Secret Places and Hidden Things

Chapter Fifteen

The island moved at a frenzied pace, blurring the colors of the land around it. Where, before, it had always felt like the island was wandering, this time it felt like it was being drawn in—like a magnet seeking its pole. It was moving in a straight line. Somehow Jain knew this in spite of the ever-changing scenery.

She was sitting on the back edge of the island, watching the distant glow of the star flicker on the edge of the rapidly-changing horizon. She wondered how the island was still moving if the weaver was gone. She felt hope, and then she laughed cynically. The weaver would have said the land was moving, not the island.

Vast distances strobed by, whole mountains parting way, rocks and trees spraying up behind her in a chaotic wake before settling into new positions. Plains, forests, lakes and oceans, tundra, mountains, swamps, and rivers—they stretched behind her, their shapes distorted by speed. The wind and noise were massive, but they didn't seem to be caused by her own motion so much as the motion of all things around her rapidly replacing each other in space.

Then there was turbulence, and she watched as the island split away in various directions, splashing up into the sky, down through the ground, off to the sides and forward, each with a different version of her staring back with wild eyes. The sun arced overhead in a burning neon line before being replaced by a swirling nebulae of stars spinning fine white spirals through the horizon.

The island hit something solid and was thrown into the air, a whole forest following behind. It arced into the sky before falling back in a new place like javelins striking the earth. She burst through the clouds and left the atmosphere, a burning corona flaring around her in a dome. The earth grew small behind her, and the sun and stars—brighter than she'd ever seen them—went flying past in a kaleidoscope of flashes. Still, the light from the weaver strobed faintly behind her.

Then something dark came. It was more endless than the black of space between the stars, deeper and broader. It was so empty it couldn't be called color. A fear gripped her heart. She didn't feel like she was moving now, everything had faded into the emptiness, and without actually stopping, everything had become still...until she crashed through another island, scattering burning rocks out in all directions like a firework.

"You there," she heard a voice call, "jump before it's too late!"

Without thinking, she threw herself from the island out into the darkness and a massive hand—bigger than her whole body—grabbed her. She let out a startled yell as a tremendous sense of motion stopped abruptly, and she watched herself smear across the void like so many splattered paints. The hand moved with her, and she snapped back into place, watching the island zoom out into a small speck of light before disappearing entirely.

She turned her head and saw the hand holding her was attached to a long, stony arm, its reach too broad for her to see its end. As it reeled her in, it resolved into a great beast, seemingly made from the earth itself. A boy was standing on its shoulder. All around it, huge chunks of red-hot rock were floating. It was gathering these with its other hand and stuffing them back into a hole in its side.

"I felt it happen," the boy said as soon as she came close enough to hear. "The star must have fallen."

"The star?"

"Yes. When it falls things will change."

"You must be talking about the weaver," Jain said.

The giant deposited her on its shoulder—if it could be called a shoulder—and started using both hands to gather the glowing rocks around it.

"It never called itself a star." Jain said, looking behind her. The giant was connected to a long, thin strip of land. Far in the distance, the faintest hint of a horizon, and reality, seemed to connect back to them like a bridge.