10

Out of Reach

After another awkwardly quiet dinner that evening, Lottica looked half-heartedly through her telescope. Her attention was not trained on any massive objects that inhabited the vast realm of space. She was much more preoccupied by the amazing gemstone hidden in one of Nick's socks and tucked away in the side drawer of the desk. It felt as enigmatic as a supernova.

She gave up on the telescope. "Are you having any luck?" she asked her brother hunched over the laptop.

Nick shrugged. “Not much. I googled all kinds of search terms for gemstones, precious gems, and I even tried adding Lebreima to the search. All I get back are a few hits linked to some of those old Lebreiman folktales Dad used to tell us.”

“They were his favorites,” Lottica said, smiling at the memory.

“No doubt. The story that kept popping up in the search results was about Hawk, and how he flew through the fires of the underworld to rescue the man who would go on to be the first king of Lebreima.”

“And no mention of magically transforming gemstones?”

Nick sighed. “Look, you’re more into literature than I am. A lot of these tales are long and dense. Many aren’t even translated from Lebreiman. And when they are, it’s not exactly light reading. Besides, I’ve got homework to do tonight.”

Lottica placed the lens cover over her telescope and went to Nick’s side. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to have to figure this all out.” She leaned in to better see the laptop screen displaying neat rows of gemstones, none of which remotely resembled the one they’d found under the iron hawk.

"What about the inscription on the statue of Hawk? Don’t you think Kareima is the name of the stone?" she asked.

"I think you’re right about the name of the gem. I’ve used Kareima as a search term, but everything I got back was in Lebreiman. I haven’t tried the whole inscription, though."

Lottica knelt to get level with the screen. "Try it now." Seeing her brother's brows tighten, she quickly added, "Please."

Nick typed Lebreima lumeinatus de Kareima and paused as he checked the spelling. "Does that look right to you, Lottie?"

She was surprised to hear her brother call her "Lottie". Only her parents had sometimes called her Lottie.

"Sounds good," she said and meant it for both.

Nick hit the return key, and almost instantly the laptop screen refreshed and there at the top in bold was the telltale phrase: NO MATCHES FOUND.

"My spelling could be off," Nick offered. He tried variations, but all with the same result. He finally gave a shrug and took his hands from the keyboard as if to offer Lottica the chance to try.

"That's okay, Nick. We'll just have to keep trying other places."

"Such as?"

"There's always the library. We might even pry some information from Grandfather or Grandmother. Maybe Lebreima has an embassy."

Nick looked doubtful.

Sudden inspiration struck Lottica, and she began typing in a URL. As she hit the return key, she turned to her sullen brother and said, "When all else fails, you just need to e-mail Strong Bad."

Strong Bad was a classic internet Flash cartoon character that defied explanation. On an older website they’d discovered years before, Strong Bad, in majestic lucha libre mask and tights, spent his time answering ridiculous e-mail queries with the help of his cryptic sidekick, The Cheat.

Even though the Homestar Runner website was largely static these days, and Strong Bad rarely answered queries anymore, a virtual visit to Strongbadia and the land of Trogdor could still take their minds off mysterious Lebreima, a land still amazingly beyond the massive reach of the internet.