SHATTERED-LIGHT

EP7: THRESHOLD

And the garden burned even more.

The fire moved faster than anything that had a right to burn. It ran through the wet beds without waiting for them to dry, crossing the narrow stone paths and climbing from one terrace to the next as though the garden had been prepared for it. I could smell the leaves burning now, sharp and green, the scent of something living being destroyed before it had even had time to wither.

The little girl stood beside her basket, staring at the flames. The old man reached for her, but before his hand could close around hers, she pulled away. She turned towards the far end of the garden and ran.

I followed.

I don't remember deciding to.

Perhaps there are moments when the mind has no time to weigh fear against reason. Perhaps compassion can be quicker than either. Whatever it was, I found myself moving after her, passing between the burning terraces as smoke gathered around my legs and climbed towards the farmhouse.

Behind me, something cracked.

I turned just enough to see the old man standing where we had left him.

The eye-patch man was no longer there.

The dark blue sedan was already moving down the road, the three men following it, and for one strange second I could see the whole thing clearly through the smoke: the garden burning behind him, the car leaving Ashcombe as though it had only been waiting for the right moment.

Why had he left then?

Why had he come at all?

I didn't have an answer.

The smoke thickened before I could think about it any further.

It swallowed the garden, the farmhouse, even the road. I could no longer see the girl ahead of me, only the pale shape of her dress appearing and disappearing through the grey.

Then the heat changed.

Rain touched my face.

I stopped.

The smoke ended only a few steps behind me. Beyond it, rain was falling steadily, though there was no cloud above me and no visible change in the sky. The ground beneath my feet remained dry. I lifted my face and let the droplets gather along my lashes.

One fell differently.

I felt it travel down my cheek with a coldness that made me turn my head.

There was nothing there.

Only rain.

I looked back towards the smoke. The fire was still burning on the other side, its orange glow visible through the grey, while here the air smelled of wet earth.

How could rain begin in one place and stop so precisely at another?

I almost stepped back towards it.

Then I heard the girl scream.

The sound came from somewhere below.

I ran.

The path beneath me narrowed as I followed the echo, changing from soft earth to rough stone. Thorny branches caught at my clothes. Something brittle scraped across my arm, and when I tried to move around it, the ground shifted beneath my foot.

The scream came again.

This time I could tell it was farther ahead.

I ran harder.

The path curved around the hillside and opened into a dark entrance between two walls of stone.

A cave.

I had never seen it before.

The girl stood just inside.

One of the men from the car stood farther in, half-shadowed by the stone.

The guard.

The girl looked at him, then at me.

There was something different in her face now. The quiet confidence she had carried through the garden was gone. She looked young in a way she hadn't before, her hands held close to her body as though she had suddenly remembered how small she was.

I moved towards her.

The guard did too.

He came closer with an ease that made the space between us feel wrong. There was barely enough room for the three of us, yet he kept advancing.

I reached for the girl.

"Give me your hands."

She looked at me.

Then she nodded.

Her fingers came towards mine. I glanced at the guard, then back at her. He was close enough now that I could see the faint movement of his sleeve.

I caught her hand.

We ran.

The passage tightened around us as we went, rough stone scraping against my shoulders. Something hard caught the side of my dress and dragged through the fabric before tearing into my skin. I felt the sting, but the girl was already pulling ahead, and I refused to let go.

We ran until the darkness thinned.

Then we came out.

The garden was gone.

Not literally. The terraces were still there, the farmhouse still stood above them, and the stone paths remained where they had always been. But everything that had been green was blackened now. Burnt leaves covered the ground. Smoke drifted low over the beds, and here and there a small flame still clung to what remained of a shrub.

The fire had passed.

What was left behind looked older than the garden I had entered.

The girl stopped.

She stared across the terraces, tears gathering in her eyes without falling.

I followed her gaze.

For the first time, I understood that destruction did not always need to be loud. Sometimes it simply left things standing long enough for you to see what they had become.

We began walking.

The burnt leaves broke softly beneath our feet. Small stems pushed through the ash, bent and blackened, while the remains of flowers lay scattered along the paths.

Then I stepped on something green.

I stopped.

A leaf lay beneath my foot.

I moved carefully and bent down.

It was fresh.

Not partly fresh. Not protected beneath something else. Fresh as though it had fallen from the plant only moments ago. Its surface was smooth, its edges unburned, its colour untouched by the blackness surrounding it.

The girl crouched beside me.

She didn't pick it up.

Instead, she brushed the ash away from its edges and used her fingers to draw a small ridge of earth around it.

I watched her.

There were too many questions now.

Why had this survived when everything around it had burned?

Why did she know to protect it?

And why did she seem to understand things that I had not even thought to ask?

I wanted to question her, but she was still a child, and somehow the dream made me feel that whatever answers existed would not come from forcing them out of her.

She looked at me.

"Remember this," she said. "You'll need it when the glass fails."

The words settled somewhere in me.

I didn't understand them.

Not then.

She stood and walked away.

I followed.

We passed beyond the last terrace, and the land opened slowly before us.

The valley was there.

It was beautiful in a way the garden had never been. The slopes folded gently into one another beneath the pale sky, untouched by the fire behind us. Wild grass moved in long waves, and the air carried the clean smell of wet earth.

Yet something about it felt old.

Not old in the way the farmhouse was old.

Older.

As though the valley had been there before anyone had given the surrounding places names.

I heard water.

I stopped.

The sound came from somewhere below, faint at first, then clearer as the wind shifted.

The river.

I had heard it before.

In dreams where there had been nowhere for a river to hide.

Now I could see it, winding through the valley in a narrow silver line before disappearing behind the hills.

The girl walked towards it.

I followed.

For a while, nothing changed.

Then she stepped across a patch of bare ground.

Her foot landed on the other side.

That single step became a boundary.

I stopped.

The distance between us had changed.

The valley, which had seemed close enough to cross in a few strides, was suddenly wider. The hills had drawn away from one another, and the river had stretched between them, cutting a silver path through the land.

The girl looked back.

I took a step towards her.

The valley widened again.

I called her name.

She didn't answer.

I tried another step.

Nothing.

She was standing on the other side of something I couldn't see, and yet I could feel it there, separating us as surely as glass.

I began to run.

The ground lengthened beneath my feet.

The farther I went, the farther she seemed.

Then I noticed something beyond her.

At the edge of the valley stood what looked like the remains of an old tournament ground. Faded wooden posts rose from the earth at uneven intervals, and beyond them the ground had been worn into a broad circle. There were no people, no horses, no banners, nothing that explained why the place had once been there.

I knew I had never seen it before.

And yet I recognized it.

The thought frightened me more than the valley.

I stopped running.

Darkness had begun gathering beneath the far hills.

It moved slowly at first, spreading across the valley floor like something searching for the lowest ground. The girl remained where she was, her small figure standing against the green.

I called to her again.

This time she looked at me.

Her face was still the same innocent face I had followed through the fire.

Then the darkness reached her feet.

It climbed.

I ran towards her.

The valley widened once more.

The river became a thin silver line between us.

And as the darkness rose higher around her, I had the strangest feeling that Ashcombe was not showing me these things.

It was leading me to them.

Then the girl disappeared.

For the first time since the dream began, I wasn't watching.

I was part of it.

And that... that was the moment everything changed.

I simply didn't know it yet.