Caught in the Ripples_An Epic Fantasy

by S McPherson

  They thunder down Cuckilbury and into the woods. I do the same, losing sight of them in the undergrowth.

  Panting, I leap at a tree, gripping one of its lower branches and yanking with all my might, bracing myself against the trunk as I pull. A sound like cracking bone greets me as the branch snaps. Brandishing it in front of me, I step deeper into the woods, eyeing the shadows, caressing the mossy bark of the trees as I pass. I know they’re in here

  A sound of something falling makes me turn. Looking down, I see a camera rolling in the sparse grass. Cautiously, I edge towards it, then realise that whoever dropped it must be above me. I look up then bound out of the way, swinging my branch like a gilded sword as a man drops towards me.

  It isn’t Drake but he’ll do. I swipe again, cutting the grey fabric of his uniform and slicing his arm. The man is sweating, extremely out of breath, and perhaps explaining why he was hiding in the tree. He glares at me but doesn’t advance. I keep the branch out in front of me, ready for his attack.

  I’m surprised when instead of charging at me, he dives onto the camera. Before he is upright I bludgeon him on the back of the head in my fury and he collapses, flipping onto his back to face me. Not giving him time to recover I ram him in the ribs. He groans and I strike him again.

  ‘Why are you following me?’ I demand.

  He says nothing. I whack him again.

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I’ll never talk,’ he growls, spitting blood at my feet, ‘especially not to you.’

  I wallop him in the gut, winding him. ‘I’m afraid you have no choice.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t I?’ and his tongue shifts around inside his mouth and I see a flash of something small and blue: a pill. I go to grab it but he swallows. ‘For the greater good.’

  He gasps, his mouth quickly foaming and he starts to convulse. I watch, horrified, as the light leaves his eyes and his twitching body stills.

  He killed himself! I stand, dumbfounded. For what? What could be so important? Despite how winded he was, he could have fought me, I know that, and he might have won. “Stick to the plan” one of them had said; a plan that clearly involved leaving me alive, unharmed…for now. My heart hammers in my chest as I stare wide-eyed at the dead man, then my eyes shift. Are more of them still out here? Watching me?

  I’m about to reach down for the camera when a sound of static hisses in my mind: mindle. I shake my head, clearing the haze, trying to remember how I used to do this so easily.

  Hello? I mindle at last.

  Dezaray?

  I jolt; Milo! I breathe aloud and in my mind. They took down the mindle shield?

  Not exactly, he responds. My brow furrows, but before I have time to ask, he says Meet me at the portal.

  The portal? Is that today? I’ve stopped keeping track. I still wear the gethamot, though, just in case, and pulling it into view, I tap the screen and watch as the arrow forms, the denomatrix lightening.

  I take another furtive glance around the woods. Everything is still, especially the dead man. I gulp and edge away. There’s nothing I can do for him now. Gingerly, I manoeuvre through the trees, using the setting sun for guidance, straining to hear every sound.

  I’m on my way, I tell Milo, but the silence in response tells me he is no longer there.

  Soon, I arrive at where the portal should open just as it erupts and Coldivor appears. I squint through the swirls but see nothing other than the familiar grassy terrain and solid trees of Taratesia. I frown. Why would Milo tell me to meet him? I’m about to mindle him when something hurtles out of the gateway and lands on the far bank of the brook. I think I see a shimmer of blue through the portal as it closes.

  I rush across the brook towards what was thrown, water sloshing into my shoes. I notice the flower first, a flower too beautiful to exist on Earth, with its ever-changing petals. Beneath the flower is a rock, and slowly I turn it over in my hand, finding a message scrawled on the other side.

  It says: ‘I did it. Maybe they’ll write songs about me.’

  Maybe they’ll beatbox.

  Hello my fellow dreamers and make-believers,

  I’d like to send out a BIG thank you to all of you, for your wonderful support and for sticking by me. I hope you continue to follow The Last Elentrice series and that I manage to make each book more exciting for you

  Hugs & ice-cream kisses,

  S. McPherson

  About the Author

  S. McPherson

  is a young British expat living in Dubai and working as a kindergarten teacher. When she is not at work immersed in a world of imagination and fantasy created by the children, she is immersed in her own worlds of imagination and fantasy at home, making up tales and writing them down.

  Caught in the Ripples is the second in the epic, fantasy series, The Water Rushes.

  Connect with S. McPherson

  facebook.com/Smcphersonbooks

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  youtube.com/smcphersonbooks

  twitter.com/smcphersonbooks

  SNEAK PEAK:

  Continue The Last Elentrice Series with:

  THE BLOODY SHOE

  I roll the rock over in my hands, the petals of its flower still ever changing colour, from red to pink to gold, and the words—Milo’s words—stand out like an angry scar on pale flesh.

  ‘I did it,’ they say. ‘Maybe they’ll write songs about me.’

  I close my eyes and let my fingers trace the rough surface of the rock, following the letters engraved there. I know Milo is referring to the gethadrox. He’s done it. He’s made the device that will allow people to travel the Nynthst and enter the realms that only Tranzuta was ever mad enough to imagine. A way for anyone and anything to cross worlds. Cold trills up my spine and my stomach plummets, like a ships anchor. Milo is somewhere out there, in a universe too vast to truly understand with creatures I shrink from imagining.

  The vague message he carved into this stone may well be a gash cut across my heart. It tells me nothing of his plans. Nor how I can follow. My bottom lip curls between my teeth as I steady my breath and tame my thoughts.

  Milo? I mindle, though even before I think his name, I realise I don’t expect him to answer. He doesn’t mean for me to follow. He blames himself for the deaths of all those Coltis—the warriors that were killed saving me on the night he came to my rescue in the Exlathars lair—and he’s gone to make sure that those who died didn’t do so for nothing. But this time his life, and only his, stands to be lost. As if this will somehow crack the weight of guilt that crushes him. I know how he feels. I wear it like a crown of stone. But the Nynthst is no place to be a hero.

  My hand wraps tight around the gethamot as if I can will the portal to reopen. Pointlessly, I wait, mildly sated by the hiss of the brook as it flows past, by the distant chirrups of birds I hear above the cover of the trees and the sudden shudder of wind as it whistles through my hair.

  A crunch echoes, what sounds like a branch snapping, and I race behind a tree, crouching at its trunk. R.U.O.E. are still out there, watching me, my brother amongst them. I still can’t be sure why they haven’t killed me yet. The desire to do so was practically tattooed in Drake’s eyes and yet he fled with the others.

  ‘Stick to the plan!’ they’d said. Whatever plan that might be.

  I try to ignore the way my heart pounds like an animal caged, and the tremor of my hands as I scrounge through the earth for a weapon: a sharp stick or broken glass. But there’s nothing. I peer around the tree, the coarse bark flaking beneath my grip. I listen and hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing. Then there’s a scrape and the rustle of leaves, as if someone has slipped. And at last they come into view.

  A wave of relief washes over me: Nathaniel. I forgot he was waiting for me to leave the manor and meet him by the local pub. I should have been back ages ago. His eyes are wary and he holds a sodden piece of wood between his blooded hands. His breath comes thick and heavy, hair up at angles and
his sweater torn. He’s been running.

  Carefully, I step from my hiding place. He swivels to face me, eyes wide and raging, a plank poised in his grip.

  ‘Dezaray!’ He drops the frail weapon to the ground and hurtles across the brook to meet me. Water sloshes, swirls and tugs at his feet but he barely seems to notice. At the sight of him, I unravel. The tightly wound chinks in my armour shatter and I let him pull me close. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he murmurs.

  ‘They were watching me.’ My words come muffled from under his arm and he pulls back, keeping hold of my shoulders. He studies the canopy overhead.

  ‘And now?’ he asks, his voice low, eyes searching, body tense.

  I shrug, ‘If they are they’re hiding. They’ve been told not to hurt me, not even on pain of death.’ My mind offers me memories of the man, the member of R.U.O.E., who chose to take his own life rather than risk being captured, questioned by me. Me! I’m barely past seventeen and yet he chose death over life. Though I doubt it was me he feared. R.U.O.E. are monsters; would they believe him if he said he’d told me nothing? Or would they devour him whole?

  The changing petals must have caught Nathaniel’s eye, for he frowns and thrusts his chin towards it. ‘What’s that?’

  I pinch the rock, as if checking it’s real. ‘Milo.’

  Nathaniel splutters. ‘You went into Storm manor to get some of your old things, and now it somehow involves R.U.O.E. and Milo?’

  I simper, ‘Put the kettle on, love. This could take a while.’

  As we slip out of the woods and make our way through the familiar deserted streets to Feranvil Farm, I tell Nathaniel everything. Of how members of the R.U.O.E organisation, Drake included, lurked in the shadows by the manor, surveillance equipment in hand…to survey me. I tell him how I stalked after them and he tells me he saw them the same time I did. Nathaniel had followed but lost me in the woods.

  ‘I didn’t know which one to follow, and in the end, I wound up following the wrong one,’ he tuts. ‘He ended up knocking me onto my arse and getting away.’

  I place a hand on his. ‘I almost got one. Had him on the ground and asked why they were following me. His ankle seemed twisted. He didn’t run. But he,’ I hesitate, ‘he chose to kill himself, instead.’

  Nathaniel stumbles over his feet. ‘What?’

  I squint and hold up my fingers, to indicate a size. ‘With a little blue pill.’

  Nathaniel frowns, drapes an arm around my shoulders and squeezes. The gesture is supposed to be one of comfort, to make me feel safe but instead it makes me feel trapped, more confined to this world and the whims of fate.

  ‘What now?’ he asks, lifting the boulder from the ground as we at last reach the entrance to Feranvil farm.

  ‘I don’t know. I need to get in touch with the Coltis. Tell them what Milo’s done.’ The earth trembles but Nathaniel and I stand firm, now used to the tremor as the ground parts. My legs barely notice the difference, quaking anyway from having raced through the woods.

  ‘Any idea how?’ Nathaniel asks. The mouth of the hole yawns at our feet and he gestures for me to go first.

  ‘That is the question,’ I note as I leap down into the abyss. Scrapes and shuffles and a sprinkle of soil let me know he’s close behind.

  * * *

  Feeling breathless? Find out what happens next in Swept Away

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