To make things a little easier since we've got so many characters now, I've put the name of the person from whose point of view the section is above that section, and each person will have their own colour. Sorry again about the delay. Enjoy! :D
EPISODE SIX
WE'RE NOT REAL?
Sarah
Sarah Pittner barely existed. She knew that she was being created, and she knew that she was being created with an innately aggressive manner. She knew that she was going to be important, but she didn’t yet know why. She was just a figment of someone’s imagination right now, nothing substantial or corporeal…
Sarah could sense that she loved water, but she didn’t even know what water was. In fact, she didn’t even know how – or why – she had a name. Who had given it to her? Who was creating her? Sarah didn’t know, nor did she particularly care.
She let herself drift back into nothingness as she waited to be created.
Vanessa
Vanessa knew she could do it; she should be able to do it. So why couldn’t she? Why were her powers giving her such a hard time about going into another world? Perhaps because those worlds weren’t real. Perhaps because those worlds were still being created and weren’t ready yet. But c’mon! How long could it take to bring a world into existence? Vanessa had done it many times in her mind, like when she had created a water world a few months during math class. How cool it would be to visit that place!
And another thing that irked her: her ‘amazing teleporting powers’ were making her look bad to Skandar! Sure, she could pop into different places, but the fact that she couldn’t do the one thing that both of them wanted her to be able to do…it was definitely irritating. And now Skandar had wings! How unfair was that? Vanessa wanted wings; what good had her teleporting powers done her?
As she watched Skandar struggle to fly, her friend only getting a foot or two off the ground before she had to touch back down, Vanessa wondered if she could transport Skandar to another world, even if she couldn’t move herself. Maybe if she tried to transport both of them, it would work. Intrigued by the idea, Vanessa said, “Hey, Skandar. Do you think if I tried to transport both of us to another world, it would work?”
Skandar paused, ruffling her wings, and then shrugged, saying, “It’s worth a shot, I guess, if you think it might work. There’s been no indication that it will, but…Sure, you can try if you want.”
Vanessa debated for another moment, and then decided. “Okay. I guess. Come here; let’s see if this’ll work.”
Skandar laughed as she came over to her friend. “You really want to meet Jack Sparrow, don’t you?” Her eyes amused, Skandar looked down at Vanessa where she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by books that she had tried to read herself into and failed.
She nodded vigorously, so excited about the fact that she could barely contain her energy. “Heck yeah!” she agreed, getting to her feet and dusting herself off as she eyed Skandar. “How are you supposed to move wings anyway?” she wondered aloud.
Beaming with pride, Skandar flapped them experimentally, gusting Vanessa with a large breath of wind. “Just like you flap your arms,” she said matter-of-factly. “But they’re not strong enough for me to fly yet; it’s like those baby birds who can’t fly until they’re bigger and stronger.”
Vanessa laughed; she couldn’t help it. To hear Skandar compare herself to a baby bird was hilarious, especially since Skandar actually had wings. “I’ll just call you ‘birdie’ from now on, okay?” she said with a laugh, which drew a disdainful look from Skandar.
“No!” her friend protested. “That’s not okay, Vanessa!”
“Oh, c’mon! You just said-”
“No!” Skandar crossed her arms and glared at Vanessa, looking snubbed. Seeing that she could not be reasoned with, Vanessa sighed and grabbed Skandar’s wing, causing her friend to stumble a little.
“Hey!” Skandar protested. “What’re you-”
“I want to go to my water world!” Vanessa interrupted, and she snapped, holding tight to Skandar’s wing just in case. She waited for nothing to happen, as usual, but to Vanessa’s complete shock, the world began to dissolve around them and colours began to fade away. She dimly heard Skandar scream in alarm and while that alarmed Vanessa, she couldn’t manage to say anything back.
Suddenly they were falling, and then a half-second later, they were underwater. Vanessa reflexively let go of Skandar’s wing and began to swim for the surface, which she could see not far above them. Though she should have been excited that her powers worked, she was mostly confused, scared, and desperate for air.
She kept swimming, her lungs beginning to burn.
Edmund
In his opinion, coming to this strange new place was even better than being in Narnia. There were no kingdoms to run, no enemies to fight, no battles to fight – and there was also the bonus of a very pretty young woman to whom Edmund had taken quite a liking. Elizabeth Swann was brave, fierce, stubborn, and beautiful, and Edmund liked her quite a lot so far. She hardly ever spoke to him, however, and spent most of her time with either Sam or Caspian, to Edmund’s annoyance. What was it about Sam that attracted her attention? The American was nothing special in Edmund’s opinion; all he could do was smile and swim. Even Lucy seemed to have fallen for him! She followed Sam doggedly everywhere he went, practically, and she and Elizabeth were like his own little cult of worshippers.
So as he stood on the deck, watching the waves and listening vaguely to the strange captain shouting orders to no one in particular, he felt conflicted. Edmund was torn between being so glad that they had been poofed out of Narnia and being disheartened that Elizabeth didn’t even know he existed. After all, what could a chap do in his situation? He didn’t want to scare her off, but he really wanted to talk to her! Only problem was that Will Turner, the other pirate, seemed to like her every bit as much as Edmund did – if not more.
He sighed. This was why Edmund had never really had much interest in dating before – there was far too much drama involved!
Suddenly two girls appeared out of mid-air and plummeted five feet into the water below, startling Edmund so much that he could barely process what had just happened. Stunned, he watched the water for a moment, thinking maybe he was seeing things, but when one of the two girls broke the surface with a gasp a moment later, he was startled into action. Edmund looked over his shoulder and called to Caspian and Will – who were in the middle of an intense discussion – “Hey! People in the water!”
Caspian and Will looked up, confused, and looked at him like he was crazy. Annoyed, Edmund gestured at the railing behind him. “Two girls!” he reiterated. “They’re in the water!”
Caspian then seemed to realise what Edmund meant, and he dashed over to where Edmund was standing, followed closely by Will. The three young men peered over the side at the dark-haired girl who was floundering about in the water.
“I thought you said there were two,” Will commented.
Edmund frowned. Where was the other girl…? Realising then that she might be in danger, he swung over the railing and dove in, followed by Caspian a moment later. Edmund swam over to the dark-haired girl and caught her flailing arms.
“Hey!” he said. “No need to get so excited; you’re fine.”
The girl gasped when she caught sight of him and her eyes grew wide before she squeaked, “Oh, my gosh! Edmund!”
Surprised and wary as to how this strange girl knew his name, Edmund merely nodded and began towing her back to the ship. “Yep, that’s me,” he agreed. The girl gave a breathless, excited laugh and then allowed herself to be hauled to the ship, where Will tossed a rope down to them. Holding tight to the girl, Edmund grabbed the rope and Will hauled them up on deck. When their feet had touched the deck, he realised abruptly that Caspian was not there too. He dashed back to the railing and, looking out at the water, saw Caspian towing a brown-haired girl towards the ship. The girl looked unconscious, but Edmund could see that she was still alive.
He jumped with surprise as he heard a loud, “Oh my gosh! Will!” Whirling around, he saw the girl hugging Will ecstatically, whilst Will looked completely flabbergasted and a little disturbed. The racket caused Sam, Lucy, Susan, and Peter, who were up on the poop deck, to come to the railing and look down at Will, Edmund, and the girl. Lucy gave a delighted gasp and raced down the stairs to stand before Will and wait for the girl to stop hugging him. When she did and she caught sight of Lucy, the girl clapped her hands and bounced up and down, her bare feet making soft thumps against the deck.
“Lucy!”
Looking surprised but pleased that the strange girl knew her name, Lucy laughed and said, “Yes! Welcome! And who are you?”
“Vanessa Talydon,” the girl said happily, looking around in wide-eyed wonder at the assembling crowd. She waved enthusiastically to Susan and Peter, saying, “Peter! Susan! Hi!”
Peter, frowning a little, asked her seriously, “How do you know us, Vanessa?”
Vanessa started to reply, but at that moment, Caspian called down from the water, “I could some help down here!” Will and Peter immediately went over to the railing and lowered the rope down to Caspian, who was hauled up a moment later bearing a brown-haired girl with…wings? Edmund couldn’t believe his eyes. It appeared that this new girl actually had real wings! Could it be? He had never heard of such a thing!
Caspian set the unconscious girl down on the deck, carefully making sure that her wings were not crumpled beneath her, and then the three young men stood over her, looking down at the winged girl curiously. Curious, Edmund came over, and he was soon joined by Lucy and Susan.
“What on earth…?” Susan said after a moment, voicing all their unspoken thoughts.
Vanessa barrelled her way into the small crowd a moment later. “Oh, that’s Skandar,” she said dismissively.
Edmund glanced at her, wondering about the strange winged girl. “She’s got wings,” he said doubtfully.
Vanessa nodded. “Yeah. She can’t fly very well, though; she’s not strong enough yet.”
Lucy interjected, “But she can fly?”
“Only a little. About a foot off the ground, and for only a second or two,” Vanessa supplied, sounding bored. Then she wandered off towards the poop deck, humming happily to herself and bouncing with excitement.
“Lucy,” Caspian said after a moment. “Go get Caine, Elizabeth, and Jack; we need them to meet the new girls as well.” Lucy dashed off towards the forecastle to obey his command, and everyone else stayed where they were, staring down at the strange winged girl and wondering about her. Peter knelt down and gently touched one of the white wings, as if to make sure it was real and not some elaborate costume.
“Are they real?” Susan asked, sounding curious.
“I think so,” Peter said, looking a little stunned. “Incredible…I wonder if she was born with them, or….?”
“Who knows?” Caspian said then, kneeling down and touching the girl’s wings himself. “I suppose that’s why she was having such a hard time getting to the surface; these wings weigh quite a bit.”
“They’d have to, to get her off the ground,” Sam said. He had been silent the entire time, and Edmund realised that the American didn’t really look too surprised or in awe like everyone else did. He wondered if Sam had seen someone like this before, so he asked him, “Sam, you look like this is nothing new to you.”
Sam shrugged casually. “I’ve seen far more exciting and weird things than a girl with wings; where I come from, she wouldn’t be out of place at all.” He thrust his hands in his pockets and shrugged again, looking a little bored. Edmund studied him carefully, wondering if he was not simply making it up, but decided not to press the matter too far; he didn’t like Sam, anyway.
Lucy returned then with Caine in tow, looking sulky as ever. Elizabeth followed a moment later, and when those two had joined the others, Lucy dashed up to fetch Jack from the helm. They had a brief discussion, and then Jack sauntered after her and came down to the deck with the others. He sashayed over to the winged girl and peered down at her through squinted eyes for a moment, and then he pointed at her and declared, “That’s not natural.”
Edmund rolled his eyes; if there was one person on the ship that he really disliked, it was Jack. The captain was so strange, Edmund hardly knew what to make of him. Caine was all right as long as he stuck to himself - which he did - but Jack didn’t, and that annoyed Edmund a lot.
Then everyone heard a cry of, “Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!” and a moment later, Vanessa had barrelled into the captain and was hugging him as she had Will. Jack curled his lip and waved his hands at Vanessa. “Someone get it off!” he ordered. Edmund, being the closest, dutifully pried Vanessa away from Jack. “Sorry,” Vanessa apologised, though she looked none too penitent. “I just got really excited to see you.”
Jack peered at her carefully and then declared, “Well, no harm done. Just don’t do…that again.” He gestured aimlessly in the air.
“I’m Vanessa,” she told him breathlessly.
“I don’t care,” Jack told her back, and then he straightened and asked, “Anything more to be said? No? Very good.” And he turned to leave, but was stopped in mid-stride when Will ordered, “Wait, Jack. We’re not done yet.”
Jack waited a moment and then turned, his lips pursed, and reluctantly joined the circle again.
Will asked Vanessa then, “I don’t suppose you know where we are?”
Vanessa looked vaguely uncomfortable and she squinted for a moment as if trying to remember some long-forgotten detail. “Not really,” she said eventually. “It kinda looks familiar, but…” She shrugged.
“Are you sure?” Will pressed. “You don’t know the name of this place?”
Vanessa shook her head. “Well, it’s kinda silly, but it reminds me of a place I made up in math class one time…It was called Istalya, I think, but since this is a real world, it can’t be the one I made up.”
Caspian then began to speak: “Where are you from?”
“America. But back to the important stuff – you guys don’t know where we are?” Vanessa asked.
“No,” Peter said.
Vanessa frowned. “Hmm…How did you get here?” There was a suspicious look on her face, like she had some idea what was going on but she didn’t like it at all.
“We just disappeared from our worlds and came here,” Lucy said, looking a little forlorn. “Sam and Caine came first, then Caspian and me, then Edmund, Susan, and Peter, then Captain Jack, Elizabeth, and Will. It was about three weeks before Edmund, Susan, and Peter came, and then another few days before the others came. It’s been a week or two since they came.”
Vanessa looked disturbed now. “Uh huh…I see.” She was silent for a moment, shifting uncomfortably, and then she cleared her throat and said, “Well, I believe I know what happened. See, I found this purple rock at my house. And it gave me these teleporting powers, where I could snap my fingers and go anywhere I wanted. I tried to snap myself into a book called GONE, which is where Sam and Caine came from-” she gestured to the two brothers “- but nothing happened. Then I read Voyage of the Dawn Treader and tried to snap myself there, but that didn’t work. I tried again, and then I read Pirates of the Caribbean and nothing worked. Then Skandar got wings and we tried to get into another world one more time…and this time, I guess it worked.” She twiddled her fingers aimlessly as she spoke.
A stunned silence settled over the small group as everyone attempted to make sense of the new girl’s strange story. Edmund was very confused; was Vanessa saying that she had pulled them out of a book and into this strange new world, apparently called Istalya? He and his siblings weren’t in a book! That was impossible! But he uncomfortably remembered what Lucy had told him after he had come a few weeks ago: all of them had come from different places and times. Maybe what Vanessa said had some truth after all…But it was so absurd!
“Wait,” Caine said, speaking for the first time in a long time. “So you’re saying that…we’re not real?”
Sarah
She knew the moment she was created. That ice-crystal moment when Sarah began to exist was a lucid one indeed. There was a swirling sensation and a vague breathing beside her, and then she was lying face up on a warm wooden deck, looking up at a blue sky. She didn’t know how she knew what the things were called, but she did. Perhaps the words came from her creator, whoever it was. Slowly, Sarah Pittner stood up, her legs shaky, but they held her up.
She walked to the railing and looked out at the blue waves and breathed in her first breath of the sea air. Sarah knew that this was where she belonged, in the watery world of Istalya, on her ship the Millennium Pearl. Puzzled, Sarah paused. How did she know her ship’s name? She had only been alive for a few moments. Then she shrugged, unconcerned, and pulled out a telescope that she instinctively knew was in her pocket. Sarah peered through it, seeing nothing, but then she caught sight of another ship, far, far away, and a small smile came over her lips.
Her first mission was clear to her now: go to the other ship, and take it.
Skandar
She woke with a cough.
Skandar sat up slowly, her wings aching. What had happened? She dimly remembered falling and hitting the water, but everything after that was a blur. What was she lying on? Skandar explored the surface with her fingers slowly and realised that she was sitting on wood. Wood…in the middle of the ocean? Confused, Skandar started to sit up and then she noticed that there were people watching her. She froze and gazed around the small circle, her amazement growing with each new face she saw.
Peter Pevensie.
Susan Pevensie.
Sam Temple.
Elizabeth Swann.
Will Turner.
Lucy Pevensie.
Jack Sparrow.
Edmund Pevensie!
Vanessa.
Caine Soren.
“Wow…what the heck?” was all Skandar could say.
Edmund
Edmund couldn’t believe what he was hearing, honestly. Vanessa expected them to believe that they weren’t real – and never had been! – and that she had read them out of books? It was so unbelievable…and he knew everyone else thought so too.
“That’s impossible!” Sam voiced.
“Not logical,” Susan argued.
“Are you out of your mind?” Elizabeth.
“I don’t think so…” Lucy said gently.
“You never know, “Caspian said supportively. “There are many strange magics in the world; maybe Vanessa has discovered another kind.”
“We are real,” Peter argued. “See?” He put a hand on Edmund’s shoulder. “You can’t argue that we’re real, Vanessa.”
Vanessa shrugged. Then the winged girl began to cough, distracting everyone from the argument. They fell silent and watched the girl sit up slowly and blink like an owl as she noticed everyone watching her. “Wow…what the heck?” she said after a moment.
Peter immediately knelt down in front of her and said gently, “I’m Peter Pevensie. How are you feeling?” Edmund was surprised to hear the kindness in Peter’s voice, and he wondered if his brother wasn’t curious about Skandar for different reasons.
“I’m…okay,” Skandar said unsuredly, as if she wasn’t certain about how she was feeling. He offered her a hand and the winged girl took it dazedly as he pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” Peter said. “I’ll take you below decks; there are hammocks down there where you can rest.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Skandar said faintly and Peter guided her away from the group. Edmund raised his eyebrows. How quickly Peter had fallen!
“So,” Caspian said, drawing Edmund’s gaze back to him along with the others. “Vanessa has told us her theory, and as no one has any better ideas of how we got here, her theory will be the official one for now. Vanessa, what did you say the name of this place is?”
“Istalya.”
“And is there in land in Istalya?” Caspian asked then.
Vanessa thought for a minute. “I don’t think so…but I could probably create some, if you want.”
Caspian laughed. “Very well. Maybe later, then. But right now, I think we’ve had enough excitement for a while. Lucy can get you some new clothes and show you where you can sleep. If you have any questions, you can ask me or Peter. Jack Sparrow is our captain, so if you’re going to create any land, be sure to give him the headings for it.”
“Sounds good,” Vanessa said happily, and then she dashed off to the helm, leaving the little group bewildered and unsure of what to think.
They weren’t real?
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