The Search for the Eoz Potion

35. Going Home

They arrived back at the forest in the middle of the night. They took a few passes over the trees and surveyed the area from above to make sure it was safe. It was difficult to tell for sure through the trees, but they saw no cause for concern. The carriages and all the griffins landed and began running across the ground toward the portal. Hailey and Claire were both asleep by the time they arrived. Zack shook them awake and explained where they were. They awoke to the fact that it was now time to say goodbye, time to leave this place where they had learned so much, and time to leave their friends.

When they walked out of the carriage, they were all shocked to see how things had changed in the forest. There were two small towers on either side of the portal about the same height as the trees that bent together. There were little tubes along the sides of each of the towers that sparked as Josef walked closer to investigate. He explained to the others that this was how the Prince had planned to seal off the portal.

The HRA had also built giant cages, jail cells made out of fencing. There were rows and rows of them beside the portal. As Aileen was coming out of the carriage she had been driving, she looked at the cages in horror. The doors were hanging open and, on the ground just in front of them, were dozens of HRA bracelets that must have broken off of the soldiers who had been guarding the portal when the Queen was freed.

"They must have fled into the woods," Tellis said as she knelt to inspect the bracelets.

"These cages," said Josef. "They were capturing and holding people as they came through the portal."

"That's horrific," interrupted Aileen.

Remembering what Aileen had done down in the castle, Tellis looked at her disapprovingly. Was what the HRA had done more or less horrific than what she had done, Tellis asked with her eyes. Aileen shook her head as if she had seen this look many times before and was still unmoved by its argument. Not wanting to press the issue further at the moment, Tellis stood up and walked towards the woods where she assumed the former soldiers, the freed Searchers, likely had gone.

"We don't have time to find them all now," he said. "The portal is about to open. But that will be our next task." He looked over at Josef, Clio, and Aileen, and they nodded back at him in agreement. "But first we need to get everyone home."

They looked out at all the Searchers, most of them freed members of the Human Robot Army who had been with them in the castle. They were all ready to go home.

"What's it going to be like when we get back?" Hailey asked Claire. "Is Faith already better."

"Sounds like it, but I guess we'll find out for sure tomorrow," Claire half smiled.

"I hope so. I'll see you at school and let you know if I heard anything."

Claire agreed to do the same and then they shared an awkward silence. Hailey could tell Claire still had something on her mind. This question about Faith was, strangely, not the biggest one in front of her at the moment.

"Tomorrow," she said finally, "Are we going to go back to the way things were? Not getting along with each other."

"I hope not," said Hailey.

"I was jealous of you," Claire admitted after a short pause. "You have so much confidence."

"You're the one who got the potion," Hailey laughed. "What good did confidence do me? You believed. I should be jealous of you."

Claire opened her mouth but Hailey stopped her from talking.

"Let's go see Faith."

"When you get back through the portal," Josef interrupted softly, "your family, your friends...for them it'll be like you never left."

This made Claire feel good. It was like a new beginning, with Hailey, with Faith, with her family. She looked at Hailey and realized that she felt the same. They hugged each other and then turned to Josef and thanked him for everything he had done. Claire shook Clio's hand and told Tellis how much she appreciated her. Then she came to Zack. She had spent most of her time in the Garden with him. His genuineness and his kindness reminded her of her brother. She wanted to make sure he knew how much she appreciated his friendship. He had led them out of the forest and they had gotten to know each other in Capital City. While she was thinking about all of this, she realized that through it all she had discovered her own strength, her own confidence, her own peace.

"Are we going to see each other again?" Zack asked Claire.

"One thing I learned here," Claire explained, "Things don't always work out the way we think they will. But I hope we do."

They gave each other a hug, but out of the corner of his eye, Zack saw Josef walking up to them and realized he had another difficult goodbye to deliver. After searching with him for so long, after being away from his own home long enough to find a new one, away from his own father and with Josef instead, it was time for him to leave it all behind. He was at peace with it, he knew it had to happen. But in some strange way, he also didn't feel ready. Claire stepped aside and Josef and Zack shared an awkward silence for a moment before embracing. Neither of them said anything as they remembered their time together, but the hug itself seemed to communicate enough - resistance to the fact that it was time to leave, acceptance that it had to happen, and a belief that they would always remember each other. Clio patted his son on the shoulder.

Hailey approached Tellis not knowing what to say. She had been skeptical of her from the moment they met, but all of her prejudgements had been proven wrong. She had grown to admire her, to respect how she had reunited the family she had torn apart. She was in awe of how Tellis had fought and suffered to restore the Queen's rule over the Garden of Yllop, and was inspired by her trust in and devotion to the Queen. All of this was welling up behind her eyes as she tried to talk to Tellis, but she stopped her.

"I always admired your spunkiness," Tellis said abruptly with a little smile.

"What do you mean?"

"I bet a lot of people think it's a rude kind of sarcasm," she said.

Hailey nodded.

"That's a shame. They're really missing out on something beautiful."

She smiled and gave Tellis a hug.

"We have about three minutes," Josef interrupted.

It was 11:58, and the portal was about to open. They stood before the trees through which Hailey, Claire, Zack, and all the other Searchers with them had once come, propelled by hope, looking for a way to save their loved ones. They waited quietly for the time to come. 12:00:00 AM. They laughed over a few memories of their time together. 12:00:47 AM. Final hugs. 12:01:17 AM. At just the right time, the Searchers flooded through the Portal. They went so quickly that before they knew it Hailey, Claire, and Zack were the last ones left. They turned to give one last goodbye to Josef, Tellis, Aileen, and Clio who stood watching them, then hurried through.

Going back through the portal was different than when they had come into the Garden of Yllop. They were only a few steps through the trees when they saw a small white light in the distance coming toward them. They looked back through the two trees that bent together to form the portal expecting to see the others, but there was nothing, only blackness. When they looked back in front of them, the light was bigger, brighter, closer, and it began to take the shape of a woman, and it quickly overtook them.