Jane Doe and the Quill of All Tales by Jeremy Lachlan

Author:Jeremy Lachlan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardie Grant Children's Publishing
Published: 2022-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

FEVER DREAMS

I’m here again, caught in the way-back-when – the very distant past – breathing the stale air of this ancient Realm of Chaos. In the sky, the pink fluffy clouds and floating islands. At my feet, the black rock streaked with shimmering veins of gold. Ahead, the crystal pillar on the crest of the mountain ridge, tall and twisted, black against the setting sun.

It’s always the same: I step forward, the pillar glows like the veins in the rock, pulsing like a heartbeat, and as the final sliver of pink sun vanishes beyond the horizon, the world falls to pieces around me. The sky rains rock and ruin. The mountain trembles and cracks. I run, I dodge, I try to reach the pillar in time, panicked, overcome by that sick desire to save whoever or whatever’s trapped inside. But I know I’m not gonna make it. I never do.

‘Hold on,’ I shout, ‘I’m coming!’

The same old sky-island plummets into the next valley and explodes. The same old fissures open wide. As always, I leap the first and soar over the second, but the third gets me again.

I jump, I come up short, I fall, and my heart breaks into a million pieces – not because I’m about to die, but because I didn’t reach the light.

Down I go again, dropping to the deepest dark. Shapes emerge but, this time, I don’t see Boon or the Brethren or the jungles of Vahru. This time, I’m back inside the Manor, falling through the Clockwork Cavern, plummeting past the flaming torches on the walls, zipping by and whooshing through the gaps in the gears and cogwheels as they turn. I can feel the shifting force again, way down at the base of the cavern: not growling anymore, but roaring.

The cavern starts to glow. Takes me a moment to realise the light’s coming from me. The wound in my palm’s torn open, and the creepy veins aren’t black anymore, but golden, shimmering and pulsing like the threads of crystal in the black rock of the Realm of Chaos, shining brighter and brighter as I spin, flip and fall. It’d almost be beautiful, if it weren’t for the pain. The veins burn as if molten gold’s being poured into my body, leaching around my wrist, up my arm and through my chest – my whole body – infecting every inch of me. The gold creeps up my neck, across my face and into my eyes till all I can see is brilliant, blinding light.

I claw at my face. I scream. I –

Come to, sweating and gasping by the campfire.

‘What the hell?’ I whisper, clutching at my injured hand.

No golden light. No shifting force. No pain.

I fell asleep on my watch like a goddamn fool.

The fire’s gone out. The strip of night sky above the chasm’s getting milky. Dawn’s on its way. Aki’s throat rattles gently as he sleeps. Boon’s curled up beside him, clinging to his uncle’s blade, single-freckled cheeks like a second set of eyes keeping watch while he snoozes.

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