Potlendh

  Copyright © David J. Wallis 2011

  Cover by Mervin Malonzo

  Interior art by Jennifer Legaspi

  Back cover by Pak Nayong

  Author’s picture taken by Arnold M. Colle

  ePub design and production by Flipside team

  eISBN 978-971-9922-31-5

  This e-book edition published 2011

  by Flipside Digital Content Company, Inc.

  Quezon City, Philippines

  www.flipsidecontent.com

  This book is dedicated to all of my students, especially Kim Na Ra, and all my children, especially Pak Nayong, and to my wife who has been a great supporter.

  A special thanks to my friends who helped edit this book.

  In memory of Doug “Orion” Botte, who had faith in this book seeing the light of day.

  CONTENTS

  1 Wishing and Getting

  2 The Island

  3 The Village

  4 Cassandra and Uniqua

  5 Cassandra’s Story

  6 Hunny, Bunny, and Runny

  7 Passage Through the Magic Mirror

  8 Guerrilla Base

  9 Submarine Lake

  10 Portaland

  11 Inside the Federation of Brothers

  12 The Boat

  13 The Flight

  14 Lava and Wood

  15 The Land of the Giants

  16 Big Head City

  17 Return to Portaland

  18 The Portals

  19 Return to Big Head City

  20 The Invisible Brigands

  21 Land of the Machines

  22 You Can’t Go Home Again

  23 Dragon’s Bridge

  24 Forgetful Beach

  25 The Ogre’s Tunnel

  26 Wish River

  27 The Dock

  28 Dark City

  29 The Wall of Centaurs

  30 Delightful Garden

  31 The Gates of the Lord of Power’s Castle

  32 Lord of Power

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER ONE

  WISHING AND GETTING

  “Be careful what you wish for” is a phrase that has always made me smile—sometimes laugh out loud. I’m not sure why. Maybe it is the comical way people say it. You know: the way they cock their heads to one side, the silly or mysterious grin they make, their eyes giving you that “You know what I mean” look. Naturally, I didn’t. I laughed mostly because of the funny way the adults looked. Problem is: I don’t always know what they mean. I just laugh at the comical way people look when they say it.

  Even now, although I am much older, I still have trouble completely understanding the good meaning of this phrase. I mean, people say it with an implied meaning. You have to understand first what they are thinking. The meaning of the phrase can change, depending on when it was said, where it was said, and at what time it was said.

  That is, until I was asked to write this incredible story that you are about to read!

  When I met Karen and Carl King (those are not their real names; otherwise, they would be bothered all the time by questions and autographs, and don’t get me started about the paparazzi), I thought the story they told me was just a fairy tale. I laughed and kidded them a lot. I know that grown-ups like to tell children fairy tales, especially at bedtime, but—let’s face it—few grown-ups would actually believe in fairy tales, much less like them. You see, I have always thought that grown-ups were people who have stopped learning new things or absolutely refuse to see the world in a different light.

  I guess I am not a grown-up—at least not one of those I just described—I can assure you. But when the King twins told me their story—well, it was just too difficult to believe. They have assured me—and shown me, by the way—but that is a bit of a secret—that the adventures you are about to read are not fairy tales at all. Incredibly, they actually happened!

  Let us start from the beginning. Karen and Carl are twins. Although they share the same birthday, they do not look much like each other. Carl’s hair had a lot more brown color, and Karen actually stood slightly taller.

  I would have said that these ten-year-old twins were already living a kind of a fairy tale life. They lived with their father on a huge oceanographic platform situated in the western Pacific Ocean!

  You might be thinking that because they were living in one of the largest deserts in the world—oceans are deserts, too, because there is no fresh water to drink—that they did not have to go to school. Far from it. They still had to attend school, but unlike you and I, they did not have to go to a classroom or a teacher. The teachers came to them, and their classroom was any area on the platform where they could plug a computer into the Internet.

  There were both good and bad aspects about this type of home schooling. First, there was no dress code. They could go to school in their bathing suits, if they wanted to. But on the down side, it was just the two of them. While there were no bullies to give them a hard time, making real friends through the Internet was very hard.

  The teachers taught through the two-way, closed circuit communications setup that also kept the oceanographic platform connected to the “real” world. Sometimes a special teacher would be flown in, but that was a rare event. If the twins did not like a particular teacher, they could complain to their father. Then, that teacher was history and quickly replaced by someone “better.”

  One of their favorite teachers was Mrs. Dubbins. She taught philosophy. She had never been to the oceanographic platform. Not only was she afraid of large expanses of water, she hated flying as well.

  “You kids look a little more down than usual,” Mrs. Dubbins observed, as if she had the ability to peer out of the large flatscreen monitor and watch them closely. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Carl muttered, and he tried to look like he was a little more interested in today’s lesson.

  “Why don’t I believe you?” Mrs. Dubbins challenged.

  “What my brother means,” Karen responded, “is that life around here is like the Doldrums.”

  The Doldrums is in the Atlantic Ocean near the equator. Much of the time there is no wind in this region. During the age of sailing ships, if a ship got caught in this area, it would not move. And, life aboard such a trapped ship would get pretty boring—if not deadly.

  “How so?” their teacher pressed, understanding the idiom.

  “Everything is the same-o, same-o,” Carl complained. “Nothing changes here. The crew is the same. The food is the same. The videos are the same. I’ve read the same books. Not even the weather changes. There’s no place to go. We’re staring at the same four walls all the time!” He stabbed his finger at his open mouth to indicate his disgust.

  “And how would you like to change your current situation?” Mrs. Dubbins was using a little psychology here, turning the twins complaint into an object lesson.

  “Well,” Karen began, thinking for a second, “how about getting a chance to go someplace else for a while.”

  Mrs. Dubbins laughed good-naturedly. “You know, there is a phrase in English that goes something like this: ‘Getting away from it all.’ Do you know what that means?”

  “Getting away from here?” Carl suggested immediately and not without some hope in his voice.

  Mrs. Dubbins laughed again. “Well, most people like to ‘get away from it all’ from time to time. Like taking a vacation or spending some free time away from the stresses of work, school, and/or family. I know that I like to ‘get away from it all’ by traveling to different parts of the country: see new sights, hear new sounds, taste new kinds of food, and most of all, meet different people.”

  “Why don’t you ever come out here?” Karen asked.

  “Me? Oh, heavens no!” Mrs. Dubbins laughed a third time. “I hate the water. I
have such a phobia about water, and you’re completely surrounded by it. I could never teach you anything if I was there. I’d be so afraid all the time.”

  “Huh. The water never bothers me,” Carl declared, maybe a little too cruelly. “It never changes either.”

  “Where would you want to go?” Mrs. Dubbins queried, changing the subject.

  The children did not immediately answer.

  “That’s probably one of the hardest questions to answer, isn’t it?” Mrs. Dubbins added after a pause. “Many people wish they could go to a different place, like somewhere exciting and different. The problem is, once we go somewhere else, it tends to become just as boring as the place we left.”

  “I want to go shopping,” Karen answered thoughtfully. She ignored her brother rolling his eyes and pretending to gag. “I would love to spend a few hours trying on new clothes, shoes, and some accessories. I’m tired of just looking through Internet catalogs, and even if I could order them, somehow they just don’t look the way they did in the catalog. On me, that is,” she quickly added for clarification.

  “Or dress up the virtual dolls on the computer,” Carl teased.

  “Be kind, Carl,” Mrs. Dubbins chided him gently.

  “All you want to do is blow things up on the computer,” Karen shot back. “How many war games do you have now?”

  “Actually, if I had my choice, I’d like to go to an amusement park. Ride a roller coaster or try out that parachute fall.”

  “If we couple our desires,” Mrs. Dubbins interjected, sensing a sibling fight coming on, “with the phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ you need to be prepared for something big!”

  “Huh?” the twins chorused.

  “‘Big’ does not necessarily mean that something better will happen. On the contrary—in fact, in most cases—we should expect a great change in or an impact on your rather comfortable and ho-hum life.”

  The children thought about this for a long time. To help them understand this concept, their homework assignment was to write about where they might like to go and how this might affect their lives. They had no idea that was about to happen to them was the last thing they could think of in their wildest imagination.

  The oceanographic platform was a lot like a large mall parking lot set down in the middle of the ocean. It rested on six, thick pillars that were deeply implanted into the sea floor. There were six levels: three decks (or floors) above the parking lot base and three below it.

  The three underwater decks below the base had to be the most interesting, to be sure. Huge viewing windows had been installed in the walls. Imagine waking up in the morning and instead of seeing the sun, some clouds, and a blue sky, you might get to see a passing school of fish or porpoises playing, or even larger creatures that make the ocean their home.

  The second or middle deck was “home,” where the family and crew lived, played, ate, and slept. Their father had carved out a niche to make a theater and game room.

  The third floor above the base housed the eyes and ears of the platform. Here communications equipment kept the family and crew in contact with the rest of the world.

  For several weeks now, since their lesson with Mrs. Dubbins described above, the waves that kissed the platform were like a slow dance with few steps. The first indication of a change in the music came over the Internet and a meteorological warning broadcast net.

  Strong storms begin their lives over open water, using the heat of the ocean to build mighty engines of swirling wind power and captured moisture. The ocean water then churns up—becomes “angry,” you might say—creating huge destructive waves, capable of inundating shores and overturning ships at sea. Pounding or driving rain virtually “drowns” both ocean and land surfaces, which in turn cause flooding and landslides.

  Just a couple of days before our story really gets started, a monster storm was beginning to form several hundreds of miles away from the oceanographic platform. It promised to be one of the largest and most powerful storms on record to be seen in the Pacific. In fact, such a storm had not been seen for decades. (Do not think that being so far away from such a storm would make a kind of safety net: storms at sea can grow very large very quickly and move at a very scary speed.)

  The twins, relieved somewhat from the monotonous boredom, stepped outside the second upper deck to see if they could catch a glimpse of the approaching storm. Disappointingly, all they saw was the sun sinking slowly towards the horizon in a near-cloudless sky.

  John Walton, a young oceanographer, was talking with meteorologist June Daily. The adults were staring at the same sky while leaning on the guard railing that surrounded the platform’s perimeter.

  “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” John commented to June. He was watching the sun set into the relatively calm ocean. The low-lying clouds on the horizon split the sun’s rays into beautiful reds, yellow, and oranges. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”

  “You can say all you want,” June Daily disagreed. “I’ll trust the meteorological reports.” She was much experienced and a lot older than John. She also had a reputation for being both crusty and blunt. “And my rheumatism,” she added ruefully.

  “So, what do our ‘eyes in the sky’ have to say?” John asked curiously.

  “Nothing to get excited about. Yet!” she added with emphasis. “But it’s coming, and you can take that to the bank. You know what they say: anything can happen overnight. And that is what concerns me. My hip is beginning to bother me, and you know what that means. Something big and bad is brewing out there. And I’ve got this horrible feeling that we’re not going to have much warning.”

  John shrugged. “It’s been a long time since this area has seen anything big.”

  “All the more reason to be concerned,” June said dourly. “Every time people lull themselves into thinking nothing will happen—wham! The big one hits, and a lot of people will have to pay. I would need to take my shoes off to count how many disasters have happened in my lifetime already, disasters that should have been prepared for. But people didn’t pay attention.”

  “So, how do you think we should prepare?” John seemed genuinely interested and not just humoring her.

  “If I were in charge, I’d start batting down the hatches,” she began. “It’s time to withdraw our claws and seek shelter in our shells. And, I’d start thinking about evacuating the children. It was stupid to bring them out here in the first place, if you ask me. But then very few people ask for my opinion. It would be colossally stupid to have them stay if that is a super typhoon forming out there.”

  The children naturally became “all ears” after hearing the word “evacuate.”

  “I thought you are second-in-charge,” John quipped.

  “There’s a big difference between being Number One and being Number Two, sonny-boy. Especially when Number One is also their father. Ever since their mother died, he has kept them close to his breast.”

  A storm was coming! They might get off the platform! If only their father would give the word! These and other exciting thoughts filled their waiting moments. They just might be able to get away from it all—finally!

  The twins spent several hours that night and several the next day reading boring, almost indecipherable weather reports that came in on a regular basis. They stared at the special Doppler radar screens, hoping to catch the fringe of tell-tale clouds that would announce the storm’s presence.

  Unfortunately, nothing meteorologically interesting told the twins to raise their hopes for a vacation from the platform. Despite June’s grumbling and dire predictions of a massive storm, the sky remained maddeningly clear, and the seas were only slightly more agitated than usual.

  Orbiting above the Earth there are several weather satellites that constantly record the atmospheric changes and report up-to-the-minute changes, such as ocean temperature and air pressure differentials. When June’s super typhoon began to grow, the sensors on these satellites moved into hyper gear, f
looding meteorological sites around the world with a tsunami of information. For the oceanographic platform and its crew, the warning almost came too late.

  If the oceanographic platform had been a boat, it might have been able to move out of the path of the typhoon. But, of course, it cannot move at all. There were docking facilities for ships along the base, and there were always one or two small ships tied up there. But typhoons have nasty tendencies to sink boats, large and small. In the short run, it did not matter: there was no time to evacuate the children by boat. It would have been safe to ride out the typhoon aboard the platform.

  Only one option was open to them: the seaplane. The seaplane, equipped for both sea and land operations, was a kind of luxury that Dr. King had insisted on having. True, the seaplane did allow faster movement of people and supplies from Islands and the mainland, but it was an expensive operation. In this case, this emergency more than justified the cost of having and maintaining the aircraft.

  Before nightfall the following day, everyone who lived and worked on the platform no longer had any doubts about the approaching storm. In the distance just above the horizon, angry piles of dark clouds pushed their way higher into the sky, rapidly filling it. Lightning displays were not only continuous but very impressive. The typhoon was bearing down on them with blazing speed.

  “Maybe next time you’ll believe me,” June declared to John in a gloating way about a dozen times. Along with the rest of the crew, they were busy securing everything that could be blown off the platform and out to sea. Also, they had to make the platform as water tight as possible. Any unsecured door or window would be an open invitation for sea water to enter the interior of the platform., and that would definitely ruin anyone’s day.

  “We need to leave ASAP,” Tony Rogers, the seaplane pilot, told Dr. King urgently. “It gets any stronger, and I won’t be able to take off. In fact, we won’t have a seaplane left!”

  “Let’s double-time it, kids,” their father addressed the twins in the living quarters. “A storm like this has not been seen in about a hundred years. The last time it occurred, it was terrible. I know how much you like it here, and I really don’t want you guys to leave. But at the same time I don’t feel comfortable with you two riding out the storm on this platform. If something should happen—” His voice kind of choked, because he did not want to think of any bad consequences.