Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 184

Chapter Twenty-Seven

My reappearance at this starting point confirms one thing for me. I’m not alive. I’m dead but somewhere else. And if that’s true, it means I still have some control over myself here. If I’ve been stripped of all the powers I had, then what do I have left. If I’m dead, that means I can’t feel hunger or tiredness or heat. So the discomfort is an illusion. The same way that the skeleton in the well can’t have been real.

I’m reminded of being trapped in my memories with Teague. All I need to do is find a way out.

I start off into the desert again. The same thoughts run through my head at my command. I am dead. I can feel no heat. I feel no hunger or thirst. This place isn’t real.

Does that mean it’s constructed by Thacker? She said she wanted to know about the Great Beyond but how much can I trust her. And where are my friends? Are they in this desert somewhere? Or do they have worlds constructed just for them.

I bend to the ground. The hot sand runs through my fingers. It certainly feels real. I bat my fingers clean and rub my fingertips to let the sand out from under my fingernails. I walk in what I think is a different direction this time. Maybe there’ll be something else, another town or some form of civilisation.

I pant as I climb a sand dune. It’s hard to remind myself the place isn’t real when the ache sets into my chest.

I reach the crest and slide down the other side.

There. Low and behold, on the horizon is a patch of green in the sea of yellow. An oasis out here in the desert. I quicken my pace and do my best to ignore my limbs failing with the exertion. What feels like lactic acid builds in my thighs and my stomach. Part of me relishes it. For a year my limbs have been everlasting, not touched by the physicality of the world. This feels like waking up.

Before long, my tired feet step off the sand and onto a patch of cool grass. Excited, I flop to the ground and rip my shoes off. I make fists with my toes, tearing the grass out of the earth. It feels cool and wonderful. I laugh. Out here in the desert, dying of hunger and thirst, I laugh and I feel alive.