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  “Let me introduce them to you,” the older man said to them. “This is Bella; we call him ‘Toadie’, because he’s always looking for things under rocks. After him is Gamer, he has a little bit of trouble remembering things, but we’re working on that aren’t we?”

  The second young man smiled. “I try, boss.”

  “That’s a good boy. Next we have Amon.”

  A black guard with a very wolfish appearance stepped forward and grinned.

  “And we have our great hunter, Bayer; you bagged a deer last week, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sah,” another young man said as he made a small bow. “With a bow too.”

  “I thought hunting was over,” Dion noted.

  “Not for me,” Bayer grinned.

  “I’m sure he’s hunting some place where it’s legal,” Karanzen said. “I also want to introduce Zeppy; he came to us from New Mexico, by way of the army.”

  A man who had American Indian features nodded at them.

  “And after him we have Salle,” Karanzen continued his introductions. “Why don’t you tell them about your hobby?”

  “I like to put on armor,” the man said to them, “and beat my friends up with a wooden sword on the weekends. It’s cool because they wear armor too.”

  “And continuing down the line,” the officer said. “Is Izzy.” Another nod. “He may look a little crazy, but it takes a lot to make him mad, right?” The one called Izzy nodded again.

  “After him we have Lab,” Officer Karanzen went down the line. “He’s originally from Old Mexico, but came up this way after a tour in Vietnam.” A man with Latin features smiled at them.

  “And here’s Bert,” Karanzen announced as he patted another man on the shoulder. “He wants to be a fireman someday, but he’s with us for now. Lord, son, do something about your breath and chew gum.” The new guard dropped his eyes.

  The next guard he introduced was a huge man, with arms the size of tree trunks. His neck matched and the square face peered out at the world. “This is Forest, but we like to call him ‘Woody’.”

  The man never cracked a smile and continued to stare at them with two piercing grey eyes.

  “And our latest recruit is ‘Furry’ here,” Karanzen showed off the last guard. “You can guess why he has that nickname.” He was young, barely out of his teens and covered with a course rug of snow-white blond hair.

  “I wanted you to meet them all,” Officer Karanzen said to them. “Because I think we’ll need to keep a watch on you two. Especially you, Dion. I have this feeling you might be in line to cause me some trouble. I don’t like trouble. I like a safe and secure mall, son. I like places where people can shop, meet other people, and do their business in safety. That is what I like. So tell me, are we on the same page, Dion?”

  “Absolutely, Officer,” Dion smiled. “I see you want to guard your little part of the abyss in absolute security. I have no intention of messing with it.”

  Karanzen stared at Dion and mulled over his response. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear, but it would do for right now.

  “I’m glad we’re in agreement, Dion. We’ll be moving along. Just remember, if you need anything, we’re always here to help.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Officer Karanzen turned and marched back down the corridor, past the door to a restaurant and to the entrance of the main mall. They watched him leave. As he walked away, his security guards formed a column and followed behind him. Not once did they turn and look back at Dion or Lilly.

  “What did you do to get his attention?” Lilly asked Dion.

  “Show up,” Dion said. “He is the guardian of this place and sensed why I’m here. He doesn’t like anything messing with his authority and I represent an unknown quantity. He doesn’t like unknown quantities.”

  “Do you ever wonder about where malls came from?” Dion asked her as they walked down the corridor.

  “Not really. I assumed they were always there. Now that I think about it, they haven’t always been around. I remember when that one opened up on the other side of the city years ago. I was just a kid and there was some big movie premiere at it. My parents didn’t want to go see the movie, I think it had something to do with missionaries and they didn’t like the subject, but it was a big deal at the time. I remember watching the big lights out front.”

  “Shopping malls are from Austria,” Dion told her. “Believe it or not, someone wanted to duplicate the Vienna he remembered from the days before World War II. They’d been around for a long time, arcades run back over a hundred years ago. But the basic two-floor design you see everywhere came from Vienna. He wanted to transport what he remembered to the United States.”

  “He sure was successful,” Lilly said. “I see them all over the place.”

  “You do wonder how long it can all last,” Dion continued. “These places have a cycle. Everything has a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. As far as I can tell, this is the only mall in the world were you will find all three.”

  “You will find stores in this mall that don’t exist anywhere else,” he continued, “because this is no ordinary mall. It has five sections, four of which we can access. Notice this directory and map, for instance.” He pointed to it where it was situated at the inner entrance to the mall. It displayed all four divisions and a directory of the stores was below it.

  “Notice that the center section of the mall is left blank. Do you wonder why that is? Did you ever stop to wonder why the center of the mall, where the big clock tower sits, is blank on this map?”

  Lilly went up to the directory and stood on her toes to get a better look at it. “Now that you mention it,” she said. “It doesn’t have anything listed for the middle. Funny, I never thought about it before.”

  “It’s because the mall owners don’t want you to think about it. I was once told the best way to hide something is to put it in out in the open. That’s exactly what they’ve done. The mall owners have hidden something in the middle of the mall no one would ever expect. No one thinks about looking for the Holy Grail in a parking lot, they’re too busy trying to find The Chapel Perilous in a dark wood. You can hide a treasure in a candy machine and no one will be the wiser because no one will believe you. They’re too busy trying to locate it on a map they bought off a street vendor.”

  “Hey! I didn’t expect to see you here today,” a voice said behind them.

  Chapter 3

  Both Dion and Lilly turned to see who’d spoken to them.

  It was Emily, Lilly’s close friend from across the neighborhood. At one point, the two of them were so close people thought they might be sisters. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Emily and Lilly were the same height, although the resemblance ended there. Lilly was small and dark, while Emily had a certain amount of bounce on her body. Both had known each other since kindergarten and attended the same schools for years. Because of their names, Lilly Arrad found herself sitting at the assigned seat next to Emily Aaron all through the four years of high school. Likewise, both girls were first in line for whatever needed to be done. It wasn’t always that way, because sometimes the teachers would begin from the back row. The worst were students whose names began with “M” who always found themselves in the middle of the list. At some future date, a social psychologist would look into performance based on first letter of the name and discover those whose names began with the middle letters of the alphabet would end up in the middle of the grade score as well.

  Emily tended to be the less vocal of the pair, although both of them had similar temperaments. Their families weren’t that close. Living three blocks away in their suburban neighborhood was the equivalent of living in different sides of the country, because seldom did families emerge from their houses to talk. Emily’s father would finish the workday glued to the television set and she with him. Emily had no other family members and seldom saw her mother as she’d divorced from her chemist husband when Emily
was five. The courts had awarded her visitation rights, but her mother seldom exercised them. It was rare for her to spend more than a few hours at a time with her mother who lived a carefree life as an artist in Dark Springs, a small liberal town outside a liberal college of the same name.

  Lilly would spend the summers travelling with her parents, who’d managed to save and organize their money to the best way possible. It was long before the days of fast cash and loose change, but her father knew how to play the stock market and had a good sense for what would move when the time was right. Lilly’s house had every modern contraption, whereas Emily was forced to watch TV on an old black and white model until her last year of high school. Lilly had a state of the art TV antenna, which could rotate by a control on top of the set for better reception.

  It happened that both girls discovered they had the same tastes in music, movies and boys. They would double date all through high school and share information on how to tame the beast that seemed to lurk inside every high school boy. When Emily visited her mother, she would slip inside her mom’s nightstand library and report the findings to Lilly.

  They went to their first concert together, Rod Stewart, and planned to follow him around on tour one summer until both of their parents found out their plans and nipped it in the bud early. When they both received their drivers’ licenses, they would take the family cars and travel down to Scipio, the big industrial town near them, and shop at the cool record stores. They’d already used a fake ID to get into a few bars to see some bands, which their parents didn’t know about.

  One of their favorite things to do was visit the mall and act as if they were British. After a careful study of all things British, they found it possible to mimic British accents and mannerisms to the point where they could fake their way through any store. At the time, it was rare for anyone from England to appear in the Midwest, so they could get away with it. Had they tried this in a coastal city with a large expatriate British population, it might not have worked so well.

  They’d already fooled one store clerk just by their presence in the store. The man had innocently assumed they were British when he heard them talk in their fake accents. He walked up and asked them what part of England they were from that day. Amazed, they played along and had the poor store clerk convinced that they were recent immigrants. Whenever they were in the mall, they would make a beeline for his store and pull the same routine. They were almost exposed one day when a friend of Lilly’s mother saw them near the store. They aborted their plans and avoided the place until they were certain she’d left.

  Both of them had plans for college out after graduation. With Lilly, it was international studies at Cincinnati; with Emily it would be theater at the state college in Columbus. The future looked bright for them as college was very affordable that year and the overseas competition minimal for their programs. Both took the college preparatory tests and did very well.

  Prom season was on the horizon. Neither one wanted to be seen with just anyone. They hoped to be approached by another senior of equal social status. The prom was supposed to be held at some swanky hotel in Scipio, but they would let their dates do the planning. There was still plenty of time for them to look forward to the most important evening of high school.

  “I had to work a lunch,” Lilly said to her friend. “What are you doing over here? We talked last night and I thought you were meeting your dad for dinner.”

  They entered the main section of the mall and looked down the corridor, which was flooded with light. In the center of it was a long planter with decorative vegetation growing up toward the weak sunlight, which filtered down from the skylights. They looked up to the second level and could see the shoppers going from one store to another. Some of the stores were from national chains, but, as Dion mentioned earlier, many of them had no equivalent outside the mall.

  Arthur’s Music was situated directly in front of them. It was a chain of stores found in malls all over the country. For a small price, you could find the latest popular vinyl on display and the harder to find material in the back. Lilly enjoyed the store because it always placed the records she wanted directly in front. She remembered years ago when she went in and saw the psychedelic light display in the corner. For a moment, she thought it was one of those headshops that lined the street next to Scipio University. She was told you could find all sorts of things there that couldn’t be found anywhere else.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re still here,” Emily said to her.

  Lilly had the strangest feeling Emily was jealous of Dion. She couldn’t understand why; she was dating a guy from the science club who had plans to attend Case-Western in the fall. The guy was supposed to be some kind of genius who would go far in life.

  “Dion needs help finding something,” she told her. Lilly looked at him with her dark eyes and wondered how much he wanted her to say.

  “We need a map,” he told her. “We need to find the store which sells the special maps to the mall.”

  “You mean the bookstore?” Emily said to them. “Honestly, I don’t know why you need to buy a map. Doesn’t the directory tell you everything you might need to know?”

  “There is a lot in the mall not on the directory,” he told her. “To find the special stores, you need a special map. I need to find the store which sells the special map.”

  “What is so special about the map that you need it to find your way around the mall?” Emily demanded. “I never have any trouble finding my way around. Why don’t you just ask me where you need to go?”

  “Dion thinks his parents might be somewhere in the mall,” Lilly said to her. She turned and smiled at Dion, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake of some kind.”

  “What? I thought your parents were dead? Isn’t that why you live with your aunt and uncle?”

  “I have reasons to believe they are held inside the mall,” Dion explained. “I really don’t want to go into my reasons, but I need to find some people who are inside the mall to get help.”

  Emily turned and gave Lilly a questioning look.

  Lilly knew what was going through her head. She thought he was nuts and his insanity had spread to her. The school had more than its fair share of bent minds. Some said it was because of its proximity to the airbase where tests were conducted in the dead of night. Others thought it might be something in the drinking water. And there was one group that believed it to be caused by an old Indian curse. Right now, Emily felt Dion and Lilly had taken leave of their sanity.

  “Could you do one of those tricks you showed me?” Lilly asked him. “Maybe show her something that will convince her she needs to help us?”

  “I wish it was that easy,” Dion sighed. “And for your information, it isn’t a trick. I can only do what my destiny allows.”

  “At least show her something,” Lilly said. “I’d hate her to think I’ve gone nuts without a good reason.”

  “I’m inside the mall and this changes everything,” Dion explained.

  “You’re saying it doesn’t work inside the mall?” Lilly asked with a strange look on her face. Was this one of those conditional things con men and bunko artists used to trick people out of their money? It wouldn’t be the first time a boy tried to trick her to give something up.

  “I’m saying if…. I do something like that in the mall it will alert the wrong people in the mall that I’m here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lilly said. “We’ve already had a run-in with Officer Karanzen and his minions. Whom else do we have to worry about? I don’t think the sheriff ever comes in this place unless he gets a call about shoplifting.”

  “Officer Karanzen?” Emily said with surprise. “That explains why I saw him walking down the concourse. He looked angry. He had those thugs of his with him. All of them in fact. Is something going on I should know about?”

  Dion looked at Emily, and then turned to Lilly. “Okay, I’ll show her a little bit of what I can do. Not so much to set off ala
rms, but enough so she’ll understand. I can do some small things, but we have to keep moving when I’m done. Even a little bit of change can alert the wrong people if they are close to us.”

  He walked to the large planter in front of them. The two girls followed behind. Next to the large garden planter ran a bench where people could sit down and relax. It was a new concept the mall introduced to the busy shoppers who were out for a day to spend their money or run up credit cards. He seated himself down by the planter and looked at the soil in front of him until he found what he needed to locate. The girls seated themselves next to him.

  Dion looked into the dark earth transported from a local greenhouse into the interior of the mall and concentrated. He closed his eyes and leaned back on the bench with his hands on the ends of his knees. Most people who walked past him assumed he was resting or, maybe in some kind of meditation. But Dion was using all the power he’d inherited from his family to harness the power of the earth element. He sat there and breathed slowly but with intensity.

  Emily, who wore a blue top over a pair of white painter’s pants, turned to Lilly. “Is he okay? Should we go find a nurse or something?”

  “He’s fine. Give him some time, he’s in the middle of doing something and it doesn’t always come easy to him.”

  Both Lilly and Emily heard a sound inside the huge planter and turned to see the source. Inside the planter, where there was a little bare spot in the dirt, a plant was growing. It hadn’t been there before, but now it was. It began as a little sprout, pushing its way up through the soil and then reaching the surface of the dirt and showed some green. This took place as they watched it happen. It reminded Lilly of a time-lapse film of a growing seed she had watched in a biology class on a 16mm projector. But this was not a trick of photography; the plant grew before their eyes.

  Now the green stalk reached the lower leaves of the plants around it and began to rise above the twigs and branches around it. It was a healthy shade of green and sprouted two leaves, which unfolded and lifted upwards them as if they were two arms reaching out to heaven. Several more leaves and stems emerged from the soil. They were inches in height in a matter of minutes. The plant reached a height of six inches and sprouted small buds all over it. When the buds were at the level of the other plants in the soil, they unfolded to bloom into bright flowers of yellow and blue.