Oracle--Mutant Wood Read online

  Ret searched the MyPlate graphic for the sixth food group, assuming it had been squeezed into a small and inconspicuous crevice again. But the fats and oils food group was nowhere to be found. It was missing.

  Without any warning, a surge of energy rushed into Ret’s right hand, enough that he broke his pencil into three pieces. A few of his classmates glared at him. Once they had turned away, Ret stole a glance at his palm, with Paige and Ana leaning over to have a look. The fifth scar had come alive again.

  If the scar was indeed a tree, then it was a very peculiar looking tree. It had the general shape of a figure-8—either that or the mathematical symbol for infinity, though standing upright rather than on its side. The top half was bushy—not so much with leaves but with needles—and was more pointed at the tip before it fanned out in its midsection and became more slender again as it neared the trunk. The trunk seemed to twist as it plunged underground. The tree’s roots made up the bottom half of the scar. Like the top, they swelled in the middle before narrowing until they eventually came together at the bottom.

  All in all, the symbol was easily the most detailed scar so far, hands down. Somewhat of an artistic masterpiece, it had many features, almost like it was a living system, yet every single component seemed connected to one another in a most continuous and harmonious manner. In a word, it was striking.

  Ret’s attention returned to MyPlate. He counted the food groups again: one, two, three, four, five—the sixth was nowhere to be found. The scar pulsed again. By this point, his befuddlement was so profound that it prompted him to do something he almost never did in class: he raised his hand (his left one).

  Suddenly, the teacher went mute. She saw a student in her class, raising his hand, but she didn’t want to call on him—no, not that student. She pretended not to notice.

  “I have a question,” Ret put forth. Most of the class looked back at him.

  Annoyed, the teacher sighed and said, “Yes?”

  “What happened to the fats food group?” Ret asked.

  Confused, the teacher replied, “What do you mean?”

  “The Food Guide Pyramid had six food groups, with fats as the smallest,” Ret explained himself. “The MyPyramid thing still included fats, though just barely. But now, with MyPlate, fats aren’t even on the table. Why is that?”

  The teacher was at a loss for words.

  Fortunately for her, one of the students said, “Maybe it’s assumed we’ll consume some fats from protein and dairy.”

  “Actually,” an astute classmate butted in, “according to MyPlate’s guidelines, we should eat lean protein and fat-free dairy.”

  “So apparently,” Ret rejoined, “we are being told not to make any room on our plates for fats.”

  No one could respond.

  So Ret added, “I wonder why?”

  “Well, everyone knows fats make you fat,” the teacher said matter-of-factly, eager to regain control of the conversation. Paige stopped taking notes, unsure if she agreed with that statement.

  “Why?” Ret questioned.

  “They just do,” was the teacher’s most educated reason. “It’s in their very name: fat. And saturated fats are particularly bad. It’s a universally known fact.”

  “Prove it,” Ret sincerely desired.

  “Excuse me?” the teacher balked.

  “How do you know that?” Ret interrogated.

  “Because,” the peeved instructor hissed, subconsciously putting her hand on her hip, “according to the American Heart Association, diets that are low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease.”

  “‘May’?” Ret politely pointed out. “That doesn’t sound too convincing.”

  With a snort, the teacher embellished, “You see, y’all are just too young to understand this yet. Quite a few decades ago, researchers set out to learn why rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity were climbing. Several studies linked these problems to diets that were high in saturated fat, things like butter, burgers, bacon—you know, the good stuff.” She chuckled to herself. “But now we know we should eat more grains, fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and fat-free dairy—just like MyPlate says.”

  Suddenly, Ana joined the conversation: “Wait a minute.” Given her ongoing crusade to find out the truth about what’s really healthy, she had been listening intently to the lecture, hoping it would provide some insight. Suspecting some inconsistencies, however, she flipped back in her notebook to a lecture the teacher had given on this very subject. It was true that Ana wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the box, but when it came to common sense, she was no dummy.

  “So why is it that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Ana started reading some of her notes, “heart disease, which is almost entirely preventable, is currently the leading cause of death in the United States—or one in every four deaths?” That was how Peggy Sue died, Ret recalled.

  “Why, since 1980,” Ana continued, “has the number of Americans with diagnosed diabetes more than tripled? And why, since the 1970s, have obesity rates more than doubled among adults and children, with two-thirds of adults and one-third of children either obese or overweight? If fats are unhealthy,” Ana concluded, “and society has been moving away from them, then why are we becoming more and more unhealthy?”

  The teacher was speechless. The facts were staring her in the face. Lucky for her, the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Ret, Paige, and Ana stared at each other with suspicion, like detectives unraveling a mystery, while the rest of the class scurried out of the room.

  With an offended air, the teacher strode up to their desks. “I don’t know the answers to all of your questions,” she sneered at the three of them, “but if you’re so smart, why don’t you tell us?” Then she spun on her heels and walked away.

  Ret glanced at his scar and clenched his fist. It was time to go to Russia.

  CHAPTER 6

  MIST SECRETS

  Stealing Lye’s cane was going to be no easy task. For starters, Jaret had never seen the evil lord without it, always clutching it as if it was glued to his hideous hand. Like a child and its favorite toy, Lye took his cane everywhere, so much so that Jaret wouldn’t be surprised if he even slept with it. Of course, it wasn’t his cane—Lye had stolen it from the First Father a long time ago. So Jaret felt perfectly justified in trying to get it back.

  As difficult as it seemed, however, the real worry was in the consequences. Whether or not the mission was a success, it would be considered an act of treason, punishable by death—or worse: becoming one of Lye’s prisoners. Yes, in Lye’s sinister mind, death was a blessing; to put someone out of their misery was an act of mercy. That’s why he usually kept his most despised enemies alive indefinitely. In fact, rumor had it there were some prisoners in the dungeon at Waters Deep who had been there for centuries, even though no one knew how Lye was able to postpone death among his captives or even himself.

  In the course of devising a game plan, Jaret had the idea to inform Mr. Coy of his intentions just in case something were to go wrong. Coy was surprised by the proposition, of course, and tried to talk Jaret out of it, saying it was too dangerous and not worth the risk. But Jaret had already made up his mind. After years of serving the bad guy, he yearned to do something to help the hero. He didn’t know why the cane was so important, just that it was, and he hoped, by gaining possession of it, that he could use it as collateral to buy time, save a life, or even preserve Coy Manor.

  What’s more, Jaret missed his wife and daughter, and he figured this would be a great way to officially cut ties with Lye and go out with a bang so he could finally go home once and for all. It was a sentiment to which Mr. Coy could easily relate. And so, although he still disapproved of the plan, Coy gave the brave man his blessing and asked him to touch base immediately afterward.

  “If I don’t hear from you, captain,” Mr. Coy told him, “I will assume you are in trouble.”

  “Underst
ood,” Jaret replied.

  “I guess that leaves only one question,” Coy said.

  “Yes?” asked Jaret.

  “Have you ever—Ben Coy?”

  It was a piece of advice that Jaret knew he would need. He figured the best place to steal the cane would be in the dungeon, whose thick mists might provide enough cover to allow him to sneak up on Lye and then make a run for it. As his cell phone was synced with the Deep’s surveillance system, Jaret kept an eye on Lye’s location as best he could, waiting for that moment when he seemed headed to the dungeon. When that moment arrived, Jaret struck up his courage and decided to go for it.

  To the north side of the complex he hastened, making sure not to follow Lye too closely. From a distance, he watched his superior stride up to the familiar door and cause it to open by striking it with a slight electrical current from his cane. Lye stepped inside the dungeon and then, to Jaret’s astonishment, turned left as the door reclosed. This was absurd to Jaret who, when he had visited the dungeon not too long ago, probed the entryway with his foot and felt the floor abruptly end to his left.

  When a moment or two had passed, Jaret made his way to the door and, like before, prompted it to open by using his miniature stun gun. Fog spilled out as he walked in, the door shutting behind him. He was greeted by a familiar sight—a sightless one, that is. Enveloped in vapor, his vision had become all but useless, so his other senses took over like before. This time, however, his ears picked up something that he hadn’t heard during his first visit: a very faint squeaking sound, like the noise a rusty wheel makes when it needs grease. It was coming from below him and seemed to be growing more distant by the second.

  Still standing by the door, Jaret cautiously crouched down and got on his knees. He turned left and crawled until he arrived at the edge. Extending one hand, he slowly reached out to see if he could find anything to help him understand where Lye had gone. Reaching as far as he could, he almost lost his balance when he caught hold of something. It was a cable of sorts, strong and tense as if it was supporting something heavy.

  Jaret had discovered an elevator, the unenclosed kind that you’d expect to find in a primitive mine shaft. He could feel the cable vibrating and still hear the pulley squeaking, leading him to believe Lye was onboard and already well on his way down the line.

  Jaret knew he needed to catch up somehow. He grabbed the cable with both hands and leapt from the ledge, then immediately wrapped his legs around the line, holding on for dear life. On account of the ubiquitous mists, the cable was extremely slippery. To keep from sliding too fast, Jaret gathered the bottom of his shirt around the cable to aid his grip, then angled the thick soles of his heavy boots to give him more traction.

  Slowly but surely, the resigning commander slid his way down the line, straining his ears to gauge how far he was from the elevator. When it seemed he wasn’t gaining on Lye, he loosened the grip of his hands and feet in order to hasten his descent. Soon, the squeaking grew louder. He loosened his grip even more.

  Suddenly, there was a loud clang as the metal elevator made contact with the ground. Startled, Jaret immediately stopped. The cable had ceased vibrating. He glanced around, hoping to see something—anything—but nothing. So he listened.

  Shuffle, click. Shuffle, click. Shuffle, click.

  It was the sound of a feeble, old man hobbling along with the help of a cane. Fortunately for Jaret, it seemed like Lye wasn’t moving too fast.

  Quietly, Jaret resumed his fall. Sensing himself nearing the ground, he relaxed his legs in preparation for making a smooth landing on top of the elevator, then gradually slowed and gently touched down. With ever increasing caution, he laid down on his stomach and slowly slid feet-first off the elevator until his boots met the floor. He knew the slightest noise might cost him his life.

  Jaret was relieved to find the view on ground-level to be considerably less obscured than the one in the air. Although the area was still plagued by the pervasive mists, they weren’t quite as dense down here, as if this was where they originated and had not yet expanded to fill the empty space above, like how steam escaping from the top of a train starts out small and contained but quickly disperses. Though a boon to his vision, this was also a bane to his stealth, meaning he had to be extra careful not to be spotted.

  The ground was rocky and uneven, not to mention wet and slippery. Jaret hid behind the first boulder he came to, anxious to conceal himself until he learned Lye’s location.

  Shuffle, click. Shuffle, click. Shuffle, click.

  Jaret looked in the direction from whence the sound was coming. He could see a figure moving away from him. Although it was no more than an outline, he knew the hunched silhouette belonged to his boss.

  Jaret pursued, watching his every step and making sure not to dislodge even the smallest pebble. Keeping his balance proved a challenge on the wet and sometimes mossy rocks.

  Shuffle, click. Shuffle, click.

  Although Jaret had no idea where he was going, Lye most certainly did. The should-be-dead but oh-so-determined senior carried on without abatement, uttering the occasional grunt whenever he lost his footing or his cloak got snagged. It appeared he was desperate to reach a certain point, almost like his very life depended on it.

  Wherever they were headed, it was a place with lots of water. The landscape was changing by the minute, this time becoming more and more saturated not from the water in the air but on the ground. Puddles and ponds were popping up all over the place, fed by underground hot springs whose heat had turned the air warm and exceptionally humid. Great pools—some shallow, others deep—were filled with crystal clear water, their lower reaches sporting rich shades of blue and green. Some spots were inundated, spilling over and running down the rocks, creating waterfalls and streams, with every body of water giving off its share of steam. It was beautiful, paradisiacal even—the kind of place that people pay to go to for a tropical vacation.

  There was a certain kind of hot spring that Jaret liked best of all, however. The biggest and brightest, these favorites were like full-circle rainbows, painted on the ground: a rich, dark blue filled most of the center, while the fringe changed from turquoise to yellow to orange to red—each color the purest of its kind. The lighter hues along the outermost edges dribbled away, sweeping and swirling like flames of a fireball. From a bird’s-eye view, these springs resembled miniature suns, stunning in every sense of the word.

  Jaret was very familiar with these colorful springs; they could be found in great numbers aboveground throughout the island of Waters Deep. In fact, the first time he saw one, the sight seemed to ring a bell in his brainwashed mind, reminding him of a time years before when he had been sent out West for training as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard. He had gone to a national park one weekend—“What was it called, Purplerock?...no, Purplestone? Oh I remember, Yellowstone!”—and seen one of its main attractions: the Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in America whose vibrant colors are created by pigmented bacteria in the microbial mats that grow along the edges of the mineral-rich water. The same phenomenon was present on Waters Deep many times over (which is what originally led Ben and Helen Coy to the island years ago and, more recently, drew the Coopers’ and Coys’ attention when they were unknowingly heading toward the island while fleeing Fire Island in the hot-air balloon).

  But Lye cared little for this marvelous display of nature’s wonder, bypassing the vibrant springs altogether in his undaunted march to his unknown destination. Every time Jaret heard the click after each shuffle, he was reminded of his own quest to filch the cane.

  For several minutes, the chase continued. Based on the size of its floor, Jaret assumed the room they were in had to be enormous. More than once, he thought he heard the echo of heavy chains being rattled against iron bars, followed by the blood-curdling cry of an eternally incarcerated soul. It caused Jaret to halt for a moment and wonder if this gigantic room constituted Lye’s dungeon, which he knew was large but “surely not t
his large?” He tried not to think about it.

  With so much else to look at, Jaret’s gaze was shifting more and more away from his steps, causing him to slip more often. One time, he tripped and put his hands down to break his fall, but one of his palms got cut on the jagged edge of one of the rocks. He applied pressure until it stopped bleeding, then ripped off the hem of his shirt and dipped it in a nearby pool of water to clean the cut as best he could. He began to wipe the wound when, to his amazement, it started to heal right before his very eyes. In a matter of seconds, it was gone, with no sign of a scar. Jaret was awe-struck. He had figured the pure water contained some minerals that would aid the healing process, but he hadn’t been expecting to be healed almost instantly.

  The miracle got him thinking. As arduous as the journey had been thus far, he didn’t feel very tired or sore—actually, not at all. In fact, the farther he went, the better he felt. New life seemed to enter his body with every breath. He walked over to the nearest pool and stared at its surface, so clear and still that he could see his own reflection. He looked much the same, but younger—a little less gray in his hair, a few less wrinkles in his forehead. He was beginning to suspect Lye knew something that he didn’t know. He kept following.

  Not much later, Jaret saw Lye finally come to a stop, and he knew they had arrived. Before them was a great fountain, shooting up from the ground like a geyser. It was in a state of constant eruption, at least a hundred feet tall and surrounded by several other fountains, all of which were smaller but some still quite large. The ground was slightly rounded, like the top of a giant basketball, and as the fountains fell to the floor, the water rippled away in all directions, infiltrating the entire room’s water supply. Like so much else in the vicinity, it was a breathtaking display of raw power, and it looked like a good candidate for the source of all water.

  Jaret hid in the cleft of a rock and waited for Lye’s next move. The villain didn’t look so good, trembling as he shuffled toward the fountain. As the rippling water began to lap at his feet, he fell on his face and started to slurp it up. Jaret thought that was rather odd. Was Lye dying of thirst? He kept watching.