“Aliza!”
I stumbled to a halt, my heart pounding as I turned to stare back down the corridor. I knew that voice. Knew it better than my own heartbeat.
“Mum?” I whispered.
“Aliza, come back, help us!”
“Aliza, we’re here.” That was Dad’s voice joining Mum’s anguished cry. “Don’t leave us!”
The stale air was suddenly frigid as my parents’ voices turned to sobs, interspersed with cries of my name. The sound grated over my heart, clawing and tugging at me, calling me back the way I’d come.
I screwed up my eyes. “You’re not here. You’re not real.”
“Don’t go, Aliza! We need you. Help us. Help us!”
Question everything you might see or hear.
Sage’s warning hissed in my ear as though the witch was right beside me. She was right. Whoever those voices belonged to, they were not my mum and dad. My parents wouldn’t try to lure me into the shadows, they’d tell me to run, to leave them.
“Fuck this,” I muttered, shaking my head.
The rifts were sealed. My parents were not imprisoned in a lonely old tower in a magical realm. They were home. Distraught, but safe. Far away from here. Though it shredded my soul to do so, I turned on my heel and broke into a limping jog, leaving the haunting voices behind.
Another archway marked the end of the corridor, this one blocked by double doors rather than darkness. I burst through them with my parents’ desperate cries echoing in my heart, slamming them shut behind me. The voices fell silent at once, and I slumped against the doors, my chest rising and plunging with every breath. Tears streamed down my cheeks, dripping to my collar.
It wasn’t real. It was a trick, designed to lure me into whatever hideous fate awaited in the shadows. A trick, nothing more. Mum and Dad were far from here, safe. The only help they needed was for me to break this wretched curse and get home, relieving them of their torment.
Swiping my tears away with my bandage, I opened my eyes to see what fresh hell awaited me.
I was in a circular room, walled with yet more archways. These ones weren’t full of darkness, or even blocked by doors, but filled edge to edge with swirling, white mist. Each was indistinguishable from the next, but for the one I leaned against.
Straightening, I took a step away from the doors. As I did so, something, some distant shadow, stirred within each window of mist. I froze, and the shadows fell still. They were barely distinguishable amongst the swirling vapours, but when I squinted, I could still pick them out.
My heart hammered a frantic beat against my ribs. How much more could I take before it gave up completely? It would be just my luck to make it this far only to die of heart failure.
I was close to my goal though. That pull, that magic, thrummed through me with renewed intensity, telling me this was it, the end, or the beginning. I was almost where I was supposed to be.
My foot slid into another careful step, and then another. The mist shadows moved with me, growing in size and clarity.
“Reflections?” I whispered, revolving on the spot.
Sure enough, the six dark figures moved with me. Relief crashed over me in a wave. It was me, just myself mirrored in the arches, not monsters stalking closer. I blew out a sigh, bracing my nerves, and marched the remaining distance to the archway directly opposite. Dagger poised, I forced myself to walk into the mist without hesitation.
White engulfed me.
My grip on my weapon tightened as fog obliterated my vision, but before I could do more than draw a breath, it faded away. I squinted as sunlight glared into my eyes, but there was nothing I could do to block out the screams.
Terrible, anguished screams, somewhere between a wail and a war cry echoed off the high ceiling. Beneath my feet, the ground was slick and dark with blood, and in the centre of the pool, a painfully small form lay still. Too still.
I lurched for the child, my hands outstretched, but the moment I lifted my foot, the room dissolved.
Weak sunlight, grey compared to that I’d become accustomed to, winked and rippled on the surface of a pond, stirred by a breeze. A group of women huddled on the bank. One had wine-red hair.
Abby!
I tried to move, but my feet refused to budge.
A police car trundled over the grass to the mouth of an all too familiar cave, joining a fleet of emergency vehicles already in place. Dogs in luminous vests sniffed frantically around the glen, darting in and out of the caves.
Isobel was standing with a pair of officers, sobbing into her hands.
The world shifted again. The Fairy Glen became an autumn woodland. People dashed between the trunks, sprinting past me with stricken faces. Fae. Some clutched children or small animals to their chests. Others threw terrified glances over their shoulders.
The leaf-strewn ground disappeared from beneath me, replaced by cold, endless blue. Clouds, like gold-gilded cotton wool, sped by, almost within touching distance.
A solemn-faced crowd filled a courtyard, a castle at their backs blocking out the sky. Flames roared to life, a wall of heat between me and them.
The visions sped by, gaining momentum. A snap of mighty jaws. A rain of feathers and blood.
A hulking, horned beast towered over me with skin like ash. Its leathery wings spread wide.
Jacques fled through a twilit wood, drenched in blood.
A frozen, starlit lake. A peal of laughter.
A dark-haired man carried a body through the night.
A tower of ice, melting and buckling as it burnt.
