The grey sky overhead remained unchanging. It was the grey of pregnant storm clouds and the promise of rain. But here in the Between it was the promise of nothing, it was simply relentlessly grey and she felt cheated. She wanted more, something that might actually resemble weather.
The sandy ground eventually gave way to spotty patches of green grass, sickly examples that huddled away as if embarrassed to be found so far from its natural habitat. But as they continued on, the patches reached out to each other and soon she was walking over springy green grass.
Out of the more fertile ground rose the occasional tree dotting the landscape. Not peculiar monsters like the Baobab tree or the deadly denizens of the Walking Forest. These were just trees – the type you might find growing harmlessly in your backyard.
But as the grass grew longer beneath their feet and the trees more commonplace, she noticed a lacking. There was no birdsong. No chirping of insects. Just silence, thick and unnatural, wrapping around them from every direction. She turned to ask Alex about it, but before she could, he made a small sound of recognition and turned abruptly toward a small tree, covered in bright orange fruit.
Alex plucked a couple off the tree and handed her one. She turned it over in her hands, studying it. She didn’t recognize it – it was round and orange, brightening to a sharp red in some places. The skin was smooth, but tough and unyielding. She’d thought that she could recognize most fruit, after all, in this current time of globalization even the most exotic of fruit had generally become commonplace – no more than an airplane ride away. She turned to Alex with a question in her eyes, unsure of what to do.
He smiled sunnily at her, suddenly younger and more carefree than she imagined possible. He produced two small, sheathed knives from some pocket, somewhere on his person and handed her one.
“Like this,” he said, demonstrating. He peeled the fruit deftly, producing a single, long, curly peel – the type she always aspired to but could never reproduce. There was white rind beneath it that he peeled away easily, producing a segmented fruit much like a normal orange.
Allyra tested the edge of the small knife and found it to be viciously sharp. For a moment she was gratified that he trusted her with it, though the realist within her knew it was probably because he was utterly confident of his ability to disarm her if she tried anything stupid with it.
She peeled her fruit carefully and produced an acceptable effort, though not nearly as quickly or neatly as Alex. She copied Alex’s actions and pulled it into two halves, then broke off a segment. She hesitated again, wondering if this could be an elaborate scheme to poison her… But Alex was already chewing. She popped the segment into her mouth and hoped for the best.
It was juicy and deliciously sweet. The flesh was firmer than an orange’s and required more chewing, though the texture was pleasant and silky. To her, it tasted more like a mango than an orange.
“The story is that one of the Five particularly enjoyed the combination of oranges and mangos – so these trees are dotted throughout the Between. There’s no official name for these, you won’t find them on Earth, but I call them orangos.”
She smiled and popped another segment into her mouth, enjoying the way the silky sweet juice ran down her throat. Oranges and mangoes – a classic and apparently long-standing combination. It was strange – she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for what she guessed to be a day and a half – yet she didn’t feel hungry or thirsty. She enjoyed the orango, but somehow it didn’t feel necessary.
As if reading her mind, Alex said, “We don’t need to eat or drink in the Between. Hunger and thirst are physical afflictions while we are here in mind only.”
“What?” she exclaimed, “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t I explained this yet?”
“No?” Seriously – this seemed like rather important information that he’d nonchalantly left out.
“The Gifted are able to separate mind from body. We enter the Between in mind only, we leave our bodies behind.”
A flood of images burst through her mind: crows picking her eyes out and vultures gorging on her flesh, or her body wandering around like a mindless zombie.
“So what exactly is happening to my body right now? Is it doing everything I’m doing here? Am I going to walk off a ledge and fall to my death?”
It was surreal thinking of her body as a separate entity.
Everything about this place was surreal.
He raised his eyebrows at her, “Nothing quite so exciting. To everyone else – you’re just going to appear like you are in a deep sleep. However, events do mirror themselves across the Veil. So if someone stabbed your body – you’d feel it here, if someone delivered a fatal blow to it – you’d die here. Similarly, any injury you suffer here would show up on your body. The mind is a powerful thing and if you die here, your body will also die. This isn’t a dream you can wake up from – it is as real as anything you’ve ever experienced.”
Allyra sighed – obviously that would be too easy. If she thought dying here would get her back to Jamie and the real world, she’d quite happily offer herself to the nearest Revenant or take a hop, skip and jump into the Walking Forest.
“So…” She said thoughtfully, trying to remember the doomsday survival triangle Rob had obsessed over when kitting out his
