The Veiled World

by Vanessa Garden

  Reece exploded into laughter as heat flooded my face. Jacob’s dark eyes flicked me a pity glance before he looked away.

  Prince Ollie continued to gaze at me with a weird grin on his thin lips. I was about to tell him that I wanted my bags so that I could put on my boots and kick him in the nuts, but the king came to stand between us.

  “Now, now, my son,” he said. I detected distaste for his own son in his voice. “Let’s show respect for our guests.” He turned to me. “My dear, we have a boy...” He paused and stared back at the castle, where through the gates a lone, blond-haired guy was walking in our direction. “Ah, here he comes. He will collect your belongings and bring them to your rooms.”

  “We’re staying in that?” asked Noah, pointing to the fairy-tale-like glass castle.

  “Of course,” said the king, his sunken chest swelling with pride.

  As we walked, my bare feet sank into the warm sand but I shivered as I stared at the large glass panes of the castle and all the gold. Never had I seen pictures of or heard about a glass castle like this. It was magnificent. The sun, which actually appeared to be setting, cast a fiery backdrop of reds and oranges, tinting the glass panels and making the castle appear even more beautiful. The swirling sands around us made it look like glitter was raining down on the castle. But I had to look away, not just because the wind was picking up again, but because the fiery sky reminded me of the raging inferno that took my brother.

  I stopped and stared back at the plane, shielding my eyes from the stinging sand as I did so. I had to make sure it was still there. Make sure none of this was a crazy dream.

  Yep. It was still there. When I turned my head back around, the blond guy rushed passed us. He was a little taller than me and muscular like Jacob, only more wiry than bulky. He had hair the colour of the desert around us and he kept his eyes low, almost shut, as he walked towards the plane with gold sand swirling around him.

  “Does he have to carry all our bags himself? There are at least eight backpacks and suitcases in there,” I mentioned to one of the guards.

  “You may help him if you wish,” he said before laughing with the other guard who’d heard me.

  I swore beneath my breath and to spite them, stormed off in the direction of the plane. A few seconds later I heard somebody call my name, and before I knew it Jacob was beside me.

  He said nothing as we both loaded our backs with the packs the guy had already tossed down the stairs. A small suitcase came flying out the open hatch. Mine. I lunged for it, feeling a little more secure now that I had my own things firmly within my grasp. Jacob’s came out next and we shared a knowing smile as he grabbed it and hoisted it over his left shoulder. Another, extra-large suitcase landed between us, narrowly missing Jacob’s feet. Great. We were going to get killed by flying suitcases before we ever got to find out where on earth, or universe, we were.

  “We’re helping you!” I shouted over the wind, which was now whipping sheets of sand against the plane. The guy briefly stuck his head out of the plane. Because he was somewhat shielded from the sand, his eyes were wide open this time. Blue. Sky blue. But he quickly narrowed his gaze at me.

  “We need to hurry or we’ll be dead in another minute or two!” he said.

  Jacob muttered something, but I couldn’t hear over the howling wind, then he turned, kicking up sand as he attempted to catch up with the others who were snaking their way through the sandstorm towards the castle.

  “Wait!”

  Despite being fairly strong and fit, my breath came short from the exertion of lugging two elephant-size backpacks and my small but tightly packed and thus heavy suitcase.

  “These backpacks have to be Bella’s or Claire’s,” I shouted when I reached Jacob’s side. I spat out the sand that had blown into my mouth, not expecting an answer from Jacob. But he shouted a “Yeah!” before frowning with determination and pressing forward.

  “Do you think this is real?” I shouted, not sure why I was suddenly spitting out all my thoughts in the middle of a sandstorm. “That we can bring our loved ones back?”

  Jacob trudged ahead for a long time before he answered.

  “Until I stepped out of that plane, I thought no, that it was just something Bruce had planned—like a gimmick or something to promote his drinks.” He glanced up and flicked his head towards the gleaming tower of glass and gold in front of us before snapping his eyes shut as an onslaught of sand flicked right into his face. “Shit!”

  He stopped and rubbed the sand away. It was stuck in his eyelashes and brows too. “But when I saw that castle and these people...I don’t know. I’m starting to think we are some place strange. Somewhere far from home.”

  The wind picked up behind us and started to swirl the sand around us like a tornado.

  “The Change!” shouted the last guard. “The Change is upon us!”

  The guards ahead rushed forward and seized hold of a large metal gate and began to slide it open. It took all six men and I noticed for the first time that although they seemed old and grey, they were strong, their muscles bulging like gladiators.

  Then Prince Ollie turned around and laughed at something behind us. And I turned to see the guy who was bringing the luggage, weighed down with two backpacks on his back and two suitcases in each arm.

  “Don’t stand there and laugh, son, either help him out or lead the others inside the gates,” the king shouted. “The Change is coming, you fool!”

  One of the guards came at us from behind and pushed us all forward. One gave me a particularly hard shove at the base of my spine. I was sure I’d end up with knuckle-shaped bruises the next morning.

  Jacob and I, weighed down with the bags, moved the slowest.

  “Drop them! They don’t matter!” Jacob shouted, and grabbed me, dragging the backpacks off my shoulders and shoving me towards the gate.

  The wind turned vicious. When I looked back, I could just make out the blond guy, loaded with bags, the sand all but devouring him.

  “He’s not going to make it, Jacob. We have to help him!”

  Jacob swore, shielded his eyes from the whipping sand, and ran back towards the guy.

  I followed.

  By the time we reached him he was face down, drowning in luggage and sand. He was partially buried already and we had to drag the bags off as carefully as we could so as not to break any of his limbs and brought him to his feet. He wobbled at first then pulled away from us almost violently.

  Suddenly I couldn’t see him anymore. Or Jacob. I shut my burning eyes. There was too much sand.

  “I can’t see!” I screamed, reaching out for Jacob, but feeling only the violent sting of the sand against my palm. “I can’t see the gate!”

  6

  Axel

  “I can’t see it either!”

  I grabbed someone’s arm, the girl’s I think. Her hair whipped against my face. Yes. It was definitely the girl. I pulled her in close and spoke right in her ear. “We’ll move in the direction were facing. You raised me from the ground. I was facing the castle gates.”

  “Okay!” she shouted before she pulled away from me to scream, “Jacob!” The hiss of the sandstorm was so loud now that I couldn’t be sure if the kid answered or not. But she must have found him with her free hand because she was shouting his name again, but in a different way, as though she’d found him.

  We moved forward, pushing our bodies against the harsh, sandy wind, but no matter how many steps forward we took, no wall of stone or open gate greeted us.

  But we must have gotten close because an ear splitting grating of metal sounded. I recognised that sound despite the storm. It was the same sound the gate had made when it was opened. It could only mean one thing.

  “They’ve closed the gates! Head back to the aeroplane!”

  “How?”

  I spat out a mouthful of sand.

  “We turn one eighty degrees and run!”

  “Nobody let go!” the girl shouted. She squeezed my hand so hard I
swore. She was damn strong.

  We turned, hopefully a one eighty, and in the process, the girl fell. But between the other boy and me, we had her on her feet within seconds.

  The wind propelled us from behind, making it easier to run but also easier to trip, and we stumbled over our own feet and rolled in the sand multiple times.

  “Are we still together?” I shouted, spitting out a mouthful of sand and letting in another. I felt a firm tug on my hand and pressed forward, hoping the other boy still had the girl’s other hand. If we lost him, who knew whether the Change would hinder him or help him. Kill him or save him more likely.

  I was about to start praying to the Goddess, something I’d only ever done once, and that was to save my brother’s life. I hadn’t conversed with Her since. She didn’t exist to me after Rin died. But just as I started whispering her name out of desperation, my feet hit something hard. Something that clanged.

  “The steps!” the girl shouted in my ear.

  Up we went. Quickly. The open cavity of the air craft seemed to suck us into its belly. We landed, in a tangle of limbs, on a growing pile of sand atop a thick black carpet.

  By the time I disengaged myself and got to my feet, the other boy had already pulled the door shut. He slid down to his bottom, his back against the door, sighing with relief. I rubbed a tonne of sand out of my eyes and blinked several times. The gritty granules still scratched at my eyeballs every time my lids fluttered but at least I could see.

  “Everyone okay?” I asked after my eyes stayed open for longer than five seconds without needing to squeeze them shut. I took a look around and whistled at what I saw. The interior of this plane, though currently in disarray, was the most modern and luxurious of all the planes that had ever flown into our world. I hadn’t noticed earlier because I’d been intent on unloading luggage.

  The girl rubbed at her eyes and swore repeatedly. She seemed to be born with the same filthy mouth as my own mother, who had made many a man of the kingdom blush in her time. The girl stomped her foot and swore again and I laughed, deciding then and there that I liked her.

  “Why are you laughing? This isn’t exactly funny.”

  “You look like an orange or perhaps a lemon,” I said.

  She wiped her forearm across her face and about half an inch of golden sand came away. Her blue eyes shifted away from me and landed on the other boy, and I found myself desperately thinking of a way to get those eyes back on to me. I wanted to know more about her. To ask questions and receive answers. I had a feeling that out of all the people who had ever crossed the veil, this girl was going to be important. Maybe she was the one who would finally come through and reach the Land of Resting Souls.

  I took a step closer and was slightly taken aback to find the girl to be almost as tall as me, perhaps a thumb or so shorter. She froze as I neared, her eyes shifting from my head to my toes and back up again.

  For some reason having those eyes on me made me nervous. My stupid hands shook as I brushed sand from my clothes and tried desperately to think of something clever to say.

  “This metal bird is by far the most luxurious I have ever seen.”

  The girl frowned and inwardly I cursed. Why did I call it that when I always frowned upon its use by everyone in the kingdom, especially Prince Ollie?

  Metal bird? I shook my head.

  The boy with the serious face frowned. “It’s an aeroplane.”

  “I know that,” I said rather icily, feeling a pinch of guilt because the boy had come back for me during the storm. Sighing, I stuck out a hand.

  “I’m Axel by the way. Thanks for the save.”

  “Jacob,” he said with a nod, his hand practically crushing mine. I quickly matched his grip and he gave another nod.

  I turned and held out the same hand to the girl, who by now had dusted most of the orange off her face and clothes. Her white gold hair, however, was streaked with orange dust. She refused my hand and instead put her own hands to her hips and glanced around at the dust coated contents of the aeroplane, as though searching for an answer to our dilemma. I had a very distinct feeling that this girl had nothing in common with the girls from the fairy tales I’d grown up on. There would be no rescuing this damsel.

  “So how long will this thing last? This Change?” she asked, moving to the closest window. Jacob and I followed. Though the sand storm was dying, it was being replaced by something that cast a shadow over the girl’s face.

  “It’s turning blue she said.” Her eyes widened in horror as the sound of sand hitting the metal shell of the aeroplane disappeared and was replaced with what sounded like sheets and sheets of rain belting the plane. “What’s going to happen? When will this thing stop?”

  Jacob looked at us both, his eyes dark with either terror or fury, then he moved to a window in the far corner and stared out of it.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said, cracking my knuckles to hide the fact that my fingers were twitching like a family of mice. We hadn’t had a Change in a while, and they were rarely without dangers. However, during all Changes in the past, I’d been tucked safely behind the castle gates. To be out here, on the other side, was entirely new.

  “The aeroplane won’t change. We won’t either. But the landscape will.”

  Jacob stared out the window. “Are you saying we might find a forest instead of a desert when we open the hatch?”

  “That wouldn’t be so bad,” the girl muttered to herself. She threw her hands up to her face and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m even saying that, as if a desert can just change into a forest.” She squeezed her eyes shut and sat down on the nearby seat. “Jeez. This had better be a dream.”

  After about half a minute of hesitation, I sat beside her and stared out at what appeared to be a vicious rainstorm, however without sky or clouds. Just water hammering the window.

  “This is no dream, and yes, the desert can change into a forest,” I said. “But the danger doesn’t lie in the forest so much as what or who dwells in it.”

  “You mean animals?” said Jacob, who was three seats down.

  Nodding, I turned to face the front of the aircraft and relaxed back into my seat, trying not to notice that the girl had shuffled as far away from me as the wall of the plane allowed.

  “We’ll just have to wait it out. Sometimes it takes minutes, other times it can be hours.” A sudden thought occurred to me and I swore.

  King Cyril would be thinking us dead. He wouldn’t have enough challengers to send out to seek the Land of Resting Souls and here I was, stuck in a tin can. He’d use his last guards, damn it. It was just my luck.

  Dream Master had been wrong.

  The girl turned her attentions away from the window and stared at me, brows raised. I raised my brows back at her and swore again before getting up and pacing the plane and eventually entering the cockpit. She wouldn’t understand how important it was to be a challenger. Not yet anyway.

  The front of the plane gave me a full view of the wet catastrophe going on outside. A kaleidoscope of vicious blues and dark greys danced against the wide glass window. Below the window were a thousand little buttons and knobs. It was fascinating, and though I wanted to press them all, like a curious two-year-old child, I found myself resisting. We didn’t need the danger of the vehicle surging forward or worse, hatches flying open. People caught out, unprotected, during the Change were never seen again.

  When I returned to the cabin minutes later, Jacob and the girl were still both staring out the windows. The girl had drawn her long legs up into her arms and was resting her chin on her knees. Jacob sat as rigid as stone between breaths, but when he did breathe, he trembled.

  Something softened inside of me. These two were far away from home, wherever that was. The girl seemed sad. Not sad because of our situation—being stuck inside this aeroplane—but because of something that ran much deeper. Jacob was quite possibly the most serious individual I’d ever met. But when he stared out that window with wide eyes, it wasn
’t for fear of himself, it was for fear of someone else. Perhaps loved ones at home. They were definitely the two most interesting of the group, from what I’d seen of the others so far. And they were the two with the kindest hearts seeing as they both came back for the bags and for me. Stupid, yes. But good. They were exactly the kind of challengers I needed by my side if I had any hopes of reaching the Land of Resting Souls and bringing my brother back to life.

  “How about we become friends,” I blurted out all of a sudden, shouting because the rain, or whatever it was crashing against the aeroplane, had gotten louder.

  The girl raised her head, as though shocked that somebody wanted to be her friend, then narrowed her eyes, as though suspicious. The boy cleared his throat and shrugged. Outside, the world grew darker, casting shadows through the small aeroplane windows. The whites of Jacob’s eyes glowed.

  “I mean it. You’re going to need friends in this place. I don’t know if you two have a lot of friends back home.” Jacob looked over at the girl and a silent communication passed between them before the girl steered her face towards the window. Interesting. “But you will need me while you are here. And I’ll need you too,” I added, sighing. “Prince Ollie does not a friend make.”

  Neither questioned Prince Ollie, like they’d already come to the same conclusion just from one meeting that he was not to be trusted. That was good. It showed they had good gut instinct.

  “Aren’t there others? Your age? Our age?” said Jacob. “Surely you have your own friends here.”

  I shook my head. “They’re all dead, save for Ollie and me...and now you people.”

  “All the kids our age are dead?”

  I nodded.

  “How did they die?” the girl asked. She was now kneeling up on the seat, facing the back of the plane. I’d clearly gotten her interests.

  “They died trying.” I eyed them warily, unsure of how much to reveal. But I figured if I was looking for friends, I’d better be straight down the line with them.

  “What do you mean?” the girl asked.

  I stared straight into the girl’s gloriously blue eyes.