Link to part one: here Wordcount: 1,024 Part: 8/9
Synopsis: The thunderbird takes off again, leaving Jasmine alone, exhausted, and hopeless.
I didn’t feel the fatigue when it set in. I didn’t feel it for hours. I didn’t realize that the storm around us was a slow-turning carousel of stifling wind and blinding rain. None of it was real to me. There was only the dance in its impossible logic and grace. I don’t know how long it would have gone on, if he hadn’t flown away.
The sky burst, and glass shards spun across the ground. Light devastated everything and shocked my mind into darkness. I don’t remember falling. I don’t remember hitting the ground. When I opened my eyes the storm was dead, the bird was gone, and the music had been jarred from my memory.
Stunned, I pushed my limp body upright with the heels of my hands. Pain sparked down my back and through my arms. I felt like I had been beaten with a crowbar. My muscles could hardly contract. Blackness swarmed over my vision once I was on my feet again and I couldn’t breathe for a second. I could almost swear my heart had stopped.
My mind returned like a bolt of thunder. My vision flew to the empty sky, the empty land, the melted craters all around me. What had I done wrong? Why had he flown away?
“Tormaigh!” I hardly had the breath to yell, but I channeled all the miserable remains of my energy through my voice. “Tormaigh, I did it. I did everything you said. You told me to talk to him. You told me to find the bells. You told me to dance with him. He’s gone.”
The air rang silent around me. Even the hum of the bells and the wind was gone. There was nothing but miles of glass prairie and black sky. The grove of bell trees had disappeared. My eyes widened against the darkness. “Tormaigh?” Nothing. “Tormaigh?”
No. He wasn’t going to appear this time. He had no answer. I started to walk. Every step sent waves of searing pain through my muscles. There was nowhere to go, but I didn’t stop. There was always the horizon.
It wasn’t much later that I collapsed. I couldn’t walk anymore. My strength had run out. My will had run out. I had to lie down on the cold glass ground and stare, unseeing at the towering sky, a bottomless abyss of cloud and air lurking in the obsidian shadow of the world. Was there a sun in Echoland? Was there anything outside the sky, beyond the glass? Or did it all roll on forever, trapping me in infinity, alone? The weight of the sky lay heavily on my chest. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t stand the distance anymore.
“You could go after him.”
I opened my eyes and turned. Tormaigh sat on the ground a few yards away. I sat up. “No, I couldn’t.”He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “I can’t chase him anymore. I’ll die before I can get him to listen. He can’t understand me.”
“Yes, he can.”
“No.” I got up and came over to him. “Listen to me. I need to get back home. The bird isn’t going to take me. You have to do something. You know everything about this world. You probably know how to get me home as much as the bird does.”
“I know,” he said, almost under his breath, “but I can’t take you there. Only the bird can take you there.” He looked up at me. “You have to find him.”
“All I could possibly do at this point is sit here and wait for him. I’m too exhausted to walk. I couldn’t possibly dance if he wanted me to do that again. I would still be willing to talk to him, but he doesn’t listen, all he does is sings at me.” Lightheadedness swept over me and I sat down, hugging my knees.
“When you find him, he will take you home. But you have to go after him. I promise he will take you home.”
“But how do I know I can trust you?”
“There’s no one else.”
And he was gone.
The wind wafted against my face and I stared into the infinite landscape. Lightning flickered maybe a five-day walk from where I sat. I saw the greenish light bounce off the glassy ground and into the clouds again. Shutting my eyes, I breathed in a long breath. I had acquired a taste for ozone. I couldn’t remember what rain smelled like when it soaked an organic world of living green and soft black earth. Thunder crackled. I had to walk. I knew I did. I pulled myself to my feet, and the wind rippled around my numb body. Maybe the storm in the distance was coming my way and we would meet by morning.
Or maybe it was going the other way.
I placed my bare foot on a seam in the glass. If I had nothing else, there were the cracks. The cracks were paths to the horizon. At least with them I would know I was headed in a single direction. So I walked, and I didn’t stop for miles and miles of monotonous glass prairie.
There was no way to know how far I had gone. There was no time as long as the sun was down, and there was no space without landmarks. For this reason, there was no way to choose when to stop. I tried to count strides, only to discover, to my subdued horror, I had completely lost the ability to count in a straight line.
I didn’t know it, but the night was circling around. Time was passing. The change was too slow to appreciate, but the east was, in fact, paling. After a while, I was able to see the difference between the green fabric and the gray lining of my jacket. I could see the contrast between my dark brown hair and the midnight slate of the glass. But I couldn’t see any difference between where I was now, and the place I had been when I started.
Then, for no reason, I stopped.