‘I need to go out for a while.’
‘Show’s about to start. Think you can just walk out now?’ Marre, a thickset girl in a shimmering silver outfit, made for the door as if to try to block Lan’s path. She fingered her dark locks and pouted her lips.
‘Don’t tell Astli, please,’ Lan whispered, pausing from her packing, emotion bubbling in her eyes.
‘This once,’ Marre grunted, exposing a rare glimpse of humanity, and lumbered back to her chair.
*
Lan’s hands around her escort’s waist, they rode for days across Jokull in the biting cold, deep into raw wilderness. Much of the island was layered in snow and ice, the landscape so similar no matter where they rode, a dull and bitter place to live. Animal life here was sparse, and how anything could salvage an existence here was beyond her. Tiny hamlets persisted, names she had never before come across — Thengir, Valtur — and people managed to make a living on simple rations, fresh fish, berries and seabirds. It was a humbling journey.
Her companion maintained an almost complete silence, grunting his replies to her. His face was permanently screwed up in concentration. She wondered if he had been born with such a scowl.
The cultist must have known what she was, and maybe that was the reason he treated her with virtual hostility — he was not the first. He was indifferent to her every need, as if he resented having to accompany her to the destination. Bringing up her concerns wasn’t something she was prepared to do — as she always had, she would silently plod on without initiating that conversation.
Isolating and imposing, the wilderness continued to unsettle her, with the ice wind blustering into her. She could have been on another world entirely. For so long, all she had known was the chaotic clamour from the auditorium, screams of the crowd, girls cackling at her in the changing rooms, the animals screeching… And now the only sound was that of the horse doing her best to plough across the long-forgotten roads of Jokull, and when they rested all she could hear was her own breath. She didn’t have any idea of where they were or where they were going. And she didn’t care. Soon she would be free.
*
On the second night they rode through thick bushes right into the heart of a dying forest that her escort declared portentously as Vilewood. Little could calm her nervousness at entering the darkness. The pungency of the sodden vegetation was intense, and occasionally a bird would dart past, startling her.
Eventually, she could see pairs of white lights bordering a path towards a clearing, and their horse headed instinctively in that direction. On closer inspection the lights were shaped like candles, but the flames were like none she’d ever seen, tiny spheres balanced on the tips of sticks — cultists were indeed the proprietors of bizarre objects. The trail of lights cut through the forest, and her vision was soon limited to no further than their radiance.
‘We now dismount,’ the cultist declared.
They arrived at what she thought was a small shack of a church, but it wasn’t the male and female gods, Bohr or Astrid, who were worshipped here, but that mysterious technology over which the cultists had a monopoly. Any Jorsalir carvings had been destroyed — instead, diagrams of bizarre instruments and etchings of numbers and symbols were scrawled across the walls.
Lan was ushered through the arch and down a spiral staircase, her bag of clothing in her hands, and guided onto a small plinth in the dark where she sat with her legs dangling over the edge, waiting, shivering and listening to an increasing hum.
It was all so quick.
Bright lights and disjointed thoughts, and her eyes closed as if by force*
Eyes wide open.
White stone carvings and columns and friezes filled her vision. A massive daedal mural covered the ceiling, a picture of metallic landscapes and curious, box-like creatures. For a moment she stared dumbly, and then the contents of her stomach began to churn.
Men and women in pale-coloured garb glanced over her as she shakily pushed herself up. Their presence was a blur. Instantly Lan made to vomit and a woman darted in to throw a bucket under her head. She threw up into it, collapsed to her knees, clutching the container and, when she’d finished spluttering, looked around embarrassed, cautiously wiping her mouth on the cloth handed to her.
‘Welcome, sister.’
Lan pushed herself upright and breathed heavily. ‘Sorry about.. doing that. I couldn’t help it.’ What an entrance, Lan.
The faces of those gathered were pleasant, full of cheer, and she could sense that they meant her no harm.
‘It’s all right, sister,’ a voice chimed.
‘Such methods of travel have side effects,’ another explained. ‘These things often happen when your body is snatched from one place and relocated thus.’
They seemed like a chorus narrating her progress in a play.
‘Where am I?’ she said.
Sensual incense and warm lighting drifted from strange sources; this room appeared acutely modern. Seeing Cayce’s face, and it being the only vaguely familiar sight, she floundered towards him.
‘Ysla,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Ysla.’ She remembered his voice, his particular tones. Cayce stood aside and watched as the gathered people began to analyze her and sketch her. A hubbub fluttered around the room as more people came in to observe this newcomer, this outsider.
‘Ye-yes. Of course,’ Lan stuttered, and then her reason for being there struck her in force. As she became utterly self-conscious of being a freakish experiment, the muscles in her legs gave way and she almost collapsed.
Cayce swept in, took her arm and, with one hand under her shoulder, eased her back onto her feet. He hauled her hessian bag across his shoulder and the crowd parted to let them through.
Her legs wobbled again as they went up a set of stairs up to the exit. Then suddenly, there at the top, in this world beset by ice, she experienced such warmth, such brightness…
There was not a single cloud in the sky.
THREE
Days later, and she was on a brilliant white beach stained pink by the rising red sun.
Pebbles. Wisps of seaweed. A sword half-buried in the sand, the hilt jutting up without function. Further along the beach were bizarre metal lattices towering up into the skies. They bled into the distance, several of them, elegant, rusting and redundant behemoths.
These were the first images Lan saw, as the mental fog was dispersed by the tidal roar and the pungency of the coast that assaulted her. The sea breeze was cool against her skin: the thought prompted her to glance across herself. Bare feet, khaki breeches, her long-sleeved white shirt — she had no recollection of these items at first, they weren’t hers, they weren’t her, but soon enough the images flashed back.
It’s all happening so quickly…
Her new body thronged with pain. Muscles seemed to spasm whenever she moved, and even though there weren’t bruises where she expected them, it didn’t diminish the pulses of agony. Cayce had warned her, of course, and she knew exactly what to expect — but the theory and the reality were quite separate. These were the effects of sorcery, even if Cayce would have hated her using the term. She was living a fantasy, a dream, and she couldn’t quite believe it. Cayce had explained that it was something she must grow used to, and from now on she must to learn to lose the years of layered frustrations, drop her self-consciousness around others.
Because she had undergone a major transformation.
Lan shaded her eyes from the intensity of the light and pushed herself up, sand clumping to her arms. She still hadn’t become used to this temperature, this balmy, sultry warmth. There were a lot of things she wasn’t used to.
Further down the shore, two of the indigenous Cephs were handling a boat, steering it onto the shore. Their handling was awkward. Pale-skinned and hairless, the creatures were humanoid save for their arms, which were
