Part IX...the end.

Jonah stood on his tip-toes and stretched as high as he could, peering into the hole. Set deep inside it was a red shining orb, swirling with color. The surface looked smooth and glassy, but inside the glass was a swirl of smoky red clouds shifting and pulsing. He knew in an instant that this was what Madeline and Tristan meant for him to destroy and he reached out as far as he could to grasp it.

His fingers brushed the glassy surface and a tingling went through his hands and down his arms. The orb shifted in its place in the tree and then suddenly stuck fast to Jonah’s hands. He pulled back from the tree and shook, but the orb, surprisingly light, held firm. And then the light of the tree dimmed, slowly at first but it grew darker and darker with every moment.

Jonah turned to look at the field surrounding the tree and saw motion in the tall grass. The darker it grew, the more the motion increased. Then suddenly there was no light except for the warm glow of the ball in his hands. Jonah began to walk slowly away from the tree, back the way he had come. And then the humming and chattering started. Quietly at first but, like the darkness, it grew louder and Jonah began to run.

He ran as fast as he could through the red grass towards the cliff and with every step he heard another creature stir and chatter in the field. Then Jonah began to hear them behind him, rustling through the grass, their hums and chirps coming from all sides. He ran and ran through the field and the trees, pursued by the strange sleeping creatures.

Finally he passed to the edge of the forest and stood at the cliff overlooking the black sea. He turned quickly and saw, at the edge of the trees, dozens and dozens of red eyes. The humming and chattering was constant and the eyes moved in and out of the trees, each one fixated solely on little Jonah. He turned to the cliff, the sea a hundred feet below, and once more shook the orb. It remained firmly attached to his hands and he began to grow very afraid.

When he turned towards the trees again, shaking the orb, the eyes moved from the trees and in the light of the red star he saw many figures begin to emerge from the dark forest. They were coming for him or for the orb. It didn’t matter. Jonah thought quickly about Madeline and Tristan. They had told him not to worry, but with the orb stuck to his hands there was no way of throwing it into the sea. So Jonah, in an act of incredible bravery, stepped to the edge of the cliff, and with the orb leapt into the ocean.

He fell slowly and quietly and made almost no splash as he hit the water. The sea was black and the water was smooth and felt oily. He sank slowly lower and lower with only the light of the orb visible. The deeper Jonah went, the dimmer the orb became and he sank and sank…Then there in the oily black water, one hundred feet below the surface, the orb went dark and Jonah was left blind.

He no longer knew if he was sinking or floating. They felt the same and he wished with all of his heart that he was back in the depths of space with the blue star and the green star. He hoped he had done what they asked and that, if he continued to sink, they would still be able to help him.

And then a voice spoke to him, somewhere in the depths of the sea. “Open your eyes,” it said. Jonah did not know they had been closed. “Open your eyes,” another voice spoke, this one female. Jonah opened his eyes and realized that he was not floating, nor sinking, nor in space, but once again tucked into his bed. Not only that, but he was in his own room beside his own window, the stars shining bright outside in the night sky. He peered and peered and sure enough, far and high in the sky, he saw two stars green and blue twinkling in space.

“Look,” they said to him, and his gaze was brought to another star, a dark shade of red. But as Jonah looked at the star, it seemed to fade to a duller red. It could have been his imagination, but as he sat in his bed and watched, the red star softened and brightened into the warmest shade of orange he had ever seen.

“Thank you Jonah,” said a male voice, Tristan.
“Now go to sleep young boy,” said Madeline. And Jonah did sleep and it was the most peaceful sleep he ever remembered.

The end.

::Thank you for reading and for being patient. I hope it lived up to your expectations. Any feedback would be appreciated::