The first wave of exhaustion washed over him as he broke into the open air of their neighborhood. He stumbled, but caught himself. The path home stretched out before him.
The second came a few moments later. His foot caught against a stone in the hard-packed dirt. Daniel went down hard, skidding through the weed-filled grass of the copse. His head spun. He pushed himself upright, shaking his head blearily. Not far. He was almost home. Just a little more.
His mother came looking an hour later, crying his name and just beginning to go pale with worry.
She found him passed out in the weeds behind their neighbor’s yard, burning with fever.
- Chapter Two -
Daniel’s eyes slid open.
At first all he could see was darkness, wrapped around him like a blanket. He gasped - and much to his surprise, the breath came as easily as ever. His brow furrowed. Why was that surprising?
He shivered, twisting to one side. He’d been running. He’d been sick. He didn’t know what exactly had happened, but he remembered all too well that something had been horribly, horribly wrong.
When he rolled over, though, he was met with plush fabric, not dirt and grass. He stopped. And then he reached out, slowly easing himself upright.
He was laying in a bed, he realized, still dressed for the park. And the bed was big. Big enough to swallow him whole, burying him in tidal waves of blankets topped with pillows like white caps. He flinched, throwing the covers away. His pulse thundered in his ears. His hands shook. In a second he was on his feet, stumbling away from the unfamiliar furniture as though it was going to come alive and attack him.
It didn’t, of course. He was left trembling, slowly turning in a circle as the full breadth of the room around him became apparent.
It was magnificent.
The bed was the centerpiece. But from behind it stretched walls paneled with wood, melding artfully into stone floors lined with thick rugs. The ceiling vaulted high over his head, and Daniel could only gape at the sight of the herbs and carved charms hanging from the exposed rafters.
A shiver ran down his spine as strings of light sparked to life amidst the collection. It was as though the room itself was finally recognizing he was awake.
He turned himself away, licking suddenly-dry lips.
A moment later, he froze.
For a second he could only blink, staring at the racks of books that seemed haphazardly shoved in here and there. Leather-bound tomes sat lazily stacked on end tables, on the mantle over a massive fireplace, even on the foot of his bed. A shelf twice as tall as he was and half again as wide stood teeming with row after row of identical-looking books. He crept closer, grabbing the one from the bed. It dropped to the ground with a thump. His lips parted. It was so heavy. Picking it up was out of the question, but he lowered himself to the rug and wrestled the cover open.
He’d been expecting the printed letters he was so familiar with. Instead, though, he was greeted by a page filled with handwritten lines, packed densely enough he couldn’t begin to make them out. Entranced, he dragged a finger across them, pressing his nose closer and closer.
No matter how hard he tried, though, Daniel couldn’t pick out more than a word here or there. He sat up, beginning to scowl. A glimmer of light from across the room was enough distract him. He went statue-still for the second time in as many minutes, only his eyes flicking back and forth as he searched for the source.
He let out a sigh of relief when he found it - a wall of glass on the far side of the room, more like a single, massive window. A door was inset beside it, leading out to a path that wound between patches of flowers and out to a pond. Daniel sprang to his feet, hardly realizing he was smiling. In a second, his hands were on the glass, his eyes narrowed to squint out.
The garden outside was every bit as lovely as the room was. He stood there, taking it all in. The cobblestones leading around and around the plants, the brilliance of the blossoms, the willow that loomed over it all...
His breath caught in his chest. Little by little, his smile was fading.
Looking outside like this, something...didn’t feel right. There was no logic or reason to it, but Daniel couldn’t shake the feeling that the world was too perfect. Too still. The closer he looked the more the whole thing looked like a painting, rather than a place filled with life.
It was wrong.
Daniel stumbled away from the glass, his eyes widening. The feeling grew stronger with every passing second. This wasn’t right. None of this was right. He wasn’t supposed to be here - he’d been at the park, just a short walk from home. All of his confusion that had begun to fade surged in anew, rekindled to a sudden, violent edge.
He spun, gasping for breath, and saw it. A single door sat tucked into the very corner, surrounded by more bookshelves and carved from heavy wood with a thick iron clasp. He couldn’t cross the room fast enough. It took all his strength, but after a few tries he managed to lift the handle and throw the door open. He fell through the gap in
