Fyrefall (Phoebe and the Wanderers, Book 1)

10 - The woods

Around the lake, the woods grow tangled and dense, the brambles are sharp and the ivy floods across the ground and I feel that if I stand still too long it will swallow me up. We followed a narrow track, kicking our way through fallen twigs and papery leaves to the clearing around the lake.An arm’s length from the water’s edge, we sat on a tuft of grass, side by side. I tucked up my legs, rested my head on my knees and gazed sideways at Alexander.“So where’s this Drift thing?” I said.

“It’s everywhere,” he said. “It’s another world that lies alongside our own…” he paused, squinting across the shiny mirror of water before us “…kind of like the glass across a picture in a frame.”

“It’s invisible?”

He nodded. “Unless you know how to look —  like Wanderers can.”

“What is it?”

“It’s your memories, your hopes and dreams — every emotion that you ever felt, even those you’ve long forgotten, and those of everyone else that ever lived. These things aren’t locked inside your brain. They’re not really yours at all. All of human consciousness belongs to the Drift.”

I exhaled, long and slow.

 “I know it sounds crazy but…”

I shrugged. “…a lot of crazy things are real.” There was something about the way he spoke. It wasn’t what he said. It wasn’t even the way he said it. But I felt myself believing. I felt myself trusting. “Tell me more,” I said.

“When you look in a mirror, you see an image that’s weaker, thinner than reality,” he said. “When a Wanderer looks in a mirror, we can see through that image into the Drift.” He glanced at me to check if I was following.

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“The lake is a like a giant mirror. And it’s a portal into the Drift.”

I stared hard at the water. Shook my head. “Nope. Nothing.”

He smiled. “Take my hand and I’ll show you.” He reached for me and closed his fingers around mine, drawing me gently to my feet. His skin was warm, and a little rough. I resisted the urge to rub my fingers between his, to feel the story of each crack and callous. Instead, I fixed my eyes on the water.

 “What am I looking for?” I said.

“Look into the water,” he said. “You’ll see.”

The lake reflected the sky, a perfect mirror image of the circle of trees and above, the sky. I forced my eyes wide and held them unblinking until my vision began to blur. The lake’s surface seemed to shift, stretching and caving inwards. It sank, slowly at first then faster and faster, until it plummeted, rushing down deeper and deeper. My stomach lurched, I wobbled. Alexander squeezed my fingers tight.

Colours shifted, stretching, blue into violet into indigo into black and then something beyond, something blacker.  I was looking into a gigantic open cavern, as wide and unending as outer space itself. And inside the cavern pinpricks of light began to twinkle and faint clouds of light shifted in the gloom. I heard a moan, the half-conscious protest of a body that did not want to be woken. The moan came again, not one voice, not a thousand, but a million billion voices together hissing. “Leave me be,” they seemed to say.

And then there came a roar, like the rushing of a distant wind, whirling up from the depths of this bottomless pit. Closer and closer, the roar became a screech, a wild wail whistling between sharp teeth. It hurtled up towards me. I felt myself falling, and I felt with gut wringing certainty that I was about to be torn to scattered shards by the ferocity of whatever power was drawing me in. Hands on my skin, fingers, bones, digging ripping into my flesh, tearing me apart like a carcass sucked dry of every last strip of meat.