river was calmer than the last time. “Where’s … Aly … Marco?” Cass gulped.
A shock of dyed red hair burst through to the sunlight. Aly looked like she could barely breathe. She was sinking under. I had to help. “Can you make it to the river bank on your own?” I asked Cass.
“No!” he said.
“Yeeeeahhhhh!” cried a voice closer to the shore. Marco was thrusting upward, shaking his head, blinking his eyes. In a nanosecond, he was swimming toward Aly. “Go to shore!” he cried out to us. “Did Torquin come through?”
“I don’t think so!” I said.
With powerful strokes, Marco swam Aly to the shallows, where she was able to stand. Then he plunged back the way he’d come. “We have to find him!” he cried out. “I’ll be right back!”
As he disappeared under the surface, Cass and I swam toward Aly. We were in a different part of the river from last time. Shallower. It didn’t hurt that the bad weather had stopped, and the current was calmer.
We reached the sandy soil and flopped next to Aly, exhausted. “Next time …” she panted, “we bring … water wings.”
Gasping for breath, we waited, staring at the river for Marco. Just as I was contemplating a jump back in to find him, his head broke through. We stood eagerly as he swam to shore. Trudging up to the bank, he shook his head, his lips drawn tight. “Couldn’t do it …” he said. “Went right up to the portal … tried to look through … considered going back …” In frustration, he smacked his right fist into his left palm.
“You did your best, Marco,” Aly said. “Even you need to breathe.”
“I—I failed,” Marco said. “I didn’t get him.”
He pushed his way through us and slumped down onto the sandy soil. Cass sat next to him, putting a skinny arm around his broad shoulder. “I know how you feel, brother Marco,” he said.
“Maybe Torquin got stuck in the portal,” Aly suggested.
Marco shook his head. “We could fit an ox team through that thing.”
“He might have gotten cold feet at the last minute,” Cass said, “and gone back.”
We all nodded, but frankly that didn’t sound like Torquin. Fear wasn’t in his toolkit. He was a good swimmer. And he had lungs the size of a truck engine. All I could think about were Professor Bhegad’s words: What rules do apply, in a world that one must experience cross-dimensionally?
“Maybe he couldn’t get through,” I said quietly. “Maybe we’re the only ones who can. I mean, let’s face it, we each do have something he doesn’t have.”
“A vocabulary of more than fifty words?” Cass said with a wan smile. Under the circumstances, his joke landed flat.
“The gene,” I said. “G7W. He’s not a Select.”
“You think the portal recognizes a gene?” Aly asked.
“Think of the weird things that have happened to us,” I said. “The waterfall that healed Marco’s body. The Heptakiklos that called to me. The fact that I could pull out a shard and let a griffin through, when others had tried but couldn’t. All these things happened near a flux area, too. The gene gives us special abilities. Maybe jumping through the portal is one of them.”
Cass nodded. “So while we passed through, Torquin just … hit a wall. Which means he may be back with Professor Bhegad, safe and sound.”
“Right,” I said.
“Right,” Aly agreed.
We all stared silently at the gently rolling Euphrates, wanting to believe what we’d just agreed on. Hoping our beefy, laconic guardian was all right. Knowing in our hearts and minds that no matter his outcome, one thing was clear.
We were on our own.
Cass was crouched low, stroking a palm-sized green lizard in his hand. “Hey, look! It’s not afraid of me!”
Aly crouched beside him. “She’s cute. She can be our mascot. Let’s call her Lucy.”
Cass cocked his head. “Leonard. I’m getting more of a he-vibe.”
“Uh, dudes?” Marco looked exasperated. “I’m getting a go-vibe. Come on.”
Cass gently put Leonard in his backpack. We continued walking toward the city, hidden by the trees. It was the height of the day and the sun beat mercilessly. Through the branches I glanced at the farm. Carts rested on the side of yellow mud-brick buildings. I figured the farmers must have been napping.
Cass sniffed the air. “Barley. That’s what they’re growing.”
“How do you know?” Marco asked. “Were you raised on a farm?”
“No.” Cass’s face clouded. “Well, sort of. I lived on one for a couple of years. An aunt and uncle. Didn’t work out too well.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Marco said.
Cass nodded. “No worries. Really.”
As they walked on ahead, I glanced at Aly. Questioning Cass about his childhood was never a good idea. “I’m worried about Cass,” she confided, lowering her voice. “He thinks his powers are dwindling. And he’s so sensitive about everything. Especially his past.”
“At least he’s got us. We’re his family now,” I said. “That should give him strength.”
Aly let out a little snort. “That’s a scary thought. Four kids who might not live to see fourteen. We’re about as dysfunctional as it gets.”
Ahead of us, Marco had put an arm around Cass’s shoulder. He was telling some story, making Cass laugh. “Look,” I said, gesturing with my chin. “Dysfunctional, maybe, but don’t they look like a big brother and little brother?”
Aly’s worried expression turned into a smile. “Yeah.”
As we neared the edge of the pine grove, we were all dripping sweat. Cass and Marco had pulled ahead, and they were now crouched by a pine tree at the edge of the grove. We gathered next to them. No one had noticed us. No one was near. So we could take in a long, clear view of the city.
Babylon sprawled out from both sides of the river. Its wall was surrounded by a moat, channeled from the river itself. A great arched gate, leading into a tunnel, breached the wall
