Leigh nodded at the wall behind me. “There’s your way out, take it.”
I turned around and where there’d been just wall a couple of minutes ago, an old wooden door with a rusty knob stood in its place. My head jumped back to Leigh as I realized what he’d just said. “Wait, you’re not coming?”
He smiled. “Another long story Chas, one I know you are dying to find out. Now go. The door isn’t going to stay there for long.”
I stared at him for a couple of seconds.
“Go!”
Shaking myself from the trance, I couldn’t help but wonder why he kept showing up when I needed him, but I was grateful. “Thanks, again.”
He smiled as I turned around and rushed to the door. I opened it, scared that it was going to disappear, and stepped through.
“Oh, don’t forget to suck in your breath.”
He shouted that advice a bit too late. The air was thin once more, and it felt as if someone had pulled the air from my lungs with a syringe. I didn’t notice that there wasn’t a floor and fell into nothing once again. The world around me twirled again and I was spinning literally out of control, tumbling and diving head first into whatever was down below, but it was the least of my problems. I couldn’t breathe and found my hands clasped around my throat, wishing for a tinge of relief, but nothing came.
My lungs felt on fire and not being able to breathe brought out my worst fear once again: The Guile.
Dizziness clouded my mind, and just like that, everything stopped as I landed with a thud on the floor.
Air filled my lungs and I started to cough uncontrollably while trying to gasp for more.
“She’s here!” Fox yelled with relief close by. The bottom of her white leather coat was moving fast toward where I lay. She crouched down as I still tried to regain myself. “What the hell happened?”
I coughed a couple more times before I could even think about speaking, which I didn’t. My body was trembling from either shock or fear, I wasn’t sure which.
I stared at Fox and I knew my nightmare was over. Tears filled my eyes. I didn’t have to say anything other than that, the tears did the work and Fox understood. She wrapped her arms around me and covered me completely.
“Can I please just go home?”
Fox stared at me with concern. “Chas,” her voice was gentle. “You are home.”
Tom paced up and down a small smelly room that looked like it used to be some sort of cleaning closet that held supplies. He kept glaring at me, waiting for the answer he wanted to hear.
Clearly, lying about what had happened was not going to get me out of this mess I’d found myself in, once again, not by my doing.
“I told you taking the back road through the basement was a mistake,” Fox said with a slight ‘I-told-you-so’ tone in her voice. Cowboy John leaned against the wall by the door with crossed arms, still chewing on a piece of straw. His hat almost covered his eyes as he just stared at the floor.
Tom gave Fox a look of warning and glanced back at me sceptically. “How did you get out of the Guile, Chastity?”
“I wasn’t alone.” I didn’t know if I was supposed to even mention Leigh.
“What do you mean, you weren’t alone?” Fox asked.
“Do we really have to do this now?” John asked with irritation lacing his tone. “She just escaped the fucking Guile, alive. If you ask me, Leigh probably showed up or something.” John turned around, opened the door and stepped through. I felt as if I could kiss him right now, except he was old, so not my type and I still felt like crap. But I was grateful that he’d mentioned Leigh’s name.
“Leigh showed up?” Fox asked.
I nodded. “I wasn’t sure if I should mention him or not.”
Tom grunted, and Henry hooted as if he enjoyed Tom’s foul mood. Tom turned on his heel and walked through the door Cowboy John had taken, with Henry still sitting on his arm.
Fox took me gently by the hand, which still shook slightly from what I’d just experienced and followed the men. We exited into another hallway, this time it looked like one of the hallways you would find in an old hotel. It had red carpet, walls with golden crests printed on them and old wooden wall frames that really needed some tender loving care. At least it wasn’t dark anymore and a bright light lit up the entire hallway.
“So I take it that Leigh is not a figment of my imagination?”
Fox laughed. “No, he’s not, but he’s not entirely real either.”
My head snapped up at Fox who was slightly taller than me. “He’s not real?”
Fox smiled sweetly. “He’s a Jumper.”
“What’s a Jumper?”
“Let me think of how to put this.” Fox looked around her hoping the answer would somehow glide past us. It wouldn’t surprise me. Considering what I’d just witnessed, that would be something normal in Revera. “You could say he is like a computer program. Jumpers, well, we are not entirely sure where they come from, we like to think of them as a piece of essence from very powerful Casters that died.”
“How many Jumpers are there?”
Fox smiled again. “Leigh is the only one we know of. He somehow always finds a way to show up in the right place at the right time. He also helps with tutoring students in the Virtual Realm, something he created all by himself. You will see him again, especially in Defence.”
I took a huge breath, a bit bummed out that he wasn’t real. Still, it was extremely cool. A Jumper. Mom had never told me about those so Leigh must have been created while she went to the real world, not that this one wasn’t real. I just never imagined that it could be this real.
Tom opened a door that led to who knows where and I was grateful for Cowboy John, once again, when he waited this time for Fox and I to walk through first. The light on the other side blinded me for a couple of seconds until my eyes adjusted.
I kept staring like an idiot, not because it was beautiful, but because once again it had no color. It was grey and white everywhere I looked, some places almost had a charcoal type of black where others where pure white fading to a deeper shade of white.
Fox giggled, and I looked at her. I glanced at Tom who just stared at me with the grey owl still clutching his arm. All of them had turned into a white and grey picture. I didn’t understand any of this. A minute ago, I could still see colors, now they were gone. I even felt a bit disoriented from it and I knew it was evident on my face.
“Welcome home, Chastity,” John said as he ran down a set of stairs made of stones.
“Yeah, sure…whatever…” The only good news was that there were no more doors, there were no more halls, just open white skies.
“Tell me Chas, what colors do you see?” Tom asked.
I was really getting annoyed with his demeanor. I knew he knew that I didn’t belong here, and to be honest, I didn’t really care anymore.
“None,” I said and walked the down the steps.
“You see,” he scolded Fox.
“It’s normal. Maybe if you paid attention, you would know that it takes time for someone like her to get used to Revera’s colors Tom. She wasn’t born inside Revera,” Fox snapped back. “Stop trying to see the bad in every situation and see things the way they are.”
She skipped down the stairs past Tom. She touched my arm gently.
I wiped off a tear, a feeling of defeat lodged inside me. What if I was only wasting my time? If I was what Mom feared, then the black sand would come no matter how hard I tried to hide it.
Tom took off his jacket and revealed his bulky arms beneath a really tight t-shirt. John did the same and Henry, well the owl was gone.
“Is it truly normal, for me not to see colors?”
Fox nodded. “It will come, Chas. Just give it time and you will see. Your sight needs to get used to this world and the surroundings first.”
A city emerged way up ahead, actually way down below, far in the distance, as the stone steps descended into the mist.
“Are you okay?” Fox aske
d and I nodded. She took the lead again and I followed her down what seemed to be a million steps.
I looked around. I wished that I could see everything the way I was supposed to. Mom said the little she’d seen was beautiful. Still, it was the total opposite of the Oblivion and that horrible blue room which Leigh had called the Guile.
I still didn’t know who those people in those images were, but remembered what Leigh had said.
They were bad events that had happened in Revera’s history. Things that were unjust. I kept seeing that woman’s figure pleading for her life, but they didn’t listen and then it hit me. Her hair was the same color as Mom’s. What if that was Magdalene?
WALKING DOWN THE STONE STEPS WAS A JOURNEY
all by itself. They curved around the wall, down in another direction and curved again. The sun made me extremely confused as it would be on one side and the next minute we would turn around the corner and it would then be on the other side.
I kept staring at the one in front of me, and tried to look back where we’d just come from, but Tom blocked my view.
Fox giggled again. “Revera has two suns. Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you.”
“Two suns?” I asked and Fox nodded again.
Tom passed us after half an hour or so and skidded down the stairs with his jacket over his shoulder until he reached John.
“So what’s his deal?”
“He’s a very private person, but he has a good reason why he is the way he is. If we’d gone the route I begged him to take this morning, well hopefully you would see what I mean,” Fox said.
For the next couple of hours Tom yelled a couple of times at us to keep up, and every time he did that, Fox let out a soft grunt and I would pull my face at his command.
I took off my blazer when Fox handed me a bottle of water and was a bit too eager bringing it to my mouth.
“Be careful Chas. We don’t have time to stop for tinkles.”
“Tinkles,” I giggled and Fox scrunched up her nose with a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
I took a couple of gulps and handed the bottle back to Fox. For a dream world they should really think about adding a couple of make believe elevators or something. This walk was worse than my ballet classes.
When the first sun started to set, the temperature started to cool down to a heat that was more bearable. The two suns thing was something I needed to get used to if Revera was going to become my new home. Not to mention this grey and white affair.
Only when the second one started to descend did I put my blazer back on. It got dark pretty quickly and I was glad that Fox’s white attire almost glowed.
A thousand small lights up ahead revealed the finishing line at the end of this journey.
Trees as big as giants hulked over the horizon and only when we got closer did I hear other voices coming from the distance. The trees were huge and if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, they looked like they had doors and windows moulded into their trunks Small lanterns hung from the trees, and in front of every one was a picket fence made from wood. Some were crooked, others were straight, and pointy and most of them were painted a different shade of black and grey.
I couldn’t stop staring as a couple of kids ran to Tom. To my surprise he picked up a small girl and two boys.
Fox turned around and looked at me. “This is the village were Tom grew up as a kid. It is called Dombeya. As you can see their entire village is inside this forest.” She smiled as one of the girls looked at her and gasped.
“Fox is here too, everyone!” she yelled. “Fox is here!” She wiggled from Tom’s arms and ran as fast as she could into Fox’s arms.
“Have you missed me, Grissy?” Fox asked.
“Very much. I made you something,” she whispered the last part softly but not softly enough for me not to hear. The little girl’s eyes locked onto mine. “Who is she?”
“That, is Chastity Blake. She’s from the Domain.”
Grissy gasped. “She’s from the Domain!”
Fox giggled at her and nodded slightly. “That is what I said.” She glanced around at me as they started to walk and put the little girl down. “She is a Dream Caster just like me.”
“She’s from the Domain and a Dream Caster?” Grissy’s excitement was overpowering and I couldn’t help but laugh with Fox.
Still, the way Grissy spoke about the Domain was enough to make me think of home; Chicago and Mom. A horrible ache lodged itself in my chest and I felt like I just wanted to be left alone. I had no idea if she was safe, back with Tim or whether my grandfather had her in Oblivion.
Another thought jumped into my mind, what in the world had she told Tim about what had happened to me? But the thought vanished as quickly as it had come. No, Mom wouldn’t have gone back home. She wouldn’t have taken a chance like that and put Tim’s life in danger as well.
I smiled as Grissy pulled me by the sleeve and forced me to squat in order to be at the same height as the four-year-old.
“Do you have Tulas in the Domain too?”
I looked at Fox, not knowing how to answer her question.
“They do, but what did Pappy Joe tell you about the Tulas inside the Domain?”
“They aren’t as smart as they are in this one.”
I giggled.
“That’s my girl.” Fox ruffled up the four-year-old’s hair and when a woman in her mid-thirties called “Grizelda”’s name, she ran as fast as she could in the direction the voice had come from.
The woman waved at Fox as she waited for Grizelda to enter their home inside the tree.
Fox waved back and both the woman and the child disappeared back into the tree.
I followed Fox deeper into the forest. Even if there were no colors, I couldn’t stop staring at each giant tree that was someone’s home. Some of them only had one window where others had four or five. Birds still chirped from their perches as squirrels and chipmunks danced across the branches. I even saw a beautiful grey monkey climb down one of the branches and jump onto another man’s shoulder as he walked past.
The people all greeted Fox and nodded their head toward me, which I returned with a slight nod as well. It was a weird feeling of awe and confusion. I hadn’t expected the trees to be transformed into homes but, then again, I hadn’t expected the people of this city to look ordinary like myself.
They wore normal clothes, and a part of me felt silly when the image of forest people with long pointy ears and leaves for clothes jumped into my mind. These people looked nothing like that.
We stopped at a huge tree which had to be in the middle of the forest. It had at least ten windows all the way up to the top of the trunk and the tree was the biggest of all the ones we had passed previously. Its branches flew into the other trees close by. There was a huge bonfire a couple of metres away. The ambience gave me the feeling they were celebrating something big.
“Here, Chas.” Fox brought me back to reality and stood next to a door that led inside the tree.
I took a huge breath and entered the tree.
If Mom had told me five years ago that the dream world was real, I probably would’ve thought that she was delusional, but if she’d told me that people lived in giant ass trees, I would’ve called the nuthouse to come and take her away. Now I was literally inside one and it looked like any other house would. Except for the rough wooden walls.
I learned that Tom’s grandfather was a big important figure in Dombeya. He was old, but extremely cool and he asked me so many questions about places in the Domain I’d never even known existed. We stayed with him for a few hours and he told me amazing stories about the places he used to visit when he was a Dream Caster. Paris and the Taj Mahal were amongst his favourite.
He’d even fallen in love with a human, which was completely forbidden as they never understood what it was Dream Casters did, or that he couldn’t stay with her in the end. But I could see that he’d never regretted a thing in his life.
Grandpa Joe,
or just Joe as he told me to call him so many times, was a Tula. That is why Tom had Henry. Henry had chosen Tom just as Abby had chosen Joe a long time ago.
Abby was a beautiful brown-haired fox, which wasn’t such a beautiful brown anymore. She was old and mostly lay at Joe’s feet while he fed her something that reminded me of beef jerky.
“Why don’t you go and enjoy Cale’s birthday tonight with the others?” Joe said, looking at me with soft eyes. I still couldn’t believe that Tom was related to him, they were the total opposite of each other.
I smiled. “I don’t know who Cale is.”
Fox and everyone laughed.
“Come, I’ll take you,” Fox said and got up from her chair. I followed her out the tree and we found a fairytale celebration of people dancing around a huge bonfire. Still the black and white picture made me feel slightly disoriented.
“When do you think that I will be able to see Revera in techni-color?”
Fox laughed.
“When your eyes adjust.”
I sighed as that answer didn’t give me a definite date which I could mark off on the calendar. I could only imagine what everything would have looked like.
“Hi everyone. This is Chastity Blake. She is still very new to all of this.”
“Spending night and day with a team of Pursuers is not the way to show this lass what type of people we are,” a big old guy said.
Everyone laughed as Fox went playfully for him. She wasn’t scared of anything.
“Come, Chastity,” a girl more or less my age with curls said as she grabbed my hand. “Do you dance?”
“What?” I asked with huge eyes. I loved ballet but hated performing in front of a crowd. Ever since I was little I had disliked it. She didn’t pay me any attention and started pulling everyone up that loved to dance and we held hands as we skipped around the fire in a big circle.
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