Volume 1: Pickpocketing by R. A. Consell

Author:R. A. Consell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: R. A. Consell

Twelve

The Warden and the Weasel

Kuro had never passed through the veil directly. Crossing over where it was thin and torn along Detritus, or at a freshwater inlet, was relatively easy. The change was small, the shift between worlds gentle, and he could even pass unnoticed. The land on the other side felt dull and flat, like music heard through a wall, but the transition was unremarkable.

Passing through the thick of the veil, though, was something entirely else. As Kuro crashed through the shimmering barrier between worlds, it felt as though a skin of dried glue was being peeled from his whole body. As he popped out the other side, his body felt suddenly too small for his mind, and his head throbbed with crushing pain. He had no time to reflect on the sensations, though, for gravity was not patient, and it pulled him into the roiling waters of the bay. With what little magic persisted in the Blandlands, Kuro could do nothing to prevent it.

The icy cold water knocked the breath from his lungs, and his exhausted limbs thrashed uselessly against the waves. Kuro had never been in deeper or rougher waters than a bathtub, and he barely knew how to hold his breath. As he was buffeted about, he got a lungful of the saltwater and began to cough violently. He’d surely have drowned if the waves hadn’t thrown him against the shore. He crawled up the pile of sharp granite slabs that made up the coast of the Blandlands side of Avalon.

The crashing waves knocked him about and more than once tried to drag him back into the water. Freezing and coughing, he managed to haul himself onto dry land, where a group of ducks clucked and hissed at him in irritation at his trespassing.

Once he had evicted the seawater from his lungs, Kuro scanned the rocky island for cover. He was already chilled to the bone, and he didn’t know how much longer he’d last out in the biting wind. The island was a pale corpse of the Avalon inside the veil. The low rolling hills were replaced with sharp slabs of rock; the lush forest with sparse trees, thin and bent by the wind; and the only hint of the soft meadows were patches of scrub grass. As with everything in the Blandlands, it was also considerably larger. It felt like half as much life spread over twice as much land, with the exception of the birds. The island was teeming with them. The nearest shelter looked to be a dense copse of trees over a mile away.

Kuro started to stumble in its direction, frequently berated by birds for wandering too close to their territory. He shivered violently, and his teeth rattled uncontrollably as he padded along the cold ground in his bare feet. He tried not to think very hard about his plans beyond reaching the thicket of trees, as his options didn’t seem too promising. The sun was already starting to set. It would get dark and even colder.

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