LUCID

CHAPTER 24

Influenced by the positive, high-frequency of Sayan's protective field, I felt my own frequency rise and resonate with it, allowing me to relieve her of that particular task and giving her the chance to get some deeper sleep than she'd had in a long time. She was out for about eight hours, by my reckoning, but it could have been much shorter, or much longer – time here in the Void seemed even more fluid than in the Astral and almost impossible to really gauge. Thinking back over the events I'd experienced since entering through the Mirror, I couldn't seriously account for the passing of much more than a few hours, but it already felt like I'd been gone for days. I could imagine how disorienting it would be for anyone trapped here longer – hours, days, weeks, months and years merging into one endless sense of eternity.

The feeling intensified as the hours passed, possibly to do with being trapped inside, so from time to time, while Sayan slept, I wandered around the school and looked out through the windows. There was no sunshine out there, just that familiar dark blanket of cloudy sky that never changed, never shifted, just hung there still and ominous. Wherever in the Void we were, I understood that this was the personal domain of the girl and her friends, conjured up out of her deepest memories, the ones still available to her. If there were night and day cycles, they would be only when she intended it. But since she had been here even longer than Sayan and the children, I doubted she had any need for concepts like day and night anymore.

Every time I looked out from the front windows I saw her, still standing where I'd left her on the edge of the 'field', surrounded by her creatures... who were growing considerably in number.

The rest of the time Sayan rested, I watched the children play. A few came over now and then to sit by me – they never spoke and I didn't push them to. A couple of them snuggled up to me and fell asleep on my lap. I imagined their parents back on the physical Earth, grieving over their sleeping bodies, day in day out, wondering if they'd ever get their child back – praying to God for a miracle. I intended to make sure they got their miracle, even if it wasn't God who provided it.

Nina brought me coffee, unexpectedly. Sat beside me on the podium.

"How are you going to get us out?" she asked directly.

"I don't actually know yet," I said truthfully. "I've never done this before. I've only ever transported myself up to now, and been transported by others, like Sayan's brother."

"Sayan tried to get us out a few times, in the beginning, but she couldn't. I wanted to help her but I couldn't focus then, I couldn't feel happy. Sayan said I needed to imagine everything good, everything nice, and try to feel it inside. I didn't know how. I do now. But the others don't – not all of them anyway. Sayan says we all need to feel happy at the same time so we can tune our frequencies together and leave together, and get home together. I guess that's part of the problem. The other part is that some of us don't have homes anymore."

"I think you're right," I said. "But don't worry, I'll figure something out and I won't leave until I do."

She threw her arms around me, nearly spilling my coffee – hugged me silently for a long time then jumped away and ran back to her friends who were drawing pictures with the youngest kids. I wandered over to watch. There were sketches of trees and houses and puppies, and suns and stars, and flowers and mermaids, and daddies and mommies and kiddies all holding hands. Everything was bright and colourful and... happy. And I got a powerful idea.

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I was standing at the window by the front door, watching the sky when Sayan came rushing up behind me.

"What's changed?" She asked excitedly.

"Two things," I said. "One, I have an idea how to get us out. And two, the girl outside senses this and it's making her very angry – look at the sky." It was getting heavier and darker by the minute. "And look at the crowd." The herd of fifty or so creatures that had accompanied the girl and I to the school had swelled to an army of hundreds. They were leaping about like ferocious penned animals awaiting their expected dinner. The girl stood incensed at the head of the horde, her whole body tense with exasperation – hateful eyes glowering at the school, at us.