Howard, A.G. - Splintered 01.5 - The Moth in the Mirror by Howard A.G

Author:Howard, A.G. [Howard, A.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult, Short Stories, Romance, Paranormal & Supernatural, Fantasy - Magic, Retellings
ISBN: 9781613126585
Amazon: B00FJ7NTP2
Barnesnoble: B00FJ7NTP2
Goodreads: 18602075
Publisher: Amulet Books
Published: 2013-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

~ 4 ~

Memory Three: Caged

Jeb’s skull throbbed, and blood drizzled from his hairline into his eyes.

He swiped away the stickiness to focus on his surroundings. Morpheus had brought him to the Red Castle after putting the sleeping spell on him. Dumped him inside a birdcage in the dungeon. Jeb wished he hadn’t drunk the shrinking liquid when he woke up, but the bug man had given him an ultimatum.

At first, he’d threatened to kill Al. But Jeb had called that bluff, knowing she was indispensable. Then Morpheus had pulled out another big gun, threatening to send Al’s fragile mom completely over the edge of sanity. That he would do.

Al had fought so hard to save her mother. It would kill her to lose her to madness. So Jeb didn’t hesitate putting the bottle to his lips.

His body swayed, but it wasn’t from the woozy aftereffects of the potion. The platform beneath him was swinging from his attempts to head-butt his way through his prison’s bars—a desperate move that had resulted in nothing more than the gash at his hairline. A piece of Morpheus’s magic—a blue electrical thread—held the wire door of the birdcage immovably shut.

“Well, plenty of good that did, yes?” a nagging female voice intoned. “Morpheus chooses who has the power to coax his magic loose. Obviously, you’re not a chosen one.”

Jeb grimaced at his fellow captive. She was a lory—a parakeetlike netherling normally the size of a human. Since they’d both been shrunk, the only thing that set her apart from the birds in his world were the robes of creamy satin and red jacquard fitted over her wings, body, and bird legs, and her humanoid face slapped onto crimson feathers as if it were a mask. A beak that was more like a rhinoceros’s horn jabbed at him from where a nose should have been, and her lips flapped furiously.

Worst of all, her voice could topple the Tower of Pisa with one syllable. Whenever she spoke, it was as if someone had surgically implanted speakers in Jeb’s ears and locked the volume dials on “deafer than a stone statue.” She was one of the many reasons he’d been trying so hard to get out of this bird prison.

Flickering light from the candles on the wall outside the cage illuminated her scowl and cast the rest of the dungeon into shadow.

“Listen, Lorina,” Jeb said after her voice stopped echoing. “We wouldn’t be in here if it weren’t for your husband.” He pointed to the creature snoring below the cage, who was just as strange-looking as his wife, with the body of a dodo, the head of a man, and hands protruding from the tips of his stubby wings. “He kept Alice Liddell in a cage just like this one all those years ago. It’s his fault my girlfriend has what it takes to dethrone your queen. Did it ever occur to you that this is what you both had coming?”

“Charlie did no such thing!” shrieked the lory, fluttering in midair in the cage.

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