Moho (Part One: Rise of a Symbol) Read Free Page B

out,” he snaps. He doesn’t let it show and yet he does care deep down.
    “You were the one who carried me out of The Spring when I was too weak to walk myself and fed me when I was too weak to eat myself,” I remind him.
    “Yes. But you’re all grown up now, aren’t you?”
    “What would I do if I didn’t leave?”
    He doesn’t answer for some time and just stares into the fog instead. Then he shrugs and suggests, “Be a Springhelper. Follow the other people into the fog,” before he says, “stay with me…”
    Silence.
    “Oh, Victor, my dear, you don’t want Moho to regret such a silly decision later on,” Aleeya says with concern in her voice but impatience in her increasingly antsy hand.
    “No, I don’t want Moho to regret this 'silly' decision,” Victor clarifies.
    “Exactly. Cosmo’s Islands is such an exclusive place full of unique people like you. You will adore it,” Aleeya promises.
    And then I start to miss Victor. For some inexplicable reason I feel that Aleeya is right and I take her hand.
    As we are walking up the hill to the birds, I bump into Victor and he bumps into me more times than either one of us can blame the barely slippery ground. Aleeya goes on and on about … I actually don’t know. All I do know is that my heart is heavy. My breaths are deep but ineffective. My stomach is fuzzy and my skin is freezing. But my brain is clear. Determined. Excited.
    Aleeya gets on a bird and asks me to join her but I’m not ready yet. Victor looks at my face and I look at his face until he breaks the silence.
    “Here, I want you to have this,” he says and takes out a small, golden-white stone. It's slightly transparent and glows. The light and temperature immediately remind me of The Spring. Victor takes it with both hands and with a sudden move of his big thumbs, the stone breaks into two pieces. He inspects both pieces and puts the bigger one into my right hand.
    “That is a Glowing Stone, a Springstone to be precise. You won’t find many of them. Don't lose it,” he says.
    "I won't," I respond and fail at the attempt to smile. His eyes alternate between the Glowing Stone and me for a while before he hugs me. As I’m buried in his big arms, I notice how protected I feel — and somehow I get the uneasy feeling that I won’t feel this protected ever again.
     
    After hours of nothing but the deep, blue sea below us I finally spot a big landmass on the horizon.
    “There it is,” I say , relieved.
    “No, my dear,” Aleeya gently denies. "There it is," she explains and points to several tiny, barely visible spots in the sea directly below us. The bird agrees and slowly descends in circles onto a broad, sandy beach.
    I get off the uncomfortably bony bird and stretch my sore body. The beach is filled with other oversized birds but their feathers match the sand so perfectly that one could mistake them for large piles of sand. It's like we landed right inside their dorm since they are all asleep, missing out on this beautiful late afternoon. The sun is beginning to set and its warm light shimmers in the feathers of the birds while a light breeze carries the sweet smell of the ocean over the beach.
    I don’t notice that Aleeya and I aren’t alone until she carefully leads me to a girl sitting in the sand.
    “I want you to meet Maya,” Aleeya says.
    But the feeling isn’t mutual. Maya ignores us. Or she doesn’t notice us ; it’s hard to tell. She seems to observe something with great interest and excitement, and yet her eyes are completely closed. For a second I think she is dreaming, but her upright position and sporadic mumbling suggest otherwise. The wind blows strands of her straight hair back and forth across her face, but she isn't bothered. She is so lost in whatever she is experiencing that Aleeya eventually snaps her fingers directly next to her left ear to get her attention — and she gets it.
    Maya opens her eyes immediately and looks around, quite lost, like we woke