The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 21 - The Web

Grace drifted, her legs and arms weightless. There was a soft feeling on her face, like the brushing of feather after feather past it, and she wondered if she could be back in that cabin in the woods. Perhaps she had never woken up, and slept there still.

But little by little, the light touches became colder and colder and she blinked once, twice, and opened her eyes.

She looked up at a confusion of moving, falling shapes and put a hand over her face to protect herself. And then she realised that they were snowflakes; the fat and fluffy sort of fall that turns into drifts within hours.

She sat up, and snow fell from her legs and arms. She was wearing the clothes she had arrived in, and the winter coat was keeping her from freezing, but she was growing cold by degrees.

She put a tentative hand up to her shoulders and found that she had no backpack. Only her clothes. Which seemed strange, when she was sure they had all been together.

Grace wondered how she came to be out here in the snow, instead of... She wasn't sure where. Perhaps somewhere in the city, since she could remember travelling on the winds with Afi. Or perhaps somewhere in the palace if they had ever reached it.

She clambered to her feet, and tried to remember coming here. Through the thick fall of snow she could see almost nothing; only the dark outlines of trees against an absolute white. It was almost impossible to look beyond the closest flakes of snow. Her eyes kept snagging on one here or there and following it to the ground, only to look up and find another to watch.

The movement was hypnotic and she might have stood there for hours, but there was a small itch somewhere in her head that told her she needed to move. She lowered her head and lifted one foot out of the snow, and wondered why she had the heeled lace-up boots on instead of her hiking boots. And then she blinked, and they were her hiking boots, all practical, thick suede and brown laces.

A single spike of worry coursed through her as she saw that, and then it faded away to be replaced by a patient certainty that something important was going to happen soon.

She smiled to herself as a gust of wind lifted the snow ahead of her for a moment, and revealed a glimpse of a stumbling figure. Then the wind fell away and the risen snow cascaded back down in a sheet to block the vision out again.

Grace walked onwards, absorbed for a while in the sensation of her feet breaking through the surface of the snow and crunching it downwards. When she looked up again, she was close to the trees, and saw that the figure had stopped beneath one of them.

She moved closer, into the shelter of its branches, and there was suddenly nothing between her and the bundled figure. Clearly, now, she could see that it was a woman, raggedly dressed and shivering. She was bundled in layers and layers of dirty brown and grey cloth, and she was curled over herself.

No, not over herself, Grace realised, as she heard a frantic whispering. She was curled over a child.

Grace crouched down over her, knowing that she couldn't be seen without understanding why. She could see little of her face except a fall of dark hair, but she could hear the words now. Though they seemed to be nonsense now that she heard them.

"Mi znandemo de nebuda, ya obіcya you."

It wasn't nonsense, she realised, as she listened. She couldn't understand it, but they were words.

"Skoro, mi budemo teplі. Ya obіcya you me malainkee," the woman said, and Grace heard desperation in her voice and wanted to help her. She wanted to help this woman and this child, but she knew that she wasn't really here, and that she was seeing something that had already happened even while it unfolded in front of her.