The Other World: Book One

by Tracey Tobin

  Through the haze that seemed to have fallen over the world the Shadow almost seemed to be laughing, but when it tried again to pull away Tori held firm and the laughter became a squeal of frustration. The Shadow squirmed and twisted and tried to ooze away, but as it contorted Tori lunged forward and dug her fingernails into its shoulders to keep it close. From somewhere very far away Tori heard someone scream her name. The world was starting to fade to black and white.

  Seething with rage, the Shadow began to open its gaping black mouth, wider and wider, and from within Tori could see several rows of shiny black teeth ready to come down on top of her and put her out of her misery.

  She prayed that Jiki had gotten up and run away.

  She hoped that Jared and Krista wouldn’t waste the rest of their youth trying to figure out what had happened to her.

  She wondered if she would be allowed to see her parents soon.

  As the last of the world’s sound began to fade away to only a faint ringing, something hot and slimy splattered across Tori’s face and she felt the Shadow go rigid. Together they gazed down to examine the silver blade that was protruding through the Shadow’s chest, right where its heart would be. With a horrible shriek the Shadow melted away into a puddle of black ooze, and without the creature’s body helping to hold her upright, Tori collapsed hard onto her knees. She managed to raise her head just enough to see Jacob standing over her with a scream on his lips, and then she passed out.

  Chapter Nine

  It was so cold.

  Tori wrapped her arms around herself but she couldn’t seem to rid herself of the icy chill that was crawling all up and down her body, in her skin, her muscles, her bones.

  “You have to fight,” said a familiar voice.

  Tori whirled around, but there no one was there. A vast, empty darkness stretched out all around her in every direction. “Who’s there?” she called out. There was no response, and her body seemed to be getting colder with each passing second. “Please, help me!” she begged. “I- I think I’m lost. I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how to get out! Please, help me!”

  The phantom whisper came like a breath against the back of her ear, gentle and yet forceful at the same time: “Help yourself.”

  She twisted around again and cried out her anger into the empty void. “Why are you doing this to me?” she screamed.

  “Silly girl,” the voice responded, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Foolish girl. No one is doing anything to you. You’re doing it to yourself.”

  Tori spun in a circle, squinting into the darkness, desperate to locate the source of her torment. Tears streaked down her face and seemed to freeze there. She wanted to shriek at the futility of it, but then she noticed a small, strange glimmer marring the endless black world. With her skin beginning to feel raw and cracked from the cold, she wrapped her arms more tightly around her body and began to jog toward the glimmer. It got larger and brighter, urging her toward itself, until finally she came to realize that what she was looking at was a large, ornate mirror, just sitting there in the middle of the void.

  She approached hesitantly. Her reflection stared back at her with cool eyes framed by pale, sickly skin. She looked like death. Disturbed by the image, Tori leaned closer and was shocked to find that the reflection didn’t move with her. The blond-haired, green-eyed girl on the other side of the glass was standing with her hands lightly crossed and a disappointed frown on her face.

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing here?” the reflection asked.

  Tori floundered. “I- I don’t know,” she replied honestly. The words felt like ice sliding down her throat. She saw flashes of bright red blood and felt a thrill of fear as she struggled to force reality back away from her conscious mind. “I just… I just couldn’t hang on any longer,” she whispered.

  The reflection reacted to her words like a wild beast, slamming both of her palms against the glass barrier between them. “Idiot!” she hissed, her eyes full of fire. “Look at it!” She slammed her hands against the glass again and again, forcing Tori to acknowledge the ethereal glow that pulsed through her veins with every heartbeat. “You have magic in your blood!” the reflection screamed. “Real magic! Ancient power, that you could have used to fight!”

  Tori’s skin was starting to frost and snap as she cringed in shame. “But I don’t know how!” she argued. “I don’t know how to use it!”

  “Fight!” the reflection screamed, slamming her hands on the glass again and again. “Fight! Fight!”

  “I can’t!” Tori cried. Her breath hitched as her throat began to seize up. “I don’t know how!”

  “Fight! You have to fight!”

  The voice and the reflection twisted and rippled, distorting until it was a male voice shouting the command and a strange scene appeared in the mirror. Tori’s body was laying on the ground in a pool of blood, surrounded by Maelekanai who fought to keep the Shadows away from her. Jiki wailed in her father’s arms and struggled to run to her savior as he squeezed her close, while Kaima ripped at Tori’s clothes and moved quickly to keep the wounds compressed.

  And Jacob, his father’s sword forgotten on the ground, was leaning over her, doing chest compressions with a desperate determination. “Fight, damn you!” he cried, his voice a plea of anger, fear, and agony. “You have to fight!”

  Tori reached out one frozen hand to the mirror, shaking both from the cold and the fear, faced with a terrifying decision.

  “You have great power in your blood,” the familiar voice spoke gently in her ear. “Wouldn’t you have used that power to save your family if you’d been given the chance?”

  “Yes…” Tori whispered with tears in her eyes.

  “Then why won’t you use it to save their families?”

  With that question echoing in her head, her body a moment away from freezing solid, Tori took one last terrified look at the scene in the mirror, and then she closed her eyes and stepped forward.

  “It’s no good! We have to get her to a healer! This hole is straight through, and I can’t tell if it got any major organs!”

  “There’s no time! We don’t even know where the healer is, if he’s even still alive!”

  “Someone has to get Eden, quickly, before we lose our chance to save her… Surely she has the power to close the wounds!”

  “But Eden is the only one keeping the rest of the force from razing us to the ground. Jacob, we’re barely hanging on to the village as it is.”

  “We can’t lose her! Not like this!”

  Tori opened her mouth and shrieked out in pain as Jacob’s chest compressions cracked another rib. The next thing she knew his hands were on either side of her face and she was staring blearily up into his bright blue eyes as she gasped desperately for breath.

  “Oh god,” he whispered. His voice was cracking. “Oh god, you’re alive. You’re still alive.”

  She could feel that she didn’t have much time; her injuries were too extensive, too much of a shock to her system. The world was already beginning to sway and fade again. She reached down deep, gathered what energy she could, opened her mouth and coughed out, “Jiki…”

  Kaima came into view, her paws never shifting from where they were effectively holding Tori’s body together. Her eyes were full of tears. “Jiki is okay, princess,” she assured Tori. “She’s alive. You saved her life.”

  With everything she could muster Tori shook her head once and croaked, “Bring… me… Jiki…”

  Jacob and Kaima looked terribly confused, but half a moment later a sobbing ball of fur had collapsed onto Tori’s chest. “Oh krishi-ka, I’m so sorry!” the little kitten wailed. “This is all my fault! I’m so sorry!”

  Her body was going numb - a small mercy, but a terrible sign. Tori reached up with her good arm and pressed a finger to Jiki’s lips. When the kitten looked up and met her eyes she forced out a weak smile and whispered, “Do you want to help me again?”

  Jiki nodde
d eagerly, sending hot tears flying over Tori’s face.

  Tori could feel herself slipping again and knew that it was all going to be over very soon, and there would be no coming back this time. “Come closer,” she whispered.

  Jiki did, and with the strength she had left Tori pulled the little one down against her body, wrapping her arms around the child so that the open wounds on her hands met the open wound on the kitten’s back.

  And then she prayed, because she quite frankly didn’t know what else to do.

  At first she was terrified that nothing was going to happen and that she was finally going to slip away beyond anyone’s help, but then the chill began to melt out of her hands and a wonderful warmth seemed to be climbing up into her arms. She heard Shadow screams and voices frantically shouting all around her, but she focused only on Jiki, on holding her close and letting their blood mix together.

  “What’s happening?” the kitten mumbled into her shoulder.

  “You’re helping me become what I need to be,” Tori replied.

  That was the last thought that she had before she found herself on her feet. She felt warm, and alert, and very much alive, and those around her were staring at her in awe. Her body felt healthy, strong, and hard. All around her the world had suddenly come back into sharp focus, and it seemed brighter, louder, and more colorful than it had ever been before. She felt dizzy, almost lightheaded, and her body felt strange, like she was underneath somebody else’s skin.

  “You really do have magic in your blood,” Jacob gasped.

  Tori raised her hands up in front of her face and felt her heart quicken at the sight of the jet-black skin that covered them. She flexed the muscles in her fingers and watched in amazement as shiny white claws pressed out from the fingertips.

  “Elder!” one of the nearby Maelekanai yelled, “we can’t hold them back much longer! We have to move back!”

  “Back to where?” another countered.

  The Elder scooped Jiki back up into his arms and motioned to Kaima. “Okay, everyone,” he bellowed, “we’re going to fall back to the council room. Keep this formation! Protect the princess at all costs!”

  Tori could see Eden in her mind’s eye, struggling to keep up her barrier, but ready to collapse at any moment. “No, she insisted. She closed her fists and looked up at the Elder. “No protection. I’m going to fight.” Without waiting for a response she turned to Jacob. “Are you with me?” she asked.

  For a moment Jacob looked as though he wasn’t sure how to respond, but after only the slightest hesitation he snatched up his father’s sword and bowed before her. “I will follow your command, princess,” he vowed.

  “Good,” she replied. To the Elder she commanded, “Take Jiki to the council room as fast as you can, and grab anyone you see in trouble along the way. Barricade the doors. Protect yourselves.” To the Maelekanai archers she said, “Gather up as many archers and arrows as you can find and hurry to the platform that is circled with trees.” She pointed in the direction of the platform she’d descended only a few short hours ago. “Find fuel - oil, gas, whatever you have here that is the most flammable, and douse the entire platform.” Then she turned to Jacob. “You, well, just try not to freak out, because I’m going to do something extremely stupid.”

  There was no denying the look of concern on Jacob’s face, but there was no denying the faith either. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  Tori stooped down to the platform and worked her claws through the mixture of black ooze and her own blood that was pooled there. When she found what she was looking for she straightened up, wiped it off on her torn clothing, and showed Jacob the little jewel with the royal insignia etched inside.

  “I’m going to lead the lambs to the slaughter.”

  She ran to the nearest building, scaled it as easily as though she was strolling up a staircase, and leaped from the roof to a low-hanging branch. Then she climbed, and it was nothing like climbing the tree with Jacob in the weak, pathetic body she’d been born in. She felt like she belonged in the trees now, like her body was designed for speed and agility, like she existed for this exact moment. When she was high enough to be able to see out over the entire village she took a deep breath and bellowed with new lungs: “Shadows!”

  All across the village, from inside and outside Eden’s barrier, inky black heads twisted toward her cry.

  Tori lifted up the royal jewel, still stained with black blood, and knew that the creatures could sense what she held. “Your ‘leader’ is dead!” she called out. “Which one of you wants to be next?”

  Their reaction was exactly the one she’d been hoping for: complete frenzy. The forest filled with greedy shrieks as dozens of Shadows abandoned the Maelekanai they’d been terrorizing and rushed toward Tori to be the first one to take the jewel back from her.

  Tori stepped from her branch and dropped back down to the village. She was pleased to see that all of the Maelekanai had taken her commands, and Jacob was waiting for her with his sword at the ready. “Time to go!” she told him, and together they fled from the oncoming hoard.

  It felt like some kind of hyper-realistic dream. Tori ran harder and faster than she’d ever been able to before and hardly felt a breath of fatigue. Every air current seemed to kiss her as it passed by her body, and she could hear the leaves rustle and see every detail around her as though the world was magnified ten times over. She felt superhuman, elated, and she began to laugh as she ran.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny about this!” Jacob shouted behind her as the Shadows began to pile up in every direction. He snatched up a quiver and bow from a fallen Maelekanai and began taking shots at the nearest.

  “Sorry!” Tori called back with a toothy grin. “I’ve got an idea, I promise!”

  Jacob swung his sword at a Shadow that was too close and cried back, “I’d love to hear it!”

  As they approached the edge of the village and the barrier that was holding the majority of the Shadows out, Tori bit her lip and concentrated, praying that Eden could hear her: When I say so, drop the wall, and trust me. There was no response, but she felt a shudder of something like excitement and knew that Eden had accepted. As Tori ran, she snatched up one of Eden’s enchanted torches that had fallen and been snuffed out. She turned to Jacob, pressed it into his arms, and spoke quickly: “When I go up, run for the ringed platform, and get this lit on your way!”

  Jacob may have protested leaving her side, but Tori didn’t give him the chance. She thought, Now! And as the wall fell and the Shadows from the outside poured into the village like a tidal wave she took to the trees.

  She was being chased by well over three hundred of the creatures now, she estimated. It was absolutely one of the most terrifying experiences she could imagine, but she’d never felt so alive in all her life. She felt every branch beneath her feet before she’d even anticipated the landing. Her claws caught and released, steadying her, holding her, allowing her to snatch the tree-limbs even as they flashed past her face. She moved like she’d been born in the forest. She felt like she’d never really lived until just now.

  It was an enormous high - one that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to come down from - but there was a voice in the back of her head telling her that it was time to put an end to the circumstances of her rebirth.

  On my command, put the wall back up, but only around this one platform. I know that you’re nearly spent, but turn it into an inescapable tomb and we’ll finish this.

  She broke through the forest canopy, and for a second she was mesmerized by the scene. In one direction there were sprawling white mountains, in another endless blue ocean, and out over the vast green forest the sun was setting in a blaze of yellows, oranges, and reds. Staring out over all this natural beauty Tori felt as though she had never truly appreciated color before.

  Then the moment was over because she was surrounded by blackness as the Shadows oozed up through the treetops all around her.

  She held up the lit
tle royal jewel and spun in a circle to make sure they could all see it. “Come and get it, creeps,” she quipped, and then she stepped away from the branches to let herself fall.

  It was a thrilling terror. Tori closed her eyes as the forest went rushing past her and just focused on the cool air whipping past her face. As she hurtled toward the ground she heard Jacob shout, and she opened her eyes, twisted her body around the forest itself, and landed on the platform on all fours. Jacob and three dozen Maelekanai with bows stood waiting for her on the adjoining platform, and the Shadows were starting to rain down all around her. They took no notice of the scent of oil permeating the wood.

  She ran for the bridge with all her might. “Throw it!” she called to Jacob. Put it up! she called to Eden.

  The torch went sailing over Tori’s head as she dashed over the bridge. The Shadows dropped like cockroaches onto the platform behind her. The barrier slammed into place just as one Shadow clawed for Tori’s hair. And then the torch hit the platform floor and the forest was filled with the shrieks of burning monsters.

  “Take them down!” Tori cried. The Maelekanai obeyed immediately, sending a volley of arrows at the Shadows while they were distracted. The barrier Eden had thrown up was a pillar of flame, but some of the Shadows were attempting to climb the trees in order to escape the blaze. “Again!” Tori cried, and another volley came, then another. By the fourth volley the screams had died down to nothing, and only the crackle of the fire remained. Tori could feel Eden’s exhaustion as she shrunk her barrier inward until eventually the fire was smothered.

  A cheer went up amongst the villagers; a cheer for victory, and for Tori.

  With a grin on her face Tori turned to Jacob and was quite pleased to see that he was grinning back at her.

  “You’re everything that Eden said you would be,” he spoke to her over the cheers of the Maelekanai. “You’re absolutely amazing.”

  She wanted to cheekily ask him to elaborate. She wanted to celebrate her victory. She wanted to run and jump and feel the wind on her face again. She wanted to do a great many things, but she suddenly felt herself becoming very, very faint. She managed to stumble forward a couple of steps, smiled half-heartedly, and then saw Jacob rushing to catch her just as she passed out.