a girl. The boy would be assigned to Lord Tyranno’s court, assisting members as necessary, occasionally rotating into the labor force to help provide for the glory of the kingdom. In exchange, he’d be showered with gifts and acclaim. Of all the children he knew, he was the one chosen. He was the special boy who would live with dinosaurs. I knew exactly how he felt.
The Toothed-One shrugged off her satchel and turned to open it with her snout, and I was shocked to realize I recognized her. She wore the standard Toothed-One outfit of loose sleeveless shirt and tight shorts that covered little more than the pelvis. Downy feathers covered her limbs and the ridge of her spine, but the unmistakable twin scars she’d received from a stegosaurus’ thagomizer stretched from her shoulder nearly to her elbow, dull white lines among rusty red plumage. Salnatha, the daughter of the Toothed-One who’d ferried Lexi and me to the Mesozoic Kingdom. If I remembered right, Salnatha was a year older than Lexi, and when I saw her now, as an adult, I got a flash of Lexi, could picture her all grown up as clearly as if she was standing in front of me.
“Salnatha!” I called before I thought to stop myself. It was like I’d reverted to childhood. The danger of exposing myself didn’t register. All I wanted was for Salnatha to see me, for a Toothed-One to notice that I existed.
She startled, the zipper-pull of her satchel half in her jaws and then falling from them and into the bag. It would be a hassle for her to retrieve it. For all their intelligence—and they’re dazzlingly, frighteningly intelligent—Toothed-Ones are constantly hamstrung by their stubby arms. It’s one of the main reasons they let human children live with them.
As the boy darted behind her, Salnatha opened her jaws and reared in a warning display. We’d been about the same height when we were kids, but now that we were both full-grown, she towered over me when upright. Even when she dropped back to her normal posture, she had nearly a foot on me. Her mouth still hung open, not in anger now but surprise.
“CJ?”
“I go by Caryn now,” I told her. “But yeah.”
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “How long has it—?” She cocked her head, listened. I heard nothing.
“You have to leave,” she said. “I’ll open a portal.” She dipped to her bag, but sure enough couldn’t open it. She cursed. The boy poked his head out from behind her. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
“I’ll help you,” I told Salnatha, moving toward the satchel.
And then I heard it. Felt it, more like. Vibrations in the ground, thunderous footsteps approaching.
“Go,” Salnatha snapped—literally snapped, her teeth clacking together. “I’ll try to find you, help you get back, but you can’t be here. You can’t let them see you.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where’s Lexi? I thought you were my friend.”
“Oh, CJ, that’s why I’m telling you to run. Please.”
The footsteps grew louder, and I heard branches snapping from trees. Lexi and I had been greeted by a Toothed-One riding a lambeosaurus, but this sounded considerably larger.
I didn’t understand why Salnatha was sending me away, but had to trust her. I’d known her when I was here as a girl. We’d played together. She told us which members of the court would treat us well and which to avoid. I truly had considered her a friend and believed she felt the same about me. Besides, I didn’t have much choice. I hid in the thick undergrowth.
A diplodocus shouldered its way through the trees. From my hiding place, I gaped at it, still awestruck after all these years, and the boy did the same. Banners streamed along its flanks, and nautilus shells the size of the boy’s head were strung along its legs, rattling with each step. The rider lowered a basket, which Salnatha lifted the boy into before climbing aboard herself and letting the rider winch the two of them up to the passenger box strapped near the base of the diplodocus’s neck. Not once did Salnatha look back.
I waited in the undergrowth, lusher and deeper than anything I’d ever seen on Earth, in the real world. I didn’t need to follow the diplodocus; even twenty years later, I remembered the way to the capital. And I couldn’t go home, since the portal had closed just after I crossed through.
But that made me realize something that you probably already have, with your love of puzzles and mysteries and your way of spotting the relevant detail in a mess of information: Salnatha had said she’d open a portal and reached for her bag. The portals didn’t open at random; they weren’t spurred to open by belief or a child’s need. The Toothed-Ones used some sort of device, and though I hadn’t seen it, Lexi must have used one too. Toothed-Ones opened portals on purpose, at will.
And yet they’d never come to look for me, and Lexi had never returned home.
Please know that it’s not you. That’s not why I went back. I wasn’t running away.
There’s a reason I met your family after we’d been dating for only three months and you still haven’t met mine after a year. Even now, I can hardly fathom the comfort level you must have with them that so soon after we met, you introduced me to your parents, your sister. That a few weeks later I was at your nephew’s sixth birthday party rapidly forgetting the names of aunts and uncles and cousins.
What does it say that the most comfortable I felt was when your nephew Nathan caught me poking through his toy dinosaur collection and started quizzing me on their names? Which, I should note, I nailed. Even twenty years after being kicked out of the Kingdom, twenty years after losing my sister to it, I remember them better than the names of my kindergarten classmates.
Nathan told me about species too rare to be made into toys, the kinds without the catchy names, the ones known only by fragments of shinbones or partial vertebrae. Your average person brushes these off, but people who really love dinosaurs know that those obscure dinosaurs are the most exciting ones. They’re new. Special. I’d have happily spent the rest of the party with Nathan, but I knew I had to rejoin the adults eventually.
“It must be overwhelming,” your Aunt Missy said, cornering me as I scooped potato salad. “All these new people. We’re such a big, loud family.” She laughed like that was joke rather than a statement of fact. “Next time, you should bring your family.”
This time I laughed, because that really was a joke. I was hard pressed to even imagine my parents at a party with your family, awkwardly sipping white wine and staring at their snack plates at if the meaning of life were written in tortilla chips crumbs.
The thing is, my parents aren’t bad people, and they weren’t when Lexi and I ran away to the Mesozoic Kingdom. They were just regular boring old grown-ups and the Toothed-Ones promised a life full of adventure and dinosaurs.
Say what you want about the Mesozoic Kingdom—it’s always exciting.
Now that I was back in the Kingdom, the memories poured in like a dam had burst in my brain. Whether it was simply being back in those old surroundings or something more magical, I remembered the lay of the land perfectly.
I waited in my hiding place, listening to the thudding footsteps grow quieter. Not that the forest was quiet. A dragonfly as long as your arm buzzed after butterflies with wings so delicate they appeared translucent. Some feathered, long-necked and -limbed dinosaur the size of a housecat dropped from a branch and tore the dragonfly to shreds.
Finally, I stopped marveling at the pseudo-prehistoric world I’d made my way back to—and I mean the “pseudo” part; for all their medieval-fantasy trappings, the Toothed-Ones have a technologically advanced civilization, and their world is at least as old as ours—brushed dead leaves off my jeans, and followed the trail the diplodocus had taken.
Taking Salnatha’s warning to heart, I stayed off the trampled path, sticking to trees and shadows. Hours passed, and eventually I came to the edge of the forest and had to stop. Partially to consider my next move and partially to stare at the capital as it rose from the horizon.
Crenellated towers mingled with steel and glass buildings, stone and wood accents interspersed in a way that looked haphazard at first glance, but resolved into something beautiful and intentional. All of it gave the impression of a world built from multiple other worlds, other times.
I paralleled the road into the capital, staying out of sight of the Toothed-Ones vehicles. You’re probably imagining that the Toothed-Ones ride bigger dinosaurs, but they mostly get around in what are, essentially, cars. Can you picture how inefficient it would be for everyone to ride triceratops or apatosauruses everywhere? For as magical a world as the Mesozoic Kingdom is, it’s also a functioning society.
I knew they would immediately bring the boy for his introduction to Lord Tyranno and his court. Pomp and circumstance reinforces how special the children are and banishes any stray second thoughts of returning home.
The capital had barely changed in my absence. Toothed-Ones on their daily business entered and exited buildings that ranged in style from ancient stone construction to modern steel-beam skyscrapers. A harnessed pair of styracosaurus pulled a massive cylinder along a side street, smoothing the pavement as a few Toothed-Ones looked on. Iguanodon and parasaurolophus steaks and chops glistened redly in a market’s display window. An old female Toothed-One strode out of the market, a boy of maybe seven or eight trailing her, arms laden with bulging sacks of groceries.
For the first time in my life, I was thankful for how young I look. By slouching, keeping my head down, not making eye contact with any of the Toothed-Ones I encountered—it was impossible to avoid them completely—I could conceivably pass for a teenager. Still old for a human in the Kingdom, and I drew some skeptical looks, but it wasn’t as if anyone shrieked in panic and called down the gendarmes.
I can’t tell you how hard it was not to gawk, not to speak to anyone. Memories of running errands along these streets or playing with other kids and the occasional Toothed-One child in our scant free hours. I know I’d come back to find Lexi, to ask her why she never came home, why she sent me away, but I’d be lying if I said that a deep but very raw part of me wanted to come back just to be here. Had wanted it ever since I’d been sent home.
Funnily enough, sneaking into the castle itself was the easiest part. Lexi had snuck me out; I retraced our steps. The ground level vent led to a basement room filled with dusty crates and decaying shelves. It looked no different from any other utility closet on Earth. Even the equipment didn’t sport the usual differences that allowed Toothed-Ones to manipulate bucket lids or mop handles with their truncated arms and clawed hands. Here, most of the work was performed by human children, a sort of payment for the privilege of living in the Kingdom in general and the castle specifically. And it really is a castle, in use for over a thousand years, though it’s obviously been refurbished and renovated to modern Toothed-One living standards. That refurbishment left a lot of blocked-off or otherwise ignored features. Go anywhere that houses a bunch of kids, and they’ll know every possible option for sneaking around or spying on grown-ups. I followed similarly disused ventilation shafts and servants’ passageways. Scooted through narrow tunnels, scraping my back along the ceiling.
I knew that Lexi wouldn’t still be living in the same room, but without any other lead, I decided to start my search there. The stone and wood corridor that led there was lined with paintings and photographs of dinosaurs and children and Toothed-Ones, all living and working together in harmony. I kept half an eye on them, wondering if Lexi or I would appear. Neither of us did.
The door to Lexi’s room was open, and I heard voices before I reached it, human voices, speaking softly. I stopped and listened, surprised that these children weren’t at the introductory ceremony for the new boy.
“—think they told him about the mines yet?” a girl—by her voice, around twelve—said.
A boy, older-sounding still: “You know they haven’t. What’s the point? Like he can say no?”
“Shut up,” a younger boy hissed. “I like working in the mines. The Toothed-Ones need our help. I like helping.”
“You would,” the girl said. “Wait until you’re been here longer. You’ll see.”
“I love the Toothed-Ones,” the young boy insisted. “So do you.”
I didn’t hear the girl’s response because I was distracted by the telltale sound of claws clicking on stone. I whirled around, saw an empty hallway but heard the Toothed-One approaching.
I scanned the corridor, saw nothing but rows of closed doors. There was only one place I could go. I stepped into the open room.
The first thing I noticed was that the kids were all younger than I’d thought. The girl couldn’t be older than ten, the older boy no more than twelve. The little boy was probably five.
They stepped back, mouths open. The little boy squealed in surprise.
“Please,” I said. “Please let me hide in your closet and don’t say anything. I’m a friend. I’m looking for my sister. Lexi Grissom?” I waved off the question; there wasn’t time right now. “Please?”
The little boy looked about to burst into tears, but the older kids glanced at each other, then nodded. I slipped into the closet moments before a Toothed-One entered the room.
“And here we are,” the Toothed-One said. “This is Tam, Richard, and Diego.”
Tucked behind Kingdom facsimiles of Earth clothing, I fought to keep my breath steady. When I heard the voice, I almost collapsed with relief and opened the door.
Standing there was Salnatha, introducing the boy she’d brought over to the other children.
“Meet Nathan,” she said.
Imagine it. You’re a kid obsessed with dinosaurs; your sole dream in life is to one day see one in person, even though you’re old enough to know that’s impossible. And then, one day, an actual dinosaur shows up—never anywhere that it could be seen, of course, maybe outside your fort in the woods or the secluded corner behind the school where you go to cry when no one wants to play with you. How could you possibly react with anything less than heartbreaking joy and relief? Everything you believed about the world, about your place in it, is true.
You already figured out that the little boy was Nathan, didn’t you? How else would I have known that a Toothed-One was coming to take a child? When we talked about dinosaurs at his birthday party, I suspected something might be up. I looked up the dinosaurs he told me about, and none of them existed. Except he was so certain, and I knew that there was one surefire way to learn about dinosaurs that no one on Earth had discovered. He had been contacted by a Toothed-One, and they were preparing to bring him over. I kept an eye on him.
Nathan doesn’t remind me of myself; he reminds me of Lexi. They’re the ones that the Toothed-Ones wanted. Both times, I merely tagged along, whether due to Lexi’s insistence or my own subterfuge. I loved the Mesozoic Kingdom, but I was never supposed to be here.
Lexi was the one obsessed with dinosaurs. I liked them well enough—what kindergartner doesn’t?—but I only got really into them because of her.
She brought me with her when she was scheduled to cross over to the Kingdom with Siltaana, Salnatha’s mother. If I had been any older, I might not have believed her, but I worshipped Lexi. I would have followed her anywhere, and I did.
“She can’t come,” Siltaana said. “Only one child may traverse between worlds at a time.”
“Then I’m staying,” Lexi replied. As simple as that.
Siltaana bared her teeth at me, and I shied away before Lexi grabbed my hand and pulled me to her side.
“Don’t you want to be special?” Siltaana asked her. “If your sister comes, you’ll have to share so much. Maybe when she’s older—”
“If CJ can’t come, I’m going home,” Lexi said, turning us around and marching away. I was terrified. Nothing would have made me happier in that moment than for Lexi to march me home and make us chocolate milk.
“Wait,” Siltaana said.
What would have happened if Siltaana had called what I’m sure was Lexi’s bluff and remained silent? Would we have simply gone home, lived out our mundane dinosaur-free lives? Would that really have been the end of it? Would I never have lost my sister?
Salnatha jumped when I stepped from the closet, spinning on me with jaws agape and claws brandished—even though her tiny arms were practically useless offensively.
“CJ, what are—?” she demanded. “I told you to wait. How did you get to the Kingdom in the first place?”
“Caryn? You know the dinosaurs?” Nathan said, confusion dripping off every syllable.
“Toothed-Ones,” I corrected him absently—he’d learn soon enough not to call them dinosaurs. “I used to live here too. A long time ago. But I think maybe it was different then.”
I watched the other children. The youngest stared at Salnatha with love and awe in his eyes, but the older two seemed on edge, as if afraid they were about to be punished.
“When I lived here, we didn’t have to be afraid of the Toothed-Ones,” I explained to the children. “They took care of us and brought us on adventures. We helped them too, obviously—everyone knows it’s much safer and faster for kids to mine the deep-ore rhaetium than it is for the Toothed-Ones. That’s a fair trade, right?” I couldn’t stop talking, now that someone in the Mesozoic Kingdom was finally listening. The words tumbled out until I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince the kids or myself. “My sister and I were here. But she sent me away—she kicked me out. That’s why I came back. To find her, to ask what I did wrong.”
I addressed Salnatha. “So, please, can you bring me to Lexi? Or bring her here? I just—please, Salnatha, I need to see her.”
Toothed-Ones lips don’t possess the sort of flexibility and expressiveness that human lips do, and they primarily express emotion with their eyes. Salnatha averted hers.
The girl—Tam—muttered something. I couldn’t make out the words, but her tone was pure disgust.
“Was she not supposed to send me away?” I asked. “Is that it? It’s fine—I’m back. She wanted the Toothed-Ones to herself. I get that. I forgive her. I’ve always forgiven her. Please, Salnatha. Please bring me to Lexi. Tell me where she is, and I’ll find her.”
Salnatha barely lifted her head. I remembered how shy she’d been when Lexi and I came to the Kingdom. At first, I thought she was afraid of us, but later I realized it was something else. Siltaana let her play with us, and though no one remarked on it, it was always clear that this was unusual. Now, I wonder if Salnatha was afraid, after all. Not afraid of us, but afraid of getting too close. Of seeing us as people.
“CJ,” she said. Her voice cracked.
“God, lady,” Tam interrupted. “Your sister’s dead.”
I didn’t weep or yell or shove Tam away. Her words flowed through my brain unimpeded, the mass of my denial refusing to let them settle anywhere. How many years had I secretly suspected as much while refusing to voice that suspicion, even in my darkest most private thoughts? I’d chosen to believe that Lexi had abandoned me, that she’d cast me out of the Kingdom because she was—what?—jealous that I’d take attention from her? Because she didn’t think I loved dinosaurs enough? That wasn’t my sister at all. She hadn’t exiled me—she saved me. Lexi discovered something terrible about the Mesozoic Kingdom and the Toothed-Ones, and she gave up her life to make sure I didn’t get caught up in whatever it was.
“What happened?” I asked Salnatha, still numb, but feeling a spark of emotion kindling in my gut. She twisted her long neck away. I grabbed it near the shoulder and turned her back to me. “What happened to Lexi?”
“You weren’t supposed to leave,” she said quietly. “None of you are supposed to leave.”
“But you said everyone leaves. They grow up and go home when their adventure in the Mesozoic Kingdom is finished.” The words came from my mouth rote as scripture, but they sounded like exactly what they are: a lie only children believe.
“Are you kidding?” Tam scoffed.
“I didn’t ask your opinion,” I snapped. What was I doing? Yelling at a child? From her look of bored defiance, I knew I wasn’t the first adult to do so nor the worst.
I could say I lashed out because I was grieving, but I know that the truth is I was hurt because Tam was right. I’m supposed to be an adult, but I was still as gullible as I’d been as a kindergartener. Of course the Toothed-Ones don’t bring children to the Kingdom so they can go on adventures; they bring them over because Toothed-Ones need deep-ore rhaetium to power their technology, and their tiny arms make extracting it too dangerous. They bring kids because they can convince kids that they’re all working together. They can convince kids that they aren’t actually slaves.
“What did you do to her?” I asked Salnatha. “What do you do when kids get old enough to figure out what’s going on? Is there… can I visit her grave?”
Salnatha was silent.
“They monitor us,” the older boy—Richard—said. “Anyone they catch questioning things gets taken away. The Toothed-Ones say they no longer believe in the magic of the Kingdom, so it’s time for them to go home. After that… I don’t know. There’s definitely not a graveyard.”
I thought about all the children that came to the Kingdom over who knows how many years, all the children who grew up and inevitably ceased believing the Toothed-Ones magical lies. A horrified thought. “Do you eat them?” I asked. The Toothed-Ones, after all, evolved from an apex predator.
“No,” Salnatha said, scandalized, as if that would be worse than anything the Toothed-Ones already did. “No, CJ, never. We wouldn’t do that. We don’t need—” She stopped herself. “Lexi was… we put down people humanely.”
“They don’t eat us because we’re not enough meat,” Tam sneered.
My mind still reeled. When everything you’ve believed is false, when the dream you’ve had since childhood turns out to be unachievable what do you do next? What could I do? Nothing. I couldn’t do a damn thing but walk away. Not alone, though. I’d left Lexi here to die; I couldn’t do that again. Not now that I knew better.
If I didn’t try to help these kids, Lexi’s sacrifice would be wasted. But that wasn’t the whole reason. I’d only thought about myself—as a kid, now, always—and she wanted to help people. I’d wanted to be like Lexi, and now I had my chance.
Nathan and Diego were crying. I crouched in front of them.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll take you home. Both of you.” I turned to the older kids. “You too.”
Tam laughed bitterly.
Salnatha was shaking her head, the involuntary distressed hiss that Toothed-Ones make emitting from her flared nostrils. “CJ, no one leaves. No children can ever leave once they’ve come to the Kingdom. What if you told someone? What if they believed you?”
I almost laughed, and if I had it would have been as bitter as Tam’s. For all that the Toothed-Ones know of human children, they don’t understand adults at all. Who would believe this? You’re listening to this recording right now, and I’m not even sure you’ll believe me. I don’t even know if I’d believe it.
“Salnatha,” I said, “we are going home. You’re going to give me whatever you use to open portals, and you’re going to let us leave. How you explain it to the royals is up to you.”
The distressed hiss took on a high wailing note, like a nearly empty tea kettle boiling. Salnatha sputtered some incoherent protestations that included my name, repeated insistences about no one leaving, a promise that she could help me escape but no one else. It all came down to one thing: she wouldn’t let the kids go. Even though it would only be four of them out of who-knows how many.
How many children do the Toothed-Ones enslave at any given time? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? I have no idea, and I realized then—far too late, always far too late—that the reason the Kingdom keep kids in small groups isn’t because we’re special and deserve close attention. They don’t want us talking, learning what happened when we got older. I’m so goddamn naïve, and maybe that was an excuse when I was a kid but not anymore.
I punched Salnatha in the face.
I don’t know how to throw a punch, hadn’t even known I was going to until my fist was halfway to her snout. It glanced off. My knuckles stung as her scales scraped the skin off. She barely stumbled, and she immediately regained her composure, bared her teeth, and snarled a low rasp. Her breath smelled like black licorice. Her claws would be useless unless she pinned me, but those fangs could rip my throat out as easily as I’d strip the meat from a chicken wing.
Fists raised like I had any idea how to fight, I squared up. Mostly, I was thinking how I could jump out of the way if Salnatha pounced. Maybe I could distract her long enough for the kids to escape. Did they know about the secret tunnel that Lexi had used to free me?
I juked away from the door and opened my mouth to yell at the kids to run when Salnatha collapsed, her feet swept out from under her. She thumped onto her side, revealing Tam standing behind her holding a Toothed-One equivalent of a vacuum cleaner. Probably from whatever chores Tam had recently finished or was scheduled to perform. Roaring herself, Tam summoned some sort of adrenaline-fueled strength and swung the vacuum over her head, bringing it down on Salnatha’s with a frightening thud.
Blood spurted upward and streamed from a deep gash on the side of Salnatha’s head. I couldn’t speak, my breathing ragged and strained. I leaned toward Salnatha and saw she was still breathing. Maybe it was stupid, just more naivete from little baby CJ, but even after everything Salnatha had done, I didn’t want her dead.
Tam disagreed. She raised the vacuum again, but I grabbed it and wrested it from her hands.
“Come on,” I said. “We need to run.”
I grabbed the portal device from Salnatha’s satchel, and we sneaked out of the room, Tam, Richard, and I herding Nathan and Diego along, shushing them constantly, promising everything would be okay even though we knew it probably wouldn’t.
We kept to side streets and shadows, but a group of unescorted humans can’t help but draw attention, and Toothed-Ones shouted at us to stop running, to show transit passes. We ignored them and ran faster. At some point, someone in the castle must have found Salnatha because alarms blared across the city.
I swore and urged everyone to somehow move even faster, but once again Tam’s clear-headedness saved us.
When the alarms went off, we’d just passed a construction site where Toothed-One laborers were enjoying their lunch break, which meant that no one was paying particularly close attention to the styracosaurus that were munching away at their own meals. I knew what Tam intended as soon as she broke in that direction.
Toothed-Ones tried to stop us, but they knew well enough not to get in the way of a two-and-a-half-ton horned ceratopsian barreling down the road. Tam directed it expertly—she must have learned how as part of her work. Her smile of gleeful rage told me that she very much enjoyed turning what the Toothed-Ones had taught her against them. I grinned and held on tighter as she steered the styracosaurus around a corner and spurred it down the thoroughfare out of the city. All we had to do was keep moving, stay one step ahead of the Toothed-Ones until we reached the place where they open the portals to Earth.
We were almost home.
It took over an hour to reach the portal clearing, traveling far from any road, the styracosaurus crashing through shrubs and saplings, sending small dinosaurs and protomammals scattering out of the way of its thudding feet. All the while, I whispered into my phone, ever-recording.
By the time we stopped, the styracosaurus was huffing, foamy spittle lining its beak. I scratched behind its frill and thanked it before sliding off. The Toothed-Ones might be evil, but dinosaurs are the same as any animal.
Tam fiddled with the portal device while I held my breath and prayed its interface worked with human hands.
The portal opened, revealing a shimmery view of Earth, the woods near Nathan’s house. I remembered stepping back to Earth as a girl, the sadness and the anger of being kicked out. Except now I knew the truth. I’d looked up to Lexi before we came to the Kingdom, and I’d spent the years after she sent me away alternately resenting and wondering how I’d failed her. Which made me wonder what she would think if she could see me now. Have I lived my life the way she’d hoped? Have I made anything of myself? Have I done everything I could?
Of course not. I knew what Lexi would do if she were me, what she must have tried to do then. That’s why I’m sending this message back with Nathan, Diego, and Richard. I don’t know if you’ll believe them, but hopefully you’ll believe me when you hear this, and hopefully you can convince other people too. Hopefully the portal device will work on the Earth side to open a way for you to come here.
Tam stayed—I tried to send her home, but she refused. Lexi would like her. Together we’ll do whatever we can to free the other kids. But there are a lot of captive kids and a lot more Toothed-Ones. We’re going to need a whole lot of help. And that’s where you come in.
| Timothy Mudie is a speculative fiction writer and an editor of all sorts of genres. His fiction has appeared in various magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, including Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Podcastle, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, and LeVar Burton Reads. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and two sons. Find him online at timothymudie.com or on Twitter @timothy_mudie. |  |