Nahuálin’s voice cracked with barely controlled panic as he called into his communication system, “Conductor, we need the Pull Back. Now.”
The voice crackled with static. “Steady yourselves. He’s holding on, trying to prevent — wait.”
Through the cosmic jellyfish’s translucent mouth, the Omringle HSB could see their destination: a crater on the moon that looked suspiciously like a wink.
But something was wrong. The orange track that should have been laying itself down flickered and sparked.
Conductor’s voice cut in and out. “The guidance system is compromised.”
Through her blue eye, Carli saw why the guidance system was failing. Dark tendrils wrapped around the track like parasitic vines, corrupting its light and causing sections to crumble into void. Rectangular impressions appeared in the failing track — metal footprints that left dead zones wherever they touched.
“Something’s interfering with the trajectory,” Conductor’s voice crackled through heavy static. “Someone’s . . . attacking . . . guidance . . .”
The wet, hungry sniffing sound echoed through the bus again. Closer now. Through the static came a smooth voice like grinding metal: “No escape this time, little bridge-walker. I have found the domain between where you are and where you are to go.”
Nahuálin’s hands flew over controls that sparked and smoked. “He’s corrupting the very paths we travel,” he said grimly. “Trying to force us into his realm.”
Horror flooded Carli’s veins when she saw the truth through her blue eye. As if dark metal feet trying to pound their way through the roof wasn’t enough, she saw dark hands reach towards the plummeting bus from the moon’s surface, fingers spread wide. Something was actively trying to prevent their landing. Through her brown eye, she saw the moon crater grow larger as they approached at impossible speed, dodging the hands.
Sweat beaded on Nahuálin’s forehead. “Conductor’s guidance is our only hope.” Nahuálin called out, “Hold on — this is going to be close.“
Terror shot through Carli’s chest when the bus lurched violently.
Through the windows, omringles watched in horror as chunks of the orange track crumbled away into the void. This left gaps their bus would have to somehow leap across.
Desperation edged Nahuálin’s voice, “Everyone buckle up! This isn’t going to be the smooth ride we planned.”
The cosmic jellyfish’s mouth began to close — slowly at first; then faster, like massive jaws snapping shut. They had maybe thirty seconds before the passage sealed completely.
“Conductor!” Nahuálin’s voice carried new urgency. “The gateway’s closing!”
“I see it! Pulling back now!”
A great invisible hand grabbed the Omringle HSB and yanked it backward like a cosmic slingshot. The seven-sectioned bus stretched like taffy. Each compartment strained against the others. The omringle’s bodies stretched as though they had no bones. Just as suddenly, tremendous forces pressed them flat as pancakes against their seats.
“Ten seconds to release!” Conductor warned. “Track integrity at forty percent!”
“Five . . . four . . . three . . .”
The jellyfish mouth snapped completely shut just as they rocketed through. The bus shot forward like an arrow. The headlight’s revealed pieces of broken orange track spin away. The shadowy hands shriveled away at the force of their approach. They flew blind now. The omringles pressed themselves into their seats and gripped their armrests. They watched in horror as they headed straight for the moon’s crater at terminal velocity with no guidance system.
Nahuálin shouted, “BRACE FOR IMPACT!”
The bus hit the crater’s edge and bounced like a skipping stone. Once. Twice. On the third impact, the emergency systems finally engaged. Soft seat cushions inflated around each apprentice just as they plunged into the crater’s depths.
Darkness swallowed them whole. Soon, the tunnel walls glowed like two rivers at sunset, side by side. The orange track calmly laid itself down in front of them. With each passing moment, the bus grew quieter as it followed the calmly swerving track — even Kainon had stopped complaining. Through her right eye, Carli saw how the walls of the crater weren't just rock, but layers of ancient stories waiting to be read. Through her brown eye, she saw what everyone else saw — darkness and distant stars growing dim behind them.
"Approaching Selene Station," the screens displayed. "Prepare for . . ."
The bus lurched. All lights went dead.
"Conductor?" Nahuálin's voice was sharp. "Conductor, do you read?"
Static crackled. Words came in spurts. "Minor . . . interference . . . count down . . . when you hear . . ."
After their harrowing plunge into the Sea of Cleverness, the apprentices barely had time to catch their breath before the next crisis hit.
Conductor’s voice crackled through the speakers. “Approaching inner moon space. Prepare for final approach sequence.”
Through the windows, they could see the inner moon growing rapidly larger — a sphere of crystal and light suspended impossibly in the hollow center of the outer moon. But something was wrong with their descent angle.
“Conductor?” Nahuálin called. “We’re coming in too steep.”
Static filled the speakers. Then Conductor’s voice, fragmented and distant: “Guidance system . . . failing . . . manual control . . . you’ll have to . . .”
The connection cut out entirely.
Silence.
The orange track beneath them flickered once, twice, then vanished completely. The Omringle HSB was in free fall. It plummeted toward the crystal surface of the inner moon like a seven-sectioned yellow meteor.
“We’re going to crash!” someone screamed.
Through the front window, the inner moon’s surface rushed toward them — not the soft landing they’d expected, but jagged crystal formations that would shatter the bus on impact. They had perhaps ten seconds before collision.
Nahuálin’s hands flew over controls that suddenly felt foreign, unfamiliar. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he realized the terrible truth — without Conductor’s guidance, he was flying blind.
“Pull up! PULL UP!” apprentices shouted from every compartment.
Five seconds. The crystal spires were close enough to count. Nahuálin said,
“No time to wield.”
Nahuálin closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and whispered the oldest navigation prayer he knew: “Trust the path, even when you cannot see it.”
His hands moved by pure instinct, pulling controls he could barely see. The bus groaned, metal straining against impossible forces.
Three seconds.
Two.
At the last possible moment — so close that crystal fragments scraped the hull — the Omringle HSB’s nose lifted. An edge of the circle around its VW symbol broke off and went flying. They skimmed the surface and shot between towering spires. They raced toward what looked like a landing platform that emerged from the inner moon’s surface.
“Hold on!” Nahuálin called.
They hit the platform hard, bounced once, twice, then sailed past it after a final, shuddering impact that made every joint in the bus cry out in protest.
For a long moment, no one moved. No one spoke.
Nahualin closed his eyes. His chest rose. He exhaled before he moved dials in the air. “It looks like you’ll all get a tour around the inner moon before landing.” His voice carried the patient cadence of someone who’d learned that the most important truths took time to root properly. His words held weight not through volume but through absolute authenticity — the sound of someone who’d never learned to speak anything but truth because lies served no garden well.
Even in this moment of crisis, his presence that commanded both reverence and trust, though he wore the simple clothes of a gardener who’d spent the morning tending roses and weeding flowerbeds. His bearing spoke of someone who’d walked between worlds, even if those worlds seemed limited to the space between greenhouse and garden gate.
His skin held the warm bronze of someone touched by countless suns spent coaxing seeds from soil. His face combined strength with infinite gentleness — sharp cheekbones softened by eyes that held depths like summer lightning, golden-brown irises that caught impossible lights even in ordinary daylight.
He rebraided his disheveled hair that fell in waves the color of autumn leaves. The strands were streaked with gold that somehow caught starlight even when no stars were visible. Dirt marked his fingernails and the cuffs of his work shirt, honest soil that spoke of someone who understood growing things in ways that went deeper than technique.
Carli struggled to understand that Nahuálin was Olli the gardener back home. Home not home. He still wore the same ordinary gardener’s clothes — those were the same canvas pants; frayed and worn soft with use, the familiar cotton shirt that had seen countless seasons, the scuffed boots that knew every path and stone of the grounds they’d walked. Yet she noticed, as if for the first time, something in the way the fabric draped suggested these were a costume he chose to wear while tending earthly gardens.
As the bus glided between the inner and outer moon, a melody filled the compartment — brass instruments and bells that came from everywhere and nowhere.
Ariki's eyes lit up. "We're about a minute and a half into Gustav Holst's Jupiter symphony! It's from The Planets. Not the best choice of music since we’re on, I mean, inside the moon, not Jupiter."
Erwin pressed his hand to his chest where something invisible nestled under his jacket."Only Carli noticed, through her blue eye, a slight shimmer in the air around him — like heat waves, but with tiny stars scattered through them. My parents used to play that on Sundays,” he said. His voice choked into a whisper, “Before they . . .”
The Omringle HSB passed crater windows on the outer moon in hushed silence. Carli pointed at one as they passed by and breathed, “Earth . . .”
Guido said, “The craters you have seen alla your young life? Windows to the inner moon.”
“I had no idea,” Carli whispered. She had the sudden feeling that from far away, all the daily challenges she had lived with for so long felt instantly small.
Carli and her friends pressed their faces to the windows in silence. Entrances and windows into brightly lit rooms dotted the inner moon. Strange creatures pulled in their flipper-like feet and flattened their faces to roll like balls down hallways, or suddenly extended their flippers and stick legs to climb stairs.
Soon, the massively broad station platform reappeared with tunnels like doorways in its distant walls. A sign read "Selene Station" in letters that floated just above the surface.
The screens flickered back to life. They displayed, "Lunar Landing: Selene Station" in glowing script. Through her blue eye, Carli saw how each letter contained tiny moving scenes — children from different times, different places, all looking up at the same moon. Through her brown eye, she saw what everyone else saw — just welcome words promising safety ahead.
"A peaceful second try," Nahuálin announced. “Now then, we'll have a brief stopover for supplies and . . . certain essential items that can only be gathered here."
As the Omringle HSB silently docked alongside the impossible moon’s inner surface, Carli felt the last pieces of her old life fall away like outgrown clothes. Around her, children who’d spent their lives feeling like aliens finally understood why — they weren’t from this world at all.
Kainon still scowled from across the aisle, but his anger had transformed into something more complex — the fury of someone realizing they’d been homesick their entire life without knowing home existed.
“This is still stupid,” he muttered, but his voice lacked conviction.
“No,” said one of the Kokko sisters gently, “it’s not stupid. You’re just overwhelmed. We all are.”
“I’m not over anything!” Kainon protested, but his voice cracked on the lie.
Ariki looked up from calculations that spiraled into equations describing the mathematics of wonder itself. “According to my calculations,” he said with something approaching awe, “we’ve just traveled approximately 384,400 kilometers in roughly twelve minutes. That’s not just mathematically impossible — it’s cosmically unprecedented.”
“Good thing we’re notta just mathematical,” Guido said with a grin that existed in several dimensions simultaneously.
The music shifted as they glided to a silent stop at the platform — strings and woodwinds joined the brass in rising harmony. A voice came over the loudspeaker: "Welcome to Selene Station. Leave your belongings on your seats and listen carefully: Watch your step. Look for your name on a sign. You'll each have your own greeter."
"More new people?" Carli muttered. She felt fine with Guido and Ariki. Anything more sounded unbearable.
The speaker clicked off with a buzz, then came back on: "And don't be late for spa and waterfall pool time. Listen for the departure bells if you want to make it back to earth. One dingaling for the spa, two dingalings for the Omringle HSB. The air is breathable, by the way."
The new friends looked at eachother. Carli smiled and said, “Waterfall pool?” She scanned the inside surface of the outer moon. She spotted saw the green and blue ball of earth glowing on the other side of a wide window.
Conductor’s voice returned, clear and steady: “Apologies for the technical difficulties. Welcome to Selene Station. Please mind the gap when exiting.”
The sound of buckles unbuckling filled the bus. The doors opened with a soft sigh that sounded like the universe exhaling in relief. Carli realized her life had just divided into two eternities: everything that came before this moment, and everything that would unfold from this moment forward. Nahuálin appeared the moment she stepped onto the platform.
"Surprise, surprise Carli. Guess who your greeter is . . . plus two more."
Someone held a sign at the front of the group of greeters. Carli saw her name, Guido Gustallini and Ariki Pukapuka written in familiar handwriting. The wrinkled face, crinkled eyes and toothy smile peeked over it. It belonged to none other than Frida Fortigrell.
She smiled with relief. "I'm actually really glad, Oll . . . Nahuálin. This is all a bit confusing, and Guido is . . ."
"A Gustallini?" he answered, then called out, "Frida! There you are." He reached out to a woman next to him with long hair that seemed filled with dripping diamonds made of water droplets. "Inanna is coming, too.”
Inanna said, "You'll get to know me, Carli. No rush." The group headed across the impossibly long, wide, and very echoey station platform towards a small tunnel in the distance. The station was surrounded by extraordinarily high gray stone walls with more crater-window views of earth.
Outside, the rolling ball beings of living starlight waited to greet them on the platform that hummed with frequencies older than memory. The air itself sparkled with welcome.
“You ready?” Guido asked, offering his hand — half-solid, half-light, but completely, absolutely real.
“Ready,” Carli said, and stepped onto the surface of an impossible moon, surrounded by friends she was only beginning to understand, about to discover what it truly meant to be an Omringle.
Behind them, the cosmic jellyfish slowly drifted away into the star-scattered deep, carrying with it the echo of children’s laughter and the memory of the day the lost ones finally started for home.