Awake

NINETEEN

I stared around at the night, my eyes straining - my breath tearing in my throat. All traces of sleep had been burned away by adrenalin. I was so hyper aware of the thrashing of my heart, of the thrumming of blood in my veins, of every pulse and sensation of my body - that I swear I could feel my pupils expanding, trying to capture any trace of light.

But I saw nothing. Nothing except darkness and a night sky devoid of stars.

Where was I? Had I sleepwalked? I couldn't have sleepwalked this far. This place felt like deep country, far away from the sea. Far away from home. Even the air was different.

It took my shocked brain several long moments to figure out what my gut already knew. Unworld. I was in the unword. Alone, and unsafe.

My shard was thrumming on my wrist - but it was thinner than usual. I felt a jolt of shock as I realised I'd left half of it behind on Lily's coffee table. Halved, would it even work? Would I be able to defend myself? I slipped it off my arm, and in my distress, it turned fluid and wrapped around my fingers like brass knuckles, clenching reassuringly. It gave me something to hold on to, something to strike with.

I ran the fingertips of my free hand across the smooth, buzzing surface. My shard was even more responsive than it had been this afternoon on the cliff - I barely had to think, before it changed.

A stray gust of wind suddenly passed across my face and my heart rate spiked, like I was rabbit preparing to dive for cover. In response, my shard sprouted thin, needle-like spines.

I looked at it, slightly repulsed. It looked like a cross between an aggressive sea-urchin and a bunch of keys held between the fingers like a makeshift weapon.

"Really?" I whispered, ignoring the insanity of talking to a semi-sentient object. "You couldn't be a bloody gun?"

The shard pulsed, unwound from my fingers and moulded itself into a vaguely cylindrical shape, then promptly collapsed again.

I realised that, not only did I not have the first idea about how to mould a gun out of metal, I also didn't have anywhere near enough metal to make one.

"How many bloody shards has bloody Jake, got?" I whispered, then was distracted by the satisfying thought that I'd jumped between worlds, without him, in my sleep. And I totally didn't need to throw myself off a cliff to do it. It was less satisfying when I realised that I still had no idea how to get back. At least I'd left half my shard behind. That meant I had a pathway back home. I just had to concentrate. I just had to focus. What had Jake said? Let your piece of the shard lead you back. It wants to be whole.

I sat down on the side of the road, and closed my eyes tightly, feeling the shard vibrating between my palms.

"Lead me back," I ordered.

Nothing. The silenced pressed on my ears.

I tried again. "Come on, please?"

Nothing.

Then I heard the faint drone of a slowly approaching engine.

A pulse of terror had me jumping to my feet, then crouching again. So far, everything I had encountered in the unworld had shot at me, or tried to inject me with scary needles. Hitchhiking seemed like a bad, bad, bad idea.

I squinted. I couldn't see any light on the flat road in either direction - but still, that sound was drawing slowly closer.

I spun around. Behind me - stretching out until the darkness hid it - I could see tall, still grass. I dove into it, immediately finding out that it was sharp-edged. "Ow, ow, ow," I hissed as the grass cut at me, hoping I wasn't leaving an obvious trail of flattened greenery. The sound of the car drew closer and I dropped onto my stomach, the cold dampness of the earth soaking into my body. I peered through the stems of the grass, and could see lights approaching - but these were a strange colour - muted, red.