(eng) K. A. Applegate - Everworld 09 by Inside The Illusion

Author:Inside The Illusion [Illusion, Inside The]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

We paddled and drifted and paddled some more. We were hungry and thirsty, unable to drink from the river that carried the bodies of the dead dwarfs.

On both banks of the river we could see the effects of the dwarfs' dam: fields of sun-blasted, scrawny wheat, trees picked clean, gaunt oxen, shriveled men and women and babies.

Famine, or near famine.

They were all smiling now, the myopic stares and gap-toothed grins of the old men, the scared-hopeful Madonna smiles of mothers, the clueless smiles of little children.

They gathered by the riverbank to wave at us, to cry out their thanks. We were the first people to appear from upriver in a long time and we had brought the river back with us. These people had seen the debris of the dam floating by, they'd probably seen bodies. They knew that we had opened the river again and they greeted us as heroes.

A man splashed out to us and handed us a skin of wine which all of us but David passed around gratefully. Another man breasted the waters to press a handful of dates on us.

Perhaps the last of his own food.

April was no longer, whining about the dead dwarfs. Now she was seeing the other side and, typically, the emotion swayed her. The dwarfs were just as dead but now these people were all happy about it, so...

The river wound on through desolate farmlands and past small, mud-brick villages. The people had very little but they gave freely of what they did have. By afternoon we had all the dates, figs, apricots, bread, and yogurt we could eat. All the wine and water we could drink. And palm fronds to protect us from the sun. We were even offered a slave.

“We're rock stars,” Christopher said. “We could so totally take advantage of this. Egyptian groupies. Cool. Walk like an Egyptian.”

“Maybe we should start looking for a place to spend the night,” David said. “Couple more hours, it will be dark and we can't be on the river after dark. Maybe the next village, if we see one. The people don't seem like they'll be any trouble.”

We turned a bend in the river, came out of the shadow of a bluff, and all at once were there.

“No way,” Christopher said with an incredulous laugh.

“Pyramids! That is a pyr-a-freaking-mid! Look at that thing.”

The pyramid was the model of every pyramid in every encyclopedia ever written, but without the ravages of the millennia on its face. It was tall, smooth, perfect in its proportions.

It might have just been built. Every one of the millions of stones was sharp and clear, as though cut with a razor.

And unlike the modern, real-world picture of a pyramid, it did not rise from barren sand. Rather it was surrounded by well-landscaped, irrigated gardens that seemed especially startling by contrast with the poverty and desolation we had passed through.

It took an hour to reach and then pass by the pyramid. It was farther away than we'd imagined, an optical illusion.

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