The Secrets of Serised

Xander was torn away from his thoughts as he noticed a slight change in their motion. A few hours in a boat on a river, and you begin to feel accustomed to the flow of the water, but something had happened. He looked at Thaladria, who met his gaze with a look of understanding

.
“What was that?” he asked, knowing she had felt it too.

“We’re slowing down.” She looked over the side of the boat, and he did the same, trying to find the cause. Estelle shook Alden awake.

“What is it? What . . . what? I’m ready! We’ll take them!” he said, groggy and not quite awake. But it didn’t take him long to notice it as well. “Why are we going so slow?”

Thaladria shook her head. “There’s nothing under us; we’re not dragging. I don’t understand.”

“Nothing on this side either. And look!” cried Xander, using a rock on the river’s edge as a landmark, to test what he feared. “We haven’t just slowed. We’re going backwards!”

The four children turned as one, fear filling their hearts. Behind them, as if from nowhere, a great whirlpool had formed in the middle of the river. It was sucking them in.

“We’ve got to do something!” cried Thaladria. She and Xander took up the oars, which up until now had sat useless. Now they paddled with all their might, but it only seemed that they could still their movement, not push forwards. And they were quickly tiring.

“Quick, Alden! My staff!” Estelle shouted, and Alden turned to rummage by his feet for it. He found it, and they pushed and shoved themselves, trying to face the back of the boat. Xander glanced over his shoulder to see what they were trying to do, but he couldn’t help but look at the whirlpool swirling menacingly behind them. Where had it come from? Surely the river wasn’t deep enough to create something so powerful.

Estelle put the crystal tip of her staff into the water and spoke some of her ancient words. “Tnionau oyseim eneymf oecnes . . . ,” she began, crying loudly, eyes closed, body tensed. “Neserpeh tniem erofeb elbata eraperpu oy!” A sudden jet of water burst from her staff, so powerful that it nearly shot out of her hands, and it took both her and Alden to wrestle the tip back under the surface. Thaladria and Xander stopped rowing hesitantly, but it seemed that for the moment they were safe. They were not moving forwards, but at least they were no longer headed backwards.

“This is not getting us anywhere,” Estelle warned them. “We have to think of something!”

“We’ve got to row to shore!” Alden cried over the din of Estelle’s magic, doing his best to keep her staff under the water.

“We’ll never make it. The river’s too wide. We’ll be pulled in.” Thaladria’s logic was obvious. The whirlpool was not far. If they turned the boat, there was no way they’d make it all the way to the river’s edge before being sucked in and capsized.

“What if we jump out?” Alden said. “If we can make it most of the way, we can jump to shore. It’s a risk, but it could work.”

“No way!” cried Xander. “I am not losing this boat again! If we lose this boat, we’re never going to find Lily. We can’t build another; there’s nothing to build it with. We’ll never find the Lost Kingdom in time!”

“Please, Xander,” Estelle pleaded, sweat beading on her tan forehead. “This whirlpool isn’t natural. It’s too powerful for my magic.” The staff was clearly pushing hard to remove itself from where they needed it to be.

“No!” Alden exclaimed. “We’ll never even have a chance if we’re all dead!”

Xander only had a moment to make a decision. He thought of Lily, of what she would do in his shoes. He knew they wouldn’t survive being sucked into that swirling pool of death. Branches that had fallen into the river were being swallowed by it before his eyes, sucked into the middle and ripped to shreds by the sheer force of the water. He bit his tongue. He knew what he had to do. The lives of the other three were in his hands. He couldn’t let them down.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” he whispered, praying in his heart that she would somehow hear and understand. Then he yelled, trying to make himself heard over the growing roar of the swirling vortex. “All right, we don’t have a second to waste! Thaladria, grab that oar! Alden, Estelle, when I tell you to, use the staff to push us so we’re angled towards the edge. We’ll use the oars and the staff to push us close enough to the side to jump out. If we don’t do this quick, we’re going to be pushing ourselves right in. You understand?”

Thaladria’s eyes were wide with fright, but she had the oar in hand, ready to follow his orders without questioning. They all knew what they had to do, and they were not complaining.

Xander took up his oar and started rowing as fast as he could, building a steady, hard rhythm with Thaladria’s. “Ready?” he called back to the twins. “Now!

With difficulty, the two managed to drag the staff around to the side of the boat. In the split second that it took the boat to turn slightly, they shot towards the whirlpool like an arrow. “Get it back behind us! Now!” cried Xander, and the twins did so. They were now dangerously close, and the swirling current threatened to overtake them. Row, row, row! Xander’s mind cried. We have to make it. Come on! Row! “Okay, let it drift in a bit. Good, keep it up!” Now they were skirting the outer arm of the vortex, using it to speed towards the river’s edge. But if they weren’t careful, they’d simply fly past and lose any hope that they had of reaching safety.

They were approaching fast. “Quick! Straighten it out!” They were just in time to stop themselves from whirling around too far. But Xander’s arms felt as they were going to fall off, and no matter how strong she was, Thaladria couldn’t row them alone.

His heart was pounding. The staff and their oars made little headway against the dangerous current, but at least they were moving, inching, towards the shore. A little farther. Almost there! But Xander’s heart sank. Try as they might, they seemed just out of reach of the shore. The boat groaned, threatening to burst into pieces as two powerful forces tried to pull it in opposite directions. Even if they jumped, they’d never make it. They’d fall into the water and be crushed to death.

They had no choice.

“We have to jump now!”

“Are you crazy? We’ll never make it!”

“We don’t have a choice! We’re not getting any closer!”

The staff quickly sputtered and died. There was no time to think.

“Now!” cried Xander, fear wrenching at him like a dagger being twisted in his gut. He’d done the right thing by his friends, he knew that. But there was no way they would survive. All four of them jumped at once, pushing off from the floor of the tiny boat with all their might, and it sped out from under their feet. In his mind’s eye, he could see them, four fragile bodies falling into the water, being sucked into the whirlpool like so many tiny sticks, torn apart and swallowed up, never to be seen again.

He shut his eyes. So did everyone else