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.
Freedom was right there in front of David Barrett. All he had to do was climb into that boat, take a ride down the river, and he'd be away from the 'topian mind games…but his feet seemed to have grown roots in the riverbank.
David wasn't hiding---not really. He wasn't hiding; he was being prudent and avoiding another argument with his father. There was a ton of prep work to be done before the deep-island exploration mission, and if David tried to spread out maps and plot potential courses at the tavern, Frank Scott would launch into another tirade about the trip. His father seemed to be dead set on giving his older son all the grief he could squeeze in before David's departure. That left the library in Waterfall City, the skybax riders' base in Canyon City, or Flippeau's small home as David's choices of where to work in peace.
He'd been up to his eyeballs in topographical maps when Marion had appeared on the balcony and announced: "Your brother is an idiot."
David didn't miss a beat. "And?"
Marion wasn't kidding. In fact, when she came onto the terrace, she was visibly upset. David knew she'd had a date with Karl that night. The knowledge was accompanied by the now-familiar pang of envy for his younger brother. If Marion was there, talking to David, instead of with Karl, the date couldn't have gone well. David was torn between evil satisfaction that Karl had somehow put his foot in it with Marion again and the irritation that Karl had done something to make her look as unhappy as she did now. Knowing Karl's usual date activities, David wasn't sure he wanted to know what the 'something' was.
She seemed determined that David was going to hear about it, however. Marion took a seat beside him at the table on Flippeau's small balcony. She looked at the charts that David had spread across the table. "Are those the maps of the inner island?"
"Yeah, I was just reading up for the mission." Truthfully, David could have done his pre-mission prep work more comfortably in his quarters at the base. He didn't know why he'd set himself up for the fun of watching his brother stealing away Marion by spending the weekend in Waterfall City. He didn't think he had any masochistic tendencies…
"You're really going then?" Marion asked, her frown deepening. Did she sound disappointed or was that just wishful thinking?
"Yep, really going...if Dad doesn't lock me in the tavern's basement or something first."
Marion sympathized with Frank. "He's only worried about you. You have to give him time to get used to the idea."
"I don't think he'll ever be on board with me staying in the Skybax Corps." David put the charts aside. She wasn't here to talk about the mission, and he wasn't going to waste a rare opportunity to spend some alone time with her by talking about topography, flight routes, inner island plant life, and family spats. "What did Karl do this time?"
"He asked me to the Dawn Festival."
David was grateful that he wasn't drinking at the moment, or he'd have done a cartoon spit-take right then. He felt a surge of fear at the implications of what Karl asking Marion to the Dawn Festival meant, until he remembered that Karl's knowledge of all things Dinotopian was limited purely to what was needed to get by and no more. God forbid he made an extra effort---studying would have involved dedication and commitment. That meant Karl couldn't have known what he was asking Marion. No wonder she looked so pissed off.
"And he had no clue, right?" David asked.
Marion shook her head. "He said it was like your homecoming dances…back home."
He didn't miss her emphasis on the last word. Strike two for Karl, David tallied mentally. "You're right---he's an idiot."
Apparently, she wasn't ready to joke about it, so David tried another tack. "Need a shoulder?"
Her pout became exaggerated, a little show of needing some sympathy. That was good, it meant her humor was returning. "Yes," she accepted, scooting her chair closer so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders in a consoling hug, no easy task with the arm rests between them. He decided that, for the moment, it was worth being in the lamentable role of "Supportive Friend" to get the chance to be close to her like this. The urge---powerful and almost irresistible-to kiss her was there and holding back was a test of willpower. But taking advantage and having Marion hate him and ending up in the doghouse currently occupied by Karl…well, David just wasn't going to risk that. The upside was that she didn't seem to be in any hurry to pull away.
"So, you want me to have Freefall pick up Karl and drop him in a lake somewhere?" he offered.
Marion did laugh at that image. He could only see the top of her head, but he could sense that she was smiling. "Would that help, do you think?"
Not a chance. Karl would probably find a farm girl or a mermaid to 'help him dry off', David knew, but he wasn't going to tell her that. "No, but it would make me feel better, how 'bout you?"
Marion picked up one of his maps. "Which lake?"
"WHAT THE HELL IS A 'DAWN FESTIVAL!'"
Frustrated, bedeviled to distraction by the images plaguing him, David screamed the question to the empty forest. There was no way Frank Scott was his father or Karl and Jack Scott were his brothers. Not in any lifetime. There was no way David was king of the nerds the way he was in these blue-hued visions. He was clinging to that hope, but it diminished with every new hallucination-memory that came unbidden.
"It's a celebration for betrothed couples, a meditation-purification ritual meant to test the depth of their bond. How do you know about it?"
He nearly jumped out of his skin at the unexpected response. Marion was standing behind him. Somehow, that didn't surprise him. "It was a rhetorical question. You come here to try to drag me back to the Godzilla statue and space rocks? 'Cause I wouldn't mind wrestling again…"
"I knew there was something familiar about you when I saw you on that beach. I know who you are, David. I know what the Tohma Faiere showed you. Karl told me."
"That freak show was a clever trick, lady, but I know a con job when I see one. What'd you think putting those hallucinations in my head was going to do? Make me embrace my inner scalie-lover? Become a farmer? Spend the rest of my life on this sinkhole island? Nice try, but no thanks."
"I don't need the Tohma Faiere to know the truth. I feel it here." She pointed to her heart. "Even if I didn't sense it, now I can see it. You and Karl are both too stubborn for your own good, neither of you wants to accept the truth. But I believe it, and you have the intuition within you to sense the truth, if you'd only---"
"Sense what truth? I'm not a Jedi; sensing disturbances in the Force or the space-time continuum, or whatever that rock did, isn't my thing."
"I know who you are…and so do you."
The blue scenes shifted and images of many subsequent visits with his father and brother passed, rapid-fire, through David's mind: Schedules always went ignored, books packed in his bags went largely unused until David was old enough to learn to hide himself in a bedroom for quiet reading time, many fights with Karl over everything from ownership of toys to who rode in the front seat with Dad (usually Karl) to which movies they'd watch, the first time Frank had to deal with one of David's asthma attacks…and the images then shifted to the years when both boys were old enough to join their father on his semi-annual "adventures". It was never simply a 'vacation'---life was, after all, to be experienced with gusto and a stout heart. "Life's short, boys, swim…don't wade in the shallow end" was a favored, cryptic saying of Frank's.
"I'm not eating that."
Karl made a coughing noise in reply that sounded like "wuss".
"C'mon, David, you're in a foreign country. Try something new," Dad badgered. "You can eat pasta back home."
"It's full of bacteria and it looks like a giant loogie." David stared at the giant plate of oysters that their waiter had plunked onto the table. "Do you know what kind of stuff they've found in raw oysters?"
Karl shrugged, cracked one open, and downed it with one gulp. Even if he wasn't always on Dad's side in such disagreements, there were several pretty Italian girls sitting at a nearby table, all of them staring at Karl. Karl would have eaten a plate of worms if he could impress girls by doing so.
"Come on, David. You could spend less time reading about things and more time experiencing them," Dad preached, digging into the plate of shellfish.
David fumed. He was tired of dad and Karl's condescending attitudes about his love of reading and their mocking him for being more cautious than they were. Every vacation ended up Dad and Karl versus David in whatever they did. Karl was the 'chip-of-the-old-block', from his penchant for chasing any wild-hair idea that sprang into his brain to his chasing any and every girl that crossed his path, never doing any wrong in Frank's eyes. David couldn't feel more unlike either of them if he'd tried.
"Food poisoning, I don't need to experience," David disagreed.
And so the debate over dinner and his lack of a sense of adventure continued---ending only when Dad and Karl spent the rest of the vacation fighting over the villa's one and only bathroom after coming down with rather nasty food poisoning. It might have been the only vacation the trio took where---however inadvertently-all three got what they wanted: Frank spent the weekend, just him and his sons, Karl got chicken soup and tons of attention and sympathy from the pretty girls from the restaurant, and David got plenty of peace to finish his summer reading and visit the beach while the two of them prayed to the porcelain goddess…
More images followed in quick succession: Many little league games in which Dad insisted both Karl and unathletic David participate (Karl excelling, David being indifferent on good days and loathing the sport on bad days), many school tests (David excelling, Karl coasting through apathetically), David's every lecture to convince his brother of the importance of a good education being said to Karl's retreating back, Karl sneaking out to meet whatever girl had caught his eye at the time…and then there were the 'adventures'. The images and locations of their 'vacations' blurred together: The boat dad chartered to cruise the Greek Islands and the captain, of uncertain nationality, who spoke no English and despised tourists; the trip to the Super Bowl where David had annoyed Frank by reading a book and Karl had used his false i.d. to buy a beer and ended up yakking on some poor unsuspecting Patriots fans; the plane tour of South America that skirted too close to an active volcano for David's liking; another plane ride ending with a massive thunderstorm sending them plunging into the ocean; Floating and swimming against mercifully warm storm-generated waves…an island, dinosaurs that spoke English, dinosaurs that spoke Saurian, uniformed riders, and David standing before half the population of Waterfall City, signing his name in a book as Mayor Waldo greeted him, "Welcome, David Scott…"
David Scott.
"To our new rider!" David heard his own voice, saw his own arm-an arm wrapped in the bronze-orange uniform of a skybax rider---raise a glass.
A large knot of skybax riders---his squadron, David's mind supplied, with a sudden feeling of camaraderie, of belonging---crowded into what looked like a dining hall chorused in answer, raising their own glasses: "To Alano!"
The big blonde guy was humbled, extremely embarrassed by the attention. He wore that expression of humility and pleased surprise from the day of his boxing match with David, when the Dinotopians had taken in the outcast Outsider, to the day when Rosemary and David proposed Alano take the flight training, to today---his graduation day.
Alano had surprised himself as how quickly and easily he'd assimilated into life with the 'topians. His time among Le Sage's pack was already like a past life---one he was glad to leave behind. Despite the unfortunate events surrounding David's first meetings with Alano, David and Rosemary had kept their word, and then some, helping him find a place for himself in the 'topians world. Being among people who were worth a damn and good as their word was a new and strange experience for the outsider, and he'd resolved to be worth their efforts. They'd gotten his foot in the door with Oonu and the skybax corps.
The training was difficult, but Alano had sucked it up and pushed through. David and his wingmate, Romana Denison, in particular had become something of a new family, and they had kept at him all through the more difficult days of training. Romana was quite fond of telling Alano tales of the more harrowing days when she and David were in his place…stories that invariably ended with a groan and a "Don't remind me" from the off-worlder.
David couldn't resist teasing his friend a bit. "And, only how many weeks of training, Al?"
Al glared now and retorted: "Bugger off, Scott."
Standing between them, Romana quirked and eyebrow. That usually signaled trouble, David knew. "Ask David how many times he had to stand on that platform before a pterosaur would accept him as a rider."
"No, don't ask David that," David disagreed.
Alano had taken the bait. Turnabout was fair play, after all, and he was enjoying David's embarrassment almost as much as Romana. "Really now? How many times, mate?"
Romana grinned triumphantly.
"Happy now?" David asked her.
She looked pleased enough with herself. "Extremely."
Her work done there, she went to mingle with some of the other riders. Romana stopped long enough to offer him one last gleeful smirk over her shoulder.
The grin triggered a string of memories: Romana shouting encouragement from the sidelines as David practiced for weeks on end on the dummy pterosaurs (the Dinotopian answer to a mechanical bull, he supposed); Romana encouraging David to leap a chasm---with a dizzying drop off---while her vertigo-striken wingmate was having no part of it; David and Romana running through one of the villages, playing hide-and-seek with a T-Rex, trying to replace a malfunctioning sunstone; Romana coming to his rescue after a dogfight with a flight of pteranodons sent Freefall crashing to the earth; Romana mixing roots and herbs together as fast as her hands could move to help make the island's homeopathic cure for a bad asthma attack for her wingmate…
"She likes you, that one." Alano interrupted David's thoughts.
David turned back to the blonde. "I think she just really enjoys making me cringe."
"I'm telling you---you should stop mucking with that matriarch's daughter and have a go at it with Romana. And quick, before Romana comes to her senses," Alano had advised him.
With the images in his mind, with Marion there, watching him, David could feel that his resolve was beginning to falter. This he couldn't stand, so he lunged for stern of the small boat, determined to cast off before she changed his mind. Undaunted, Marion raced past him to the bow, dug her heels into the dirt, and pushed with all her strength against him. In the resulting tug-of-war, the boat didn't move at all. "What do you think you're doing?" David snapped at her.
"Saving your life. You saved mine, after all. You were Karl and Frank's family. That means you were my friend. Even if you weren't, I still wouldn't let you get on that submarine. You're not going to kill yourself trying to cross the Razor Reef if I have anything to say about it!" she grunted, still shoving the boat. "Maybe you wouldn't listen to Karl or Noree, but you're going to listen to me."
"The concern's charming, really, but it's my life to risk, so thanks anyway…"
Marion stopped pushing and climbed into the boat.
David had no idea what to make of that. "…Okay, I'm getting mixed signals here."
"If you insist on getting aboard that submarine, I'm getting on, too. And I'll be at the bottom of the ocean with you when it scuttles on the reef. You're willing to risk your life, how about mine? If you really don't feel anything for me, then cast off and let's go."
He stopped pushing the boat, Marion saw. He didn't look happy about it, though. It didn't matter…she was getting through to him, that's what counted. She pressed, "Where are you going to go? I saw your face when I asked about your family that day. You don't have a family off-world, no one to go back to---so why are you set on killing yourself to get there?"
"To get home! Can you understand that!" he growled.
"This is your home! You have a family here if you'd only believe it. Not Le Sage and Dane, Karl and Frank and J---" Marion barely caught that slip. "If you didn't have a connection to them, you wouldn't have found your way back into their lives…aren't you tired of being alone?"
David's reaction wasn't at all what she expected. His gaze turned cold as ice, and his features became stoic. He strode to the rear of the boat, lifted her bodily out of the craft, and set her on the riverbank. "I knew Scott would use that to manipulate me, but I didn't think you would, Marion!" David accused as he shoved the boat the rest of the way into the water, leaving her standing there on the shore.
"You still think I'm trying to trick you! Why would I do that? What would I have to gain?" she defended herself.
"I have no idea! Maybe you want me to give back your medallion? Maybe you want to keep me out of your food lockers? Maybe it's just some 'cult-of-the-dinosaur' mentality thing where you use the Tohma Faiere to convince me I'm one of you because you want everyone to join your little 'utopia' society. Some criminal rehabilitation thing. I'm sure you think you'd be doing me some big favor, but it doesn't matter. I'm outta here!" He looked up long enough to see if she were going to try to jump into the boat again.
She had set the Tohma Faiere atop a large rock. As David watched, Marion picked up a second rock and hefted it above the faith stone as if making ready to smash it into a million pieces. "Nice try, but you forget, I've been bluffed by Le Sage, and she's the queen of theatrics..."
"The Tohma Faiere is a prized artifact of my people. It's the only way to correct the timeline. There are people like Dane who'd love to use its powers for their own ends. It's my duty to protect it," she said, not one iota of a bluff in her voice. She locked her gaze with his, letting him see that she was deadly serious. "But if I have to destroy it to prove to you that I'm not trying to trick you or manipulate you, then I will. I'll miss never getting to meet David Scott, your family will miss him, but I'd rather you were David Barrett for the rest of your life than dead..."
He raised his voice to drown her out. "Then, go ahead. It won't make any difference. Anyway, it looks to me like you and the dino-scout and Frank are getting along just fine without me, so why don't you...what?"
She hadn't moved to smash the stone. In fact, Marion was gaping at him, wide-eyed and stunned, like he'd just slapped her or something. He had no idea what he'd said to bring that look of---of hurt---to her face, but guilt bit at him. Instinct---or maybe it was intuition after all---took over, just as it had that day on the beach. He took a step toward her and started to apologize, but Marion spoke first.
"How can you say that?" she asked softly. "What kind of life have you had in this timeline---in any timeline—that makes you think a family would be 'fine' when someone they love has been..." She fumbled for the word she wanted. "...has been stolen! How can you be fine with having people you loved stolen from you? Because, I know I'm not."
Marion had realized, too late, the full implications of her words. All she could do was wait to see what his reaction would be. His icy, hostile glare had softened...even the unreadable mask he usually affected gave way to a smile.
Something about David and Marion…Karl's mind raced, the ghost of one more image lingering just at the edge of his memory. Karl focused on it, willed it to play itself out.
"How long are you going to keep this up, Karl?"
It was David again...and he was definitely wearing a Dinotopian skybax rider's uniform in this vision…
…and Karl was not. He saw himself clad in loose, regular Dinotopian clothing.
"I don't want to talk to you, David, I mean it!" Karl was weaving through the vendors of Waterfall City's marketplace, pointedly keeping his back to David…to his brother. Baby Twenty-Six was tucked beneath Karl's arm.
"Yeah, I got that much," David shot back. He circled in front of Karl and physically blocked his path. "You know, if you've got a problem with me, fine, I'm used to your crap, but you don't have the right to this martyr act---which, by the way, is getting really old---and you don't have the right to yell at Marion like she's trash!" David had tried catching Karl by the arm, but Karl jerked free of his grip and pointed a warning finger at him.
"Don't touch me, I'm serious."
Twenty-Six looked from Karl to David, catching the anger in the humans' voices, and made a noise of distress. The boys were arguing in front of a merchant's booth. The spat was drawing gazes from most of the passing shoppers. The saurian vendor said something in the dinosaur's native tongue that sounded like a reprimand and David answered back in the same language with what sounded like an apology. Karl, not understanding a word of the exchange with his modest grasp of the language, took advantage of the distraction and stormed off. David was right behind him.
"You want to talk, then tell me what happened with you and Marion," Karl said.
David frowned. He was getting sick of hearing that question from Karl whenever he spent any time alone with the matriarch's daughter. "I'm not telling you anything. It's none of your business, Karl."
Karl couldn't believe his ears. "None of my-I saw you two on the balcony last night, David. You were trying to steal my girlfriend! First time I turn my back---"
Karl remembered it now. Even without the Tohma Faiere, Karl remembered the vision of Marion turning down his invitation to the Dawn Festival. Karl had gone looking for her and seen her, sitting with his brother---very close to his brother---on Flippeau's balcony, looking quite cozy and happy there, and even laughing. They never once spotted him down on the street. All Karl remembered after that was seeing red and a fit of jealousy that had progressively soured his mood and temper. He'd sat in Flippeau's house---practically lying in wait---until almost sunrise for the two of them to come down from the balcony, had all but jumped down their throats as soon as they walked into the living room. All he'd managed to do was offend Marion with his questions and seriously tick off his brother.
"Are you serious? Aren't you the guy who took her skinny-dipping while I had pneumonia? You want to play that card? How about the summer I spent with you and Frank. You told Sharon Carter that I had---what was it?---mono so you could take her to the Fourth of July fireworks?"
"That was different." Karl was surprised to find that they had circled through the marketplace and ended up back on the bridge. Romana and her pterosaur were standing there, waiting for David. Close enough to overhear but trying not to listen in, David's wingmate was shaking her head at the bickering siblings as if saying 'not again'.
"And summer camp? Did you actually tell Kim McCormack I'd joined the French Foreign Legion after you locked me in that supply room? You want the rest of the list?"
"So this is retaliation?"
"Jeez, you are unbelievable! Get over yourself. Not everything on this planet revolves around you, Karl. I'm not apologizing to you. I didn't do anything wrong and neither did Marion. In the first place, you can't just declare her your girlfriend like she's a piece of land you're laying claim to. In the second place, if you're having trouble accepting that you're not the only one who cares about her, you're going to have to get some therapy or whatever you have to do to pry your head out of your ass and deal with it."
That was hitting too close to home. It was true---Karl would prefer believing that Marion had eyes for him and only him and that his brother was living in a fantasy world if he thought otherwise. But Marion had said it herself the night Karl and David had gone with Cyrus on that submarine: "I love you both." Even if Karl chose to dismiss it, the words still echoed in his mind.
"Marion's different..." he persisted.
"Until the next hit-and-run victim comes along…" David turned around and walked away. He beelined for the spot where Romana and Freefall were waiting.
"…and you know it!" Karl followed him now. He didn't want to ask the question he most needed answered, but it was now or never. "Did she ask you to the festival? Cause she turned me down cold, and next thing I know I find her with you. I deserve to know if she blew me off because of you."
"You're an idiot, Karl," David informed his brother.
Karl blinked. "I'm sorry? I'm what?"
"You asked Marion to the Dawn Festival. Do you have any idea what that means? I'm guessing not. You never bother to learn anything about the island that you don't absolutely have to know…"
"Don't lecture me!"
David turned so abruptly that Karl crashed into him. "The Dawn Festival is…it's not the homecoming dance, it's not about Karl showing up with the prettiest girl in school! It's for couples that are going to be bonded. Asking Marion to that is about as good as asking her to marry you. Did you know that?"
Karl had not known that. "Did she ask you?"
"Oh, give me a break…" his brother snapped.
Romana glanced at David, raising an eyebrow as if she was also curious to know. David missed her look entirely.
Twenty-Six could take no more of the humans' bickering. Her tiny---but considerably strong---teeth clamped down on Karl's hand and he yelped, letting go of her at once. The baby casmasaur scampered into the crowd.
"That's great, David." Karl pushed his way after her, shouting: "Twenty-Six!" At that moment, he hated everything from the fact that he couldn't escape this island to the fact that David was right, to the bitter truth that, if his brother wasn't there, maybe Karl would be the one in the skybax corps, maybe he'd have Marion's undivided affections, and maybe his entire life would have been one hundred times easier.
He caught Twenty-Six before she could hide beneath one of the merchant's tables. "Where do you think you're going?" he scolded. It was only then that Karl realized David had also been chasing after the baby dinosaur. Karl was about to continue their argument, but didn't get the chance. From the crowd, a voice yelled, "Thief! Stop him!"
The shout gained the attention of everyone in the marketplace, even Karl and David. David must have spotted the trouble first, because he took off like a shot into the crowd, with Karl not far behind, slowed a bit by having to lug Twenty-Six.
The thief didn't get far. He attempted to get past the crowd by running across the tabletops in the martketplace. Reaching the end of the row of tables, he leaped to the ground. He rounded a corner and was nearly plowed over by a cart laden with bushels of produce. He skidded to a stop only just in time, but the delay was all the Scotts needed. David tackled the smaller man hard and knocked him into a booth loaded with baskets and woven throw rugs. The collision briefly knocked the wind out of both of them. The thief recovered quickly, kicking and punching at David with one hand while still clutching the box with his other, trying to escape.
It was then that David had recognized the boy.
"Jack Barrett, you little…" David tried wrestling the box with the Tohma Faiere out of the outsider's grip. "I should have kn…."
"Sorry, but a man's got to look out for himself." Jack drew a bone dagger from his coat and was about to stab at David with it when Karl arrived. Karl spotted the threat to his brother and instinctively pounced, trying to tear the blade from Jack's hand.
Two against one were apparently too lousy of odds for the outsider. He dropped the box. It opened upon impact with the stone street, and the Tohma Faiere tumbled out. The meteorite began to glow a brilliant blue…
That was it! That was how the switch had happened!
Karl's eyes snapped open. He was alone in the small chamber of the Sanctuary, with no idea how long he'd been locked in the Tohma Faiere's visions. The faith stone was gone, but it didn't matter. Karl didn't need to see anymore. He had the answers.