Swan on the Moor

Chapter 19

Jessie and Aine stared upwards in blank and total astonishment. Whatever else they had been expecting, this had not been it. Miles and miles of endless stifling corridor spotted with doors that did not open – "Should have brought a hair pin and picked a lock," Jessie had muttered darkly; Aine had merely wondered if perhaps they were safer not knowing what the rooms held – portraits of strange men, women and forms neither of them had names for, the flickering not-candles and endless intricate draperies, tapestries and strange incongruous items such as vines, anvils and weapons – presumably intended to distinguish one door from another – they had finally reached a huge portal and the end of the corridor. It had been tall enough to fit a giant though ("Perhaps that's what it's for," Jessie had joked, nervously) and marble, smooth and totally without any hint of how one was to open it. After a brief search for levers or buttons, Aine laid a tentative hand on the blank facing and it simply and silently swung open, to reveal the world beyond.

Jessie's face was slightly green. "I don't know how you can look down," she said weakly to Aine, who was peering around with the strange air she sometimes projected that reminded Jessie that no, she wasn't human, was she? There was something beautifully animal and reasonless in those only-too birdlike eyes. Part of her, Jessie reasoned, was probably fascinated and wanted to try to fly, or something. Nothing in Jessie wanted to fly, and everything wanted to run back into the corridors no matter how unfriendly they seemed, but the marble door wouldn't open again.

They stood on what, for lack of a better word, was a cloud, with the door behind them. No sign of the mansion they had assumed housed the corridors. Just a door, on a cloud in an infinite sea of light, just like the floor in the mansion, endless and mildly unpleasant to stare into for any length of time. It wasn't a sky – there was no sense of time or end – it was just something to fill the space. As far as the eye could see there were other...clouds...with doors, and in the very distance, a green-gold, almost pulsing, island.

"Bet that's the centre," said Jessie, fighting down nausea. "I guess that's where we go. Got to be a way out there. It looks different to all the other places." Aine turned to study her face.

"Are you OK?" she asked, her voice lightly distant. Jessie could feel in her something she had felt when she had held an injured bird in her hands; she couldn't, or wouldn't move, but every nerve in her was straining to leap away, not through fear or dislike, just because it was what she did.

"I'm...fine," Jessie replied, pulling herself together a little. "It's not cold at all, isn't that odd? This looks high. It should be cold..." She forced herself to look down.

There was no ground as far as she could see, either, just more of that endless light. "How do we get anywhere else?" she added.

"You just step out," Aine breathed, a faint, rapturous smile on her face, and before Jessie could stop her, she had half-leaped from the island.

"Stop!" Jessie cried, reaching for her, but pulled back with amazement when she saw Aine was simply hovering in the air, supported by nothing but a faintly brighter patch of light beneath her bare feet.

"Huh," Jessie, said, raising her eyebrows weakly. I guess nothing should surprise me about this place now! It doesn't conform to physics, clearly... Gingerly, squelching the butterflies in her stomach, she stepped off herself, trying not to look down, fixing her eyes on Aine instead, who smiled at her.

"It's almost like what I thought flying should be like," the half-fae said, sounding a little more grounded, at least. "Totally weightless. It's wonderful..." She shuddered, shaking her shoulders as if she was trying to encourage wings to burst out, and tilted her head back into the light. Iridescent colours played on her strange skin and hair, the effect looking almost like a dragonfly's wing, or the multitude of colours in a magpie's feathers.