Lost in Babylon

He pushed his way through us and slumped down onto the sandy soil. Cass sat next to him, putting a skinny arm around his broad shoulder. “I know how you feel, brother Marco,” he said.

“Maybe Torquin got stuck in the portal,” Aly suggested.

Marco shook his head. “We could fit an ox team through that thing.”

“He might have gotten cold feet at the last minute,” Cass said, “and gone back.”

We all nodded, but frankly that didn’t sound like Torquin. Fear wasn’t in his toolkit. He was a good swimmer. And he had lungs the size of a truck engine. All I could think about were Professor Bhegad’s words: What rules do apply, in a world that one must experience cross-dimensionally?

“Maybe he couldn’t get through,” I said quietly. “Maybe we’re the only ones who can. I mean, let’s face it, we each do have something he doesn’t have.”

“A vocabulary of more than fifty words?” Cass said with a wan smile. Under the circumstances, his joke landed flat.

“The gene,” I said. “G7W. He’s not a Select.”

“You think the portal recognizes a gene?” Aly asked.

“Think of the weird things that have happened to us,” I said. “The waterfall that healed Marco’s body. The Heptakiklos that called to me. The fact that I could pull out a shard and let a griffin through, when others had tried but couldn’t. All these things happened near a flux area, too. The gene gives us special abilities. Maybe jumping through the portal is one of them.”

Cass nodded. “So while we passed through, Torquin just … hit a wall. Which means he may be back with Professor Bhegad, safe and sound.”

“Right,” I said.

“Right,” Aly agreed.

We all stared silently at the gently rolling Euphrates, wanting to believe what we’d just agreed on. Hoping our beefy, laconic guardian was all right. Knowing in our hearts and minds that no matter his outcome, one thing was clear.

We were on our own.

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my hand as I leaped over a narrow trench. It carried water from the Euphrates, up through the pine grove and into the farms for irrigation. I was the last one over.

Cass was crouched low, stroking a palm-sized green lizard in his hand. “Hey, look! It’s not afraid of me!”

Aly crouched beside him. “She’s cute. She can be our mascot. Let’s call her Lucy.”

Cass cocked his head. “Leonard. I’m getting more of a he-vibe.”

“Uh, dudes?” Marco looked exasperated. “I’m getting a go-vibe. Come on.”

Cass gently put Leonard in his backpack. We continued walking toward the city, hidden by the trees. It was the height of the day and the sun beat mercilessly. Through the branches I glanced at the farm. Carts rested on the side of yellow mud-brick buildings. I figured the farmers must have been napping.

Cass sniffed the air. “Barley. That’s what they’re growing.”

“How do you know?” Marco asked. “Were you raised on a farm?”

“No.” Cass’s face clouded. “Well, sort of. I lived on one for a couple of years. An aunt and uncle. Didn’t work out too well.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Marco said.

Cass nodded. “No worries. Really.”

As they walked on ahead, I glanced at Aly. Questioning Cass about his childhood was never a good idea. “I’m worried about Cass,” she confided, lowering her voice. “He thinks his powers are dwindling. And he’s so sensitive about everything. Especially his past.”

“At least he’s got us. We’re his family now,” I said. “That should give him strength.”

Aly let out a little snort. “That’s a scary thought. Four kids who might not live to see fourteen. We’re about as dysfunctional as it gets.”

Ahead of us, Marco had put an arm around Cass’s shoulder. He was telling some story, making Cass laugh. “Look,” I said, gesturing with my chin. “Dysfunctional, maybe, but don’t they look like a big brother and little brother?”

Aly’s worried expression turned into a smile. “Yeah.”

As we neared the edge of the pine grove, we were all dripping sweat. Cass and Marco had pulled ahead, and they were now crouched by a pine tree at the edge of the grove. We gathered next to them. No one had noticed us. No one was near. So we could take in a long, clear view of the city.

Babylon sprawled out from both sides of the river. Its wall was surrounded by a moat, channeled from the river itself. A great arched gate, leading into a tunnel, breached the wall far to our left. Outside that gate, a crowd had gathered at the moat’s edge. They were almost all men. Their tunics had more folds than ours, with thicker material bordered in a bright color.

“We didn’t get the garb right,” Aly said.

“We look like the poor relatives,” Cass remarked.

“It is what it is,” Marco said. “Let’s walk like we belong.”

As we stepped out from the trees, I noticed that Cass was chewing gum. “Spit that out!” I said. “You weren’t supposed to bring stuff like that.”

“But it’s just gum,” Cass protested.

“Hasn’t been invented yet,” Aly said. “We don’t want to look unusual.”

Cass reluctantly spat a huge wad of gum into the bushes. “In two thousand years, some archaeologist is going to find that and decide that the Babylonians invented gum,” he muttered. “You making me spit that out may have changed the future.”

We all followed Marco out of the trees and onto the desert soil. As we approached the city wall, the crowd grew loud and raucous. They’d formed a semicircle with their backs to us, shouting and laughing. Some of them scooped rocks off the ground. Three men stood guard, facing outward, looking blankly off in to the distance. They wore brocaded tunics with bronze breastplates and feathered helmets. They looked powerful and bored.

“Behold Babylon,” Marco whispered.

“Just past Lindenhurst,” Cass whispered back. “That’s the Long Island Railroad. Babylon line. Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst, and Babylon. I can do them backward if—”

A horrible scream interrupted Cass. It came from the center of the crowd, and a second later, the men all roared with approval. Instinctively we stopped. We were about sixty or seventy yards away, I figured, but no one was paying us any mind. I could see a couple of boys racing toward the crowd with armfuls of stones. As the people ran to grab some, a gap opened in the semicircle. Now I could see what was inside—or who. It was a small, wiry man in a ragged tunic with a thick purple border. He was cowering on the ground, covering his head with his hands and bleeding.

The color drained from Aly’s face. “They’re stoning him. We have to do something!”

“No, because then they’ll stone us,” Cass said, “and we’ll be dead before we’re born.”

Staggering to his feet, the bloodied man shouted something to the crowd. Then he took a step backward, yelped, and disappeared—downward, into the moat.

I heard a splash. Another scream, worse than any we’d heard so far. The crowd was standing over the moat, peering down. Some bellowed with laughter, continuing to throw rocks into the water. Some turned away, looking ill.

From behind us I heard the sound of wheels crunching through soil. The men in the mob began turning toward the sound, falling silent. A few dropped to their knees. We did the same.