"Edgar?"

Edgar almost slipped off his skyship as he tried and failed to jump backwards in surprise at seeing Cassima's face suddenly appear in front of his own.

"What?" he yelped in alarm, then calmed as he realized whose face he was looking at and why it had appeared in front of him. "Oh…Cassie…it's you…"

"Yes, and it's Cassima, if you don't mind."

"Oh yes, sorry," Edgar muttered. "I almost forgot about how we can talk to each other like this…"

"I know. Did you find the oasis?"

"Yes…and I got this amazing little ship that can…"

"Not now, Edgar," Cassima said. "Where are you?"

"I'm on the east side of the Impossible Mountains…I think."

"Really?" Cassima said, fascination creeping into her voice. "I'm on the west side."

She then grew much more serious, leaning in closer to the image of Edgar's head and speaking in a quiet voice:

"Edgar?"

"Yes?" Edgar asked, lowering his voice as well.

"That cabin near the sea in Tamir…did you see it?"

"Maybe…I'm not sure, though…"

"One of Shadrack's agents was in there." Cassima whispered. "He was talking with another man last night, and he dropped one of Shadrack's notes…a note on how he is going to…to…"

"I think I see," Edgar said uneasily. "Could you read it to me?"

"No, it's written in some kind of scrambled text, I can't figure it out…maybe you can help me."

Edgar blinked in surprise. This wild, independent woman asking him for help?

"Me? Why me?"

Cassima paused. It seemed like every time she met this man, even though she never asked him anything about himself, she learned more and more about him. Now she recalled what Alexander had said about his sister's loved one: Edgar's parents were Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, making him such a being as well, even though he looked exactly like a human.

Although Cassima hadn't been thinking of this when she asked for Edgar's help in deciphering the paper, it made her request all the more fitting. Shadrack's agent said that a sorcerer would be able to decipher the writing on the paper, but she was certain that any other being experienced in magic would be able to do so as well.

"You just…seem like the kind of person who can figure out things like this," she said gently. "Just keep heading west. You should find me."

"But…" Edgar began, but Cassima's head had already vanished, leaving him alone on the mountain path with his skyship.

"…Okay," he murmured.

Cassima was surprised to encounter Edgar so soon after she had contacted him. This wasn't all that she was surprised at, however. His riding on a small ship that appeared to be moving through the air as fast as a speeding thoroughbred coming at her along the same path she was walking on also alarmed her slightly.

"I took your advice and went to the Llewdor oasis and got this ship, Cassima," Edgar said, braking in midair, almost breathless from excitement. "Wonderful, isn't it?"

"Yes, very," Cassima said, her shock giving way to slight irritation. "But you told me you were going to help me decipher that paper…"

"Of course. I just need to…"

Cassima wasn't looking at Edgar anymore. The path they were standing on (well, she was standing on it, anyway) was intersected by a third path that seemed go on for a short way before ending not in a solid rock wall, but in a large opening, looking down on…on something. Whatever it was, Cassima couldn't help staring at it.

"Edgar…" she said softly.

"Yes?" Edgar asked, dismounting and shrinking his ship, packing it and its straps away.

"What is that?"

Edgar peered down the path towards the opening.

"I don't know. Let's take a look at it."

He slowly walked north and knelt down in front of the opening. It seemed to be a hole bored into the mountainside by eons of erosion, providing a window to whatever was on the other side of this stretch of peaks. Edgar couldn't make out just what was on the other side, though. All he could tell was that the land on the other side of this window was far, far below them, and a thick layer of mist made it impossible to make out anything but the vague shapes of trees and shrubs.

"What is that?"

Cassima had sat down beside him, staring through the window with equal bewilderment. As Edgar squinted at the indistinct landscape, he noticed that the ground didn't seem like solid ground at all. It looked flat and featureless, almost like water…

Another memory began fluttering teasingly just out of Edgar's reach. He racked his brains, trying to figure out what the land they were looking at was. They were in the Impossible Mountains, between Llewdor and Tamir…and Rosella had described going through a passage underneath the mountains…which led to…

"Did Alexander tell you about Rosella's adventures in Tamir?" he asked Cassima.

"Yes," Cassima replied. "I don't remember all of it, but…"

She stared at the soggy land beneath them, then a look of awareness lit up her eyes.

"Is that the Tamirian Swamp? The one that she went into?"

"It has to be," Edgar confirmed. "Look."

He pointed to a tiny island in the middle of the swamp. On it was a tiny tree, barely more than a shrub.

"There's the tree that she said bore the magic fruit that saved her father's life."

Cassima looked at the tree, then suddenly looked disbelieving and confused.

"'Bore?'" she repeated. "Edgar…There's something hanging on that tree. I think that it's still there."

Edgar looked through the opening. Then he shook his head and looked again, but his eyes weren't deceiving him. A large, bulbous fruit hung from the squat tree.

"It's impossible," he gasped. "That thing only bears fruit every five hundred years, Genesta told me…"

"No," Cassima said almost inaudibly.

"What?" Edgar asked, turning to her.

"It isn't impossible," she said dully, not meeting his gaze. "Edgar, there's something I didn't tell you about that wizard Crispin."

"The one who gave you that…that…"

"That charm bracelet, yes," Cassima said. "When we met, he told me that these pendants don't just take us to different places, but different times as well. I didn't believe him at first, but if that tree down there only bears fruit every half-millennium, there's no way we can be in the same time we were in when we left our homelands."

Edgar stared in stunned shock at the little tree. Different times? That would explain what happened in that gorge the previous night…or did it? He had apparently unintentionally traveled into the past, but how? Had his pendant done it, or had some higher force had a hand in it? Whatever that odd event was, he hoped that it wouldn't happen again. It was as if he was thrown through an invisible window…a time window.

He was still reeling from the revelation that his pendant was taking him to times other than the one he had come from and what implications this had when Cassima began speaking again:

"If that tree really only fruits every five hundred years, we must be either in the past or in the distant future."

"Right," Edgar said emotionlessly. With his pendant sending him to a different time every time he used it, returning to Etheria wasn't a simple matter anymore. If he tried going there now, he would probably end up in a year decades before his birth, or possibly even years after his death.

"But we can't sit here pondering this all day, Edgar," Cassima said, suddenly becoming much livelier. "Alexander and Rosella are counting on us. You said you were going to help me with this paper, right?"

She held out the stained piece of paper.

"Huh?" Edgar asked, still caught up in his thoughts, the paper momentarily forgotten. "Oh…oh, yes."

He took the sheet from Cassima and frowned at it.

"This looks quite encrypted, but I'll give it a try," he said.

The text on the paper seemed as if it was chopped up into fragments and rearranged haphazardly. Still, there had to be a meaning hidden somewhere in this text that only a sorcerer – or someone else with skills in magic – could decipher.

Edgar focused his energies on his left hand and touched one of the text fragments. It rotated ninety degrees in response to his magic. He tried zapping another fragment and it rotated as well. He continued touching the other fragments until he began to make out a regular pattern in the chaotic text. Although he couldn't make any sense out of the fragments, he continued rotating every piece of the paper until he formed one cohesive image. After a minute or two, he succeeded. The scrawled, foreign text glowed ominously for a moment, then flowed and swirled across the page, reforming itself into perfect English.

"I've got it!" Edgar said eagerly.

"What does it say?" Cassima asked.

"'The best way to stop a tree from branching out and spreading is to destroy it before the roots are firmly in place,'" Edgar read. "'The trick is going in at exactly the right time.' Hmm. Sounds frightening, doesn't it?"

Cassima narrowed her eyes quizzically.

"It doesn't make sense. It sounds almost like a riddle. Is it a subtle way of saying that Shadrack is planning to kill all of us? Perhaps his plans for revenge don't stop with me and Alexander alone...Rosella might be in danger too, but just what does he plan to do with us?"

"I have no idea," Edgar sighed uneasily, "But I think we're going to find out. Keep this paper, Cassima. We should be moving on now."

"'The roots…'" Cassima repeated as she took the paper from Edgar and stowed it away. "It's a metaphor, that's for sure, but what is he talking about? Does he mean our homelands?"

"You know I don't know, Cassima. I just hope we can figure it out before it's too late."

Cassima got to her feet and brushed some of the gritty rock fragments off of her dress. The mention of her homeland plus a dim memory of the dream she had had the previous night had given her what she had been searching in vain for all that morning: a destination.

"Me too, but there's not much point in staying in one place and worrying ourselves silly over it. I'm going to my homeland, Edgar."

"The Land of the Green Isles?"

"Yes. It's a place I know, and I just might find some answers there."

"What about me? Should I go to my homeland too?"

Cassima smirked.

"Why not? It's Etheria, isn't it?"

"Right," Edgar said, rising to his feet with a shrug. "I'll go there. I've got nowhere else to go."

"Don't fret, Edgar. If fate stays the way it is, we might run into each other sometime soon. Be careful until then, though."

"I'll try to be. Same to you, your Highness."

As if they were one person, Edgar and Cassima shut their eyes, focused on a mental picture of the lands they were born in, then disappeared in two bright flashes of light.

---

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