The Celestial Portal

By J. L. Ender

I stormed up the narrow stair toward the storm-battered castle, the biting sea wind spurring me on.

“Princess, please wait!” my guard, Alloy, called.

Hearing my preferred title only stoked the fire.

The next stair crumbled beneath my boot, and I pitched sideways into open air. The world spun. I caught sight of crumbling brick buildings, my people tending meager crops growing in sad dirt plots. The collapsing stone city I’d inherited. My mother’s turtle pendant swung out, its chain scraping my neck.

A strong hand took my upper arm and yanked me back to relative safety. Alloy’s weathered face hovered over me, gray-flecked eyebrows raised in concern. “I told you we should take the elevator.”

I pushed him off. “This can’t wait.” Shame flashed through me. “Sorry. Thank you for saving me.”

Alloy nodded.

I gathered my rage about me and thundered on. At the top of the stairs, I shoved open the doors to my mother’s throne room.

Feasting! Our nobles were actually feasting.

Dozens of eyes glared. Hands stopped halfway to mouths.

“How could you!” I snarled. “Our city crumbles into the sea, our people struggle to scratch out a living on bricks and dirt. And you feast! Another section of street just fell into the sea!”

I charged a table laden with food and shoved. A few soup bowls trembled. A gelatinous mold wobbled. I snarled, fists shaking. Alloy quietly upended the table, scattering food.

“Get out!” I let out a primal scream and ripped off my crown, hurling it at the throne. It missed, clanking against a stone wall.

I dropped to my knees, hot tears blurring my vision.

“That’s no queen. Even she knows it,” someone muttered. The angry retorts faded as Alloy shoved everyone outside.

“Princess? They’ve gone.”

I traced the raised lines of Mother’s amulet: an elegant turtle on a silver disc. She’d always been so sure something in the archives would save us. Our planet failing, our city collapsing; we were coming to the end.

Chest heaving with unspent anger, I turned to Alloy. He nibbled on a fallen chicken wing. “Have this sent to the farmers. I’m going hunting.”

The weight of the dead ocean outside the library walls pressed in as I strode past a filmy window caked with rotting algae.

I’d spent ages trawling the cramped bookcases for information on the ancient portal that brought us here centuries ago, when the ocean teemed with life. Now we scraped by, cultivating pitiful farms atop the towers of our dying city. The portal was our only way out.

Useless. Nothing new. Desperate, I grabbed another book. Just the same words, in the same order. I fingered my necklace.

Please, I need help. I don’t know what to do.

A beam of sunlight shimmered through the pale blue water, illuminating nearby shelves. I started putting the book back.

And noticed something glowing behind the shelf.

My heart hammered.

I turned to Alloy, who hovered, as usual, at a respectful distance. I pointed. “Move this shelf?”

“Princess?”

“Trust me.”

He rubbed his hands, took a deep breath, and tugged. Then stumbled backward when it glided to the side, ancient tracks squealing. Behind the bookshelf was a small metal plate with a carving of a turtle emblem.

My pendant’s turtle would be a perfect fit. I pressed it to the plate. A cracked chime dinged, and a door slid open. Dry, musty air wafted over us. I stepped into a dusty alcove of empty shelves. Disappointment and nausea churned in my gut.

Except the shelves aren’t empty.

One book sat alone. A big, red, leather-bound volume with crumbly yellow pages. I read the first words aloud, “To activate the celestial portal…”

I studied the floor. Another silver disc, another shining sea turtle in the center. Tears stung my eyes. At last, I’d found something. But what…?

I rubbed my face and kept reading. “Stand on the symbol of our world with pendant in hand.”

The disc lit up. “Oh, dear.”

The giant disc tilted, and I slid into darkness.

My stomach lurched as I tumbled onto ancient tiles thick with dust. A plume exploded upward when I landed.

“Princess!” An uncharacteristic note of panic filled Alloy’s words.

I sneezed violently, and the sound echoed into the darkness.

I’d fallen into a cavernous hall. Far above, Alloy’s boxy face stared down from a distant circle of light.

I waved, then realized he couldn’t see me. “We’re going to need a light!”

The beam of Alloy’s electric lantern fell on an inky expanse taller than the throne room. An enormous black arch.

I frowned. “How was this chamber never mapped?”

“We’re well below the city, Princess.” Alloy shrugged. “I thought there was nothing down here but support pillars digging into the seabed.”

I traced the lines of my pendant again. “So… this is the portal? But how do we activate it?” I searched until I found another disc on the wall beside the giant arch. I reached up to activate it.

“Wait, Princess.” Alloy held my crown.

I nodded and put the crown where it belonged. Time to be the queen my people need. I’d refused the title for years, feeling myself unworthy.

When I pressed my pendant to the disc, a loud thrum quivered through my eardrums and rattled my brain.

Light burst forth, followed by a stiff breeze of fresh, fragrant air. A teeming jungle and a great sea, healthy and green, shimmered on the other side of the portal. An immense turtle with a shining golden city on its back floated off the coast. I spotted houses, a church, a clocktower, all overgrown with plant life.

Big, but not large enough to house our entire city.

But beyond him, I spotted another turtle, and another. Seven in all. I sighed with sudden relief. A new world, just for us. Our planet had died, but another adventure awaited. I straightened my crown and smiled at Alloy. “Let’s explore our new home.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. L. Ender is the author of the superhero series Steel Fox Investigations and mecha vs kaiju mayhem The Cold Below, as well as a number of other novels and short stories. Ender has worked as a dishwasher, a beef jerky labeler, a warehouse worker, a shelf stocker, a greeter, a traveling technician, a laser engraver, a package handler, a copywriter, a graphic designer, a librarian, an editor, a dispatcher, a phone operator, a hotel clerk, and hopefully someday soon as a novelist… He lives in Ohio with his wife and fellow writer SCE Ender.

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