Chapter 4
.
Market day was the highlight of the week in Emerald Hill. The widest part of the main road had been taken over by dozens of colourful stalls, selling everything from fruit to furniture. People from the village and from surrounding Zones, some even more obscure than Emerald Hill itself, had come to spend the warm summer morning shopping- and more importantly, socialising.
Porker Lewis had lived in cities his whole life and had never seen anything like it before. The stalls and carts of the traders were wood and canvas with hardly any metal in evidence. They were festooned with colourful flags and banners- predominantly orange and yellow, although some stalls sported different combinations of colours. It gave the street a lively, carnival atmosphere that was heightened by the scents of many different foods and spices hanging in the air. Shoppers did not jostle and hurry to get from place to place as they did in the city; here they wandered seemingly aimlessly, flowing around the little knots of people who had stopped to chat.
As they headed for the cluster of stalls and the crowd of cheerfully gossiping Mobians milling around them, Johnny explained to Porker that the colours of the stalls represented their Zone of origin. Many Hill Zones on South Island had the same traditional checkerboard tiles on every available surface, but in each Zone the tiles had their own distinctive colour scheme. So Emerald Hill traders decorated their stalls in orange and yellow, those from Green Hill in orange and brown. Dust Hill was different in that it had no tiles, so instead used the green and purple shades of the crystals mined from the caves beneath the Zone.
As well as simply wanting to see the market, Porker had a shopping list of clothes and other items that had been ruined when his suitcases were soaked, which he needed to replace. Sonic also had an errand of his own to take care of.
Last night's scene on the Star Post hill now seemed unreal, almost dreamlike. Sonic could almost believe that he had imagined some if not all of it.
But then there had been Porker's odd reaction to the story. He hadn't been as sceptical as Johnny; in fact he'd been frightened. Sonic could have put that down to too many horror films and the pig's timid personality, but he seemed to know more than most about Star Posts. It was the Post, not the alien, that scared him.
Granted, most of the theories Porker had blurted at him- Sonic had learned very quickly that Porker spewed technobabble when he was nervous- went right over his head. There was something about Star Posts being a kind of technology that was too advanced to comprehend. Sonic tuned that out, which was his natural reaction to anything technical and boring. What he did pick up from Porker's ramblings was that the pig thought Star Posts were some form of ancient transport network, gateways to… somewhere else. Although how they worked was a mystery even to him.
Sonic had been reminded of a rumour he had once heard, that somewhere on the outskirts of Starlight City or maybe Metropolis – if indeed they had Star Posts there- somebody had tried to dismantle one to see what was inside. There was an explosion, and neither the Star Post nor the hapless Mobian were ever seen again. At the time he thought it was just another cautionary tale. Curiosity killed the whatever.
He had wondered aloud whether there was any truth to the story. What had really happened to that unfortunate person?
"You don't want to know," Porker had replied, becoming uncharacteristically silent.
What Porker had said about Star Posts being transportation devices got the hedgehog thinking. If a Star Post could make a person disappear, where did they disappear to?
And could they come back? Could something come through from the other side, something riding in a hemispherical spacecraft perhaps?
Sonic still had the seashell. That morning he took it out and examined it.
In the daylight he could see the shell's colouring more clearly. Something about it seemed odd; perhaps it was different to the other ones he had found. He had rummaged though the accumulated junk- how had he managed to fill the house with so much stuff in a month, anyway- until he found the handful of large fragments among some other bits and pieces in half a coconut shell he had picked up somewhere. Sonic couldn't even remember why he had kept that.
At the time he had shrugged; at least it had kept the seashells safe.
Sonic could immediately see that he had been right. The shells were different.
The fragments from the Emerald Hill beach were off-white with a tiger-like pattern of yellow stripes that roughly followed the ridges on the shell. It was the pattern that had appealed to him in the first place.
The new shell from the hill had similar stripes on the centre whorls, although they were darker: brownish red on a cream background. But something strange happened as his eyes followed the spiral outwards. The neat stripes gradually broke up, forming first spots and random splashes, and then intricate swirls that almost looked as if they had been painted on and hurt his eyes if he tried to follow them for too long. The colour gradually intensified from brown and cream to an unnatural looking scarlet and gold. Greyish spots appeared around the edge, brightening to electric blue towards the lip of the shell. And the precise rows of ridges broke up into separate small bumps that at their most extreme resembled the beginnings of spines.
It looked weird to Sonic. Alien flying thing weird. Not that he usually spent his time staring at seashells, or knew much about them.
But he did know someone who might. Which was why the shell was tucked safely inside his left glove as he walked towards the market beside Johnny and Porker.
The three chatted amiably as they walked. Johnny shook his head, smiling amusedly as he glanced across at Porker Lewis, who was also shaking his- albeit in a slower and more thoughtful way.
"I'm not sure what effect, if any, the rings have. I'm not sure what you're thinking of is even physically possible," the pig was saying.
Johnny rolled his eyes. "You don't know how many times I've had this conversation," the rabbit commented. "He won't listen."
"Because I'm right and you know it." Sonic grinned. The young hedgehog was balancing on a low, narrow garden wall at the side of the road, placing him at the taller mammals' eye level. He held his arms out slightly for stability as he walked, enjoying not having to look up to speak to them.
"Well… you are very fast. And it's interesting how you absorb those rings, I've never seen anything like that before-" the pig eyed Sonic with the curiosity of a scientist, and was rewarded with a yet broader grin.
"…Yeah?"
"It helps if you don't feed his ego," the rabbit said in a stage whisper. "It's big enough already."
Posing with his nose pointed slightly upwards and chest puffed out, Sonic stuck out his tongue. "Shut up, Lightfoot. Wait until I run that loop and then try complaining about my ego." The hedgehog folded his arms and executed a quick turn on his heel so that he was now walking backwards.
"Showoff," Johnny observed.
"And he's not feeding my ego, he's stating facts," Sonic continued in a reasonable tone of voice.
The rabbit rolled his eyes.
Johnny had suggested spending a few hours at the stone loop after checking out the market. He still didn't like the thought of Sonic trying to run the loop, but had put the idea forward anyway to give the hedgehog something to do that would take his mind off what may or may not have happened at the Star Post.
What remained unspoken was that Sonic wasn't fooled for an instant, nor had he given up on the idea that he had seen something more than a Mobian in an expensive car. And they both knew it.
Still, Sonic agreed anyway. He hadn't had much chance to demonstrate his speed to Porker yet; he didn't get a new audience very often after all…
Still walking backwards, he smirked to himself. Maybe he would defeat that stubborn loop this time. No, he'd definitely do it this time…
At which point he suddenly ran out of wall and toppled off the end with a surprised yelp.
Porker echoed it. Johnny, used to this kind of thing, merely sighed.
"You okay?"
"…Stupid wall."
...
Every child, Mobian and otherwise, knows that trailing after people as they shop is the most boring thing in the world.
Sonic couldn't agree more with this pearl of wisdom. After a while- a short, impatient while- he yawned hugely and wandered off on his own.
He glanced with little interest at the Acorns' clothing and shoe stall. There were clothes to fit the most common Mobian shapes and sizes, and a handwritten sign advertising a tailoring and shoemaking service for those who couldn't find the size they needed.
Although many Mobians wore clothes for warmth or fashion, Sonic had never really seen the point. Apart from the shoes and gloves that protected the sensitive pads of his feet and hands, he saw clothes as a nuisance; he was warm enough in his own fur, and clothing would only restrict his movement anyway. Besides, his spines would rip to shreds anything he tried to wear in no time.
Once, Emerald Hill Village's hairdresser- the only other hedgehog he knew, whose greying quills were more like wiry hairs and always tied up in a bun- had told him that hedgehogs with spines as sharp and stiff as his sometimes cut them in order to be able to wear clothes. Sonic had shuddered inwardly at the idea.
He'd rather keep his quills. As far as he was concerned he had too much built-in cool to care about fashion anyway.
In fact the only thing that caught his eye on the stall was a pair of red running shoes. He paused to stare. Sleek and streamlined, their polished leather made his own scruffy white ones look pathetic in comparison.
You can't afford those and you know it, he chided himself. The few coins tucked into the pocket of his glove cuff were not nearly enough, and although the soles of his old trainers were worn almost to smoothness there was still some life left in them yet. The bright red shoes displayed prominently at the front of the stall were the kind professional athletes wore. They would have been out of his league even if he had needed new ones.
Still, he loitered for a few moments, wondering idly how much faster he'd be able to run wearing those…
"Are you going to buy something or just stand there drooling over those shoes all day?" laughed the young red squirrel minding the stall. Sonic grinned back to cover his surprise. He hadn't even seen her.
"Hey, Sal. Watching the stall again huh?"
"Yep. My parents are busy telling Tuftee off for the tenth time, I don't doubt." Sally Acorn shrugged resignedly. Her little brother was always causing some form of mayhem, much like Sonic- except that Tuftee tended to blindly follow others into trouble rather than finding his own.
Sonic didn't know whether to laugh or grimace. He rolled his eyes.
"What's he done this time?"
"I don't know, and I don't think I want to." She sighed, flicking her tail irritatedly, and changed the subject. "This is the third week I've seen you staring at those trainers. Are you ever going to try them on?"
Sonic was tempted. Very tempted. But he shook his head and moved on after one last wistful look at the running shoes.
...
Emerald Hill was unusual in that its people were of many different species. In some older villages the population was dominated by just a few, but not here. The furred, feathered and scaled people making up the crowd were as mixed as in any of the larger cities.
Because he had spent most of his childhood being passed around various households, Sonic knew most of the villagers by sight and many by name. Some said hello as he moved through the bustling throng of shoppers. Joe the walrus waved from his seafood stall. A nine-year-old Sonic had spent a summer with Joe's family, being taught to fish. The fisherman was a nice guy, but it had still been the smelliest, wettest, most tedious few months of Sonic's life, not helped by the fact he could not bring himself to go anywhere in a boat. Let alone a leaky boat. The very thought of it made him go green beneath his fur.
Joe probably could have told him something about the seashell, but Sonic didn't want to risk being invited on another fishing trip. Or worse, offered swimming lessons again. If he had to ask the walrus it would be his last resort.
He bumped into the village doctor next; the grass snake shook her sleek olive head and tutted disapprovingly at the new graze on Sonic's elbow that he had got from falling off the wall. He hadn't even noticed it. Then there were a few members of the village council, older Mobians who invariably asked him when he was going to get a proper job and what he planned to do with his life now he was old enough to decide. Sonic didn't know.
He disentangled himself quickly from these encounters. He didn't have time to chat for long; he had something more important to do. He craned his neck in search of one particular trader.
He was beginning to think that Motley hadn't come this week- he didn't always set up his stall in Emerald Hill- when he spotted the gaudy wooden caravan standing out like a sore thumb amongst the other stalls.
Sonic grinned, immediately recognising it. Flags with the colours of many Zones fluttered from the top and sides of the caravan. It looked like the owner had specifically chosen them because they clashed with the brightly painted wood of the vehicle itself. The small purple apteryx that pulled the caravan was tethered behind it, fluffing its feathers and clucking sleepily to itself.
Motley had set out his goods on a long, low table. They were a random collection of objects- he called them 'historical relics,' while everyone else- including Sonic- called them 'junk.' But this was interesting junk, and each piece had a fascinating tale attached to it. Motley managed to turn the stories of how he obtained each item into a series of adventures. Whether there was actually any truth in them was another matter, but the stories were one of the reasons Sonic liked him.
Another was his knowledge. He claimed to know a little about everything, which was why Sonic had come to see him today. The hedgehog tightened his fingers around the strange-looking shell in his glove. If anyone could tell him where it might have come from it would be this guy.
The stallholder was already haggling with another customer- an immensely tall bird, probably from a neighbouring Zone, who Sonic had seen a few times before but never actually spoken to. Motley was also a bird, but a very different one; he was an Old Mobian magpie about the same size as Sonic himself. The black and white avian perched on a stool behind the table with a garish purple bandanna wrapped around his neck and his beak parted in a perpetual grin.
Motley's left eye was brown, but his right gleamed pale blue from the middle of a random splash of white feathers. He winked it at Sonic as soon as he spotted the approaching hedgehog.
"Aha! Another customer in search of amazing artefacts from exotic zones! I'd call them priceless, but everything here has a price…" the magpie's musical accent emphasised the first syllable of each word, a blend of many regional accents that made it impossible to tell where he was originally from.
Sonic raised an eyebrow. "And knowing you the price is sky high," he replied cheekily. "Hey, Motley. Got a question for you…"
The bird gave a laugh that would have reminded Sonic of a pneumatic drill had he known what one sounded like. "I know you've heard it all before, boyo. But it's part of the job, gotta make a living." He rustled his wings in a shrug. "I'll be right with you once I'm finished with the Doc here. You take a look around the stall. Got some new merchandise his week, great stuff, you'll love it." His long tail bobbed up and down in time with each sentence.
Sonic had to smile at the little magpie's infectious enthusiasm. He fought back his impatience and glanced at the curios for sale while he waited.
The heavier objects were arranged under the table, including a squat totem pole from Green Hill, carved from a tree stump. There was the bleached skull of some many-horned creature, and a large square block of sandy brown stone. A carving of a viciously fanged face was still just visible on the water-worn surface. Sonic couldn't begin to guess where Motley had found that, not to mention how he had managed to carry it.
On the table a selection of smaller bits and pieces was displayed. A thick leather-bound book with a row of seven bronze rings running down the spine. A small jade figurine of what looked like an earless hedgehog sat next to a huge spotted egg, which someone with too much time on their hands had pieced together from tiny fragments and mounted on a wooden stand. Old coins, which like all Mobian currency had holes through the middle- the legacy of an ancient and disastrous attempt to use gold rings as money- stood in leaning stacks. At one end of the table was a pile of bizarre little metal gadgets that Porker would have loved.
There was also a brass compass, scattered stones and crystals, and yes, seashells. But none looked remotely like the one clutched in his hand.
Although all the items roused his curiosity in some way, it was the fact Motley had travelled all over South Island to gather them that appealed to the hedgehog more than the objects themselves- Sonic had never been much further than the neighbouring Green Hill Zone. Many of the things for sale here had come from places he had never even heard of, let alone visited.
Listening to the magpie's tales of those distant Zones was not as good as seeing them himself, but it still made Sonic's world seem less small and dull.
He pawed through a box of old video games that Motley had laughingly labelled 'ancient relics' (although by Emerald Hill standards they were quite new), smiling to himself as he remembered how he used to pester the stall owner to take him on one of his trading runs. Maybe he would ask again one week. After all, the hedgehog mused, he was fourteen now and free of school. He didn't want to end up delivering pizza and newspapers forever.
Sometimes he imagined what it would be like to travel freely. More and more often lately his runs took him to the boundary of the Zone, where the Emerald Hill landscape began to merge almost imperceptibly with the rockier, more heavily populated Green Hill Zone. He would stand there and wonder- what if he just kept going and didn't look back? What was it that anchored him to Emerald Hill?
But he invariably turned away and returned to the village. He had no family, but his friends and his home were here.
Besides, he thought as he shifted the shell in his glove, now he had a mystery to solve.
"Now I haven't seen what you're looking for myself- more's the pity- or I'd be a rich magpie," Motley was saying to the other bird. The customer's abnormal height surprised Sonic every time he glanced up at him. Anything over five feet tall was unusual among Mobians, and this one had to be closer to six.
He was wearing the same strange clothing that he always did. All that could be seen of the bird himself was his long yellow beak; the rest of him was hidden beneath a heavy coat, hat, scarf and ski goggles. Judging by his height he had to be a stork or a heron, but why on Mobius was he dressed for a blizzard in a near-tropical Zone like this?
The hedgehog shook his head, amused. A stall like Motley's would attract a few eccentric types. Not that Sonic counted himself as eccentric, obviously…
"But I have been asking around like you wanted. And, well, I wouldn't put too much faith in this, the guy who told me-" Motley glanced at Sonic, smirked knowingly and dropped his voice to a loud whisper, "-Let's just say he'd had a few too many." He winked again before continuing at normal volume. "Not that I make a habit of talking to drunks, Doc. But anyway. What he said was, his grandfather told him something had come down in Wood Zone. Something like what you're after."
"Wood Zone, hm?" Doc replied in a measured tone.
"Yep. And if it ever was there, it probably still is. What gets lost in Wood Zone stays lost, y'know. It's a jungle in there." Motley let off a machine-gun burst of laughter at his own joke.
Sonic, who was idly examining a thick plate of metal with a large letter G stencilled on it, unconsciously swivelled a pointed ear towards the conversation.
"Hey, you're gonna let me know if you do find the thing, right?" Motley's odd eyes sparkled avidly. "'Specially if you wanted to sell it. I could give you a good price for something like that, a very good price. For my own personal collection, you know…"
"I know how much you like your shiny things, Motley." Doc's beak barely moved, but his voice was patiently amused. "I wouldn't be selling it, though."
"A collector yourself, eh. Well, that I can understand." The magpie cocked his head to one side, calculatingly. "If you're into treasure, Doc, I've got just the thing for you. Something no self-respecting treasure hunter would be without."
The taller bird chuckled, shaking his head. Sonic could almost hear him roll his eyes.
"Not interested? I'm disappointed." Motley mock-pouted. "What a boring Zone this must be. Aren't there any true adventurers here? Doesn't anyone want to know what this special item is, this one-of-a-kind-antique, this essential piece of equipment for the intrepid treasure hunter?"
Sonic grinned. Even though he was familiar with Motley's sales patter, he couldn't resist.
"Go on then. What is it?" he raised a challenging eyebrow. "And it'd better be good, after all that."
Motley ignored the latter half of the comment, smugly fluffing his chest feathers and pointing at the hedgehog with a wingtip.
"Aha! I knew you had taste, boyo." Although the Old Mobian had no real hands, his wings with their independently mobile pinion feathers and stubby, clawed 'fingers' were almost as dextrous as they reached for a nondescript piece of age-browned cloth that Sonic hadn't even bothered to look at. It unfolded into a ten-inch square of fine material, frayed at the edges.
"The one thing every treasure hunter needs is a treasure map." Motley held it up reverently for his two customers to see. "I got it from a bat up north. He was an odd one- a chimera, you know- wings and arms, lucky guy. Anyway, he got it from a Sky Pirate. Or maybe he was one; he wasn't too clear on that. Charged me a fortune-"
"Motley. Get to the point," Sonic groaned.
"Oi, am I telling this story or not? Show some respect for your elders, will you?" the magpie grumbled- albeit through a smirk.
Sonic frowned at the map. The black outlines dyed into the fabric were clear enough, but it took him a moment to recognise the teardrop shape of South Island; Geography had been one of the few subjects he had paid any attention to in school and this was very different to the modern maps he was used to.
"It's wrong," he pointed out.
Motley shook his head adamantly.
"Didn't I say this was an antique? It's not wrong, it's old. Old and valuable. What you see here is South Island as it was, hundreds of years ago. Look." He hopped lightly onto the table and cleared a space with a talon, before spreading the map out flat so they could see it more closely.
The map was intricately detailed. The spine of mountains running down the centre, the circular bite out of the coastline and tiny sister island that made up Crater Bay, and the sharp, curved tip of South Island were immediately recognisable and much the same as they were today.
The Zones within that familiar outline were a different matter, however. It was this that had confused Sonic. Their boundaries were marked out with dashed lines, the Zones themselves dotted with indecipherable symbols and labelled in tiny curling script, except for a few towards the east which were marked 'Unknown.' There was even a little drawing of a dragon in one of the blank areas.
Some of the Zones, the hedgehog immediately noticed, were too big. He remembered seeing Meadow Zone drawn as a small blob no bigger than Emerald Hill, but on this map it was enormous. Others were too small; the Star Light Zone should have been three times that size. And some either had different names or weren't shown at all.
Sonic noted sourly that Emerald Hill was among those that didn't even get a mention. It had probably been nothing more than a corner of the Green Hill Zone when this map was made.
But most startling of all was that where modern maps showed a blank, grey area in the middle of the island, a vast city had been drawn in painstaking detail. Its name was surrounded by a decorative scroll.
"Genesis City…?" Sonic read, blinking incredulously. So the map was old. And suddenly much more interesting. He gave the magpie a wide-eyed stare. "Whoa. Motley, did you actually follow this map? You didn't go there, did you?" he asked eagerly. That would be some story. Everybody knew about Genopolis. The Lost Zone.
Motley shuddered visibly. "Me? Go to the ghost city? Not even I'm that brave, boyo. Or that stupid. Or that dead." He puffed out all his feathers as if the air had suddenly gone cold. But seeing Sonic's disappointed expression, he brightened again before the hedgehog could lose interest. "So, you can see why this map is so special," he continued as if nothing had happened. The magpie peered at Sonic and the heron through first his brown, then his blue eye. "You two know how this village was founded, right? …No?"
"No," Sonic confirmed disinterestedly. History was not a subject he had ever paid attention to.
The heron, however, was nodding.
"I've done my research, yes. But it's always good to hear it from a new perspective."
The magpie glowed. "Ah, so someone here appreciates their history! Well." He cleared his throat. "The story goes that centuries ago, that city was the capital of the whole island. It was vast, and I mean huge, with technology like you wouldn't believe. Millions of people, and spires reaching up to the sky, all tiled in sapphire blue." He made an expansive gesture with his wings. "They say it was the first city where Mobians of different races lived together, and that's why it was called Genesis. It was the greatest city on Mobius, and it just kept on growing and growing- until one day, boom."
Motley snapped his beak shut, pausing to let the tension build. He was getting into his tale now, and knew how to work up an audience.
"What happened?" said Sonic. Even though he'd heard this part before he was interested despite himself.
"I'm glad you asked, boyo. The answer is… nobody knows. Some say it was a comet. Others that the city was overrun by monsters, or that there was a earthquake and the whole place collapsed into the ground." His voice dropped to a whisper. "The entire city, destroyed overnight. Genocide City, they called it, and nobody's set foot there since. Apart from the ghosts."
"Oh, please…" Sonic snorted at the way Motley drew out that last word, not quite managing to keep the laugh out of his voice. The magpie ignored him.
"But not everyone died," he continued. "For the next few years, survivors came trickling out of the ruins. Some of them settled in Starlight City. Some crossed the channel to Theria, and founded the Metropolis Zone. And some," a wing feather jabbed downwards to point at the ground, "Ended up right here. They abandoned their technology and swore to take care of each other and give a home to any other survivor who made it down here. Been doing it ever since. And maybe," he concluded with a dramatic flourish, "They found their way here using this very map." He punctuated the final three words by tapping the map in question with a long black claw.
Sonic grinned slyly at him. "That very map, huh?"
"Yes, this very map." He tapped it again. "Didn't you hear me?"
"Didn't you say you bought it up north somewhere?"
"He's got you there," Doc commented with a dry chuckle.
Motley blinked, opening and shutting his beak a few times before recovering himself.
"Yeah, well… maps travel. It's what they're for."
Sonic's grin didn't budge an inch. "I thought you said it was a treasure map, anyway? I don't see anything that says 'x marks the spot' on there."
"Not that kind of treasure, is it?" the bird looked slightly miffed. "Look at the way the landscape has changed, here and here. There're things marked on this map that have been forgotten for years. Places nobody has been to in living memory. Just imagine what an intelligent explorer could discover by following this map…" his eyes narrowed shrewdly as he noted the hungry look on the hedgehog's face. "Oho, is somebody trying to knock my price down, I wonder?"
Busted. "Maybe," Sonic ventured, looking elsewhere.
Despite his attempts to remain casual, he wanted the map. It spoke to his sense of adventure. Motley was right; who knew what he could find using a map like that?
And what did all those little pictures mean? There were lots of them around the future location of Emerald Hill. Did they mark the entrances to the caves? He couldn't remember exploring that many…
And then there was the city. The huge, haunted city. Of course he'd heard of Genocide, but still… how cool would it be to go there?
"I'm asking twenty Rings for this piece of history," Motley proposed.
Sonic's face dropped into a scowl as his happy bubble popped. He felt his glove pocket, which was anything but heavy with coins.
"I can afford ten," he replied, knowing full well that was only just barely true.
Motley eyed him understandingly, but his tone was now all business.
"Fifteen," he said.
"Do I look like I have fifteen Rings? Maybe if I saved for a month," the brown hedgehog muttered grumpily. "I'm still recovering from that TV you sold me."
"Sorry, Sonic, but that really is the best I can do. When I said the map cost me a fortune I wasn't kidding," he shrugged, genuinely sympathetic. "We've all gotta make a living, y'know."
"Tell me about it." Sonic eyed the map dejectedly as it was folded up and returned to its place on the table. "Maybe you can help me out with something else instead," he continued after a while. "Know anything about seashells?"
Doc, who had been about to leave, glanced up furtively. Suddenly he spotted something very interesting among the metal pieces at the end of the table.
Motley handled the shell with a combination of his clever wingtips, beak and talons, examining it from every angle.
The hedgehog watched impatiently until Motley looked up, head cocked to one side.
"Hmm. That's odd. Where did you say you found this?"
Sonic smirked. He couldn't help it; Motley was going to love this.
"Under the Star Post."
The magpie's beak shut with an audible click. He stared at the shell as if it had suddenly transformed into something else entirely.
"The Star Post, eh…" he began thoughtfully, then the words began to rattle out of him again as if someone had hit the fast-forward button. "I know about Star Posts! But what were you doing there, boyo, don't you know they make people vanish? Did I ever tell you about the guy in the Star Light Zone that-"
"Yeah, you did." More amused than irritated, he reached across the table to tap the disc-shaped shell. "It's this I want to know about." Sonic didn't mention the UFO, or hovercar, or whatever it had been. He had to admit that in the light of day it all seemed a little… farfetched. Motley couldn't resist a good story but he couldn't resist spreading it either; if he told the magpie now, the whole village would know about it within five minutes. If someone like Lance found out he'd never live it down. Sonic had decided to learn as much as he could about the shell first.
"Well it's an ammonite, I can tell you that for a start," Motley began after a moment's thought. "People call them snake-shells, too, because that's what they look like. But it's really a type of mollusc. You probably already knew all that, right?"
Sonic hadn't, and shrugged noncommittally.
Motley's claw flipped the shell over. "The thing about ammonites is, they're everywhere. Common as feathers, anywhere there's seawater. You can't go to a single beach on the island and not find one. But," he added as Sonic made a disappointed face, "Know what the other thing about them is?"
"No idea," the hedgehog replied dryly, fighting the urge to tell the bird to hurry up and get on with it.
"Well." Motley puffed out his chest feathers in yet another dramatic pause.
"Motley…" Sonic finally cracked.
The magpie smirked around his beak and continued as if he hadn't heard him.
"The thing about ammonites, boyo, is that they come in different colours depending on where they're from. And this," He jabbed at it with a clawed foot, "This one here, isn't an Emerald Hill ammonite." As an afterthought he prodded at the shell's opening, dislodging a few particles of the black grit that was packed inside. "And that's not Emerald Hill sand, either."
Sonic broke into a grin.
"I knew it. So where's it from?"
Motley pondered for a moment.
"Can't say where precisely, boyo. Not an exact science. But the shell's dark and so is the sand in it, so probably somewhere north of here. Crater Bay maybe."
"Motley, this is Emerald Hill. Everything is north of here," the hedgehog pointed out, unimpressed. He frowned at the spiral patterning and vivid blue spots on the outer part of the shell. "But why's it all swirly like that? Is that normal?"
Motley shook his head. "Nope. But that isn't to say it's unusual. You see 'em with odd patterns like this sometimes. I've never found one this colourful, mind you, but it's not unheard of," a shrug. "Nobody knows why, but they say it could be because of pollution, or maybe they're just mutant shells- y'know, like some people have funny coloured fur, or different markings." He pointedly turned his head to regard Sonic with his blue eye, centred in its patch of white feathers.
Nodding, Sonic took the shell back and turned it over in his hands before looking back up at the magpie.
"So there isn't anything… special about this thing, then? Nothing really weird?"
Motley had delivered on his reputation as a fountain of knowledge, but Sonic had also hoped the trader would be amazed by the shell, that he would say it was like nothing he had ever seen before. That would have vindicated his memory of the night before even if it didn't help him find out what had really happened.
Motley clucked his tongue, misunderstanding what the teenager was getting at.
"It's a pretty shell, boyo, but the thing is I don't tend to sell ammonites. They're too common, y'know? That one is spectacular, and with that Star Post story…" he paused and gave an apologetic wing-flick, "But it's cracked, that's the problem. It's a shame. Nobody'd buy it, and if they did and it fell apart… well it wouldn't be good business, would it?"
Sonic waved him to silence.
"I'm not trying to sell it to you, Motley!"
"Good," the bird replied with a laugh and a wink, "Because then I'd have to start thinking I had competition, wouldn't I?"
...
Sonic had his eyes on the ammonite as he wandered through the market, trusting the people around him to get out of the way of his sharp quills. His mind went over the conversation with the magpie as he walked.
He had to admit that he didn't know much more now than he had this morning. He had learned what the shell was called and that it wasn't from a local beach, but little more than that. He'd assumed that the ammonite would somehow reveal to him who had dropped it and why if he found out as much as he could about it. Perhaps those strange markings had some hidden meaning, or maybe this was a kind of shell only found in one specific place.
It had been a silly assumption to make, he thought, feeling stupid and more than a little annoyed with himself. What Motley had said confirmed Johnny's opinion that this was just a seashell- maybe it was nothing to do with the floating craft and the box of blue light after all. Maybe it was a souvenir from someone's holiday. One of the kids who dared each other to touch the Star Post could have dropped it there, either accidentally or because it was broken.
Sonic hated to give up. Last night he had felt part of something huge and mysterious- not the child's playacting he was used to, but a real adventure. Now, though, he seemed to have hit a dead end.
Where could he go from here? The shell might not be important, he mused, but there was always the Star Post. The creature might appear there again. And he could always persuade Porker to tell him about the Star Post again; he'd pay closer attention this time and maybe it would give him a few more ideas…
That seemed as pointless as running round in circles, though. He made a face at the thought of sitting through Porker's lecture for a second time; he didn't think his brain could take it.
His disappointment at not being able to afford the map or the shoes wasn't helping his mood, either. The hedgehog made a sour face- if he didn't successfully run that loop later, he was going to be very annoyed.
A sudden tap on his shoulder broke his train of thought. Sonic stopped and turned, expecting Johnny and Porker or someone else he knew. Instead he got a surprise.
"Excuse me," said the towering heron in arctic gear. "I noticed you had a rather unusual seashell. If I might make a suggestion- perhaps you shouldn't be asking yourself where it came from, but instead what happened to it while it was alive?"
Sonic blinked incredulously, wondering why the bird's voice suddenly seemed so familiar….
