Chapter Eleven

I felt a few cold drops on my face.
“Hey, Caity-kins,” came Luke’s voice faintly from somewhere. “Get up, now. We’ve got some water.”
I felt the cold liquid rush into my mouth, and it was the most perfect feeling ever. I drank the water, and opened my eyes.
“There she is!” Lucas said. There was someone else, there, too. A woman, who wore a yellow blouse with a long white skirt that came down to her ankles. The only parts of her skin showing were her feet through her sandals, and her stunningly piercing green eyes through a small hole in her veil. She wore gloves, and the veil wrapped around her head, so everything else was completely covered up.
“Wh-where are we?”I groaned.
“We are still in the Desert of Naharah,” Luke answered. “I managed to find a little village, though, and told them our tough situation with you being dehydrated and all. This lovely woman was gracious enough to give us a canteen of water, even though their village is suffering from drought.”
I sat up. “Thank you, so much.”
The woman nodded.
“What is your name?”
She closed her eyes, and didn’t answer.
“She doesn’t like talking much, I suppose,” Luke said. “She hasn’t been answering me, either. The whole village is rather quiet. Maybe they were brought up not to, y’know, talk to strangers.”
The woman handed me the canteen, and I accepted it. I drank more water from it, and was soon able to stand up.
“Are you all right, now?” Luke asked.
“I think so,” I said. “But maybe we’d better get going. I mean, don’t we have to figure out what that earthquake was about?”
The Naharian woman opened her eyes again. It almost hurt to look into them.
“Ah, we’ll eventually figure it out,” Luke said. “Do you want to go into the village?”
“Luke, I told you it’s not safe in this Desert,” I said. “I almost died of dehydration.”
“But you didn’t! I told you to trust me. I told you nothing would be wrong, that you wouldn’t die of dehydration, and you would be fine, and here you are! Look at you! Fully functional and fully wet. Wait, no, not wet. That’s not what I meant. I meant that you are all hydrated. Ah, good old water. Shall we go look?”
“No,” I said. “I want to leave this place.”
“First you want to leave the last one, and now you want to leave this one?” Luke asked. “Just relax and have some cake.”
I only just realized that he was eating some of his chocolate cake.
“Lucas, I do not want to stay here any longer. I’m sorry about that, but I’m not exactly used to being in deserts.”
Luke groaned. “All right. Fine. We’ll do whatever the hell you want. After all, we are here to give you the best time of your life. Let’s go travel the depths of space, the wonders of alternate worlds!” He then looked at me kind of weird. Straight into my eyes and unblinking. I raised one eyebrow. It was a bit awkward.
“Okay, then,” I said. I turned to the Naharian woman. “Thank you so much again for the water. It saved my life, and I will not forget it.”
She nodded again, turned around, and then disappeared in a gust of sand.
“Well, then,” Lucas said, putting the remaining cake away and hopping onto his motorcycle. He hit some buttons on the side of the dashboard, the some lights began to flash green.
“Are we looking for the next door?” I said, putting the canteen around my neck and getting onto the motorcycle.
“Yes, that is what we are doing,” Luke said. Before long, the lights began to flash purple. “Aw, bloody hell! Why does it have to be so far away?”
I looked at the dashboard, but didn’t understand what it meant. “What? How far away is it?”
“At least twenty kilometers,” he said.
“Eh. Not as bad as I expected. At least we have water now.”
“Yeah. I guess we’ll just have to drive.”
So we drove. The blinding white sky slowly grew darker and darker. It was odd to see time moving after time had stayed so still for such a long time. I did nothing except sit at the back of the motorcycle, sipping the water from the canteen, quickly stealing bites of Luke’s hidden chocolate cake without his knowledge, and watching the sky grow darker as Luke and I sailed across the sea of sand that was the Naharian desert.
There was another blank door, and it seemed almost blue in the pale moonlight. Thankfully, the purple door with the shiny silver door knob stood out like a sore thumb right in the center of it.
“Are you sure this is the next door?” I asked. “It looks exactly the same as the last one. And I don’t want to go back into that dimension and run into the psychotic version of me again.”
“She isn’t psychotic,” Luke said. “She is just kind of evil. And she was not brought up right the way you were.”
“But Cedric was alive,” I said. “I just… I don’t know, I guess I’m still in shock from seeing him.”
“Yeah, well, thankfully you didn’t see yourself or him in this dimension.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What, do we exist here?”
“Oh, yes,” Lucas said. “But not in the Desert, of course. You live in a village called Bridam, which is close to the northern pole of the planet. It is freezing cold up there, I will tell you. But the girls are hot, at least.”
“You are so creepy,” I said. “But am I… am I happy there? Or is Caitlin happy? Is Caitlin happy with Cedric?”
“Caitlin and Cedric Whitewood of Bridam in this dimension live average lives. Their relationship isn’t too good, however, because they are orphans and they live with two different families. They barely see each other.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed. Was I ever going to be happy and sane anywhere? “Well, then I have no intention of visiting them. At least they have got fairly decent lives up in the North Pole.”
“They live in Bridam,” Lucas corrected me.
“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s just go.”
Lucas opened the door, and the two of us went in.