Just as I was about to fall to my death, like and angel, I felt something grab my hand and pull me back up to safety. I was laid down on the concrete. I looked up to see my savior.
“Jace. You saved me!” I said happily. “I thought I was going to die! But you saved me. You’re like my angel.”
“I guess so,” he said. “Come on. We need to get out.”
I managed to stand up and started to walk.
“Where have you been?” I asked him.
“Hiding,” he replied.
“I knew you weren’t captured. The man said you had been captured.”
“Well, he lied,” he said.
We walked round corners and up and down stairs. It seemed like we had been going forever when I finally saw something helpful.
“Hey, look!” I said grabbing his arm. Up ahead in a dim splash of light was a ladder. “That could be a way out!”
We ran towards it happily. I stopped at the base and looked up. Light poured through what looked like a grate.
“Come on,” I said. I started to climb up the rusted ladder. As I neared the top I stopped and looked down to check on Jace. He was just starting to climb up. “Hurry up!” I called down to him.
“Sorry, I just saw something weird.”
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied.
I knew he had something, I could tell because he didn’t look at me when he spoke. Why is he hiding something from me? Is it something I did? I decided to let it slide.
I reached the top and pushed the grate. It slid across with a scrape of metal against concrete. I went up into the brilliant light and coughed as black dust billowed around me. I was standing on a road in what looked like a small city. Everything was black. At this time Jace had come out and was looking at the city.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I’ve been here before. When I was lost.” I remember back to when I had come upon this city. Everything turned to ashes. I remembered the skeleton and the baby, and the toy. The toy! Where was the toy! I started to cry as I realised I I had lost it.
“What’s wrong?” Jace asked.
“It’s just that when I came here I went into a house and inside a crib was a skeleton and wrapped in it’s arms was the skeleton of a small baby. There was a bear in the baby’s arms and I had taken it in memory of what had happened. But it’s gone, everything’s gone.”
“What house was it?” he asked.
I scanned the city in search of the house. I looked to where I had thought it was, but it wasn’t there. Had it all been my imagination? The skeletons, the toy, everything I did in that house. But the bear, I held it, it felt real. No, it couldn’t have been my imagination. But where was the house?
“Merissa?”
I completely forgot about the question.
“Um, it’s not here. I thought it was over there but it isn’t,” I replied pointing towards the place I thought it was.
“How could it not be there if you saw it?” Jace asked.
“I-I don’t know.”
“Well, do you think you imagined it?” he asked.
“No! I didn’t imagine it! I felt the bear, I held it. It felt so real, I couldn’t imagine it, I just couldn’t.”
“Alright, which way did you go to get back to our hometown?”
“Aah.” I looked around the vast mounts of black and grey ashes. “I think it was this way,” I said pointing towards what I thought was North East.
“Alright, come on. Let’s go.”
We started to walk to the way I pointed. On and on we walked.
“Where now?” he asked.
I thought hard and I realised I had fainted around about this place.
“I don’t know, this is where I fainted.”
“You fainted,” he said looking surprised.
“Yeah, then a man in a cart picked me up and took me along the road and his way passed through our town and that’s where I hopped off and ran to school.”
“Ok. Wait, this guy was in a cart. Aren’t carts and stuff like that really old fashioned.”
“Well, yeah, that’s what I thought. To tell you the truth I thought I had gone back in time. But then we arrived at the town and I found the school. In fact I don’t even know why I didn’t ask him why he was in a cart and was being drawn by horses.”
“Do you know how long you were out for?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, he didn’t tell me when he had found me.”
Jace didn’t reply, he just frowned. “We better keep on moving. The more we do the faster we’ll get home.”
