Adam's Apples
They flew faster and faster as the sack of apples flew faster and faster some distance in front of them, but they could not gain on the sack as the evols dove into a forest. The evil ones flew ever faster between the thick trunks of the trees.
The powerful whirling wind that carried Adam, Zonia, Enoch and Toby seemed to have a mind of its own. The children twisted and turned around and between the tree trunks while keeping the sack of apples in their view.
They suddenly burst into an opening, still following the sack. It flew straight toward the rocky side of a mountain. Without slowing down, the sack slammed into the mountainside.
The mighty wind that whirled about the children and the tiger while carrying them swiftly suddenly slowed their forward movement, then sat them down gently where the crumpled sack lay at the bottom of the mountain wall. Enoch picked up the sack and looked inside. As he suspected, the sack was empty.
"They are not here!" he said, showing the open sack to his companions.
Adam studied the empty sack for a moment, as did his sister, then said, "They must have passed right through the rock."
"Then why didn't the sack pass through, too?" Zonia said.
Toby sniffed the sack and snarled a puzzled snarl.
"What do we do now? We will never find the apples now..." Enoch said.
"We will find them. They can't get away from us that easily," Adam said, pulling out the dream doodler. He shut his eyes and imagined that he, Zonia, Enoch and Toby were in the place where the apples had gone. He waved the doodler and thought as hard as he could think.
Adam's dream drawing materialized, its portal so dark that it was hard to see anything inside.
"I think it's a place somewhere in the mountain," Adam said.
"I can't see anything," Zonia said, squinting her eyes. "Can't you do something so we can it better?"
Adam closed his eyes tightly again and waved the dream doodler. The dream drawing hanging in midair immediately brightened, as if someone had flipped a light switch.
"It's some kind of a tunnel or something," Enoch said.
"Hurry! Jump into the dream drawing before it closes!" Adam commanded, then bounded through the portal.
Zonia and Toby followed. But when Enoch jumped toward the portal, he bounced off and the portal closed. A moment later, Adam suddenly reappeared as if walking out of thin air. "I forgot. You can't go through the same way we can," he said. "I'll doodle you into the dream drawing."
Within seconds, the three children and the tiger were in the small opening within the mountain.
There seemed no way out. The light Adam had dream doodled earlier was fading, and soon the cave became almost totally dark again. He again used the dream doodler, this time to produce a big flashlight.
"We need flashlights, too," Zonia said with irritation in her voice.
So Adam dream doodled yet another drawing and Zonia reached into the portal to get one of the two flashlights Adam's imagination and the dream doodler had produced. But when Enoch tried to reach through the portal, his hand bounced off.
"I'll get it for you," Zonia said, reaching inside the portal to get the other flashlight, then handing it to Enoch.
Together the three searched the cave as their bright flashlight beams moved around the cave. They soon discovered a number of jagged rocks along the cave walls.
"Look! Over here!" Zonia said after a few seconds of searching. "There's a big hole in the ground here!"
Sure enough, when the boys and the tiger looked at where Zonia was pointing, they saw a large hole in the floor of the cave just behind a massive rock.
"Let's shine all of our flashlights down the hole. Maybe we can see where it leads."
Zonia and Enoch did as Adam said.
"It goes straight down, Adam," Zonia said. "I can't see the bottom!"
"I'll use the dream doodler to make an elevator!" Adam said after thinking the matter over for a few seconds.
"What's an elevator?" Enoch asked, not so sure that he liked the thought of jumping into a hole that had no bottom.
"It's something that we can ride on, something that will take us slowly to the bottom of that shaft," Adam said, hoping his confident explanation would make his friend feel a little bit better about the matter of going into the hole.
"But the hole is too narrow for all of us at once," Zonia said, examining the narrow shaft with the beam of her flashlight. Her brother squeezed his chin with his thumb and fingertips and thought about the problem.
"I've got it! ...I'll dream doodle four elevator floors, one above the other. That way we can all fit."
Zonia and Enoch looked at Adam with puzzlement on their faces. They were not at all sure this would work. Toby, however, growled a growl of confidence in his best pal.
When Adam shut his eyes, pointed the dream doodler toward the opening in the floor of the cave, and pressed the "DREAM DRAW" button, a round platform appeared in the hole. It was just large enough to fit perfectly.
"You get on first, Tobe," Adam instructed the tiger, who didn't hesitate stepping onto the platform and sitting down. The platform with the tiger then began lowering into the shaft with Toby confidently riding on it.
Adam shut his eyes and pushed the button again, and again a platform appeared in the shaft covering Toby and the platform below. "Now you, Enoch," Adam said.
Enoch stepped on the platform, but not with as much confidence as had Toby.
Adam then dream doodled two more platforms, one for Zonia and one for himself. In a few moments, the tiger and the children were moving downward slowly on their platforms, one atop the other. Toby's platform bumped against the bottom after several seconds more and the three platforms above the tiger stopped while the cat stepped off his elevator floor and into the cavern.
Enoch's platform descended and stopped. Zonia's and Adam's did the same in their turn.
This cavern was indeed bigger than any they had ever seen. Stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and from the floor of the cavern to form columns where they joined together. An eerie red glow illuminated the columns and the dark shadowy walls of rugged rock formations. The glow coming from somewhere deep from the cavern pulsed with life almost as if this region beneath the mountain had a heartbeat.
Adam could see the worry on Enoch's face, and Zonia didn't look exactly happy, either.
"The Great King is always with us," Adam said in a strong, confident voice. "Nothing can hurt us in a Dream Doors Adventure."
Rumbling sounds in the distance caused Adam to put his hands up and ask for quiet.
"Ssshh....listen...".
The sound grew a bit louder, but then stopped.
"Sounds like it came from that direction," Enoch said, pointing toward the place beyond the stalactites and stalagmites.
Because they could not see beyond the dark columns, they walked between them toward the blackness. They shined their flashlight beams together into the cavern's darkest region.
"It's so dark!" Zonia exclaimed.
They kept walking. Very slowly. Their lights revealed only the sandy floor and darkness beyond.
"This cave must go back a long way. It doesn't seem to have any walls or ceiling." Adam spoke while shining his beam of light all around the inside of the cavern. The beam revealed nothing.
Again, the rumbling sound grew louder for a few moments, then quieted. The sand on which they walked became deeper the farther they walked. They had to lift their legs higher and higher to step upon and over the small sand dunes.
All at once, the sand beneath their feet began to shake. They tried to keep from falling while the shaking intensified. Toby snarled a snarl of surprise and the children yelled loud, startled yells when suddenly the sand began swirling downward, pouring into the floor of the cave.
Downward, downward they went, tumbling and rolling one on top of the other. They seemed to do somersaults forever while they and the sand poured faster and faster into the unknown.
Although the suddenness of their fall took their breath, Adam, Zonia, Enoch and Toby landed softly. They sat for a few seconds on the piles of sand after their abrupt stop.
"Is everybody okay?" Adam asked, brushing the sand from his hair and from his shirt.
"I'm okay," Zonia said, like her brother brushing herself off.
Enoch said nothing, but rather sat spitting sand from his mouth.
Toby snarled an irritated snarl, then stood to his feet and shook as hard as he could shake, flinging the grit from his fur in all directions.
Together, they slid down the steep pile of sand until they stood on the hard surface of their new surroundings. After several moments of brushing sand from themselves, they moved deeper into the new, underground region.
"Toby has found something over there!" Zonia said, pointing to the tiger, who had poked his head and body halfway through an opening along one wall.
They followed the cat, having only to duck slightly to get through the newfound passageway. This new cavern looked much larger than even the previous one. Stalactites and stalagmites formed columns like in the other cavern. But these were larger. Much larger. As big around as the gigantic trees of the outside world.
A red-orange glow lit the entire cavern. But still there were the dark places. Weird shadows on the wall and in the distance as far as they could see.
Bubbling, gurgling sounds much like the sounds of the bubbling pool where the evols had threatened them. The sounds seemed to come from somewhere in the distant darkness.
"Do you still have your flashlights?" Adam asked, flicking on the beam of his flashlight.
"No, I lost mine..." Zonia said with a whine.
"I lost mine, too," Enoch answered.
"The dream doodler!"
Adam looked down at the dream doodler holster, then felt it with his hand. Gone! Probably lost in the sand when they tumbled through the floor above. "Oh no! I've lost the dream doodler!"
"Oh no!" Zonia echoed with equal distress.
"Let's go look for it," Adam instructed. "It's probably back there in the sand."
They turned to face the hole through which they had just come.
"Is this what you are looking for?" a screechy voice asked with a cackle of laughter.
The children watched the creature slowly materialize. A black hooded evol floating in air held the dream doodler in its long, bony hand. Suddenly, many more evols appeared, nearly surrounding the children and Toby, who growled and bared his fangs.
Before the tiger could attack, a semitransparent, yellowish barrier of some sort surrounded him.
"That takes care of your striped friend," the evol who held the dream doodler said with a cackle. "And now it is time to take care of YOU!..."
"COME!" the evol who held the dream doodler screamed loudly. His screeching command made the whole cavern shake. "COME!" the evol screamed again.
Adam, Zonia, Enoch and Toby heard shuffling sounds. They grew louder and louder, and within seconds, they saw huge, hideous creatures shuffle into view. They looked half human and half lizard. The beast-like things joined the evols in surrounding the children. Their large, bulging red eyes stared at the children.
"Mutons!" Enoch said in a whisper so that only Adam and Zonia could hear. Toby roared angrily from the nearly invisible cage and raked at the walls with his powerful claws.
The newly arrived creatures with pinkish-gray skin had no hair on their bumpy, bone-ridged heads. Their wide jaws hung partially open, showing big sharp teeth and thick red tongues that partly stuck out between their teeth. Their long, hairy arms caused their hands to drag the ground when they walked. Their short, thick, bowed legs made them appear to limp as they shuffled their web-toed feet when the moved along the cabin floor.
"Take these earthlons and put them with the others!" the evol who held the dream doodler screeched to the mutons, who began growling and gnashing their sharp teeth while they glared at the children.
"Nothing can hurt children during a Dream Doors Adventure," Adam said out loud.
"Oh no? We shall see...we shall see..." the evol said with a cackle.
The muton giants shuffled along behind Adam, Zonia, and Enoch. The ugly, half-human, half-evol beasts grunted and growled while they made the children hurry along the dark, rocky tunnel.
Finally, they came to an opening in one wall of the tunnel. One of the mutons glared at Adam and pointed one thick, gnarled finger at the opening. The thing grunted and scowled loudly.
"I guess he wants us to go through there," Adam said, leading the way through the opening.
This cavern was far larger than even the big one with the stalactites and stalagmites. Boiling, gurgling sounds, along with the rumbles of rockslides and the hissing of steam, filled their ears while they moved along in front of the shuffling mutons.
"This must be the center of the mountain," Adam said, looking around at the glowing cavern, watching puffs of steam shoot up from the floor in the distance.
"Those things are everywhere," Zonia whispered to her brother in a disgusted tone while they watched the giant mutons move about. The beasts carried stones, boiled lava in big buckets, and did other muton tasks.
The mutons behind the children nudged them onward until finally they came to a long, gorge-like trench that separated one part of the cavern floor from the other.
One of the mutons pointed at a rickety bridge made of wood which stretched across the chasm.
"They want us to cross that bridge," Enoch said. "I don't think it will hold both us and them."
"Don't be afraid," Adam said with courage in his voice, repeating, "nothing can hurt us in a Dream Door Adventure."
The children stepped at first very cautiously upon the swaying wooden bridge. They held to the thick ropes that served as handrails. Although the bridge swayed and seemed to buckle and stretch as they moved, they became more confident that it would hold them the farther along they went.
The mutons did not follow on the bridge, but growled and grunted orders from their side of the chasm. They pointed and made hand gestures commanding the children to cross to the other side.
Several of the beasts waited for them while they crossed the bridge. Like the mutons on the other side, the giants forced the children along a deep, grooved pathway past other staring mutons.
The children had to carefully step around small pools of bubbling lava and holes in the cavern floor that vented steam. Soon they came to another hole in one of the walls of the cave. But this hole had long metal rods that stretched from top to bottom of the hole. The rods were spaced very close together so that they formed bars.
The bars suddenly lifted and seemed to go somewhere up into the top of the cave. The mutons behind the children grunted and growled at them, their wide jaws moving up and down and their red tongues sticking out in lizard-like fashion while they pointed for the children to go into the prison cell. Then they shuffled away, leaving the children behind the bars.
Adam, Zonia and Enoch looked at their darkened cave cell surroundings. They heard muffled voices, which told them they were not alone.
Children!
"Who are you?" Adam said, moving closer to the children who huddled together in the semidarkness.
The little ones looked at Adam, Zonia and Enoch but said nothing. They were obviously frightened.
"I'm Adam...and this is Zonia," Adam said, putting his hand on his sister, then on Enoch. "...and this is Enoch."
Like always, there were no language barriers for children of New Eden. First Time children, Trouble Time children-it made no difference. The Great King granted that talk between New Eden children and all others would have no limitations or boundaries. These frightened children understood perfectly-as easily as did Enoch.
"We won't hurt you. We are here to help you."
Adam spoke bravely. He did not know why he told these children that he, Zonia and Enoch had come to help them. He only knew it was true.
"I am Seth," the oldest of the boys among the children said, somewhat uncertain still of how much he could trust these just-arrived prisoners.
The boy introduced the other children, all his brothers and sisters. And after a few minutes of getting acquainted, Seth's brothers and sisters seemed most curious about the strange clothing Adam and Zonia wore. They were particularly fascinated with the belt and empty holster around Adam's waist.
The girls touched the material of Zonia's shirt while the boys moved their fingertips over the bumps and ridges of the belt and holster. Several of the children seemed fascinated by the strange shoes Zonia and her brother wore.
"How did you get here? Why are you locked up like this?" Adam asked.
"The Fallen Ones took us from our father and our mother yesterday while we slept," Seth said. "I don't know why. All I know is that one of the Fallen Ones kept saying, 'Steal the seed and change the future.' He kept saying it over and over."
"Steal the seed...change the future..." Adam repeated, trying to make sense of the words.
"Well...all I know is...we are here to help you," Adam said with courage in his voice. "Don't be afraid. We'll get you out of here."
Enoch and Zonia were not so confident. Especially when they watched the hideous muton, more than 10 feet tall, shuffle up to the bars of the cave cell, gawk at them, and move his horrible jaws and terrible teeth up and down.
"That one is the keeper of the key," Seth said quietly so that the monster could not hear. "I think he would like to eat us all, but the evil ones told him never to touch us."
"He sleeps a lot," one of Seth's sisters said in a whisper. "He snores so loud it shakes the whole cave."
The muton hissed and made growling mouth noises, its bulging eyes seeming to grow a brighter red. The monster then sat by the bars and leaned against the rock surface of the cave. Within seconds, its eyes could no longer be seen because the folds of its eyelids drooped, then closed.
The muton's massive head slowly nodded forward until its broad chin rested against its fat chest. The snoring that followed did indeed shake the entire cave cell.
"See...I told you..." Seth's sister said, almost with amusement in her voice.
"Do you know anything about the apples?" Adam asked Seth.
"You mean the seven apples my father keeps with him at all time?"
Adam blinked, startled by the boy's question in answer to his own question.
"Grandfather Adam...he is your father?" Enoch, who was equally startled by Seth's question, said.
"Grandfather Adam? Who is he?" Seth said with total puzzlement.
"We've got to figure a way to get that key from the muton," Adam said, interrupting the confusing matter of Adam being father or grandfather. Adam Beam did not understand the puzzle any better than did Enoch or Seth, but he did know they could not spend a lot of time worrying about it.
"How can we get that key?" he whispered, mostly to himself.
"The apples...what about the apples?" Zonia said, trying to get the conversation on the right track again.
"The apples are for some great purpose!" another of Seth's sisters said enthusiastically. "They are from the Garden of long ago."
"My father told us that the seven apples are the only things left from the Garden of long ago," Seth said.
His sister corrected him. "The seven apples, as well as he and Mother, are the only things left that came from the Garden."
"The Maker of All Things told Father that the apples are to be used for some great eternal purpose," one of Seth's younger brothers said timidly.
The children's conversation was interrupted by several noisy snorts from the sleeping muton. Then Adam said, "We have just got to get out of here, find those apples, and get them back..."
Adam had thought and thought about how to get out of the cave cell. He sat leaning against the bars, looking at the snoring muton leaning against the cave wall just outside the bars. There seemed no way out. The key to the cave cell door lock hung on a hook attached to a piece of cloth around the beast's stomach.
"What kind of things are these...these mutons?" Adam asked Seth, who sat nearby.
"They are the children of the fallen ones. The muton's fathers are the fallen ones. Their mothers are earthlons," Seth said.
"You call them fallen ones. Enoch calls them slegna...but we are taught that they are evols. I think, though, that they are all the same," Adam said, studying the snoring, drooling muton.
"I suppose," Seth said, letting some of the sand he had picked up from the cave floor sift through his fingers.
Adam carefully studied the big key hanging from the muton's side. The key lifted and fell with each breath the muton took. When the beast snorted during his fitful sleep, the key sometimes jumped with the quick movement.
"Why have they brought you here? Do you know?" Adam said, still studying the key.
"I don't know. I only know that one of the fallen ones kept saying, 'Steal the seed and change the future.'"
"The evols taking you and the other kids must have something to do with them stealing the apples," Adam said.
Both boys jumped when the muton suddenly jerked his whole body in what must have been part of a nightmare.
"Look! The key fell off the hook!" Adam said, getting to his knees and crawling closer to the muton, who settled back into sleep just outside the bars.
Sure enough, the key had fallen several inches away from the creature's leg. Adam moved as closely to the bars as he could and stretched his arm between them all the way to his shoulder.
He tried to crawl his fingers through the sand toward the key, but the key was several inches out of reach.
"You arms are longer than mine, Seth," Adam said. "See if you can get the key."
The taller, lankier boy reached between the bars and was finally able to rake the key toward himself with the longest of his outstretched fingers.
"Great!" Adam whispered excitedly.
Seth handed Adam the key.
"We will have to be very quiet," Adam said, slipping the hand that held the key between the bars and putting the key as quietly as possible into the cave cell door lock. When he turned the key, the door lock clicked loudly.
Both boys looked at the muton giant when he spasmed against the rock wall where he sat. His eyes opened and he made smacking sounds. He shifted where he sat on the sandy cave floor and rubbed one of his gnarled hands over his face, then let the hand drop heavily to the floor. His eyelids drooped, then plopped shut, covering the red eyes.
Adam and Seth knelt beside the bars, afraid to move. The muton could awaken at any moment!
Finally, the beast was breathing quietly again and Adam whispered to Seth, "Go tell them to be very quiet. We are going to get out of here."