Figure 8 By Will D. I froze as something rustled in the brush. I felt excitement as I slowly drew an arrow into my bow. “Come here… everything’s gonna be alright…that’s it” I whispered. More rustling. I let the arrow fly from my bow and something in the brush squealed. There was a large thump as it fell to the ground. I happily ran over to examine my handiwork. The carcass of a large boar lay before me. I quickly cut the fresh meat from the pig, as much as I could fit into my bag. Not wanting to be wasteful, I cut off more to carry under my arms as I went home. It was a short walk out of the forest across the hill and around a pond to get back to the village, one I had memorized from doing so many times before. A couple of people greeted me as I took the meat to the butcher, who thanked me, and began cutting it into meal sized pieces, that would later be wrapped up and put in the village’s storeroom. Everyone in the village shared what was contributed; everyone depended on each other’s contribution to survive. I went home to sit down for a bit, remembering the recent festival celebrating the end of summer. “I didn’t ask her again, why do I have to be so shy…” I thought to myself. I was thinking of Kubi, the girl of my dreams. I hadn’t asked her to dance with me at the festival again. She was perfect in my eyes, but I could never manage to say a word to her. “I wonder if she even knows…” I began to think. Then my father walked into the room, crunching into an apple and examining a broken ax. “I just don’t understand it… oh hello Jorb! Back so soon?” he asked surprised “yeah… I actually had just gone into the forest when I found something, lucky eh?” I replied. “It’s always luck with you isn’t it?” he said laughing. He then sat down and continued to examine the broken ax. Things just had a tendency to fall apart around my father, he jokingly blamed that the witches had cursed him. I didn’t like to think about the witches, my mother was always sick, no doubt their doing. Whenever something bad happened without a good explanation they were always the first to be blamed. Everyone resented them, living in their caves, cursing us for no good reason. I always thought they cursed us because of how we had shunned them and forced them to live in their caves. “Jorb!” I snapped back to reality. “My word boy, you’re always off in your own little world aren’t you? Go see what it is your mother wants.” I hadn’t visited her all day, I went into her room. “How are you feeling today?” I asked. “Oh fine, could you grab me some water son?” I was always her 1st choice when it came to taking care of her. Seeing her always in bed saddened me, she never seemed to get any better. I went outside after getting her water, it was already getting late. I looked into a puddle from a spilled bucket of water, at my reflection staring back at me. People always said I looked so much like my parents, brown hair and eyes. I always failed to see the resemblance though, I was skinny and they were pretty fat, so were my brothers. I began to lose myself in my thoughts again before feeling a tap on my shoulder. It started me back into reality with a shake. “It’s time to eat Jorb” said my brother jack. How long had I been sitting here? The sun had moved much farther down the sky. After dinner I went to bed. I had nightmares about one of the incidents from when I was a little kid, I was alone in the forest, I had wandered out of the village by myself. I had always wanted to explore when I was younger and it always landed me in trouble. I was chased by a giant spider in the forest, which nearly caught me. In the dream the spider was much larger than it had been in real life, the size of a large cow rather than the size of a dog. I managed to make it out of the forest, the spider didn’t follow, they hated the light. I didn’t stop running, I was crying, and I tripped over a rock and scraped my knee up really bad. Instead of limping home crying like I really had, in the dream my leg fell off completely. I began to scream as I woke up in a cold sweat. It was already morning. I tried to shake off the nightmare, and I got something to eat. I went outside and saw the village chief’s son. I let out a sigh and tried to quicken my pace hoping he wouldn’t notice me, he didn’t. We hated each other, he hated me because no one really disliked me (other than him), he was jealous. Everyone seemed to not like him, he could never figure out why, but the reason was obvious. He was always rude and expected everyone to be his friend in return. I was almost the opposite, I was nice to everyone, and if I didn’t like someone I would just avoid them rather than make them my enemy. So in the end I had no one who disliked me (other than him) and lots of friends. I only hated him because he wouldn’t stop hating me; if he had just left me alone we could have been fine. He had obviously been waiting outside of my house to annoy me, I was lucky that he had been distracted when I came out. I decided the only way to avoid him would be to wander outside town for a bit, so I headed into the forest. I was wandering around for a while, admiring the birds when suddenly I felt a sharp pain in the back of my leg. I looked down and saw a poisonous scorpion had its tail stuck right into its leg. I screamed and stomped on it furiously. The place where I had been stung was rapidly turning bright red. I felt light headed, and tried to start going towards home, hoping somehow that I would make it. My vision started to blur, and I felt dizzy. Soon the world was spinning around me and I saw multiples of everything. I fell to my hands and knees and started to crawl, the edge of the forest was in sight. Suddenly I vomited, and with only the strength to move a few more feet I collapsed. I looked up and saw someone or something moving towards me, and then I lost consciousness. After a seeming eternity of darkness I began to wake up. The first thing I noticed was a sharp pain in my head. Then I realized I was on some sort of bed, in what looked like a cave. Everything was blurry again and I lost consciousness. When I re-awoke someone was standing over me and gave me a strange liquid to drink. At first it had a pleasant, almost minty taste, but it burned my throat. I began to cough and the person above me tried to calm me down. As soon as the burning stopped I began to regain my vision. I immediately noticed that the person standing over me was a witch and with a gasp I tried to sit up, but was stopped by intense pain in my head and overwhelming nausea. My vision was blurred again for a couple of minutes and I came very close to losing consciousness again. They told me to calm down and that I was safe, they said I would have surely died if they hadn’t found me. I found it hard to believe that a witch would help me and I became very frightened. The witch walked over to a cauldron with a stool in front of it and started to mix several ingredients together. I watched fascinated, there were always rumors that the witches knew medicine, something that my people knew absolutely nothing about. We knew that the sick should rest and how to fix broken bones but that was it. Anyone with serious injury or sickness was doomed to die. The fact that this witch had saved me from what she said was a fatal poisoning seemed incomprehensible to me. After a while she brought me some of the strange liquid she was making. This time it was thick and sweet like syrup, upon drinking it I felt much better. The witch told me I should sleep, and I noticed I was very tired. Upon waking, I felt almost normal. I was in no pain and had no nausea or blurred vision, I was however very weak. I managed to sit up. The witch wasn’t here. I stood up, shakily at first, and realizing I was now capable of leaving my natural fear of the witches overcame me and I walked as fast as I could manage out of the cave. I realized the cave entrance was on top of a hill, which seemed very familiar. I then realized this was the hill that could be seen from the far side of the forest. I saw the forest below me and off on the horizon my village. I realized I was too weak to risk going into the forest so I decided to go around the edge of it. I made it about a mile before running out of breath and stopping for a break. I was very hungry and thirsty; I then remembered the supplies in my pouch. I always packed a snack and a small amount of water in case I was longer than I expected in the forest. When I started eating I noticed the food was very stale, I must have been unconscious for a long time. I felt re-energized after eating and began walking again. It was nightfall before I made it back to the village. Everyone gasped when they saw me. They said I was gone for five days, and everyone thought I was dead. Everyone wanted to know what had happened but I was exhausted and told them I would tell the story in the morning. My parents were overjoyed to see me; they said they had lost all hope. They also mentioned that Kubi had cried when it was announced that I was presumed dead. My heart raced when they said that. I went to bed and couldn’t stop thinking of her. I realized she must secretly like me the way I liked her. I dreamed of her. She is beautiful, with long brown hair, and innocent brown eyes. We were talking in the dream, speaking of adventure. I awoke the next morning to find that I had slept in very late, it was almost noon. I felt much better than I had the day before and went out to tell everyone what had happened. I was in the middle of my story, and when I got to the part where I realized I was in a witches cave everyone froze. There was a long silence when I realized my error. Anyone who was suspected to have any contact with the witches was outcast; to blatantly state that you had been was social suicide. The village chief’s son started to laugh, and started yelling that I should be kicked out of the village. My mother gasped and my father started yelling but it seemed that everyone had made up their mind. Then I noticed Kubi in the crowd of people with a horrified look on her face. I didn’t know what I should do, and then suddenly I began to run. I ran as fast as I could, first to grab my bow and some supplies, then next to the only place I knew I could be alone, it was also the place that had gotten me into this whole mess, the forest. I noticed that Kubi was following me, yelling for me to come back, and for some reason it made me run faster. I kept running until I didn’t recognize where I even was. I sat down on a rock, surrounded by trees. I sat thinking about what was going to happen next. How could I survive? I would probably have to run to the next village, but word would eventually spread there and I would be kicked out of there too. I was so angry. Then something strange crossed my mind, of how unusually hot it was. Suddenly a heard I scream, I went to investigate and found Kubi with her hands over her mouth petrified, face-to-face with a large bear. The bear was less than 20 feet from her. I ran to her side, and the bear stood up on its hind legs and let out a roar and began to charge at us. I drew my bow and shot, hitting the bear right between the eyes. It howled in pain and fell while running; it slid and came to a stop right before us. Kubi started crying and buried her face in my shoulder. I began to comfort her, when I noticed something strange. It was the corner of something sticking out of the ground where the bear had first been standing. It was obviously not a rock, it was bright red and too perfectly straight. It was so straight it looked like the corner of a box. I pointed it out to Kubi who had stopped crying and was now blushing. We walked over to it and noticed it really did look like some sort of box. We started to dig it up, and discovered it was actually quite large. Digging it up took a while but when it was finally out of the ground we discovered it was some sort of red chest. It wasn’t locked so I opened it. Inside was the strangest thing I had ever seen, it looked like some sort of glove, with a metal tube on the top and multiple buttons all over it. The whole thing was brilliantly shiny silver. As I picked it up there was a brilliant flash of light. The next thing I knew I was on my back opening my eyes, Kubi was knelt down shaking me asking if I was okay. I said I was fine, and then noticed the strange glove-like thing was attached to my hand. I realized it wouldn’t come off and asked Kubi what had happened. She said after the flash of light, the strange thing had appeared on my hand and I was unconscious for about a minute. I wondered what it could possibly be for. I studied it closely then decided to press one of the buttons. The tube on the glove started projecting a hologram. I flinched in surprise; I had never seen anything like it in my life. I realized it was a picture of me and Kubi sitting next to the chest. I moved my hand and the me in the picture moved its hand at the same time as me. Suddenly the picture began to zoom out, high above the ground until finally I could see a large sphere, dusty brown all over it with patches of green at the top and bottom. The picture zoomed out even further until the dusty brown ball was shown doing a figure 8 around two humongous fiery balls of light. To be more specific the dusty ball was doing a semi-circle around one of the balls of fire then going diagonally towards the other, doing a semi-circle around that one the diagonally returning to the first. One of the giant fireballs was yellow, and the other was red. I realized that they were they exactly same color as the two suns. I then realized that the dusty ball was my world. This somehow explained why during the summer the two suns could be seen, instead of just one, and why during summer it was light out all day long. I noticed also that the dusty ball took a lot longer doing the diagonal part of the figure 8; this explained why the summers were so long. All of this information was overwhelming to me, and I just sat there with my mouth open staring at it. Then suddenly I realized the two suns were moving closer and closer to each other. I watched in horror as the dusty ball burst into flame and eventually the two suns swallowed the dusty ball whole, the joined with each other, becoming one great sun. Another thought raced to my mind. About how my parents said it used to be much cooler when they were my age and how every year it seemed to be hotter in the summertime. Then the hologram started replaying, this time I counted how many times the planet circled the suns before it burst into flame and how many more before it was swallowed. It was only 30 years before it burst into flame and 3 more after that before it was swallowed. I began to think that it was 30 years until the end of the world, but then realized that it would become much to hot far before the planet burst into flame. Kubi was confused by the holograms, which shut off after playing that second time. I started explaining quickly and panicked what I thought it all meant. She was horrified, and we both started wondering what could be done. We were really freaking out when I suddenly thought of the other buttons on the glove. I pressed the second of the four buttons and with a loud FWOOP a ball of light flew out of the tube on top of the glove. The ball of light flew and hit a rock and opened up a strange circular portal. Kubi shrieked and jumped back in surprise. I looked through the portal and saw a long peaceful looking green field. I went through and started choking, I realized I couldn’t breathe. I ran back through the portal and told Kubi I couldn’t breathe there. I decided to press the third of the four buttons. This button caused the portal to disappear. I decided to try to open another portal, this time water started gushing out at an unimaginable rate. I quickly closed it deciding that a lake must have been on the other side. Finally after opening several more dangerous or uninteresting portals I pressed the fourth button. This time a hologram appeared showing pictures of the places I had previously opened portals to. I realized that I was supposed to do something after a while so I touched the picture of the green field where I couldn’t breathe, and a portal to the green field opened. I then realized that if me and Kubi could keep opening portals we might find a suitable replacement to our world, which was apparently going to end soon. The next portal I opened seemed safe, so after I went through I told Kubi to follow me. The portal on this end had opened on the face of a cliff at the top of a very tall pile of rocks built up against the face of the cliff, at least a hundred feet tall; all around us were green fields and trees full of fruit. We climbed down from the strange rock pile and began to look around. The fruits looked amazing, so I tried one and it tasted delicious. There were these fruit trees as far as the eye could see, there were enough to probably last all of the villagers a very long time. By the time we were done looking around it was sunset; we sat on the grass and watched the sun as it set. It was very romantic, finally I turned to Kubi and admitted that I had wanted to ask her to dance at the festival but I was too shy. She was surprised and said that the same thing had always happened to her too. I finally told her that I think I am in love with her, she blushed and turned away. She said she had never known. We started moving closer, looking into each other’s eyes, we were about to kiss when suddenly we heard a loud shrieking noise. We both jumped in surprise and saw a hideous creature running towards us. It was humanlike in the way its body was shaped, but it looked nothing like a human. Its skin was bright pink and muscly, its eyes were black; it had long claws and rows of silver jagged teeth each one shaped like a rhombus. It had long pointy ears, no hair, no ears and spikes running all down its back. It was running sideways on all fours, screeching and foaming at the mouth. Kubi screamed and I instinctively drew my bow and shot at it. I hit it in the belly, which only made it madder, so I shot again and this time hit it in the head. It collapsed, after a few moments of silence the ground began to shake and holes started erupting from the ground, each hole had these horrible creatures pouring out of it. There were far too many to fight, so we started climbing up the pile of rocks towards the portal. We climbed desperately, trying to get away from them, they were slow climbers, but they were almost as fast as us. We were almost as the top when a rock slipped loose where my foot was. It fell and made a sickening crack on the skull of one of the monsters. Unfortunately I lost my grip and slid about 15 feet down. I yelled at Kubi, telling her to go through the portal. The monsters were just below me and as one reached for my leg I kicked it and it fell screaming off the rock pile all the way to the bottom. I climbed as fast as I could with the monsters at my heels; they were covering all sides of the rock pile below me as I climbed. As I neared the top I noticed some of the top rocks were missing from the pile, they must have fallen off as Kubi jumped into the portal. At the top I looked up into the portal and saw Kubi looking through horrified. I told her to reach for me, and I jumped and grabbed her arm and got my feet into some holes on the Cliffside. I managed to climb through right as the monsters reached the top of the rock pile. I hurriedly pressed the button to close the portal. We collapsed on our backs panting. It was nighttime so we decided to move outside of the forest where it would be safe to sleep. The next morning we explored several more worlds until we found one that was a beautiful lake with a waterfall splashing into it, surrounded by lush jungle. We thoroughly explored it to make sure it wasn’t dangerous. We decided it would be the perfect place to move everyone. We went back to the village, sending Kubi first, because everyone probably still didn’t like me. We showed them the holograms, and the portals, and explained everything. The village chief sent out messengers to tell as many of the nearby villages as possible. Life in the new world was strange at first, but everyone came to enjoy it, especially since there were no witches or dangerous animals to worry about. I always loved to explore other worlds with Kubi from that day on; we eventually got married when we were older. The glove, to this day, has not come off of my hand.