Chapter Thirteen
The Break
Running through the tunnels of the Mitimae – the Macana ship, Linda was reminded of a hamster her older sister Jamie had taken with her to the dorm when she left for college. It was Jamie’s hamster, but Linda often would watch it run around the many brightly-colored tubes and chambers that made up its habitat. She would watch as he scuttled through the mazes Jamie would build for him, always in seeming awe of what new chamber he found next or what incredible development awaited him around the corner. Right now, she suspected she knew what it felt like to be that hamster, and if she had the opportunity, she would have set the poor thing free.
Although the maintenance tubes were well lit, without knowing what was going to be around each bend as they ran, Linda felt like she may as well have been running blind. Each time they passed an access panel to one of the rooms outside, she got even quieter than she was already trying to be. If they were discovered, hunched down in here, scrambling like mad to escape, she was very worried about what would become of them.
“Almost there,” chirped Medibot Three.
“Good,” Linda said, going as fast as she could. She spared a glance behind her, where she saw Gail and Gene keeping pace pretty well. Kevin, in the rear, looked very winded and, worse than that, disheveled.
“Kevin,” Linda whispered, “your shoelace!”
Her warning came too late, though. His right foot came down squarely on the flapping, untied lace of his left with the next step. When he tried to lift his left foot, both legs became entangled and he fell over, hitting the floor of the maintenance tube with a loud “clang” and a louder “oof!” He slid forward down the slick, hard metal almost three feet, coming to a stop only when he bumped into Gene. Where his knee hit the metal there were blue shreds of his pant leg and a red streak down the whole three feet to where he was lying now.
The three robots and three remaining children froze in their tracks. Kevin, gritting his teeth as he grabbed on to his scraped, bleeding knee, also did his best to remain quiet. Had any of the Macana heard the crash? Would they just rip open the wall and fry them with those lightning-guns right here? Blast it, why couldn’t Kevin keep his shoes tied?
Medibot Two came up to him after a few moments. He opened a chamber in his chest and produced a small quantity of some fluid and gauze. He cleaned Kevin’s wound, a process that made the boy grit his teeth to stifle a shout of pain from the chemical, and wrapped it up, although it was clear that this would just be a temporary solution.
The robots motioned to them. “Safe. Come. Hurry.”
Gene helped Kevin to his feet and, limping, he followed the others as they scuttled through the tunnels that promised to lead them to the hangar.
* * *
Kevin was still limping a few minutes later when the robots stopped at an access panel. “Here,” One said. “Hangar.”
“Great, let’s go,” Kevin grunted, trying to sound like he wasn’t in pain, failing.
“Cannot.”
“Why not?” Linda said.
“Guards.”
She slumped. “I thought you said there weren’t any guards in the hangar!”
“Just arrived,” Two said.
“Heard noise,” said Three.
“Way to go, Kevin,” said Gail.
“How many?” Linda asked.
“Four.”
“Four,” she repeated, exasperated. “We might have been able to take one by surprise, even two… but four? And with Kevin hurt–”
“I’m not hurt!”
“Shhhh!”
“Oh. I’m not hurt,” he said again, in a much softer tone this time. “I say we jump out and tackle ‘em! I can teach you guys a football drill–”
“Oh, knock it off, Kevin!” Gail shouted. “We don’t have time for you to pretend you’re an athlete right now!”
Kevin’s eyes dropped, more horrified than when Linda figured out what really happened to the surface of this planet. “I am an athlete,” he said.
“You’re clumsy and you’re slow and you throw like a girl!” she said. “Gene’s ten times better than you and he never even brags about it!”
Kevin’s mouth fluttered, totally taken aback. He had no idea how to reply.
“Gene,” he finally muttered, “is that… is she…”
Gene choked a little bit, trying to walk the line between telling the truth and crushing his friend’s pride. “You’re better than me with a slingshot,” he said. “Remember when we shot those Coke cans off your grandfather’s fence? You got ‘em all and I didn’t come close.”
“There’s no high school slingshot team,” he said. “You can’t win an Olympic slingshot medal.”
“There’s archery. And shooting. Maybe–”
“Guys, please, not now!” Linda hissed. If she and Gail hadn’t just made up, she would have scolded her for picking this inopportune moment to be honest about Kevin’s shortcomings. She looked to Medibot One. “Are those four the only guards in the hangar?”
“Yes.”
“Is there another access port? Maybe some way we can sneak past them and get to the airlock before they realize what happened?”
“There is a different set of maintenance tunnels for the rest of the ship to prevent a catastrophic event in case of a hull breach,” he said.
“Perfect,” Gene said.
“We need a distraction. You,” she said to Medibot Three. “Can you sneak back to the hall and then enter the hangar the normal way?”
“Yes.”
“Good. When you get there, tell them you know where we are, then lead them as far away as possible.”
Medibot Two nodded and turned away, heading back into the twisted maintenance tunnels. There was nothing left to do now but wait.
“And you’re pretty good at ping-pong too,” Gene said to a cheerless Kevin.
“Am I really that bad?”
“No.”
“But don’t quit your day job,” Gail said. “Read a book or something.”
“Gail, come on,” Linda said, balancing her words to keep anybody from getting angry with anyone else, a feat that she was afraid would prove impossible at this point.
“You’re right,” Gail said, surprising them all. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m just upset.”
“People tell the truth when they’re upset,” Kevin said, turning away from her and nursing his injured knee.
“Listen!” Gene said. “He’s outside.”
The four children and two robots stopped talking, stopped moving, and listened as Medibot Two spoke to the guards.
“I know where the humans are!” it shouted. “Follow me!”
“Now,” said Medibot One in a low tone. He activated the access panel and the six of them climbed out into the hangar. They were about halfway down the rows of vehicles, and they saw Medibot Two at the far end, leading the guards, one of whom sang something to the robot.
“What did he say?” Linda whispered to Three.
“He said, ‘Where are the humans?’”
Medibot Two sang back.
“And he said, ‘sneaking out of the maintenance tunnel behind you, but you must follow me as I lead you away.”
Blue lightning erupted around them.
“Look out!” Linda and Gene each grabbed one of Kevin’s arms and pulled him down behind the nearest van. Gail and the two Medibots followed.
“Why did he say that?” she shouted.
“Because it was asked of him,” said Three.
“Oh great,” Kevin said. “All of the robots in the universe and we get the ones who cannot tell a lie.”
There was a tremendous clang and Linda dared to peek out from behind the van. Three of the guards were still advancing on them, weapons drawn, but Medibot Two had tackled the fourth guard around the waist and was shouting, “Do not kill! Do not kill!” He had the Macana on the floor and was weighing him down with his metal body.
“Hey,” she said, “that’s downright brave of the little walking trashcan.”
“Over here!” Gene said. “We’ll make a run for the cabinet with the vacuum-suits, then get into the airlock!”
“On three!” Linda said, a phrase she thought she was getting far too much mileage out of these days. “One… two…”
“Three” was stifled by another crackle of blue lightning, searing the edge of the van they were using as protection. The four children bolted as fast as they could between vehicles, trying to keep at least one between them and the guards at all times. Kevin, limping, was bringing up the rear, with the two Medibots pushing him forward as much as possible.
“Run!”
“Flee!”
“I know, guys, I know!” Kevin said, ducking behind a van just in time to avoid another bolt. No matter how much he wanted to pretend his knee didn’t hurt, it was really starting to slow him down. Worse than that, it was burning, and images of terrible infections clouded his mind. He assumed the chemical the Medibot put on it was some sort of disinfectant, but how could he be sure?
The other three children were already at the cabinet with the vacuum-suits. Gail and Linda each grabbed one. Gene grabbed two, running the other one back to Kevin. “You okay, man? Can you make it?”
“I’ll be fine!” Kevin shouted, grabbing the suit and stubbornly stuffing his right arm into the sleeve. It was far too long, flopping all over the place, and as Kevin ran he tried to bunch it up until he got his hand into the glove.
They turned the last corner around the vans to get to the big sliding doors that would take them to the airlock, then stopped cold. This was most certainly the wise course of action, since they had just bumped into the girls, who themselves were staring down the barrels of three oddly shaped electric lightning weapons.
“Stupid humans,” one of the guards sang to them. “We should kill you right now.”
“In fact,” said the second, “perhaps we will.”
The weapons began to buzz and crackle with power.
“No! No kill!”
Four metal hands shoved Gene and Kevin to the floor, pulling the girls down only seconds later. The Medibots grabbed the guards’ weapons, straining their metal fists against the metal of the guns and bending the barrels back, squeezing them shut. The guards shouted things at them in the musical language, but even that light operetta could not disguise the rage in their voices. The wrestling match seemed to go on forever, but in truth it was only a few seconds before the first of the three guns split open from the strain, dousing all of the guards and both of the robots with power. The other two guns were ripped open soon after and all of them collapsed in a heap, the robotic bodies on top, twitching and smoking, not moving or speaking at all.
“The Medibots!” Gail said.
“We’ll have time to feel bad later,” Linda said. “Come on!” She slapped the control panel next to the airlock and the door slid open. All four of them rushed in and Gene hit an identical panel on the other side, closing it.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s suit up and get out of here before they catch us.”
“Don’t worry,” said a hauntingly familiar voice. “They won’t disturb us until I permit them to. I have much I wish to discuss with you humans.”
The four children looked down the breadth of the airlock at the single female Macana standing ready. With that voice, even in her vacuum-suit, even holding a lightning-weapon, there was no mistaking Lallura.
* * *
Lallura flexed her arms in the vacuum-suit, light glinting off the silver row of emergency pods along her right arm, extending up to the shooter at the wrist. Linda wondered how long she’d been waiting there – whether everything else they’d gone through since leaving the medical chamber was just a ruse to wear them down. Through the polarized facemask of the vacuum suit, Linda could barely see a smile trace the Macana woman’s face.
“What do you want from us?” Linda asked. “Why don’t you just let us go?”
“Let you go?” Lallura said, mockingly. “Surely, you can’t be serious, little Linda. Let you go? Your very presence is the key to saving my people.”
“After all of the people you killed on this planet, you’ll excuse us if we don’t start gushing with sympathy.”
Lallura gave off her musical laugh. “The Mitimae? Don’t waste your time weeping for them, Linda. Small, weak creatures that spent all of their time bickering amongst themselves while we took what we needed.”
“And killed them all in the process.”
“Well that’s what we do, my dear. They weren’t using this world to its potential anyway. You, on the other hand, you show a lot of potential for us.”
Gene found the courage to speak up. “Why didn’t you just let us die out there? That seems to be what you’re good at.”
“Because, boy, you are simply too great a mystery. You appeared on this cold, dead world out of nowhere. We found no ship, no energy-traces that would have been left by teleportation, no signs of a shelter where you could have escaped the scouring. However you got here may very well be the way the Macana will leave.”
“Your ship’s not good enough for you anymore?” Kevin sneered.
“This star system has been woefully disappointing for my people. We’ve scoured every world and yet we haven’t nearly the resources we need to make the journey to the next system. We are, in effect, stranded here. But you – you present something wonderful for us. If we can go wherever you came from, why, I suspect we’d find whole new worlds to bring under our fist. It will be glorious!” She leaned over Linda, eyes quite wide. “Is it that pool of water? We took samples from it, studied the geology of the terrain, but we cannot find anything that would explain your presence.”
Kevin almost blurted out, “Did you try jumping in, you ninny?”, but for once, common sense overrode his mouth and he maintained his silence.
“We’re not telling you anything,” Linda said. “We’re just going to knock you out of our way and keep going.”
“You can’t stop all four of us alone,” Kevin said, trying not to show how much he was favoring his uninjured leg.
Lallura laughed again, and every time Linda heard that laugh she hated it more. “Silly children, silly human children. You’re going to tell me everything, or you’re going to die.”
She pressed a button on her vacuum suit and they heard the pumps that removed the oxygen from the airlock begin working. In a few minutes, there would be in a vacuum even in here.
“Your suits!” Linda said, trying to wriggle her arm into the slumped white uniform in her hands. Lallura laughed again.
“You can’t be serious. Take a good look, younglings. They’re all slashed.”
Gail shrieked – Lallura was right. As she thrust her arm into the suit, she found a hole in it, neatly cut. The suits were useless. Gail looked at Linda. Gene looked at Linda. Linda looked at Lallura.
Kevin looked at the controls on his vacuum-suit.
“Come now,” Lallura said. “Surrender, or you’ll get what you had coming to you the moment you arrived here.”
“You know what’s great about our world, Lallura?” Kevin asked. “We always learned to share!” He raised his gloved hand and twitched his wrist. There was a popping sound and one of the emergency pods shot out of his launcher like a paintball. It hit Lallura square in the face, cracking open the glass shield of her vacuum-suit and knocking her to the ground, unconscious. The force field popped into place around her, a blue, humming field. Kevin knew the sound would be gone in just a few seconds.
He turned the launcher on his friends – Pop! Pop! Pop! Linda, Gail and Gene were each inside a solid bubble of energy. Then, just as the pumps had succeeded in pulling out enough air to silence the chamber, Kevin turned the launcher on himself. The force field burst into place around him, cutting off the dangling body of the vacuum suit and leaving him with the sleeve he’d shoved his arm into. Behind the others, the airlock opened to the empty void of the dead Mitimae world.
Linda cheered, but Kevin didn’t hear it. She motioned outside and tried to walk. It wasn’t easy – the force-field rolled along, so it was like trying to walk inside a giant ball, but they each got the hang of it, Kevin last. It would take a few minutes for the airlock to close. A few more for the Macana to realize what had happened. Still more for them to suit up and empty the airlock again so they could give chase. If they could only get to the Evertime pool – Kevin had given them a head start. Linda was determined to make the most of it.
* * *
Linda was in the front as they rolled, Gail and Gene pretty much neck-and-neck, with Kevin at the rear. Not only did he start behind them, but his leg was still aching, making it harder to get the hang of rolling his force-bubble through the ash-blanketed landscape. Linda was keeping the path to the Evertime pool in her head as though she’d drawn a map there, and was fairly certain she was on the right track. After a few minutes of running, she saw more and more charred tree stumps and realized they were in the remains of a forest – they were getting closer.
She wondered how much air, exactly, these bubbles held.
Finally, coming over the last rise in her sight, they saw the pool, and it was more beautiful than anything Linda could have imagined. She stopped herself at the edge of the water and turned to her friends—
Who were all looking at her with horror.
Gail clasped her right hand to her left and tugged, shaking her head “no,” and Linda immediately got the message. Inside these bubbles there was no way to hold hands, no way at all to stay in contact. If they rolled into the Evertime pool like this they would each fall between different moments, and they would each be alone.
Gene was motioning for Gail to come closer to him. She looked confused, but she did, so close that their bubbles touched one another. As soon as the bubbles made contact, Gene started talking excitedly. Gail’s eyes grew wide and she nodded. They both motioned for Linda and Kevin to roll up too.
As soon as Linda’s bubble touched Gail’s, there was a rush of sound. She heard Gene’s voice, very muffled, saying, “It worked! I read this in a book once – astronauts could put their helmets together and they could talk in the vacuum because the sound was traveling through the material.”
“Wonderful, we can talk,” Linda said. “We still can’t hook ourselves together.”
“Could we wait for the energy to wear out, then jump in?” Kevin asked.
“That sounds awfully risky,” Gail said.
“For more reasons than one,” Linda agreed. “If we don’t act fast enough, we’d be dead. And if the Macana catch up to us before it happens, we’re also dead.”
“So what can we do?” Gail asked.
Linda looked out over the pool. “Does everybody remember the directions back to Murphy’s world?”
“Kinda,” Gene said. “Why?”
“I think we’re just each going to have to go alone.”
“Alone?” Gail said. “What if the Macana come after us?”
“Once we jump in the pool they can’t catch us,” Linda said. “Even if they figured out how to get into Evertime, they won’t figure out what world we’ve gone to. We’ll just all roll in together and, no matter how long it takes us to get there, we’ll all roll out at about the same time.”
“It’s so crazy it just might work,” Kevin said.
“Your grandfather?” Gene asked.
“Naw, about 50 old movies I’ve seen.”
“So we’re going to do it, right?” Linda asked. “Remember the directions on the map. You go past the tree with the red pinecones, walk until you get to the tree with the blue and purple bulb-fruit and the white leaves, then turn right and keep walking until you see the sign.”
“If you hit the end of the universe, you’ve gone too far,” Kevin said.
“Can everyone handle this?” Linda asked.
“Yeah,” said Gene.
“Yes,” said Kevin.
“I don’t know about this, Linda,” said Gail.
Suddenly a blue streak ripped past them and hit a nearby stump. It exploded, showering their bubbles with shards of burnt wood and greasy ash. Somehow, an explosion with no sound seemed terribly wrong.
“We don’t have time to discuss it Gail!” Linda said, looking back in the direction they came. There was a Macana vehicle rolling towards them, a suited Macana on the roof, aiming his weapon.
“Come on, let’s go!” Kevin said. He shoved his bubble forward and the other three rolled with him. They hit the water one at a time – Linda, Gene, Gail and then Kevin, and the Macana saw them go down, watched the ripples in the water smooth out, and were very surprised as minutes and minutes passed, long after their energy and oxygen should have run out, and they didn’t come up.
* * *
At 8:33 and 15.2 seconds, Linda was falling into Evertime. She tried to keep her eyes on Gene’s bubble, right after hers, but as soon as her bubble was completely underwater, his bubble vanished from sight. This trip into Evertime was very different from the other ones. She was not cold, not wet, and although the currents batted her back and forth inside the bubble, it was much easier to keep her head about her until, inevitably, she popped to the surface. She was in Evertime, again, floating in the pool next to the dead Mitimae tree. It wasn’t easy to roll her bubble across the surface of the pond – it took her what felt like several minutes of lunging forward to make it drift in the proper direction. It was even harder walking up the bank out of the water and onto the ground, but eventually, she made it.
She was alone here, alone in Evertime for the first time, but not the last, and she was hoping when she jumped into the next pool at the Infinity Bar and Grille she would find her friends right behind her.
As she rolled along, she thought about time. Back home, it was Saturday evening. She and Benny had been gone over a day, and their parents must be terrified. She imagined the kids from the soccer game telling them what happened, and how the police would be combing the woods the way people did that time Benny wandered in when he was little. This time, though, they wouldn’t be there to find. How long would they look? And what would happen if they found the pond?
She worried about Benny, held captive by Baliwick for far too long now. What was he doing to him? What sort of things was he trying to find out from her brother? And what in the world made him think that she, plain old Linda Watson, could be so important?
It didn’t make any sense, so she wouldn’t waste any more brainpower worrying about it. She just wanted to get to the bar, get the information she needed, and get Benny home.
She got to the tree with the blue-and-purple fruit and the white leaves. She turned right.
* * *
It was 8:33 and 15.7 seconds, and for Gene, coming out of the pool into Evertime was like a rebirthing ceremony. He was so grateful to be leaving that horrible, miserable, dead world behind him, so anxious to find some place again where things were green and alive. That’s what hurt him the most, wandering around that empty place – everything was dead. All the trees, all the people… he didn’t even see remnants of any animal life. A place with no animals. He thought of his own dog and his two cats at home, of the aquarium he kept stocked with goldfish, even though they had a habit of dying too rapidly, of the many turtles and lizards and spiders he’d kept over the years. He thought of a world where none of that existed any more, and it was not a place he wanted to be.
Evertime was still, but it was far from dead. Rather, this place was practically the exact opposite – full of promise, full of life about to begin. Each of these pools, linked to this world by a proud, living tree, was a conduit to an entire world of people and creatures waiting to be discovered by people like him.
There could be dogs with flippers like a seal out there. There could be creatures with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. There could even be all of the creatures he’d heard about that no one believed existed anymore – unicorns, the horses with wings (Pegasus, he thought they were called, although that may have been the name of just one), and Sphinxes and mermaids and sirens and dragons and winged monkeys.
Well… maybe not winged monkeys. That would just be silly.
But then, maybe there was a world where being silly was the norm. Cartoon characters roamed the streets like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Another world where dogs had giant clocks in their stomachs. Another where humans and aliens fought together in a war against an ancient evil. A world where giant insects were spawned by careless radiation. Worlds of fire. Worlds of ice. Worlds of sunshine and worlds of darkness.
He could be an explorer, he decided. He thought of a word he heard people back at the Infinity Bar and Grille tossing around, a word infused with promise.
Evernaut.
Oh yes. An Evernaut. That was something he thought he could stand to be.
He got to the tree with the blue-and-purple fruit and the white leaves. He turned right.
* * *
Gail shivered as she climbed out of the pool into Evertime at approximately 8:33 and 16.1 seconds. It wasn’t cold in Evertime, she wasn’t shivering against any sort of chill from the clinging water. She was chilled by what she had just lived through.
She felt bad for what she said to Kevin now. It was only minutes before that she had been the outcast herself, chastised for her decision at the Infinity Bar and Grille, barred from the group by her best friend. Linda forgave her, though. And then she turned around just seconds later and did something even worse to Kevin. He hadn’t even made a bad choice, he was just overexcited, and she ripped into him. If she ever saw him again, she would apologize.
Oh no, not if, she wasn’t going to let herself start thinking like that. Not now.
It was weird, coming out of the water alone while the others had all jumped in with her. They only hit the water fractions of a second apart, but that was evidently all Evertime needed to isolate them from one another. She missed them.
She bet Gene would have known how to make this stupid force-bubble roll in the right direction. It wasn’t exactly the easiest mode of transportation. What’s worse, here in Evertime, she knew it wouldn’t run out of power and shut off. She was trapped in the bubble for the duration.
She missed the stars here, too. She didn’t like looking up into a sky and seeing nothing. If there was anything good about being on Mitimae, it was the sky. The stars were so bright and so clear. She couldn’t believe that the stars there corresponded to the ones at home. There were so many of them.
Not that they were all kind stars – it was one of those stars that spawned the Macana, after all. She wondered if there was such a star in her own world. She wondered if her planet might one day have to face down Macana.
She wondered what other creatures existed in the gulf surrounding those stars. She wondered if, maybe, there was even a world somewhere out there where the stars themselves came alive and descended to earth and held congress with the people.
“Clear your head, Gail,” she said. Now was no time for such silly speculation.
She got to the tree with the blue-and-purple fruit and the white leaves. She turned right.
* * *
Kevin was behind his friends. It was 8:33 and 17.2 seconds when he fell into Evertime, and he spent many subjective minutes there trying to roll his bubble out of the water. His knee felt like it was on fire, and it was not getting better. You couldn’t get hungry in Evertime, and you couldn’t get sleepy or tired, but the trade-off was that your pain would stay with you and never fade like it should, no matter how you treated it, how you nursed it, what you did to make it better. Wounds could not heal. Nothing would work. The pain would remain.
Suddenly the long walk to the Infinity Bar and Grille seemed even longer.
On the other hand, part of him felt rather grateful for his solitary confinement. The things Gail said to him stung more than she could know. Sports – baseball, soccer, football – they were all he had. All he’d ever wanted for as long as he could remember. The heft of the ball in his hand before he fired off a pitch, the satisfying thud when he kicked the soccer ball past the goalie… it was everything to him.
He was twelve years old. He’d been practicing since he was four and realized how good his brother was. He saw the attention – the near-worship Daniel got, and that’s what he wanted, plain and simple. It seemed like so much attention, so much joy, and all for playing games. It seemed like a good life.
He’d realized when he was nine that his best friend, Gene, was a lot better than he was at most sports. He realized sometime later that it wasn’t just Gene. No matter how hard he practiced, how hard he tried, he realized he stunk up the field. It wasn’t fair! His brother made it all seem effortless! He never even had to think about it, he just went out and whipped everybody stupid enough to face him down.
But Kevin would never be that good. He had known all of this for some time. But here, with Gail’s cruel words still echoing in his ears, this was the first time he’d ever really admitted it to himself.
So if he couldn’t play sports, he thought as his rolling bubble and screaming knee took him past a tree that dripped some sort of red sap that looked like ketchup, who was he? “Kevin White” was a child with no identity outside of sports. He’d never tried to develop other skills, never shown an aptitude for any talent, never cultivated any interest that didn’t involve grass or clay courts or pigskin or bats.
Who was he?
Maybe he was someone here.
Look out there, at all the endless trees, all the limitless potential. All of the worlds of the imagination. Surely, somewhere out there, he could find a place where he would fit in. He could leave that crummy world he’d come from behind, find a home, start somewhere better. Somewhere he could be appreciated.
Yeah, he could definitely do that.
At least… maybe he could do that.
After. After he helped Linda find her brother. He’d made a promise – if not out loud to her, than to himself – that he would use his skills, his talents, to help her bring little Benny home, and the fact that those skills were not nearly as impressive as he’d always pretended they were did not allow him to escape that promise. He’d think about this more, but not until they got Benny away from Baliwick and brought him home.
He got to the tree with the blue-and-purple fruit and the white leaves. He turned left.
Evertime Realms 
People are saying…