The Cradle of All Worlds. Jeremy Lachlan

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘To you, Eric, he is nothing. To Jane, on the other hand, he is everything.’

      She pulls back the hood, and the invisible thread tugs again, pulling at my insides so hard I almost pass out. I can’t move, can’t think how it’s possible, but there he is, staring at the ground as if nothing’s going on at all, as if he hasn’t even left the basement.

      Winifred Robin has brought my dad to the party.

      ‘How dare you bring him here,’ Atlas growls. ‘Gareth! Take him into custody!’

      Peg and his men charge into the crowd, weapons raised. Panic flushes through my body and everything seems to slow down. Winifred vanishes into the crowd, leaving Dad unprotected, alone, adrift in an angry sea. Now they’re calling for his blood as well as mine. I scream and try to break away from Atlas, anger swelling inside me, a furious tide. The stone trembles beneath my feet. The sky’s no longer caught in a tug of war between day and night. The blood-red clouds are bruising.

      Dusk has come.

      The crowd scatters. Atlas tells me to stop, but I keep screaming, fighting, reaching out to Dad. I’m thrown onto the shaking Stairs. Eric Junior holds me down, but nobody sees Violet coming, not even me. She slams into Eric Junior, who falls into Atlas, who staggers back but recovers all too quickly, swinging his knife again. I pull Violet close, shield her with my body and swipe at Atlas as I turn away, but the blade gets me, slicing my left palm open, cutting to the bone. My hand hits the Sacred Stairs. Something snaps inside me, breaks free, and the furious tide overflows. I can feel the cracks in the stone snaking their way up and down the Stairs, tearing across the square. I can feel the whole island shaking to its very core.

ROCK AND RUIN

      What just happened? I’m holding my palm against my chest, stemming the flow of blood with my tunic, covered in a cold sweat and shaking. Violet’s yelling in my ear, but I can’t focus. My hand’s killing me. My vision’s gone fuzzy. The air’s thick with noise.

      ‘Come on, Jane, we have to go!’ Violet slaps me, hauls me to my feet. ‘Now!’

      Bluehaven’s being torn apart. It’s chaos. The horse gallops around the square, still tethered to the wagon. Peg is out for the count or worse. Some of the crowd flood into the alleyways, heading for their homes or the ocean. Others stick to the open spaces, but nowhere’s safe. The ground cracks at their feet. Windows shatter, walls crumble. I can’t see Dad anywhere.

      ‘We have to get out of here.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ Violet says. ‘Where’d you get that idea, genius?’

      She grabs my uninjured hand and pulls me down the stairs. I’m too slow and clumsy. Don’t even see Atlas coming till he’s nearly on top of me. He has that bloody knife out again, but one swift kick from Violet and he’s on his knees, clutching his groin and grimacing.

      ‘Told you I’d get him,’ she says.

      Through the screaming crowd now. A lamp post falls. A stage collapses. We change course again and again, ducking and stumbling across the square. I feel lightheaded. The blood from my hand’s running freely down my chest, but I can’t stop, have to find Dad.

      The thought fuels me.

      A woman screams and points behind us. Enormous chunks of the Sacred Stairs are breaking free, crashing down the hill. Bouncing through the terraced farms, flattening trees and farmers’ huts, tumbling into the square and obliterating both effigies in a shower of sticks. The cracks at our feet open wide, some half a metre or more. Me and Violet jump one hand-in-hand, take a hard left when the horse and wagon thunders past. We’re running alongside the Town Hall now, weaving between the stone columns. Definitely not the safest place to be.

      The column ahead crumbles. I pick Violet up, leap over a fallen boulder, and dive into the Town Hall foyer just as the great doors slam shut behind us, blocked by the falling rubble.

      ‘Inside?’ Violet cries. ‘You brought us inside? What if the roof collapses?’

      ‘Working on it.’ The chequered floor’s covered in dust and debris. The high-domed ceiling’s falling apart, and the statue in the centre of the foyer has already lost its head. There are other survivors in here, too, none of them happy to see me. The Hollows. Eric Junior. Old Mrs Jones. Meredith Platt. Basically, everyone dumb enough to head indoors during a quake. They arm themselves with any weapon they can find – rocks, paperweights, shards of glass from the broken windows high on the wall, a chair. ‘Oh, give me a break . . .’

      Mrs Hollow snatches Violet from my arms with a high-pitched, ‘Hands off my daughter!’ Violet tries to get free, but Mr Hollow grabs her, too. Not, I suspect to protect her, but to use her as a human shield. Nobody else moves. They’re not as brave as Atlas. Even Eric Junior hangs back now.

      Everyone’s terrified. Well, everyone but Winifred Robin.

      She’s in here too, walking calmly towards me. ‘Hold out your hand.’

      ‘Where’s my dad? What did you do with him?’

      ‘Your hand, Jane,’ she says. The domed ceiling cracks again. More chunks of rock rain down. People scatter and shout but Winifred doesn’t blink an eye. ‘Hold it out. Now.’

      ‘Dad,’ I cry, even though I know he can’t hear me.

      I trip and fall backwards. My tunic’s drenched in blood, my head’s spinning. But then Winifred grabs my left arm, tucks something small into my bloodied hand, and everything changes. The ground gives a final, almighty shudder, as if the island itself has shrugged, sat down and sighed. The quake has stopped. Everything’s gone quiet.

      If it weren’t for the settling dust I’d think time itself had frozen.

      I sit up, blinking. Winifred smiles at me. But before either of us can say a word, somebody screams outside. Several people, actually. Cries of outrage, of fear. Eric Junior tries the doors but they won’t budge. People crane their heads up to the broken windows high on the wall instead, gathering beneath them like little light-starved flowers.

      ‘What’s going on out there?’ Mr Hollow asks.

      ‘It has happened,’ Winifred says, and she closes her eyes, as if listening to a beautiful song. A favourite tune she hasn’t heard in years. ‘The Manor has woken from its slumber.’

THE DEPARTURE

      At first, everyone in the foyer’s too stunned to move, but it isn’t long before they’re all bustling around the doors, trying to get them open. I’m still on the floor, staring at an old, tarnished brass key resting alongside the gash in my palm. I let it slip between my fingers. It lands on the floor with a dull thud. Winifred bends down and quickly ties off a bandage around my hand. I can feel her watching me, hear Violet calling my name, but I can’t stop looking at the bloodied key lying there in the dust. There’s a symbol on its handle. The one Winifred drew on the back of my photo. The almost-triangle in a circle.

      ‘Jane, you better come look.’

      Violet’s standing on her mum’s shoulders, looking through one of the broken windows. СКАЧАТЬ