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If it’s not real, why is sweat running down my back?

  Keep moving, maybe there’s a cliff to fall off. That will wake me up.

  Gotta keep moving.

  A dark patch in the distance. He quickened his pace. The sand sucked at his feet, tiring his legs. The patch grew as he got closer and he squinted to make out details. Smoke poured off a midnight-black structure as tall as four houses. He was close enough to smell the burning.

  Black gates.

  Burning black gates.

  Detached, somewhat mesmerized, Kai kept going. Smokey clouds billowed thick, so dense they soon blocked off his view. A moment’s relief from the crimson glare, then suffocating closeness.

  This is so messed up. He couldn’t stop himself, he kept walking. Burning blackness filled his mind and heart. Sing-song death filled his ears. Rancid smoke clung to his taste-buds.

  There was no turning back now. He was drawn like a dog on a leash.

  She came out of nowhere—a girl shimmering in a light that shook him from his daze.

  “You fool! What are you thinking? It’s not your time.”

  She grabbed his tender arm with a fury that made him wince. Torn between the hypnosis of the flames and this all too real bully-of-a-female, Kai froze.

  As if trigged by their presence, the black gate cracked open and thick smoke rolled out. Tendrils of it curled toward them, slow but deliberate. Living, hungry. Screams from inside clawed at his eardrums.

  “DarKounds are coming. We’ve got to get to the river. Come on!” Something in the girl’s voice turned his belly to water.

  Then the howling began.

  His blood turned to ice. You can't run with ice in your veins. He stared, perplexed. The tiny, shiny girl turned back to him and swung her arm. The back of her hand connected with his face, rattling his teeth.

  “There’s no time. Move.” Her slap and the fear in her eyes unlocked his legs. He ran.

  Thick tendrils of blackness kept pace alongside them. He heard the pounding of clawed feet. Heightened senses picked up snarling, breathing, whining. It all sounded doggish enough to be the darKound things the girl was so scared of. Pain danced across his cheek where she’d slapped him. She pulled ahead of him now. The blackness edged ahead, hemming him in, cutting him off from her, from escape.

  Kai wanted to laugh, but adrenalin pumped through his veins and the girl’s fear was rubbing off on him. He ran, feet bleeding, burning.

  You can never run fast enough.

  Nimble and quick, the shiny girl was moving further away.

  Give up.

  Leg muscles screaming, chest heaving, and desperate for oxygen, he ran.

  Give in.

  Surrender.

  Don’t fight what is stronger than you.

  There was no way he could outrun the blackness.

  Accept it.

  Running is futile.

  He slowed, time to stop this running away nonsense.

  Then a shimmery silver thought: You’ll let a girl outrun you?

  “No! Heck no!”

  Energy pulsed through his thighs, his feet flew. As if sensing his burst, the darKounds ran faster. He heard it in the rhythm of their footfall.

  What was a darKound anyway? Curiosity nearly made him stop. Kai shoved it aside and focused on the girl. Every step took him closer and then he was alongside. Running apace—the blackness matching every step.

  A silver sliver slashed through the barren terrain—the river! A thick bank of trees lined the opposite side. They hit the water running. Icy cold seared his burnt skin. The shock was too much, his limbs turned to lead. Someone flicked the switch in his head and blackness took him.

  ~*~

  He came to lying on his side in cool grass, coughing up water. The shiny girl sat within arm’s reach, her knees drawn up. Her inner light shone so bright that it poured off her in waves, setting bark and grass ablaze with a pure light, completely opposite to the smoking black gates that she’d pulled him from. Each place the light touched seemed to dance with vibrant life. He lay still, unwilling to break the moment, drinking in beauty unlike anything he’d ever seen or felt. It was like being taken apart, rearranged and put back together in a whole new way. Then the moment popped like a pin-pricked bubble. She was glaring at him.

  “You nearly drowned.”

  No kidding.

  “First, you go strolling off to the gates of the Darklands. Is it not enough that your body is dying in hospital? Don’t you know that when you pass between those gates here, that’s it. No get out of jail free pass. No do-overs. Gone forever. And then! If strolling off to the Darklands isn’t enough, you dive in the river even though you can’t swim. What were you thinking? If you have some sort of death wish, you should tell me now and I’ll push you off a cliff, finish the job, and save us both a whole lot of trouble.” She gave him no time to answer. Getting to her feet, she threw something at him. A jumpsuit. Shimmery grey and soft to the touch.

  Kai caught the jumpsuit and shuddered. The fabric felt clammy, cold as frog skin. He didn’t like frogs. “I can too swim.” Even to his own ears he sounded three years old and sulky.

  “Put that on. You can't be seen like that,” the girl pointed at his chest, wrinkling her nose. “You'll have every darKound swimming the river to get to you.”

  He followed where her finger pointed and swore. In the chase he’d managed to rip a hole in his purple-stained T-shirt. The triangular bit of chest visible through the tear was no longer a healthy flesh colour, but translucent, shifting like the rainbow patterns on a bubble. What? He pulled up the hem, and his mind swam. He was completely hollow. Empty. No heart, lungs, veins. Just dark emptiness that swirled and pulsed.

  He dropped his shirt as if it had stung him and held his hand up to the light. He swallowed hard, feeling the dry bread that had been breakfast queuing at the back of his throat. He could see the girl clearly through his fingers. It made him think of the plastic human figure he’d found in the cupboard in Biology class at St. Gregory’s. Anatomy meant nothing to him, but he spent many break times taking out all the organs and creating macabre faces with them that he would sketch and give to Lizzie. Lizzie, who sat next to him in Bio, who always wore pigtails, and smelled like rain. Lizzie, who had won his heart because she always carried a frog in her pocket. She was the coolest thing, yet she didn’t like his drawings. Maybe that’s why he didn’t like frogs. It hadn’t made any sense to him back then.

  And his hollow body made no sense to him now. Before his mind snapped, Kai shut his eyes and felt for the zipper on the suit she’d given him. The jumpsuit slipped easily over his wet clothes. He felt a tingle through his wrists and neck and held up his hand. It was normal, pink-tinged-blue from the icy water, faint veins criss-crossed his palms. Relief buckled his knees and he slumped at the base of a tree.

  The girl sighed, “He built the suits to make your spiritual body look more like the body you’re used to. He knows us well. Human brains don't take to being messed with. We need to get moving. It’s not safe here.”

  “Where is here? And those gates. All that screaming. This place is a riot. Not normal, I tell you.” He remembered the letter in his pocket. “Listen, I’m gonna be late. Wake me up, will you? There is somewhere I need to be.”

  She regarded him with cool eyes, frustration laced with sympathy. And a dash of something else. Irritation?

  “Look, I don’t want to waste your time. Just poke me with a stick or something. I’ll be out of your hair.” Across the river, the shadows along the riverbank rippled. Kai rubbed his eyes and squinted. “Why are the shadows moving?”

  “Those are darKounds, not shadows.”

  “Oh, wow. Can they swim?”

  “They won’t swim in this water, and before you ask why, which no doubt you will, let’s just say it’s special.”

  “Great. Then what’s the rush?”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “What’s to get?"

  “You’ve been marked f
or destruction and they’ve been sent to bring you in. They are hunting you. They’ll search upstream until they find a place to cross, and they won’t quit until they’ve carried you back.”

  “OK, then.” She was so serious that Kai tried not to laugh. One barked out anyway. “Must have been something mouldy in my bread.” His nose wrinkled, “Indigestion maybe. They say that can give you odd dreams.”

  "Dreaming would be better. C’mon, Boy. Let’s go."

  3

  Kai pressed on through the forest, sweating to keep up with the blonde girl who'd rescued him. Her hair was pulled back into a single braid that hung halfway down her back. It swung every step she took. He walked in time to the swing of her braid…left, right, left. Every time he caught himself walking in time, he forced himself out of rhythm but when he looked again he was back in sync.

  “My name’s Kai, by the way. Not Boy. Kai. You?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “Evazee. Most people call me Eva.” Even though her short legs took two steps for each one of his, she breathed easy. It bothered him.

  “Zee, it is, then.”

  By the lack of expression on her face he’d managed to score a point. The thrill of victory dwindled as she shut down and started walking again. Way to go, Kai. Alienate the only other person keeping you company in this bizarre dream.

  He had to wake up. It was the only thing that mattered. His foot slipped and he came down hard, knee grinding into the glowing orange moss. The crushed moss turned slimy, filling his nose with the rank odour that reminded him of burnt-out electrics.

  Evazee glanced back with a frown, but she didn’t stop.

  Nursing his stinging knee, he tried to keep pace as she pushed forward through tangled roots. The questions buzzed in his head, circling like flies on a carcass. Every so often, he’d try to ask, but her back was all he saw and her answers didn’t stretch past grunts.

  He grabbed a trunk to hoist himself up a steep ledge in the forest floor. The bark was smooth, a deep shade of purple and topped with an umbrella of teal, heart-shaped leaves. He shook his head and hung on to sanity by a thread with a theme song on repeat. Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.

  Trees pressed in closer the farther they walked, gnarled trunks dotted with fluorescent moss in glowing shades of sapphire and emerald. Scattered mushrooms gathered in clumps in bark hollows, violent shades of jewel colours pulsing slowly with gentle inner light.

  Kai shuddered at the thought of eating one. Anything lit up that brightly had to be radioactive.

  This place didn’t smell like any forest he’d ever been in. Those had been all damp wood, mud, and rotting leaves. Here, the air was cleaner, as if it had just rained but without the wetness. He turned sideways to fit between the trunks. The forest pressed in close and Kai’s insides squirmed. He imagined it was a similar feeling to being locked in the trunk of a car. Wake up, already.

  The ground tilted steadily upward, sending burning fire through his thighs. His breathing was laboured. Should’ve stuck with that running thing he’d tried at St. Greg’s. Technically he’d only gone once and the shock had been enough to send his body into a rebellious spasm for a week.

  He stumbled through a gap in the trees into an exposed clearing, nearly colliding with Evazee, who stood still for the first time since he’d woken up from his swim.

  “Zee, I want to wake up now. This is not my scene.”

  The girl squinted at the bright, sunless sky overhead. “I have to go.”

  “No. No, no! You’ve got it wrong. I need to go.” He tapped his chest and tried to ignore that it sounded as if he was whining. She was breathing normally. That bothered him more than the purple trees and glowing plant life. “You obviously like it here.”

  "Listen, Boy, I know you have a ton of questions. I'm all out of time, so pay attention. You need to find the one they call Tau. He can help you.” She swung the bag off her back and began to dig through the contents.

  “I don’t even know where I am, how am I supposed to fi—”

  She stopped rummaging and glared at him, “Trust. Trust and keep moving. Things are different here.”

  “Oh, well that helps me so much. Thank you.”

  “Your sarcasm is wasted on me. Focus. If you want to live, pay attention. Avoid dark. Stick to the light. If the light leaves, you leave too.” A frown creased her forehead, her head tilted sideways and she squinted at his temple. No, she was blatantly staring.

  “This is creepy. Actually, quite rude. What are you looking at?”

  Her bag fell over, forgotten for the moment as she closed in on him, homing in on the side of his head as if it were a flashing beacon. She traced the skin reverentially and crinkled her nose. “It’s you. How can it be?”

  Kai pulled away with a nervous chuckle, fingers scrubbing the skin where she’d been studying as if he could rub off what she’d seen.

  Zee grabbed his arm. On the inside of his wrist was a mark he’d never seen before—a silvery pattern, shaped oddly like a treble clef. Kai pulled his arm and squinted at it. Where had that come from?

  “So these are new? You’ve never had them before?”

  Kai shrugged, staring at his arm with suspicion. His feet weren’t sore either. They’d been fried and nibbled in the desert, but now they were fine. Shoeless, but not sore. He shrugged, “Strange things can happen in dreams.”

  “The water must have activated it. Wait, I have something for you.” Zee ran back to her bag, threw back the flap, and unzipped a hidden pocket. “Here,” she pulled out a roll of paper tied with rough string and handed it to him. “There’s no time to waste. You have to find Him.”

  “What’s this?” It might as well have been a toilet roll for all the use he had for it. Although, to be honest, a bog roll would be more useful right now.

  “He’ll explain everything when you find Him.” She turned toward the trees.

  A fine sheen of sweat slicked his palms. “Whoever you think I am, I’m not. I don’t want to be here. I need to wake up. I’ve been hunted, nearly drowned, and slapped.” He cleared his throat and made a point of not looking at her. “If you could tell me how to get out of here without being eaten, I’d be most grateful. I might even forgive the slap.”

  The girl turned back, eyes softening. She cupped his cheek with her hand and the smell of rain from her palm washed over him. “Find Him, Boy. And don’t get dead.” She hooked her backpack onto one shoulder, hesitated, took it off, and tossed it at him. Kai caught it, fumbled, and dropped it. By the time he’d bent down to retrieve it and swing it onto his back, she was gone.

  He squinted up into the umbrella leaves. “Why are the trees purple?" He kicked the nearest trunk. He winced at the crunch of toes as his words bounced back to him and fizzled in the silence.

  Stubbornly refusing to rub his throbbing foot, he limped up the hill to the top of the clearing and sat down. Soft sand shifted beneath him. Bleached white as sea salt, the tiny specks sparkled in the light like shards of miniature diamonds. Ignoring the faint vibration from the jumpsuit, a constant reminder to the weirdness beneath it, he unravelled the knot that held the string in a tight circle around the paper. The scroll unrolled reluctantly, curled as tight as a brittle armadillo. It was blank. This was beyond a joke.

  It was then that he noticed the shift. So subtle, he rubbed his eyes to clear them. When he took his hands away there was no denying the dimness settling in all around. His breath quickened as the light dipped another degree. Someone was fiddling with the cosmic dimmer switch. After the weirdness of the day and Evazee’s warnings, panic trickled through his veins.

  When the light leaves, you leave too.

  OK, weird girl. I’m going.

  He shoved the scroll into the bag and settled it between his shoulders. The straps were too tight, adjusted for Zee’s slight frame, but he wasn’t hanging around now to make it fit. Adrenalin-laced energy flooded his body and he took off. Dodging trees and roots, he stumbled into the thick army of growth
on the other side of the clearing.

  Light. Got to find some light.

  4

  Cold from the rock seeped into Kai’s belly. He lay sprawled on top of it, blending in as best he could. Blackness lay thick all around him, pressing down heavily. It was hard to breathe.

  He could reach the cave below in twenty steps. Pale yellow light spilled from the opening, but still he hung back, wary of crossing the open space. His head swirled in the suffocating dark. The whine from the suit filled his ears like a million microscopic insects running laps on his eardrums. Each breath grew shallower, and stars danced in front of him. If he didn’t do something, he would pass out. He clawed at the zipper and felt the rush of relief as he stepped out the suit. Squinting down at himself in the faint light from the cave, he glimpsed his T-shirt and jeans. The hole in his shirt was no longer there. His arms looked normal, though sickly in the strange light. Zee must have messed with his head something fierce. He chuckled to himself in the dark. Should have ditched that suit long ago.

  Something smacked into the back of his neck. A sharp sting sent a shock through his body. Sitting up too quickly, he nearly toppled off the rock. He grabbed on with one hand and reached back with the other. His fingers closed on a swollen squishy body that wriggled and squirmed. A bug. A flying leech of a bug burrowing into his skin. Disgust rolled through him. He grabbed at it with both hands, pulling hard to dislodge the slimy blob. He toppled off the rock and landed with a smack, knocking the air out of his lungs. He clawed at the bug, but it bit down hard. Kai growled and pulled harder. It popped loose, squirming in his fingers, its body a putrid glowing orange, the size of his thumb. Kai threw it down, grabbed a rock and crunched it. It left a luminous stain on the rock that gave off a stench of cheap toilet spray, fake flowers, and bleach. He wanted to throw up. A dull buzz came at him from the trees behind. Wing beats. A mass of leech-bugs was coming for him. Whether the bugs would be put off by the light in the cave, he had no idea, but he ran.

  Fifteen more steps.

  Two leeches landed on him, burrowing into his flesh.