See part one for explanation and disclaimers. I don't own 'Dinotopia', James Gurney does. Hallmark still owns the characters and I'm still not profiting from this. Hope you're enjoying this. Still recommended for teens and up for action/violence and mild language.
9
David made it as far as the boat.
Once he slipped out of the Sanctuary, he headed for the river in search of any boat that the 'topian fishermen might have beached on the riverbank for the evening. He knew Scott, Marion, and the saurian guards (after they woke up) would head for the enclosed stairway beside the falls. They'd expect David to head for the city…no one in their right mind would get into a boat and head into the forest with night falling fast. But, Gabriel's training was ingrained into David: The falls would cover the sounds of David moving through the brush of the forest that lined the riverbank. The trees, once he reached them, would protect him from any dino-scouts if any were dumb enough to try to fly after him in the dark.
He didn't have to follow the river for long before he found an abandoned boat. Now, it was just a matter of floating down the river to Gull's Bay. If he hurried, he'd still make it before tomorrow's high tide. He'd just have to hope that Al would stall Le Sage and Dane until David got there. After that, it was just a matter of climbing into the submarine, crossing the Razor Reef, and he'd be on his way back to the mainland.
Then what?
David's hands froze just inches above the bow of the boat…inches from grabbing hold and pushing it into the water. From his escape.
It was just a rock, Barrett. You didn't see anything---not at the tavern, not at Le Sage's, not with those dinoscouts, and definitely not when that rock zapped you. Nothing. It was just scalie-lover mind tricks. Just get into the boat and go, David…he rallied himself. GO.
Involuntarily, his eyes closed and blue light filled his mind again…
The door had a "240" on it. The first number was a '2'---David knew the number from his books. It was how old he was, too. The door was in a large building---very large from the toddler's vantage point---made of brick, one that had a lot of stairs. His mother had carried him up most of the flights, balancing him in one arm, his suitcase in the other. When they got to the door with the "240", they stopped and his mother set him down. David was confused. His mother had said they were going to a 'house', but this didn't look like a house. It looked like a hallway…and it smelled weird---it smelled like when their dog, Dodger, had accidents on the carpet. His mother knocked, and a very large man with black hair and bushy eyebrows opened it.
The man looked at David's mom, called her "Abby", then stared down at David and smiled. "Hey, there's my boy!" he greeted the toddler. He reached a big hand towards the child. David had the sudden fear that the man was going to grab him and take him away from his mom. He ducked behind her for safety and peered back in fright at the stranger.
"Oh, that's perfect, Abby. My son doesn't even recognize me." The man sounded angry, which did nothing to persuade David to step out from behind his mother.
"Yeah, and whose fault is that, Frank? Don't blame him because you spent the first years of his life having a baby with that travel agent and never bothered to visit us." Mom sounded mad, too.
"You could have visited---"
"I don't have time to rearrange my life to accommodate you, Frank, now that you've decided your son is old enough to be interesting and feel like playing dad. It's not my responsibility." She handed David's suitcase to the large man.
"That isn't fair."
"You dumped me for that travel agent before your son's first birthday, Frank. Don't talk to me about 'fair'. I brought him here like we agreed. Here are his books---"
The man wrinkled his nose at the books. "Books? He's barely old enough to walk!"
"---his schedule, his inhaler, and the list of emergency phone numbers. I'll be back in three days…"
That was when another little boy, not quite as big as David, with yellow hair and brown eyes appeared from the house that wasn't a house. Seeing the child, David's mom took a deep breath and counted to three. When she spoke again, she didn't sound quite so angry. "Is that Karl?" she asked. The large man nodded.
Mom wrapped her arm around David's shoulder and urged him out from behind her back. "David, this is your father. You've met him before, but I know you don't remember, since he's never around. You're going to stay with him this weekend. Do you remember we talked about that?"
David remembered. Mom had showed him a picture of his 'father', but face-to-face with the man, he wasn't so sure he wanted to go through with it. He wasn't sure what a 'father' was or why he needed one, but Mom had one (David's grandfather) and it seemed important to 'grandpa' that 'the boy have a father'.
"Come here, sweetie, there's someone else I want you to meet," Mom said. Keeping her arm around his shoulder, she led David into the house---which was scary enough on its own, being big and unfamiliar with ugly masks on the wall and a weird smell (at least it smelled better than the hallway)---and over to the small, yellow-haired boy. The boy was watching them uncertainly. "David, this is your brother, Karl. What do you say?"
David knew the answer to that question was usually "Please", "Thank You", or "I'm Sorry", but none of those seemed right. "Yellow," David finally said.
Mom patted his head. "Close enough."
The large man who was 'father', frowned. "What is he, retarded or something?"
Mom smacked the large man alongside his head and he yelped. "Keep David on his schedule, read the list of allergies---especially the food allergies---because I'm sure there are a million things in this petrie dish of a building that will trigger his asthma, and for God's sake, try not to emotionally scar my child for life by being you or I'll make you pay for therapy when he grows up." Mom hugged David. "I'll be back in three days, honey. Have fun with your father and brother. Goodbye, Frank." And with that, mom left David alone with the stranger and the yellow-haired child.
"Boys, remind me in a few years to have a long talk with you about women. Well, David, let's get you settled in." 'Father' picked up David's suitcase and started reading the pages his mom had left. "Jeez, is she kidding me with this list…?"
David shook his head, trying to physically dislodge the nagging images from his brain. Since that scalie priestess did her voodoo magic chant, the visions were coming even through he was nowhere near that freaking space rock.
So, what did it mean? David had still been turning all that over in his mind before Karl had interrupted him. He had come up with three theories.
First theory: The 'topians knew, thanks to Frank, that David had been planning to escape the island. Marion also knew David had no family, none besides the adoptive one he'd formed with a few outsiders like Alano and Le Sage. He'd let that slip the day he'd saved her from Gabriel Dane. She'd read the desire for a real home, a real family, with that damned empathy of hers and he'd stood there and let her do it. Since David frequented the Scott tavern and was friends with Frank Scott, maybe they thought they could play on David's respect for the off-worlder and desire for a real family and use their meteorites to plant some bad dreams in David's head (well, he corrected himself, not all bad---the ones with the matriarch's daughter weren't unpleasant at all) to convince him he was part of Frank Scott's family.
It seemed like a cruel tactic for 'pacifists' like the 'topians, but they might do it---in their minds, they'd probably justify it as 'saving his life' and doing David a favor by convincing him that the faith stone had erased his memories of another lifetime where he was a Scott, thus creating a 'happy home' and a family for him on the island. They might even hope to convert David into a scalie-lover that way.
The idea of being manipulated like that really pissed him off…
…but it didn't sound like 'topian strategy.
Second theory: The 'topians might just want to convince him that the faith stone had erased his memory of a whole other life to get him to tell them where Marion's medallion was hidden. That seemed more likely…but still, something about it didn't quite ring true to David either. That was the kind of deviousness you found among outsiders, but 'topians…well, it also wasn't their style.
Which brought David to his last theory: They were telling the truth. Frank and Karl and Jack were his family. David was really a nerd in a skybax rider uniform and Karl was his annoying, skirt-chasing brother, and that stone had somehow fractured reality to create a universe where David was an Outsider and Karl was the nerd in a skybax rider uniform. Truth was weirder than a Sci-Fi Channel movie-of-the-week.
So, David was either fleeing from his long-lost family from a parallel universe, a forgotten lifetime----which was so ridiculous that it was difficult not to laugh out loud at the notion---or he was escaping the hands of a horribly misguided dinosaur cult disguised as escapees from a Renaissance Festival, and devious ones at that. He didn't know what these images were, but he knew one thing:
I am not David Scott.
Nevertheless, he could still feel the images in his mind, like a nagging pull in his brain trying to call him back to the Sanctuary.
It could call all it wanted; he wasn't answering. David didn't want to see any more.
Karl concentrated, trying to direct the Tohma Faiere's images to show him what he needed to know. I need to know what screwed up the timeline. I need to know who Jack is. Show me more. It was half-request, half-prayer. The faith stone obliged and the images smoothly shifted…
"KARL!"
Sixteen-year-old Karl cringed as the last voice he wanted to hear boomed in the tiny tattoo parlor. Okay, maybe not the last voice---Dad or, God forbid, Mom would have been worse, but his big brother was a close third. Did David have a damn tracking device planted under Karl's skin somewhere or what? How did he find Karl in the middle of freaking London? David had been asleep with his face planted on his laptop, trying to finish a Botany report, when Karl had sneaked out of Dad's hotel suite. "Needle Art's" tattoo parlor was miles from the Westin.
David threw open the door just like a policeman leading a raid on a drug lab just as Karl had settled, lying on his stomach, on a table. 'Needle Art', a hulk of a man, had been loading up the needle. The shout made Art jump, nearly stick the needle into his own finger. He gave the new arrival a death glare. David gave him an apologetic shrug, but his gaze was fixed on his brother---and the buxomous blonde who was standing beside Karl's tattoo table, beaming over the blue letters Art had just drawn on Karl's left glut. The letters spelled out her name. Karl had figured it was the fastest way to impress her. Who knew the ways she might express her appreciation…
"Wait your turn, kid," Art barked at David.
David raised an eyebrow. "My turn? You are kidding, right?"
"Go away, David!" Karl's face was scarlet.
"Are you crazy? Seriously? Have you lost your mind?" David---very unhappily---inspected the buttocks art to be sure it was only ink and not permanent dye. "Get your pants on, Romeo, we're going back to the hotel." David glanced at the blonde girl. "Sorry---" He checked the name on Karl's hip. "---Angelica. We'd like him to make it to legal adulthood before he gives himself hepatitis or whatever other wonderful diseases are on that needle."
"Watch it, kid," Art growled.
"No offense, 'Art' is it?" David held up his hands.
Karl hurriedly jumped off the table and hiked up his jeans in one swift move. "I'm going to kill you, you know…" At the least, he was fully prepared to deck his brother. "Mind your own business, David."
"I could care less if you want to disfigure yourself to impress your flavor of the week, just wait and do it sometime when Dad can't find a way to make it my fault," David snapped. Karl supposed that was justified---when Karl had come back to the hotel with a nipple ring, having it done secretly while dating a pretty French girl, during their last family vacation, Dad had laid into David almost as bad as Karl: 'You're supposed to be the smart one. Why'd you let him do that?'
Still…there were principles here. "You're not my damn babysitter!"
"And believe me, I don't want the job!" David tried physically moving Karl to the door, and his younger brother pounced. The end result of the scuffle was both boys wrestling on the dirty floor of Needle Art's until the proprietor took the boys by their ears and tossed them out on to the sidewalk. David had an Indian burn, a bloody nose, and a blue dot on his shoulder from accidentally rolling into Art's needle. Karl had a split lip, several nasty bruises, but remained tattoo free. It had taken two blood tests over the span of a year to convince David he hadn't caught something from the needle…
Karl would have cried out for frustration if he hadn't been paralyzed by the effects of the Tohma Faiere. This wasn't what he needed to know. So, Barrett was a pain in the butt in both realities, no surprises there. Big deal, Karl could have guessed that much. The combination of that, the parade of girlfriends, and the absence of his place in the Skybax Corps, wasn't a winning argument for convincing him to correct the timeline, either, if that's what the Tohma Faiere was trying to do. Karl still didn't see one good reason to want that life back…or to want to sign up for having Barrett…David…in his life 24/7.
But Dad and I were friends. Wasn't that enough reason?
Karl found that he couldn't answer his own question.
The doorbell rang, barely audible from the upstairs bedroom, especially with the din of voices downstairs. Seventeen-year-old Karl didn't take much notice of it. People had been coming and going all weekend, bringing food and platitudes-with good intentions, yes---until Karl could stand no more. When his grandparents and his father had started another round of bickering-and attempted to drag Karl into the debate---the teenager had retreated into his bedroom and locked the door behind him. He was angry with all of them.
All he wanted was to get through Mom's funeral tomorrow before they all started making his choose sides in their quarrel over who was taking custody of him, but apparently the adults weren't going to let that happen. His Mom's parents were sure that Frank was too irresponsible to be a full-time guardian, citing that he'd "abandoned" their daughter years back and was constantly traveling with his sales job. Dad had countered that a "boy's place was with his parent". As far as Frank Scott was concerned, no further discussion was needed. Karl was too tired to keep arguing. If he were forced into another "Karl's better off with us because…" shpiel, he was in serious danger of settling the matter by going to live with his Aunt Patricia and her fifteen cats, allergies be damned. The whole thing was only making him wish more desperately that it could have been anyone besides his Mom that had to be killed in that car crash.
The argument downstairs didn't ebb with the chime of the doorbell…until a new voice, distinctly not Frank's or one of the grandparents', let out a loud command Karl couldn't quite make out. The din of conversation ceased at once. After the new speaker's shout, the conversation downstairs was much more subdued. For a minute, the only sound was the soft music and the thunder of footsteps on the stairs, approaching Karl's room.
Someone knocked on his door. Karl didn't answer, figuring it was dad or his grandparents again.
The doorknob rattled, then, as Karl watched, a credit card jimmied the pitiful old lock and the door swung open. Sitting on the floor by his bed, not wanting to deal with the intruder, Karl snapped: "I want to be alone!"
"With that group, I don't blame you."
Karl's head jerked up. It wasn't a voice he'd been expecting to hear, but nevertheless it was real. David ducked into the room and swiftly locked the door behind him. For good measure, he pulled took the chair from Karl's small desk and propped it beneath the doorknob. He was covered with snow from the storm outside. He was also supposed to be at his mother's house in Utah, two time zones away. "I'm not sure what's more touching-Dad's 'grief through denial' routine or watching him and your grandfather having that glaring duel. I'd lock myself in, too," David said.
Karl was still getting over the shock of his brother's arrival. "What are you doing here?"
"Where should I be?" He saw the expression on Karl's face. "What? You thought I wouldn't show up? Don't you trust me?"
David had a bag in his hand. The smell of fast-food from the bag filled the room, and Karl's stomach growled. "Food for the shut in. I figured with Dad's fantastic way of not coping, my little brother would be in his room starving himself instead of downstairs eating even though there's a room full of food, and, oh look, I was right. Here you are." He dropped the bag onto Karl's lap. "Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"I didn't ask if you were hungry. I said 'eat'." Despite being taller, David couldn't possibly have forced him to obey. Karl already had ten pounds on his brother, and it was all muscle. Karl dug into the food anyway. David, meanwhile, shrugged out of his damp overcoat and plopped down beside his brother on the hardwood floor.
"Did you fly in from Salt Lake City?" Karl asked, still dumbfounded that David was actually there.
"Me? Fly? Voluntarily? Yeah, right. I took the train. Cost a month's pay from the Lucky Mart and we had to stop three times for snowstorms, plus I had to sit next to a guy who had a nice conversation with his left shoe for five hundred miles, but hey, no problem. Has Aunt Ethel started singing showtunes yet?"
Karl grinned a bit. "No, sorry, you didn't miss that."
"Damn. Hey, pass the bag, I'm starving, too."
They lapsed into silence for a bit, before David finally broke the quiet: "So, how are you doing, bro?" Karl gave him a look. "Okay, I know, dumb question." David nodded in the direction of the stairs, indicating the group downstairs. "They're being pretty pushy with you?"
"Grandpa wants to take me back to Duluth after the funeral. Dad told him to stay out of it. And I'm not sure, but I think Grandma may have thrown the marshmallow Jell-O mold at one point. Might have been her dentures, I don't know, I got the hell out of there."
"Vivid imagery there. Was it as bad as when Kevin wanted Dad to let him adopt me?"
Karl nodded. "Almost. 'Cept Dad wouldn't punch Grandpa or try to stuff him in a laundry chute."
"What do you want to do?" David asked him.
"I want to get through the funeral without fists and upper plates flying," Karl answered. He had been thinking about this question since his mother's accident, knew the answer even though this was the first time he said it aloud: "I want to stay with Dad."
"Yeah?" David didn't look surprised, though Karl was sure his brother wouldn't have felt the same way if he were in Karl's place. David's relationship with their dad was much rockier than Karl's.
"Yeah."
David nodded, standing up. "Okay then."
"Where are you going?"
David pulled the chair away from the door and unlocked the handle. "To have a chat with the quote-unquote grown-ups and plead your case. At least, I'll try to get them to behave until the funeral is over. The advantage of being the polite, quiet son is that it gets people's attention when you do raise your voice. I'm here for you, bro." David offered Karl a mock salute. Vaguely, Karl realized his brother did have some experience with this sort of thing. Dad and David's mom had been locked in custody and re- negotiations of visitation rights off and on for most of David's life. "I'm heading into the trenches...lock this door behind me. And if I don't come back---you still owe me for telling Dad I dented his car last summer."
It surprised Karl that he actually felt a bit better. Okay, so maybe his brother wasn't a complete waste of space…
The admission sent the faith stone's picture show spinning into a succession of images: Karl was back in the underground caverns with his father, but instead of Jack, David was there with them. There was the crack of Cyrus' small gun and blinding pain shot through Karl's leg. From the corner of his eye, he saw David pounce. His brother wasn't a brawler, but he was bigger than Cyrus. They wrestled for the weapon. Another shift of images and David---in Dinotopian civilian garb---was running through the crowded streets of Waterfall City, an angry saurian in pursuit. He searched the crowd until he spotted Karl, shouted for his brother, and lobbed something through the air. Karl caught the object easily. It was a sunstone. Karl had the impression that the sunstone was important…but not because of a carnosaur attack. No, it was something about a transmitter. It needed a power source. They needed the sunstone to make the radio transmitter work to warn a boat away from the thunderstorm and the Razor Reef. The Dinotopians had hesitated to offer a sunstone, and his rule-abiding brother had actually swiped one in order to make Karl's plan work. And it had worked, Karl recalled. They'd saved that boat full of people...
David and Karl had been friends, too?
Another shift and there was Karl and David, working to pull their father out of one of the hunter's traps. Another shift, and there was Karl, attempting to teach his hopelessly nerdy brother how to box. That hadn't gone well at all: David was very near hopeless where sports were concerned. Karl had inadvertently knocked his brother onto his butt and Marion, already hacked off at the 'barbarism' of the upcoming boxing match, had fussed over David…
There was something else. Marion…there was something about Marion…Marion and David…and the Tohma Faiere.