The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 – THE END OF THE WORLD AND BEYOND

The mermaid tied something like a string around Naomi’s waist. Was she going to tie Naomi up and leave her to drown?

Before Naomi could dwell on that thought, the creature pulled her up again, very fast, and she looked into bright sun beams coming at her, dancing in the water. She burst through the surface and was catapulted in the air, and then she felt something hard hit her head.

When she opened her eyes, she looked into the worried face of her brother. His face was red and sweaty.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “What happened?”

Good question. Naomi felt for her head. 

“Well, tell me later, okay? ’Cause we have sort of a situation here. There’s a white brim on the horizon, and beyond it only sky—I mean, except for the steam rising from behind the horizon. And the horizon is, like, coming closer all the time and there’s still only sky and steam beyond it. Looks as if we’re heading toward the brim of a gigantic waterfall or something like that. And … and,” Jerick shut his eyes for a second, “and we have trouble steering the ship around or stopping her. The current here’s tremendous and it sweeps the ship along like a … like a … stick on a river. And the anchor isn’t working either. The bottom of the ocean here’s all soft sand, like butter. The anchor just slides through it.”

It took Naomi a moment to realize what Jerick was talking about, but when she did she forgot all about the mermaid and the string around her waist, and jumped up. Jerick was right. Ahead of them stretched a white brim all along the horizon, and steam rose from beyond the water. Never had any horizon looked so close to her, and it came closer with every second. How fast they went, and how the current rushed, and how hot it was here! She felt sweat on her forehead mingle with the water from her wet hair. “What are we to do? And why is it so hot all of a sudden?”

“Don’t know. The heat seems to be coming from the … from the abyss or whatever you want to call it.”

“From the abyss.” Naomi recalled Onogog’s demonstration with the little ship and the plate. “Or maybe this world really is flat and we’re steering toward the end of the world right now.” Naomi only half believed it herself.

“Don’t start with that again!” Jerick grew even redder in the face. “No, I think it’s probably just a wa— But look at what the sailors are doing!”

Onogog and his eleven men were busy tying a long rope around themselves. Onogog tied it around his waist and between his legs like a mountain climber and passed it on to the next man, who did the same.

“I think I know what they’re doing,” Naomi said. “I think they’re trying to keep anyone from falling off the ship—you know, once we reach the brim of the ocean and goodness knows what happens. Either they’re all going to die or all going to live.”

Naomi knew they’d better join the men, although she felt very much like crying and running away. Tying herself to that rope was like tying herself to Death. But there was no other option; they had to do it.

They both dashed toward the sailors.

Naomi came first. Her sweaty hands slipped several times off the rope as she feverishly tried to tie it around her waist. It was then she noticed a strange belt around her waist and a little bottle attached to the belt. The string! The mermaid. But she would have to think about the mermaid later. That is, if she survived the next few minutes.

Hurry up! Hurry up! We don’t want to lose Jerick. What dreadful heat!

The steam from the edge drifted over to them and swallowed up the ship in a hell of tropical oppression. Naomi felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes started burning. Tears shot up and clouded her vision.

“C’MON, LET ME HELP YOU!” Jerick shouted.

Naomi had never seen him so red in the face, as if dipped in a bucket of paint. He seized the rope with shaking hands and tied it fast on Naomi.

Then everything happened at once. There was a big wave, screaming and shouting, the bow going slightly up in the air, and the next moment everything going down, steeply down. Before Naomi realized it, they were falling off the edge of the ocean, like stones: falling, wretchedly falling, their feet lifting up from the deck and the ship dropping underneath them.

Naomi screamed. She no longer knew whether she was right-side up or upside down. The sailors all tumbled over her and over each other while they fell faster and faster.

She caught a glimpse of Onogog. There he was, thank goodness, still holding on to a latch with his steely arms to some handle at the bow of the ship. Please, please let him hold on! We don’t want to lose contact with the ship.

Slowly the rope uncurled itself and began to look like a crooked mast attached to the bow of the ship. The ship fell with her bow pointing diagonally downward and the rope now stood straight up.

But where was Jerick? It was hard even to know where to look.

“Jerick!” Naomi cried. “JERICK!”

Nothing. Only men whose long hair and beards fluttered in the air stream. The hot air stream. It beat against her face like a hard whip and made it difficult for her to keep her eyes open. It was a wonder she could see anything at all.

Seconds, minutes passed. No impact yet.

The air cooled down and the steam disappeared, and Naomi recollected herself enough to observe that she was the last person on the rope. No Jerick, only the rope’s empty end fluttering like the sailors’ hair.

“Jerick! Oh Jerick!”

○ ○ ○

The ship sped over the edge of the ocean just when Jerick snatched the rope from Naomi. The deck dropped underneath his feet, and he clung to the rope, but his sweaty hands slipped, slid down the moist texture. He tightened his grip, tried to drag himself away from the end of the rope.

The end. He felt it slithering up his legs, beating its way to his waist, his stomach, his chest.

Before he lost hold of the rope completely, he brushed against a familiar object: the basket of the balloon. What with the wind, heat, and steam, he could see as little as Naomi, but he was close enough to the basket to feel for something to hold on to. Something less slippery than the rope. He let go of the rope and glued himself to the basket as to a signal of hope from his own dear world.

But now what? He could try to cut the tie between the mast and the balloon. He might be safe then, flying in the basket of the balloon. Or would he? The balloon was probably damaged. Balloon fabric begins to fall apart when the weather is too hot, which is why balloons usually launch early in the morning. This insufferable heat had likely ruined the balloon; Jerick was surprised it hadn’t yet completely deflated.

Even if the balloon was still all right, though, what about the others? He should at least get Naomi into the basket with him. But would he be able to save the sailors? It would be very risky to tie the end of the rope to the basket; he might be blown away and lose his own life in addition to having lost everyone else’s. What was he to do?

Blast it all, he had to risk it. He couldn’t let everyone die and save only himself.

He let go of the basket with one hand and tried to catch the end of the rope. If it were only a little closer, and if it only didn’t flutter so much! Jerick reached over as far as he could, but it wasn’t far enough. He had to let go with the other hand. He had to let go of the basket.

He hesitated.

Argh, to hell with it, I’ve got to do this! He screamed into the suffocating wind and let go of the basket’s cane. Paddling in the air like someone learning to swim, he tried to get closer to the rope. Yes! Yes! He was getting there. Just another inch. Stupid rope! It was still fluttering as much as ever. He desperately tried to catch it. C’mon! Come here, you little beast!

It seemed to take ages until he got a hold of it. Thank goodness the air had turned outright chilly by now, so the rope no longer slipped through his hand.

And now back to the basket.

The basket was farther away than expected, and he paddled and kicked and wiggled his body in the attempt to breach the distance. No use. His move away from the basket must have been due to the wind or something else, not due to his paddling. As much as he tried, the basket actually moved away from him. 

“NO! NO! NO!” He yelled as though he could command the basket to come back. Please don’t let me lose it, don’t let me lose us all! And at the same time he wondered whether anything he did would even matter. Would there be a bottom at all into which the ship would smash? They had already fallen for several minutes, which meant they were already a few miles below the edge of the ocean. No waterfall was this big. Had Naomi been right? Was this the end of the world? Would they keep falling until they had all died of thirst and starvation, provided there was still air to breathe? And after they had died, would their corpses keep plunging downward into a bottomless pit? Would their flesh start to rot and their clothes turn into rags and their bones appear from underneath their skin, all while falling down, ever down? Jerick had a morbid picture of fourteen skeletons endlessly falling, falling, falling—

Unexpectedly the basket did move closer. In fact, it happened so quickly that Jerick almost flew past it. He reached out his hand just in time to catch one of the strings between the basket and the balloon.

After some precarious maneuvering, he set about tying the rope to one of the poles inside the basket. This was not as easy as it sounds, seeing that he always had to hold on to something with at least one hand. Finally, though, it was done.

And now let’s undo the other one. He moved over to where the balloon was tied to the mast and tried to undo the knot, but he couldn’t. Of course! He should have thought of that. There was way too much tension on it. Even Onogog wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

The name Onogog rang a bell in Jerick’s head. It made him think of weapons, and that reminded him that he had taken a Swiss Army Knife with him to the balloon festival. Yes, there it was, in his right-hand pocket. Thank goodness it hadn’t fallen out. He took it—very carefully, because he did not want it to slide out of his hand—and began hacking at the rope. It was hard work, because the rope was thick. And all the while Jerick was astonished that they still had not reached any bottom. He glanced downward beyond the ship, and then he saw it. There was a surface all right, and they were approaching it fast.

Immediately he hacked and cut away at the rope again. Stupid thing! C’mon, c’mon! Argh!

More and more frantically he chopped and slashed and cut at the rope, and he screamed and yelled and cried, and tears flew out of his eyes like raindrops falling upward, and then, all of a sudden—crash!—he was thrust into the bottom of the balloon and felt a sharp pain pierce his left shoulder.

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The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 – HEIMSKRING

Naomi hated always having to look up at people, and in the case of this man she had to crane her head back even farther than usual. His colossal frame was clothed in brown leather, layered like a suit of armor and adorned with two pieces of chain mail on his upper arms. The plaits of his blond hair mingled with the plaits of his beard, making it hard to see whether a particular plait grew out of his face or the top of his head. Naomi was frightened to look at him for too long.

“Dis struger, egnildeme!” (“Greetings, strangers!”) the man said and lifted his right hand in greeting. “Fard ki nehrafer ref ri dis?” (“May I know who you are?”)

Jerick cleared his throat and also lifted his right hand, but then moved it to scratch the back of his head. “Uh … you probably can’t understand us, just like we can’t understand a word of your gibberish, but maybe you could, I don’t know, communicate to us somehow who you are and where the heck we are?”

The man looked at them calmly, his blue eyes exuding dignity, despite the fact that his bearded face lacked any sort of comprehension. “Un, nef sad rier emana raf, nada si red rees ganal.” (“Well, if that was your name, then it’s very long.”)

“Well, as I said, we don’t seem to understand each other.” Jerick laughed uncomfortably.

“Rif nenisha nus tichin u nehesterfe.” (“We don’t seem to understand each other.”)

“Yeah, right, whatever.”

Before Jerick could think of what else to say, Naomi had the sensible idea of pointing to herself and saying “Naomi” several times.

“Ah! Nar-omi.”

“Yes, yes, I’m Naomi.”

“And I’m Jerick.”

“Jar-rick. Jar-rick. Ah!” The man pointed to himself. “O-no-gog. O-no-gog.”

“Onogog,” the children said.

“Aye, ki ni Onogog.” (“Yes, I am Onogog.”) He nodded again. Then he lifted his long, muscular arms and pointed all around him, saying repeatedly, “Heimskring. Heimskring.”

“Heimskring?” Naomi and Jerick glanced at each other.

“Maybe that’s the name of this ocean or country here,” Jerick said.

“Or this world,” Naomi suggested.

Jerick first sneered, then grunted. “I think you’ve been reading too many fantasy novels, Nomers.”

“Well, where else can we be? We don’t have any people like him at home. At least not anymore.”

Naomi felt as though she had stepped into a dream or a movie—or yes, into one of her fantasy novels she liked so much. Was this really happening? Had they drifted into a different world? Had it been a magic cloud that had wrapped them up like a blanket and carried them to an unknown place? Or had they landed in another time, like they did in stories with time machines?

She would have to wait to find out.

They proceeded to climb down the mast with Onogog, leaving the dragon balloon tied on top. Down on deck they met the sailors, who still threw fearful glances at the dragon hovering above them. They were twelve in all, including Onogog, but none of them was as imposing as he. Their hair and beards were not as long, their foreheads not as square, their shoulders not as broad, and their statures not as giant-like. Like Onogog, however, they were all blond and wore brown leather outfits.

Naomi scooted close to Jerick. She had never stood amongst a whole group of warriors, all equipped with real weapons. By the looks of them, they’d all killed people at one time or another. She felt like she’d much rather be at home reading about other worlds or times than actually being there.

Naomi’s fears turned out to be groundless. The sailors gave them as warm a welcome as possible on such a rustic ship, serving the hungry children plenty of cold meat, bread, and fruit, as well as some beer. It was the first time Naomi had beer, and it tasted very bitter. She had a hard time not spitting it back out. Although it seemed the right sort of drink in this setting.

During the meal, Onogog took one of the wooden plates and turned it upside down. With a few sticks and a piece of leather, he built a little model of a ship and put it on the plate. He gestured to the children that the ship was the one they were sailing on right now, and, pointing to the plate, he said, “Heimskring.” After that he slowly moved the ship toward the edge of the plate, even imitating the wind by bending down and blowing into the leathery sail. “Aye?”

“I think he’s trying to tell us about the purpose of their voyage,” Naomi said.

“Yeah, seems like they’ve got the fantastic notion that they could travel to the end of the world. As if the world were flat. Seem to be a little behind the times, these guys. Stuck in the Middle Ages or something.”

“A lot of people in the Middle Ages didn’t think that the earth was flat. You read the wrong kind of books, Jerick. You should read some older ones for a change. The other day Dad read to me a—”

“Okay, okay, know-it-all, I’m a balloon specialist, that’s all. I don’t have time to read all that old stuff.”

Onogog raised his thick eyebrows. He did not have to understand English to perceive their irritated tone of voice.

Naomi saw his face and smiled at him. “It’s all right, Onogog. We just still aren’t sure where we are and if your world might really be flat.”

“What?” said Jerick. “You think that the earth here actually might be flat?”

“Well, you never know.” Naomi forced herself to keep smiling and glanced at Onogog. “We might be in another world, and other worlds might be different from ours.”

“Yeah, and are being carried on the back of some giant ant or something.” He grunted again. “I guess we’ll see. At least it’s pretty obvious that that’s what they think. I mean the part about the world being flat, not the ant. Which isn’t very comforting. Either we’re headed toward the brim of the world and might fall off any minute or we’re traveling with a bunch of blockheads.”

○ ○ ○

After they had been on the ship for two hours, Naomi leaned over the starboard railing to take in the scenery. The railing was very low, even for her, and she wondered how the tall men managed not to trip over it by accident and fall into the sea. Naomi peered down at the moving water. It looked alive, as if it were a creature of its own: the waves, the gushing power with which it hit the ship, the white foam dancing over the dark azure.

She was glad to be on the ship and no longer in the balloon where she would still have to be afraid of landing in the ocean and drowning. She always had been especially afraid that she might die of drowning. Sometimes at night, when she could not fall asleep, she had horrible pictures in her head of being on a sinking ship and not getting on a lifeboat. She imagined herself struggling in the water, panic-stricken, being pulled under, her lungs bursting—

She shook her head as if to wake up. Stupid girl, to think of that now! Being on a ship was the worst possible time to remember her waking nightmares. So she looked down on the water and tried to simply appreciate its beauty. How quickly the ship was moving. Much more quickly, it seemed, than when they had first arrived. The water also looked much clearer. Naomi almost thought she could see the bottom of the ocean. But that must be an optical illusion, she figured. And what was that? A dolphin?

Naomi leaned farther over the railing. In the water, a slender creature swam parallel to the ship. It grew larger and larger, and suddenly it surged out of the water, and for an infinitesimal moment Naomi thought she saw a mermaid, though much more beautiful and terrifying than any she had ever seen in a picture.

The creature shot directly at her. A strong hand gripped her left upper arm and tore her over the railing, pulled her down headfirst into the water. The sounds of the wind and the voices of the sailors abruptly died away, and wet coldness engulfed her instead of the warm rays of the sun. 

For a moment the strong hand let Naomi go, but then a whole arm slung around her from behind and wedged her in while she was being pulled down, down into her nightmares.

The light from the sun became fainter. The coldness grew.

The body of the creature pressed against her spine, swung back and forth, back and forth. Like a fish. The motion distracted Naomi for a few seconds, until she remembered her fears. Her lungs felt strangely tight. A rush of panic surged through her body. She struggled to free herself, but the arm held her as if it were made of steel.

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The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 – UNDER ATTACK

Jerick looked down at the ship, his green eyes wide with horror. “Th-they’re shooting at us! All the sailors are running around like crazy. They’re trying to take cover or something, like we’re gonna attack them.”

Angry shouts and agitated voices rang through the air. What could this mean?

Jerick stared at Naomi, waiting for her to come up with some brilliant idea.

Naomi returned Jerick’s gaze with a blank look. Then her eyes suddenly shot open. “The balloon, of course!”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you remember?” Naomi pointed up. “It’s shaped like a dragon.”

Their balloon was not round like most balloons, but shaped like a fierce dragon with green skin, open jaws and big, pointy teeth.

“And you mean—”

“I mean, look at the ship … how old it is. And the sailors. Whoever they are, I don’t think they’ve ever seen a hot-air balloon before, and maybe … I don’t know, this might be a little far-fetched, but maybe they still believe in dragons, and maybe they think our balloon is a dragon.”

“This balloon a real honest-to-goodness dragon?” Jerick frowned and laughed. “Right! These sailors can’t be very bright if they really believe that.”

“But think, Jerick. Imagine you’d never seen a balloon, and of course you’d never seen a dragon either, except in pictures, because dragons of course don’t exist—but imagine you firmly believed in them, and then during a sea voyage you saw this. Wouldn’t you also take cover and shoot at it?”

“Well, maybe, but I don’t believe—”

Another whizzing sound. An arrow flew right over their heads. Fortunately, it also missed the balloon and disappeared below.

“DOWN!” Jerick pulled Naomi to the floor. “We’ve got to do something, and quick.”

“I think I’ve got an idea.”

“What did you say?”

“I … I said I think I’ve got an idea.”

“Well … watcha waiting for?”

Naomi fumbled with her pink shirt. “I think we should lower the balloon even more and … and show ourselves to the sailors … to wave at them or something I mean.”

“Are you crazy? They’ll shoot a thousand holes into the balloon in no time, and a few holes in us too. It’s a wonder they haven’t done it already. Maybe we’re still too high for most of their bows, or maybe they don’t want to waste all their arrows before the mighty dragon attacks. Anyway, if we lower the balloon they’ll definitely shoot us. No, we should—why didn’t I think of that before?—we should do the opposite. We should go higher up, out of reach of even their best bows.”

“And then what, Jerick? Don’t you see that this ship is our only chance? There’s only ocean out there. We’ll drown if we can’t get on this ship.”

Jerick did not answer. He hadn’t thought of that in the distress of the moment.

“So we should lower the balloon,” Naomi continued, “and wave at the sailors, and when they see a boy and a girl in a basket hanging from the dragon, they must put two and two together and—”

“—and realize that it’s not a real dragon.”

“Exactly.”

“Hmmm. Okay.” Jerick stood up and brushed his wet hair from his forehead. “It’s a bit risky, but … well, I figure it’s our only chance.”

They peered over the rim of the basket.

“Whoa! Look at how low we are already,” Jerick said.

The ship seemed much bigger than she had appeared at first, and the sailors could also be seen quite distinctly. They were crouching each with one knee on the deck, grim faces directed toward the dragon and drawn bows held in their outstretched hands. No one was shooting. Apparently everyone was waiting for the dragon to make a sudden move.

“We can just as well start waving now,” Naomi said. “If we can see them that clearly, they might see us too. The lower we get, the more dangerous it’ll become.”

“Like I said.”

They both began to wave, at first still hiding most of their bodies in the basket (with a frequent glance toward the protruding arrowhead, which looked very sharp indeed), but then they leaned farther over the rim and gesticulated at the bearded men. Naomi’s legs hung dangerously high in the air. Jerick shouted at them, and Naomi joined in, “We’re only a boy and a girl. You don’t need to be afraid. This isn’t a real dragon; it’s only a balloon. You can lower your weapons. Please don’t shoot us!”

It worked. Or so they thought. The sailors noticed them. It was evident from the way they looked at the basket and talked to each other.

“Hurray! It’s working,” Jerick exulted.

“Yes, they’ve definitely noticed us,” Naomi said. “But it’s weird. They don’t seem to be relieved at all. They’re even more wound up than before. Listen to them. It doesn’t sound to me as if they think the danger’s over.”

Suddenly one of the sailors shouted something to the others and slung his bow on his back. He jumped up and ran over to the mast and climbed it.

“What’s he doing?”

Before Jerick could wonder any further, the man reached the top of the mast and leaped onto the platform at the masthead. Within less than a second, almost too fast for Jerick to see, he took his bow, fitted an arrow on it, and drew it. Aiming at the balloon, and with a terrifying tone of courage in his voice, he roared, “Ressoger echrad, sall id redinker eerf redo uder striv ni retoter echrad!” (“Great dragon, let the children go free or you will be a dead dragon!”)

“What is he doing?” Jerick said again. “And what’s he saying? I didn’t understand a word.” He waved at the man, who, since the balloon had steadily descended, was very close to them. “Hey, sailorman.” Jerick sounded braver than he felt. “What are you doing? This is just a balloon. You can put your bow away.” And he tried to smile and show through his gestures that this “dragon” was quite harmless.

The man knitted his brows. His eyes darted from the balloon to the children and back. Confusion replaced the look of courage in his face. Jerick saw his indecision and tried to think what might keep him from doing something stupid. “Let’s throw him a rope and signal to him that he should tie it to the mast.”

“Okay, let’s.” Naomi helped Jerick to pick up a rope from the basket.

“Hey, sailor, catch this.” Jerick threw the rope toward him. The man, perhaps mostly out of reflex, tossed bow and arrow in one hand and caught the rope with the other.

“Tie it, tie it to the mast.” The children tied imaginary knots in the air. For a moment the man just stood there, bow and arrow in one hand, the rope in the other. But finally, with one last unsure glance at the dragon, he tied the rope to the mast.

As soon as he was finished, Jerick and Naomi pulled on the rope as hard as they could. The balloon inched closer to the mast. When the man saw what they were doing, he grabbed the rope, and after a few pulls the basket bumped against the railing of the platform. And now, for the first time, they could study each other in peace.

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The Crack Beneath the Worlds – Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of my fantasy novel The Crack Beneath the Worlds:

 

CHAPTER 1 – VOICES IN THE CLOUD

“Finally!” Jerick kicked hard against the propane tank of the hot-air balloon. “Why didn’t this darned thing turn off earlier?”

“And why did we have to climb in here at all? This was the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.” Naomi clung to the side of the basket, which was suspended a hundred feet above ground. And rising fast.

Even for Jerick, hijacking a hot-air balloon belonged to the category of Exceptionally Rare Achievements. An ordinary day in the life of Jerick Faust might include carrying a gun replica through a security check, accidentally erasing all of his father’s work from his computer, or lighting firecrackers in his room and almost burning down the whole house. But not hijacking a balloon.

The feat was all the greater in that he managed to drag his little sister along, Naomi, who would not even steal a cookie without asking their mother.

Naomi was so tiny she wore little kids’ clothes instead of proper outfits for a girl her age. Today’s shirt was pink-purple bearing the picture of a doll stroller, complete with a smiley doll waving its chubby hand and the words “My Doll Is All I Need” printed on top. Needless to say, Naomi never wore the shirt at school.

“What are we gonna do now?” Naomi asked. She stood up on her toes and stretched herself to be able to put her button nose over the rim of the basket. Her face was wet from crying.

“What we’re gonna do?” said Jerick, oblivious to her tears. “I’m gonna land this baby, of course. What else?”

“Yeah, like you can actually do that.”

“Of course I can. I’m a balloon expert.” He put on his best patronizing smirk and stroked his reddish-blond spikes, which were completely unlike Naomi’s straight dark hair. All in all the two looked so different that few people believed they were siblings.

“See, this thing here is called a burner,” Jerick pointed to the metal object underneath the opening of the balloon. “It turns propane into fire and blasts the heat into the mouth of the so-called envelope to make the balloon rise. Now that the thing has finally turned off, all I have to do is pull on this control line here, which opens a flap at the top of the balloon for a moment, and voila!—we’ll start going down.”

“And why couldn’t you have just pulled the line while the burner was still on? Wouldn’t that have worked too?”

“Um.” Jerick opened his mouth like a fish and shut it again. “I, well …”

Before Jerick could come up with a far-fetched explanation, a wet cloud appeared out of nowhere and enveloped the balloon.

“Where on earth did that come from?” Jerick cried. “I thought it was a clear day. Did you see any clouds?”

Naomi said nothing.

“OK, well, I’m gonna pull the line anyway, I’m sure we’ll get out of the cloud then, and—”

A shrill voice echoed through the cloud, and it wasn’t Naomi’s. After a short pause, another voice answered, and then a third joined in. The voices sounded as if they were incantations in a foreign language, half singing, half commanding, like the pronouncement of a spell.

Jerick looked left and right, turned in a circle, bent over the edge of the basket and peered down. Nothing. Nothing but the gray cloud. “You hear that too?”

Naomi nodded.

“Seems like they’re right here in this cloud—whatever they are,” Jerick said.

The incantations grew louder. They moved all around them now, as if a whole choir of invisible witches dwelt in the cloud.

Naomi crawled into a corner of the basket and squatted down.

Jerick held his breath. An icy shiver coursed up and down his spine.

All at once, the cloud rent open and the warmth of the sun engulfed the wet faces of the children.

The voices were gone. The children exhaled.

“What was that?” Naomi asked.

“I don’t know, but we’re out of it now. Time to bring this thing down.”

But when Jerick looked toward the ground to see where to land the balloon, he froze.

“I can’t believe this,” he said. “Nomers!”

○ ○ ○

Ever since Naomi was five, Jerick had been calling her “Nomers,” even though she couldn’t stand the nickname. It sounded too much like a mathematical equation to her, not at all like a reflection of her inner being. She thought things should have names that befitted their character. Like a lullaby, or a golden chalice. Lul-la-by sounded calming, and a golden chalice sounded precious. Or the word lovely. Lovely truly sounded lovely, she thought. And crunchy sounded like you could bite it with a crunch. Nomers, on the other hand, didn’t sound like the person she was at all.

At the moment, though, she was much too afraid to think about that. So all she said was, “Yes?”

“Come here.”

Naomi got up to stand beside Jerick. And then she, too, held her breath. “W-where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

A lump swelled in Naomi’s throat. Down there, far underneath them, as far as the eye could see, shimmered the deep blue of an ocean. There was no land in sight. “There aren’t any oceans close to the festival grounds, are there?”

“No, not for miles around. We’re in the middle of the country, or at least that’s where we should be. I’ve got no idea where we actually are.”

“Oh Jerick!” Naomi began to sob. “How awful! What’s happened to us? Oh, I wish I’d stayed with Mom and Dad. And … and I wish I hadn’t followed you into this stupid balloon!”

Jerick looked as if he was close to tears himself, but he’d of course never cry in front of Naomi. He turned away from her, bent his head over the edge of the basket, and looked straight down. Naomi suspected that he wanted to wipe a few tears from his eyes without her noticing.

He barely had time to do so. “A SHIP! Look! There’s a ship!” he shouted and pointed at the water.

A ship? Naomi pulled herself up on the rim of the basket, her feet dangling in the air. She craned her head forward and peeked down—cautiously, because she was afraid she might fall out. Yes, Jerick was right. Directly underneath the balloon, an old-fashioned sailing ship glided through the water. Her bow cut through the gushing waves and her stern left a trail of white foam behind. Looks like a Viking ship, Naomi thought.

This day was getting more confusing with every minute. What was she to make of a Viking ship in an unknown ocean?

A quick whizzing sound and a thump cut through her musings. After a brief pause, trying to figure out what had happened, she let go of the rim, stumbled onto the bottom of the basket, and screamed. An arrowhead stuck through the cane only a hand’s breadth away from where she had been hanging!

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Do You Like Narnia or Harry Potter? This Might Be For You!

Is Narnia an Allegory?

The Chronicles of Narnia are undoubtedly one of the most influential works in the history of juvenile literature – delightful for all ages. 

There is, however, no small amount of confusion about the literary type of the Chronicles. Time and again, it is referred to as a “Christian allegory,” a tag with which C.S. Lewis would not have been happy.

As he explains in some of his essays and letters, an allegory is a work in which immaterial realities are represented by imaginary physical objects. For example, the immaterial faculty of Reason may be allegorically represented by someone we call Lady Reason. This Lady – because Reason is clear, undefiled, swift, cold, hard, and sharp like a sword – we could picture as a “sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel,” riding on a horse “with a sword naked in her hand.” This, C.S. Lewis has actually done in his only allegorical work, “The Pigrim’s Regress,” from which the example of Lady Reason is taken. 

Are the Chronicles of Narnia, then, an allegory? After all, C.S. Lewis loved allegorical literature, and it is obvious that elements of his Christianity flowed into the Narnian storyline, such as the concept of Creation, the Incarnation, Redemption, the End of the World, and Heaven and Hell. 

Were C.S. Lewis alive, I think he would be very glad if I could transfer to the readers his view that the Chronicles of Narnia are not an allegory. C.S. Lewis did not say to himself, “Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia.”

His original inspiration was much less theological than that – nothing more than a mental picture. Long before he became a Christian, he had a picture in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. Decades went past, until one day he said to himself, “Let’s try to make a story about it.” At first he had very little idea how the story would go. “But then suddenly,” he later wrote, “Aslan came bounding into it,” and “once he was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.” 

I believe I am right that some people will now think, “But aren’t the Chronicles of Narnia Christian at all? Doesn’t Aslan die and rise again like Jesus did? Isn’t that a representation of the Christian faith? If that isn’t an allegory, what on earth is it?” 

Well, C.S. Lewis called the Chronicles a “supposition.” He wrote the books by saying, “Let us suppose such and such were true and then imagine what would happen.” At first this supposition did not even contain a Christian element, but after Aslan had “bounded into” Narnia, Lewis said, “Let us suppose that reality contained different parallel worlds, and that in one of them the Son of God, as He became Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.” 

Now this supposition has a definite Christian element in it; the Christian element is in fact essential to it. But that does not make it an allegory. As we have seen, an allegory is trying to describe a (mostly immaterial) fact in our world by means of a picture, such as Reason being pictured as a sun-bright virgin clad in steel. Aslan, however, does not represent the immaterial God in the same way in which Lady Reason represents Reason. He is the result of a supposition. Granted the supposition, he and all the characters and events in Narnia would have been a physical reality no less than Jesus’ death in first-century Palestine.

Narnia is thus an imaginary world existing in its own right, having grown out of a Christian supposition, but not being an allegory of Christianity. To put it differently, Aslan is Jesus in another world; he is not an allegory of Jesus in our world. 

I would encourage those who still cannot see the difference to read Lewis’s “Pilgrim’s Regress.” Putting it side-by-side with the Chronicles of Narnia should make the distinction plain. 

But no matter whether you agree with Lewis’s view on the question of allegory, no book shelf is complete without the Chronicles of Narnia. One can read them again, and again, and again. 

(By the way, if you like Narnia, you might also enjoy my Fantasy novel The Crack Beneath the Worlds.)

How I Got the Idea for “The Crack Beneath the Worlds”

As often seems to be the case with stories, this story, too, began with a picture. While strolling through a bookstore one day, I came upon a collection of German rhymes, fairy tales, and illustrations. One of these illustrations pictured a moon looking through a telescope at the sky.

There was no story to go with the picture, though, and I felt there ought to be. I simply had to find out who that moon creature was and what he was seeing through his telescope. Hence I started writing a story about it, which I initially called What Mr. Moon Saw Through His Telescope.

Soon, Mr. Moon was joined by a host of other characters: vulnerable children, maritime warriors, talking bears with monkey feet, cunning magicians, an old king, a clockmaker, a beautiful mother of many, a mermaid, a giant swan, as well as a particularly frightful and most hideous beast.

Still: Mr. Moon has remained my favorite. I love his extreme short-sightedness (having pretty bad eyes myself), his way of speaking and moving, his lack of practical skills, and his philosophical remarks. He is the linchpin of the story.

Perhaps you’ll like him too.

Find out more at schriftman.net/crack.