Frost's legs shook. With every step he took, he felt new and horrible feelings of wonder penetrate his body. Everything in this world felt alive and calculating, even the ground itself. Usually the earth of Seasons' Spiral sat flat below his paws, but now it seemed as if, deep within it, something was folding continually and singing.
Frost had never been in a dreamworld or a mindfield before. He hadn't thought the Viper would arrange something so deceptively realistic. Instead he'd expected, well, he wasn't quite sure—some land of long rippling hills, stained perpetually with red, tangled with the sharpest wire, littered with the wing bones of small birds and the teeth of whisperers...something horrifyingly grotesque, some-thing which would send wild shivers through his body to make him falter—easy prey for the hunting viper.
Suddenly overcome with fear, Frost stopped in his tracks. He'd never seen the Ensnarer before.
He'd heard of it, of course, from the migratory birds that passed through the Spiral each summer on their way to the Inlands. They'd described its twisted body and its iridescent scales, its lanternlike eyes and its tongue that, when it flicked, could sense everything—everything on the whole planet, the little pink birds with the strawlike feathers had told him. The Viper hadn't been as active recently, they also said, but it still frequented the Spectrum in search for small prey. Until he met Ravine and Spire, Frost hadn't known much more about the Ensnarer than that. He swallowed. He could hear his heartbeat.
Somewhat reluctantly, Frost turned his eyes to the sky of the mindfield. He found it wasn't at all like the sky over the savanna he knew. This sky was a deep, tumbling sort of gray. Thin clouds drifted over the sun, and over a dark blue moon. That was a new addition.
Had he fallen from way up there? Frost wondered. Had the others fallen from there too? And where had they landed?
Frost glanced at his paws. He ought to have known where he was going, but he felt no pull. Where did his paws want to take him?
He waited a beat with his eyes shut tight, but nothing changed in him. He felt like the same old Frost, blunted by the same old ignorance. His waterfall insight didn't seem to account for much here.
Frost turned to his logical side for help. After a moment of contemplation, he assumed the most intelligent thing to do would be to find the Ensnarer's lair. Hopefully its tunnel system hadn't been rearranged or moved elsewhere for the mindfield and was where he knew it to be in the real world—buried under the northernmost plain of Aeolia. Hopefully.
And hopefully Ravine and Spire were okay. Oh, well of course they were okay! How silly he was. They had the Dreamfisher to protect them. It would take care of everything. It would—
Out of nowhere, a current of hot and cold channeled through him, and something hissed urgently in his head.
It was then Frost broke into a run.
YOU ARE READING
Aeolia
General FictionA woman runs from everything. A songbird joins her from nowhere, singing colors and images. A whisperer finds the pair among a field of poplars and graves. A dark and vicious viper stalks them from deep in the earth. They must flee from the Viper...
