"Life in the Stars"
"The Return of Shag and Maya"
Chapter 48
XLVIII
As the portal reopened, Liz stepped back through and into a worried Max's anxiously waiting arms…
Max kissed her… "Did you see Maya?"
"Yes, I did!"
"Did she look like you thought she would… like we saw her in the cave…?"
Liz shook her head.
"But, she must have looked familiar…" Max said. "You recognized her."
"Actually… I didn't," said Liz. "She told me who she was."
"You spoke with her?"
Liz nodded, "Come on, I've got some things to tell you… all of you, but I want Maria and Alex and the others to hear it, too."
It was dinnertime on the new granilith, and Liz knew that everyone would be gathering in the dining room already, so she led Max, Michael, and Varec there. After everyone was present and the little droid had taken their requests for dinner, Liz asked for everyone's attention and related the entire story of her experiences with the Sphere of Visions, the Sphere of Searches, and the Sphere of the Portal. Max and Michael filled in the story by telling what had happened with the first sphere, the Sphere of Protection, before they had brought Liz into the lab. For a few brief moments, there was complete silence in the dining room as everyone "digested" the things they had just heard, but then the room became quite animated as everyone began to have questions…
"So, Liz…" Diane Casey said, "Does this means that you are not only the Queen of your planet but also part of the royal family of Xarius? I mean, you're the great, great… whatever… daughter of the King and Queen of Xarius, so are you, like, a princess on Xarius?"
Liz hadn't actually thought about this. For a moment she thought about it now, "I guess that's true… I really don't know. I mean, I'm separated from them by over ten thousand years…"
"May be…" said Alex, "but you're separated from Maya on Antar by the same amount of time, and you're the true Queen of Antar because of her. And you are, after all, their direct descendant… so I'd say you're a princess of Xarius."
There was a lot of agreement with Alex at the table, and Kyle decided to offer a toast to the Princess of Xarius, much to Liz's embarrassment. It was in fun, but everyone had a feeling that there really was something to it.
"What do they call someone from Xarius?" Kyle asked… "a Xarius-sarian?"
There was a little good-natured laughter around the table.
"I really don't know," Liz said.
Zorel raised his hand cautiously to get attention. Liz looked at him…
"Can I borrow the Sphere of Searches to find the book I misplaced?"
There was more laughter at the table… and even if no one else said it, a lot of others suddenly thought to themselves of things they had lost, too…
"I don't know, Zorel," Liz said, smiling, "I'm not sure if we should use the spheres for unimportant things…"
"It's important to me!" Zorel said.
Liz grinned… "I know! I'll think about it… Right now, this is all pretty new."
Isabel asked, "Did you think about the fact that MayaSabriena may want the spheres back?"
Liz stood there momentarily, not knowing what to say. Quite frankly, the thought had not occurred to her. The truth is, she realized, Maya might want all the items back; after all, they were rightfully hers. Shaqor-Niseel had given them to her…
Liz shook her head… "I didn't think about it… it is possible…"
"Do you know when you will see Maya and 'Shag' again?" asked Kathleen.
Liz smiled and looked more animated at this question…
"Actually, when I left, they told me that they would be seeing me soon… I'm not sure if that was like an invitation to come back or…"
As Liz spoke, a wave of light ran suddenly through the room. Everyone gasped and stared in awe as the portal appeared near Liz. The glass barrier of the portal began to ripple then an extraordinarily handsome man stepped through it into the room holding the hand of a nice-looking lady with a regal demeanor. The lady turned around and held out her hand to another person who stepped through the portal behind her… then another. The two new ladies looked enough like Maya that the three of them could be triplets. Realizing that she was looking at JoLeesa and AnDasniya, Liz lifted her hand to her mouth, and tears came to her eyes. She and Max both stood and welcomed their new guests.
Smiling, Maya brushed the tears off Liz's cheek and hugged her. Liz hugged Maya back tightly then hugged JoLeesa and AnDasniya.
"You can't imagine," Liz said, "when I was reading your diary, how many times I've wanted to hug the three of you and just tell you that everything was going to be all right… I… I feel like I needed to get that out of my system. I know it's crazy, but it's something I've felt for all these years…"
Maya nodded, smiling, "I quite understand… I often wanted to hug Leese and Andya and tell them we were going to be all right when we were on the little moon… and I did, but I never knew for sure that we would be until 'Shag' rescued us."
Max seated his new guests at the table between himself and Liz then summoned the little droid to offer them drinks and anything they would like.
Liz whispered to Varec, and Varec nodded then left the room, returning quickly with several items in his hands…
Liz took the box with the spheres, the baby bracelet, and the new diary from Varec and offered them back to Maya, placing them on a small table near her. Maya picked up the baby bracelet and looked at it smiling. I'll take this… It was Shag's when he was a baby. The jewels in it are very special, brought from all the different corners of the universe. When a Xarian offers a girl this special bracelet, it is like offering her an engagement ring. If she accepts it, she is considered to have accepted his proposal…
You keep the spheres, Liz. I have called on them many times and will continue to even though they are in your possession… you may use them, too, whether or not they are in your possession, because the spheres recognize you as a rightful owner.
As for the diary… Ah, how I would love to read it again right now! But it is fragile and old, and it would be best if you would continue to preserve and copy it. Once that is done, I hope you will give me a formal copy."
Liz nodded and smiled… "You can be sure of that!"
Maya reached over and opened the box with the spheres. She removed the Sphere of Searches and spoke to it…
"Where is the book that Zorel lost?"
Zorel's mouth dropped open. The sphere floated from Maya's hand and began to glow with an electric blue aura. Then it displayed an image of Zorel's room, zeroing in on the area beside the head of his bed…
"It is there," the sphere replied, "behind the head of the bed next to the wall."
"Thank you," Zorel managed to say. "How did you know I…"
"I used the spheres to locate Liz on this ship before we came, and I saw you ask," Maya said with a smile.
"Thank you," Zorel said again, smiling widely.
"You are quite welcome," Maya said, replacing the sphere in its holder and closing the box again.
"This is a fine group of children, Liz… and I am delighted and most impressed to meet all of these wonderful people here. I see, too, that the women in our family have a talent… or the extreme fortune… of finding the most handsome men in the galaxies." Maya looked at Max, who turned slightly red.
"We have heard of Zan, even on Xarius," said Shaqor-Niseel. "I am afraid, however, that I am not very well informed about that planet… It is very far from us… but I have heard a few things…"
"Zan is a very fine king," Varec replied… "He brought peace to our planet… twice, and he has given us prosperity and happiness. The people of Antar love Zan, and the scientists are indebted to him… and to his General of the Armies." He indicated Michael. "I am afraid, though, that there is one group on Antar that has not been happy with Zan."
Max and Michael both looked surprised at this "revelation," as did all the others at the table.
Varec continued, "The Academia has been quite frustrated, and it is rumored that they plan to petition the Council to forbid him from ever traveling off of Antar again."
"Why ever would that be?" asked Maya.
"It seems," said Varec, "that every time Zan leaves Antar, when he returns, all the history books have to be rewritten."
There was a lot of laughter at the table. Max shook his head and groaned. Michael grinned and nodded.
They had learned so much during this trip that parts of the current history books would already be deemed out of date and would have to be rewritten. The Diary of MayaSabriena would have to be revised to include the new diary that was found. And then there were the Vreenis Spheres… and the whole meeting with Maya, who after all, was herself, historically, a royal of Antar. Indeed, even as they spoke, they were making and rewriting history with this meeting of Antar's past and present.
"The last time I was in this area," said Shaqor-Niseel, "Antar was involved in a great war. The king and his family had been killed, and some vain strutting peacock named Kivar had set himself up as the king. I was saddened to see this, because Antar had been a peaceful planet, and the people of Antar loved their king. What happened to change that?"
"It's a long story," Max said, "but the short of it is that the scientists on Antar took DNA from the dead king and his family and combined it with Earth DNA and basically 'programmed' them to be reborn on Earth to hide them from Kivar until they were grown and could return to fight for their planet again."
"That would be you…?" Shaqor-Niseel said more as a statement than actually a question.
Max nodded. "I was King Zan. Michael was my advisor, Rath, though he never uses that name now. Isabel was Vilandra…"
Shaqor-Niseel nodded… "What ever happened to the strutting peacock?"
"Kivar?" Michael laughed. "Let's just say that the Battle for Antar, after Max and I returned, ended with him in the claws of a jah-ee."
Maya jumped… "When I was a child on Antar, the jah-ee was believed to be a legend or a myth. I never knew that there really was such a bird."
"Oh yes!" Michael replied. "Max and the jah-ee have this sort of relationship… they hear each other's thoughts and understand each other… ever since the Battle for Antar. Max spent a month underground with the jah-ee under the secret island where the jah-ee live."
"That is amazing!" said JoLeesa. "All the mythology that we were taught as children said that the jah-ee were huge killer birds that everyone was afraid of, and no one had actually ever seen."
"Well, no one alive anyway…" AnDasniya corrected.
"Well, there is a lot that Zan has done that was never done before," said Varec. "And there is another here who has a similar, though slightly different, ability…"
Varec indicated Danyy, Jim and Kathleen's boy.
"Danyy can speak to any animal. They understand him and he understands them. He doesn't speak to them in the same way that Zan does with the jah-ee. Zan and the jah-ee communicate with mental images. Somehow, Danyy communicates with the animals mind to mind in complete thoughts like sentences."
"Can I show them my pawgor?" Danyy asked.
JoLeesa's eyes opened wide. AnDasniya and MayaSabriena looked shocked, too.
"You have a pawgor? …On this ship?" Maya asked him.
"Yes," Danyy replied plainly.
"Uh, well," Maya said laughing, "Maybe you should show it to us another time, Danyy… Give us a little time to get used to that idea."
"What's a pawgor?" Shaqor-Niseel asked.
Maya answered, "It's a little like a Vix on Xarius."
Shag's eyes opened wide, "Oh! That would be some 'pet!' I would like to see that later, Danyy!"
Danyy smiled.
"JoLeesa's husband, Des-Varis, has a pet Flox," said 'Shag.'
"What's a Flox?" it was now Danyy's turn to ask.
Shaqor smiled. "It's about as long as this room and looks like a big fat rope. It has two thousand tiny feet but no legs. Its head is flat and its eyes are on two stalks that stick up about as high as your waist. It has a huge wide mouth and a huge tongue that can lick the paint off a wall… but it's harmless. It's a strange-looking beast."
"It sure is!" Danyy agreed.
"So…" said Maria, joining in the conversation, "are both of you, JoLeesa and AnDasniya, married?"
They both nodded and said, "Yes." JoLeesa added, "We went to Xarius with Maya and 'Shag.' They got married on the ship on the way there, and we were married about a year after that."
Maria was thinking and calculating, "You must all have, like, an awful lot of children! I mean, you've been married over ten thousand years, and obviously, you're all still very young…"
Maya laughed. So did Leesa and Andya.
AnDasniya explained, "Actually, Maya had four children, I had four, and Leesa had five. You see, on Xarius, we live a very long time, but we can only have children for about forty of your years, until we are about sixty of your years old. After that, there are no more children. I guess we weren't meant to populate the universe… at least not with one set of genes. Our children had children and their children had children… Eventually, they had spread throughout the universe. Some even went back to Eluymer to live."
"It's called 'Earth' now," said Liz's daughter, Maya.
"Urth? What a strange name!" said Maya.
""Did you know that I was named for you?" Maya asked MayaSabriena of Xarius.
"No! Is that right?"
"Yes! And my sisters are JoLeesa and AnDasniya. We're triplets, and we were all named for you after my Daddy brought the first diary back from Michael's Moon."
"Triplets? …like us? And you were named for us? Oh my! How exciting!" said JoLeesa. "I'm very honored!"
MayaSabriena and AnDasniya agreed.
"Why do you call it 'Michael's Moon?'" asked AnDasniya.
Maya giggled, "Because Michael asked Maria to marry him there."
MayaSabriena, JoLeesa, and AnDasniya of Xarius smiled and looked at Michael who blushed slightly.
"So our little moon is special to someone besides just us!" Maya said. "That's sweet!"
Michael smiled then took a swallow of his drink as he turned a little redder.
Dinner this evening was one that no one on the new granilith was likely to ever forget. There had been a lot of those on this trip, but this one was special even among the special dinners. An evening meal on the new granilith with MayaSabriena and her sisters… and 'Shag' …the one and only originals, was something none of them had ever expected. Everyone had the feeling that they had just been a part of history, and the history books on Antar would soon reflect that they had been.
----------------------End of Chapter 48
