The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

Author:Alex Jennings [Jennings, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2022-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Perry was nothing and nowhere. He was a loose net of awareness hanging against an unrelenting void. He even missed the sensation of falling. He waited for what seemed a long time, and he couldn’t help but think about what was happening to him. Was this what sleep was like? Did people experience something like this every single night and promptly forget upon waking?

He felt a stirring somewhere in the depths of his consciousness. His nose began to tickle a bit. It was not so much that his senses began to awaken; it was that an environment began to form, bringing with it stimuli for Perry’s senses to read.

He hoped he liked whatever the next place was. The church had been all right, he guessed, but Perry hoped that this time, wherever he went, Brendy and Peaches would be there with him. Together, they’d decide what to—

Water rushed into Perry’s mouth and nostrils. He swallowed quite a bit of it before he knew what was happening. He experienced a quick, razor’s-edge moment of disorientation in which he knew two things: the first was that this water was not breathable like that of the Bayou Saint John, and the second was that the worst thing he could do right now would be nothing. If he thrashed with all his strength, he might just break the water’s surface and reach the air he needed.

With a strangled shout, Perry threw himself upward, hardly swimming at all. It was as if he grasped the water and pulled it down past his head. Perry broke the surface, sputtering and coughing. He thrashed around, trying to locate the shore.

“Buh-BRENDY!” he screamed.

“Perry drowning!” Brendy shouted. “Rock! Bring Perry over here!”

It was as if someone had stuffed a flock of pigeons into a cannon and then fired them all, unharmed, into the air. Perry heard a flapping of wings, a bizarre cooing sound, and then Brendy’s voice again. “Right! Bring Perry!”

Perry felt himself drawn up into the air and swept to his right like a dry leaf carried on the wind—and this wind smelled of smoke and herbs. Almost immediately, he felt grass beneath him and realized that a drizzle fell from—well, from up. Perry could not locate any sky. He closed his eyes. He’d known that his little trick, if it worked, would get them out of their predicament. It had worked—or he thought it had, but they were still lost.

“Here Perry!” Brendy crowed. “I do good?”

“Why you talking like that?” Perry asked, eyes still shut.

“What say?” Brendy asked. Then after a pause, “He wants to know why you sound so funny. He talk funny. He talk people. You talk all broke up like baby talk! Well, here Perry. Alive. I know he alive. Thank you. You live in my rock? Not understand. I told my rock to do something, then you came. You live in the rock…?”

She went on like that for a while.

Once Perry had recovered a bit, Brendy’s chattering began to grate on his nerves.

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