The Lost City of Faar by D.J. MacHale Read Free Book Online

was sorely tempted to shout out “Second Earth!” so the flume would suck me up and bring me home. But I didn’t. I was here now and I had to go forward, not back. Actually, I had to go down. Underwater. With a sweep of my arms and a kick of my legs, I thrust up out of the water, then sank back down below the surface. We were on our way. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a short and painful trip.

JOURNAL #5
(CONTINUED)
CLORAL
    S wimming underwater is a very cool thing.
    My parents taught me how to snorkel in Long Island Sound when I was a kid and Uncle Press, as I told you, took me to get my diving certification. I never liked regular old swimming much. To me, doing laps in a pool was like jogging on a treadmill. There was nothing interesting to look at. But diving below the surface was a whole other story. That was like dropping in to a different world.
    Of course, I had been dropping in to a few too many different worlds lately, so I wasn’t as psyched about this dive as usual.
    Once I sank below the surface, I was afraid to take a breath. I was used to breathing through a mouthpiece connected to a hose that was connected to a scuba tank. But there was no mouthpiece in this weird head-bubble thing. And there was no tank of compressed air strapped to my back either. All I had was a stupid little harmonica-looking doo-dad stuck near the back of my head that was supposed to take oxygen out of water. Suddenly the whole thing sounded pretty impossible. Even though I knew I was underwater and myhead was still completely dry, I couldn’t bring myself to let go and . . .
    â€œBreathe!” commanded Uncle Press.
    I spun around and saw that he was floating right next to me. How weird was that? I could hear him even though we were underwater with our heads encased in clear plastic. His voice sounded kind of high and thin, like the treble knob on my stereo was cranked all the way to ten and the bass was backed off to zero, but I could hear him as plain as if, well, as if we weren’t underwater.
    â€œTrust me, Bobby,” he said. “Look at me. I’m breathing. It works.”
    I wanted to trust him. I also wanted to shoot back to the surface and breathe real air. But my lungs were starting to hurt. I didn’t have any choice. I had to breathe. I exhaled what little air I had left in my lungs, then took in a tentative breath, to discover it worked. I had no idea how, but that little harmonica gizmo was letting me breathe. It was even better than using a mouthpiece and a scuba tank because there were no hoses to deal with. And because there was no mouthpiece, I could talk. We could communicate underwater!
    â€œThat’s better,” Uncle Press said reassuringly. “You okay?”
    â€œYeah,” I answered. “How come we can talk?”
    â€œIt’s the re-breather,” he said, tapping the silver device on the back of his globe. “It carries sound waves, too. Cool, aye?”
    Cool was the word.
    â€œLet’s go,” he ordered.
    With a kick of his fins Uncle Press took off swimming. He left a trail of carbon dioxide bubbles that came from the re-breathing device as he exhaled. Now that I was getting used to breathing in the air globe, I took a quick lookaround to get oriented. The pool of water we had flumed into turned out to be the opening to a passageway underneath a huge overhang of rock. Uncle Press was now slowly swimming toward a ribbon of light about thirty yards away that I could tell was the end of the rock ceiling, just as he had described. Behind me I saw that the ceiling only went back a few more feet before ending at a craggy wall. This was a pretty out-of-the-way place for a gate to be hidden. But I guess that was the idea. The gates were all hidden in remote places so ordinary people from the territories wouldn’t accidentally find them.
    Uncle Press was already several yards ahead of me and I didn’t want to be left here alone, so I