Made it difficult for them to pick up a fresh scent. Staying away protected you and your mime-parents from them until . . . until I got sloppy. For the first time in fourteen years, I let my passions take hold when my archaeological team discovered Ludwig’s message. Foolishly, I came groundside, touched Ludwig’s chronomessage and then left it there with the Peruvian. They must have found the artifact and smelled my intentions. Learned of you and your mime-parents. And so the scucca poisoned them, knowing I would be forced groundside again to fetch them.”
Phfit. Phfit. Phfit. The pressers beat slowly.
Nick scanned the faces of all his friends. Daniel tilted over his cane. Haley had her arms crossed.
Did they believe Grand? Do I?
Phfit. Phfit. Phfit . . .
“I told you it was real!” Xanthus performed a frighteningly good drop kick. “I told you, I told you. I told you, I told you. No one believed me. No one. Redemption!”
Haley rolled her eyes. “What do they want with you?”
“Bet he’s torn between love for his family and duty to his country,” Caroline offered.
“Dude. It’s gotta be the Lord of Fire and Ice,” Xanthus said. “He wants to conscript Grand into his elite warrior guard, but Grand works for no one.”
“What do they want with you?” Nick repeated Haley.
“It’s not what they want with me,” said Grand, “but what they’re trying to keep me from. Chasing me away from Huron has left her and her citizens vulnerable. The Dujinnin have now openly attacked the Merrows. While Merrows . . .”
“Mermaids?” Xanthus called out.
“Well,” said Grand, “that is what we call the female Merrows.”
“Whatever,” said Xanthus. “Mermaids are hot!”
“Anyway,” Grand said. “The Merrows do not live within the city walls, rather off the coast of Eynclaene. Still, they are given Huronite citizenship because they manage and guard all of Huron’s wealth in offshore accounts. I would suppose the Dujinnin mean to plunder those treasures. I must return to her and so must you, Nikolas.”
“What? Me?” said Nick. The more Grand talked, the more he felt confused.
“It is you Huron needs now, Nikolas. I would’ve never risked coming to the ground and out in the open like this if it wasn’t for our dear city. The Merrows are in grave danger and with them, Huron herself. I must bring you home.”
“Home?”
“Aye.”
Nick couldn’t manage a response. All he could do was listen to the pressers. The mimes had withered to half their size.
Grand squared to Nick. “Above all else, what do you desire from this life?”
“Home—Moon, of course,” Nick combed through his hair slightly frustrated. “But I don’t get any of this. Where’s this city you keep talking about? Is there like an unheard of civilization somewhere? Underground? Why do you keep talking about the past like you’re some time-traveler or something?”
Grand stepped into the middle of the stardust scucca and spun his finger like a lasso, each revolution smaller than the next. Dust began to clot into spheres.
“Saturn . . . Jupiter . . . Mars,” said Daniel as planets took shape.
“What’s that stuff you’re using, again?” said Xanthus.
“Stardust,” Grand said. “This was Earth myriads of years ago, before men kept record of the heavens. If they had, they would have known that our solar system bore not eight, but nine planets.” He stepped to Earth and did a quick revolution around it. “Earth had a twin.”
“Huhhh,” the kids said.
A second planet crested over Earth like a blue-white sunrise. But it wasn’t its mirror copy, they were fraternals. Slightly larger, its oceans were a deeper hue, its continents more severe and pronounced. And it sparkled, like someone had glazed it over with flecks of glass.
Phfiiiiiiiit . . . The pressers wheezed to a stop again.
“I told you to keep them going, boys,” Grand warned Tim and Xanthus. They resumed their pressing.
“Mon was his name,” said Grand. “And the brother planets were bound literally one to another.”
Nick stepped around Grand for a better look. The planetary bodies were so close that the atmosphere fused together like Siamese twins. A massive rope crossed the atmospheres, tethering the two planets together.
“The tidal waves?” Daniel shook his head. “The gravitational force between the two would be enough to rip the surfaces apart.”
“And so it did, until the tether was constructed by Roch-umbria. It cast a spell over the planets, keeping peace among skies and tides.”
“Where’s Moon?” Haley unfolded her hands.
“Mon,” Nick said, knowing the answer before Haley asked the question. “Mon is the Moon.”
“Yes, Nikolas. Well done. Earth,