Leatherbound Lives

Chapter Three

I lay awake in my bed, waiting for my parents to enter their bedroom. When the noises of them settling into bed had ceased, and I detected two different cycles of snoring, I put on my jacket and teleported down behind the pub. A grizzly man in a carhart stepped out the back door just as I appeared. He blinked and shook his head, mumbling something about having too much to drink. He ambled away, and I began darting from house to house, not quite familiar enough with the island to be teleporting long distances in it.

A mangy tabby cat meowed at me, its yellow eyes piercing through the dark. I tried to shush it, but it meowed even louder. I teleported to the roof of a house about twenty feet away, meowed, and when the cat took off in the direction of the sound, I teleported back to where I was and continued on. I hate cats, I thought bitterly as I trudged on to the outskirts of the village.

I continued past the edge of town, where the cottages became more sparse. Clotheslines ran from houses to trees, upon which faded garments hung. It was a still, cold night. Completely silent. I took out the map Worm drew me. It directed me to a ridge that I could see in the distance. I started towards it.

I'd never been hiking before - I'd always been more of an indoor person - but after this experience, I certainly didn't want to try it. I scampered up the ridge - or, as well as you could scamper when the mud was sucking at your feet. The ground was sloped at at least a seventy-five degree angle. When I'd set out, I didn't want to get my clothes dirty so that I wouldn't get caught, but after climbing on the ridge for thirty seconds, I was up to my knees in muddy clay, and the grime was caked under and around my fingernails. There was no point in trying to hide it now.

Worse still, a dense fog was seeping into my clothes, beading on my skin. I shivered, hoping the house wasn't too much further. I finally reached the peak of the ridge, panting, the thick air clinging to my body. I still couldn't see the house - I could scarcely see ten feet ahead in the fog. I crab-walked down the other side of the ridge, rocks scattering as I gained momentum. Near the bottom, I lost control and somersaulted the rest of the way down, landing on my back with an oof!

I lay in the weed-choked grass, seriously considering teleporting back to the pub, crawling into my bed, and just forgetting about the whole thing. But I was already muddy, cold, and miserable. It might as well have been for something.

Reluctantly, I got up, squeezed as much mud out of my hair as I could, and trudged on. It can't be much further, I thought, consulting Worm's map. After an eternity, the fog magically cleared, and the house came into view. The pictures my father showed me must have been outdated - the house was in even worse shape than it had been in the photograph.

Every inch of wood was gray and warped - what little glass was left in the windows smeared with grime. An entire tree had taken over the majority of the second floor, its roots woven deep into the foundation. One end of the roof had caved in, and I saw a corner of a bomb crater in the backyard.

Images flashed through my mind of the the children huddled together in the basement, the impact of nearby explosions rattling the house down to its bones. Then the bright flash, the wave of debris.

I turned around and ran. I ran and ran and ran, not caring about which direction I was moving in, only focusing on putting as much distance between me and the house as possible. I didn't want to go inside anymore. I didn't want to learn about the history. It's easy to read about attacks like this in books - you're still detached from it all. But to actually witness the results of a war so deadly was horrifying. A wind picked up, whipping back my hair, chilling me down to the bone. Thick mud began sucking at my legs, and by the time I realized I'd run into a swamp, I was up to my mid-thigh in grayish-green, watery clay.

I was sinking fast, looking around frantically for a tree branch or some roots - anything to grab onto. But there was nothing surrounding the swamp except flat land and a few scarcely placed trees, and I was right in the middle of the hazardous terrain.

Something stood out in my peripheral vision - an inconsistency in the environment. My eyes, seemingly separate from my body, zeroed in on a stone structure built upon a mound of solid earth. I was sinking quicker, quicker. I tried my best to remain tranquil, trying to imagine my view from atop the stones, but I was sinking down into the swamp, and I couldn't see up over the stones. I panicked, thrashing around in the mud, but the more I moved, the further I pushed myself down.

As the swamp water reached my chin, I looked up at the dark, cloudless sky, taking one last breath and closing my eyes before the mud enveloped my face. Help me, I thought desperately, take me anywhere - anywhere but here.

Seconds later, I gasped clean fresh air. When I wiped watery clay from my eyes, I was greeted by the same dark sky I had looked at just moments ago. But I was now sitting atop the stone structure. I couldn't tell exactly what had happened - either the survival instincts I had used previously to access my ability had kicked in once again, or I had used the sky as my view without realizing it, and teleported out of my own free will. They were both equally likely, but I suppose the only thing that mattered now was that I was on solid ground.

Every square inch of my clothing was saturated in the grimy, foul-smelling substance that filled the swamp. The wind was getting more violent, stinging my eyes and prickling my skin.

It suddenly occurred to me that I wasn't entirely sure what I was sitting on. I slid off of the structure to get a better view. It was an old, tunnel-like thing made of stone bricks. I traced my finger over intricate carvings along the side, worn away and nearly invisible. It reminded me of ancient tombs I had read about in history. I discovered an entrance, ominous shadows seeping out of it. I peered into it, and saw nothing but thick, impenetrable darkness. But, considering my surroundings, I had no way out of the swamp without the aid of teleportation, and quite honestly, I wasn't feeling too confident in my abilities at the moment. The structure seemed to be some sort of the tunnel that sloped downward, into the ground, and I wondered if it was a passageway that led out of the swamp; built long ago for people like me, who found themselves stranded in the middle of the bog. That's it. It was an escape hatch.

Without further thought, I hunched over and immersed myself in the darkness.