Cloak, Torn: Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 18

When the beanstalk came down I thought the world had shattered. It crushed Jack's old house, sending dust, dirt and splinters catapulting through the air, obscuring everything and blocking out the sun in a cloud of debris. There was a boom and a crack like a thousand cannons firing at once. A massive shockwave rippled under me and I went flying. There was rusty blood and sour juice and bitter dirt all mixed in my mouth and I couldn't see. I couldn't find Jack or Warren or even the sky.

And then as quickly as it began it was over. The silence was so complete after the roar of noise that it was almost as though I had gone deaf.

I coughed and spat a mix of blood and dirt. I could feel the burning scrapes up my arms from being thrown and the bruises already starting to discolor my skin.

"Warren?" I called. I coughed and struggled to get air into my lungs as everything suddenly seemed to want to leave my body. I didn't blame my blood or the air or even the contents of my stomach for trying to leave. It sucked to be my body at the moment.

I tried again.

"Warren? Warren where-," I coughed, "where are you?"

I heard a bark and tried to shove myself up in the settling dust.

"Warren?" I asked, a little stronger this time. He howled in response and a second later I saw him trotting towards me. He looked more brown than black with all the dirt that had settled in his fur and there was a bright red streak across his nose but it looked pretty superficial.

He brushed up against me and I wrapped my arms around his neck.

"Thank goodness you're okay," I muttered into his fur. "Abby would kill me if you died before I could turn you human again."

Human again. The harp! What happened to the harp?

I looked about frantically and found the dusty harp lying a few feet away, not any more broken than usual. If the strings hadn't all been snapped I would have been inclined to think it was indestructible. I sighed in relief.

As the dust began to settle more I could see the beanstalk lying on its side, its hacked off end clawing the air in a last gasp, still oozing slime. It had fallen on top of the old house, crushing it to dust. Not that Jack would mind. And lying under the weight of the vines, limp and unmoving, was Andrew.

I ran over after fast as I could to where his massive hand lay in the dust. I scrambled on top of it and found his wrist and listened for a pulse. There was none to hear.

He's dead. I'm standing on his corpse.

I got off so fast I tripped over myself and fell in the dirt. I could see his eyes from here, open and his lips forever frozen in anger while blood leaked from between them like a trickling waterfall down his cheek. I shuddered at the realization that the crack I had heard had been the snap of his neck.

Dimly I remembered all the spells involving giant blood and thought about whether I could hide his body and how much of an uproar this would be and a million other things but the first and foremost thing was a made up memory of Andrew's voice shouting,

"You broke your promise!"

From behind me I heard a loud squawk and Jack's shout of,

"Gotcha, you stupid goose!"

You broke your promise.

I didn't break it. He did.

I whirled on my heel, cloak billowing, to see Jack wrestling the goose into his arms.

"You," I growled. I sprinted for him and tackled him when his back was turned, slamming his face into the ground and spilling the goose from his arms in a flurry of feathers.