Passages (Alternate Worlds Book 1)

by Taylor Leigh

  She shuddered. ‘Yes. But how did you—’

  Tollin waved her question away. ‘Never mind that. Come on!’

  Victoria hurried after him, new spring her step. If she could slow down Andrew’s symptoms, it might give her time to find a cure for him. ‘Can I ask you one more thing, Tollin?’

  ‘As long as it’s not about my past.’

  She bit her bottom lip, fighting back a flurry of nerves. ‘Do you know what happened to Molly? I’m sorry to bring her up, but I don’t believe she drowned, like Andrew said, and if he wasn’t so damn stubborn he’d admit it as well. If you had seen the light. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. And you…you seemed to know.’

  Tollin sucked in a heavy breath, voice shifting to a tired growl. ‘There are many strange things in the world, Victoria. Molly’s disappearance is one of them. She was playing with things she shouldn’t have. Some things just like to take.’ He grew quiet. ‘We were supposed to make this journey together, today.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Tollin. I know I don’t compare to Molly, but I promise I won’t let you down. I would never want that.’

  ‘Nothing to worry yourself about. You’re doing wonderfully. Wouldn’t have brought you along if I didn’t have faith in you.’ Victoria wondered what he’d meant when he said he’d brought her along. Did he mean to the planet or had he somehow commandeered her mission to follow the river? ‘You needed to get out of the village; too bleak today. Needed to be off, doing something good, thinking for a change! Besides,’ Tollin said. ‘You’ll need to be prepared for when you return home. This is the best way. If you want to solve the problem back home, you’ve got to solve it here first.’

  Victoria squared her jaw. ‘I’m not going home.’

  ‘What?’ Tollin pulled up short.

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  Tollin’s face darkened. He spun round and marched towards her. ‘You can’t.’

  Victoria straightened regally. ‘You don’t have a say in it. You’re the one who brought me here in the first place! I’m not going back to that horrible, barbaric world! Everything there is so dark. I feel dead there. Here…people care about each other, the beauty, the water. I can never give it up. Never.’

  ‘You have a duty to your planet! To your people! You’ll be abandoning your cousin to a horrible fate if you stay here. There’s a cure on this planet for what’s plaguing them, I know it, and it’s up to you to save them! You’re the future Queen; you can’t give all that up just because you think it’s pretty here!’

  ‘You do it then! That’s what you do, isn’t it? Save people? Why don’t you just go save Scrabia then? Why do you need me? I’ve found someone here, someone I want to spend the rest of my life with!’ She could hardly believe she was admitting to it. Saying the words sent a wave of nervous excitement through her. ‘And I’m staying for him! He’s promised me I could!’

  Tollin’s eyes were almost black as he glared at her. ‘He can’t love, Victoria. I’m sorry, I really am, but that’s just the way his mind works. He only sees prospects and prey. To him, you’re nothing more than an object that will help him reach a goal.’

  Victoria glowered, trying to ignore the awful truth his words held. She hated to face it. Andrew’s detachment to any real human emotion was his one glaring flaw. Otherwise, he would have been so completely perfect. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to accept Tollin’s view of him. ‘How can you say that? What do you think he is, some unfeeling predator? He’s not that! He’s human, like me…isn’t he?’

  Tollin nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, he’s human. But his mind doesn’t work like yours does, Victoria. He doesn’t…feel. He’s wired differently. You can never have the relationship you want to have with him because he will never understand or want that kind of life. He lives a life of extremes and games. Everything about him is lies and manipulation and calculations because that’s all he knows how to do. That’s all he’ll ever want to do. It’s his mental condition. He was born with it and he won’t grow out of it. I’m sorry.’

  She shook her head. ‘Sounds an awful lot like you,’ she snarled. ‘Isn’t that what you’re like? Hardly blink an eye when Molly dies, almost seem gleeful about these spores poisoning people, like it’s some big game to you! But I know you’re wrong. I’ve been with Andrew all this time and I know!’ Her head went back and forth again, thinking of the pleading fear in Andrew’s eyes. ‘You think you’re so clever. Always have to be the expert on everything. Well, you’re not. Not on this. You’ll say anything to get me to go back, to lose hope in the one thing I’ve wanted to live for in I can’t remember how long. Well, I won’t do it. I’m not falling for your lies, and I’m not going back!’

  Tollin swallowed. He seemed to be wrestling with a great deal of replies, all trying to force their way out. When he did finally speak, his voice was calm and even. ‘Victoria, you have to do this. My goal is not to make you miserable. I would never want that. But you’re the one who has to set it right. Not because I can’t do it myself, but because you need to do it. This is your responsibility. Your burden to bear. No-one can do it but you. No-one should.’

  Victoria felt tears stinging her eyes. ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? Who are you to tell anyone what to do? You have no control over my life! If you didn’t want me to stay then why did you bring me here in the first place?’

  ‘I brought you here so you could learn. You could watch these people, like Andrew, see what it was like, learn how to make Scrabia a better place. So you could help me find the cure for them and know how to deal with the problem! That is why I brought you here! Everyone has to make sacrifices, Victoria, including you! Just because you’re a princess doesn’t mean you can just get your way all the time!’

  ‘My life has not been anything but doing what other people tell me to do. Now it’s my chance to make my own choice and I choose to stay here! What do you know of sacrifices?’ she snapped.

  Something in Tollin’s eyes shifted slightly. They deepened. Eyes of a person who had seen what Victoria could never imagine. ‘More than you know,’ was his quiet reply.

  He turned away and started walking again. Victoria immediately felt guilty but didn’t dare go back on her words. The idea of returning to Scrabia was more terrifying than anything she could say to Tollin. She shook her head stubbornly. No. She already had it all figured out. She was staying here with Andrew and going to Academia. Let Tollin go save Scrabia, since that seemed to be his goal in life. She had no desire to.

  Their trek lasted another half hour in brutal silence before Victoria realised Tollin had stopped. The noise of rushing water was louder now.

  She hurried up to stand next to him and let out a breath. ‘Oh, no…’

  The stream had split. Water was flowing towards them from two different directions.

  ‘I was afraid this would happen,’ Tollin admitted bleakly.

  ‘W—what do we do?’ Victoria looked up to him. ‘Follow one and then the other?’

  Tollin shook his head. ‘That will take too long.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Victoria, I really am sorry about this, but we’re going to have to split up.’

  ‘What?’ she cried. ‘We can’t! I can’t go in there alone! I’ll be eaten or killed by savages or lost!’

  Tollin took her shoulders, bringing a flood of comforting warmth through her. ‘I’m sorry, but we both can’t go. This is important. Victoria, you have to do this! You won’t get lost as long as you follow the stream; it’s your road through the forest and you know where it ends up at. All you have to do is follow it back.’

  ‘What if it splits again? Then what?’

  Tollin sighed. ‘Take the larger stream. Who knows, maybe these two streams will meet back up again and we’ll be together. You have to go, Victoria. Take the one on the right and I’ll go left. In about four hours, turn round and head back here. I’ll wait for you. We’ll both go back to the keep then, that’s where your friends are going, isn’t it? It’s not far from h
ere. Keep your eyes on the water and look out for spores. We have to know which way it’s coming from.’ He must have seen the panicked look in her eyes because he smiled gently. ‘You can do this, Victoria!’

  He reached into his breech coat and pulled out two strange looking necklaces. They each held a golden pendant with a large blue gemstone in the centre which pulsated gently.

  ‘Here, take one of these and hang it round your neck. It will distract anyone who looks at you. You’ll basically be invisible.’

  ‘Is it magic?’ Victoria asked, fascinated. She swung the device back and forth.

  ‘No. It sends out a pulse on a frequency that disrupts the sensory part of the brain just enough to trick it into thinking it’s seeing nothing. It’s from technology that—’ Tollin stopped dead as Victoria stared at him blankly. ‘Yeah,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s magic.’

  Victoria took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. ‘Right. I can do this. Let’s go, we’re wasting time. We’ll meet back here in a few hours, right? How will I know when it’s been four hours?’

  ‘Em?’ Tollin’s hands went to patting his vest pockets. ‘Right.’ He pulled up the sleeve on his right arm and glanced down at the wrist timepiece he had there. Then he reached in his trouser pockets and pulled out a copper fob watch. ‘Here, take this. When the big hand gets to here,’ he pointed. ‘Come back.’

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. ‘How many timepieces do you have?’

  Tollin blinked at her. ‘What? I like to know what time it is!’

  She forced a weak smile. ‘Bet I’ll find the spores before you do.’

  Tollin grinned. ‘There’s a good lass! Keep sharp!’

  Victoria watched Tollin go with a sinking feeling. From here on out, she would have to do things on her own. She sighed and reluctantly took her own path, following the river.

  Walking in the forest alone was a completely different experience; her memories kept rippling back towards her first night on the planet.

  It took her a good long hour to get over jumping at every noise, but once she did, she found she began to enjoy herself. It gave her time to think, and she never had been able to get over the beauty of forest. Everything was less menacing now. Victoria rarely journeyed into the forest, yet she didn’t feel the same fear as she did those four months ago. She wasn’t an alien to this planet now. Now she felt like it was home.

  Victoria kept her eyes on the water when she could. She found it deceptively clear and beautiful. She began to question Tollin’s theory. It made so much sense to her, but now that she was actually searching, there didn’t seem to be anything out of place. She had to appreciate what a horrible menace it was: invisible and poisonous.

  She had been walking for the greater part of an hour, undisturbed, when a noise came to her. Victoria slowed her pace and looked ahead, up the stream. A great striped green and black cat was hunched over the water. Large green tendrils rippled up from its fur and were waving in the air like extra limbs. Victoria ducked behind a large patch of saw-grass and watched the creature as it lapped at the water for a minute. The beast paused, head still lowered, and then let out a horrible snarl. The tiger sprang from the bank, landed against the side of a tree and then proceeded to shred the bark to splinters. Even at the distance she was, Victoria could not help but flinch in terror. It dashed about wildly, tearing up anything it seemed to find offensive, screaming at the top of its lungs. Saliva streamed from its black mouth as it plunged about in wild circles before charging past Victoria’s hiding place, yowling as it disappeared into the deep ferns.

  She watched it go in mute surprise. The birds above her had stopped chirping and Victoria could almost feel the whole forest in tense waiting. She stayed still for a long moment, but the tiger did not come back.

  Cautiously, Victoria crept out from her hiding place and walked back to the stream. She peered down in the clear water where the cat had been drinking. Nothing seemed out of place. Yet, the behaviour of the cat had suspicious familiarity. Paranoia…violence…could it be the effect of the spores? She mulled over the strange idea as she continued her walk along the stream. It certainly had similarities to what some of the villagers went through. Perhaps, like Andrew, the cat was more sensitive to the spores, and thus had a greater reaction.

  After a time the excitement dwindled. She was growing bored of following the stream and seeing nothing and was just deciding to turn back when something caught her eye, twisting like a drunken jellyfish. A fuzzy yellow ball was drifting beneath the surface, floating over the rocks and sand. It was strangely familiar. Victoria dropped down onto the wet, mossy bank hurriedly and, slipping in the clay, scooped her hands down to pull up the object. It was almost insubstantial in her hands and as she drained the water away she was careful to keep the fuzz from floating away as well. She stared down at the object in quiet familiarity for a long moment. It was a spore.

  Victoria shivered and wiped the spore off on her skirt and eyed the water, no longer thinking it so clear and clean. Tollin was right. Right about everything. What had he said? All streams have to start somewhere. The Blaiden land was ahead of her, and beyond that, somewhere, among the many rising peaks, the Guardian’s Mountain. She turned back the way she’d come. The sun was still low, rising on the horizon, just now trying to chase away the persistent rainclouds. It didn’t matter if she’d found one spore if she hadn’t found the pod that was responsible for them. She had to go on.

  Now that she had visual proof of the spores, Victoria began to spot an alarming amount of them in the water as she walked. It was an exciting new adventure and she felt a thrill every time her eyes caught one. The ground was growing steeper and Victoria had to fight to pull herself up over logs and through tangled vines.

  She hauled herself up over a particularly difficult pile of rocks and stopped short, breathing hard. She was in a small clearing. The stream sliced through it and wound out of sight once again into the deep forest. Ferns and vines covered the ground and great trees leant in over the stream, as if shielding it from above. A few stone structures were set up at the edge of the clearing. She studied them. They were carved into giant knives stabbed into the ground. Someone had runes carved on them, spirals and lines that she couldn’t begin to decipher. She traced one of the lichen -crusted lines, distractedly humming, studying the mountain, which rose up above the trees.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ A voice from behind Victoria startled her and she whirled round with a yelp.

  Flynn, the Druid leader, was standing across the stream, eyeing her. He had his bow drawn and an arrow aimed at Victoria’s chest. His grey eyes were steady, bemused, even. She realised the necklace must not work if you march right past people making a good deal of noise. She made a mental note to complain to Tollin about not telling her that—if she survived, that was.

  ‘Flynn! I didn’t expect to see you.’

  He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘You clearly didn’t. Now answer my question. Why are you out here?’

  Victoria bit her lip. She didn’t think her mission would go over that well. Better to play ignorant. ‘I wanted to see the forest!’

  Flynn seemed to buy the stupidity of her remark. It stung slightly, Victoria realised, to see that Flynn thought she was dumb enough to journey into hostile land just to have a looksee.

  ‘There are trees on the Tartan’s side of the lake,’ he grunted, lowering his weapon. He pulled a flask from his belt and crouched down by the stream to fill it.

  Victoria walked towards him. ‘I know. But I wanted to see where I landed when I came here, I dropped some of my things and I wanted to go back and try to find them.’

  ‘Stupid girl. Your blood is on your own head. The forest is not welcoming to you.’

  She watched Flynn filling up the flask with water in morbid interest. How much of that water had he been drinking? Before she could fight down the words they bubbled up through her throat. ‘Have you noticed anything strange about the water?’

  Flyn
n raised his eyes to her questioningly. Victoria didn’t know if it was her own imagination, but she thought she saw a slight yellow tinge to his silver gaze. ‘There is nothing wrong with the water. The streams flow from the icewalls of the North.’

  Victoria glanced down at the river as Flynn stood. She swallowed. ‘This river comes from there?’

  Flynn scowled at her. ‘The origin of this stream is the only one unknown to me. It comes down from the forbidden land. It is the one we cannot follow to the ice. Some say it flows from inside the mountain.’

  Ha! She was on the right track after all.

  Victoria blinked. ‘Are you sure it’s safe to drink?’ She had been watching a silver centipede as long as her arm crawling up the side of a tree. ‘If you don’t know its source, I mean?’

  Flynn ignored her question and turned away from her. ‘Go back home, girl. You will die if you stay here. The beasts and my people will not allow you to leave.’

  Victoria hopped the stream and came up beside him. ‘Can I ask why you don’t kill me yourself?’

  Flynn scanned the woods. ‘You are not from this world. You are not a natural part of the problem. I have no right to kill you.’

  ‘I see,’ she mused.

  ‘Do not expect my people to follow my views. I have not shared my thoughts with them. They believe you are unnatural and will most likely slay you.’

  Victoria huffed. ‘Thanks for the heads up.’ She had expected as much. She was honestly surprised by Flynn’s thoughts of her. ‘Can I ask you one more thing?’ Flynn did not answer, so she took that as a yes. ‘What is the forbidden land? Does that mountain have a name?’

  Flynn whirled on her, face fierce and Victoria was caught off-guard by his tone. ‘Do not go there! That is the beginning of the Blaiden’s Land, the sacred mountain of the Guardian and you will wish they would kill you if you were found.’

  Bingo.

  She couldn’t help noticing the fear in his eyes. Her stomach turned over. ‘Which mountain is it? You can’t tell me not to go there and then not tell me where it is. I could be stumbling right into their territory then.’