THE FIERY SPIRAL
BOOK 3
HELEN BRAIN
Human & Rousseau
For Luke and Matthew
Gone too soon
I will find a way home.
CHAPTER 1
EBBA
There Micah is – scuttling around in the shadows outside the council room like a rat. He told me I’d be a hero if I assassinated General de Groot. He showed me when to take out the knife hidden in my hair clip and exactly how to use it. He said he was proud of me, that he loved me. And then he betrayed me to the guards.
If I could reach him I’d shake him until his brain rattled. But I’m above the council chambers, being pulled upward into the portal, away from the marble floor where the general lies dead, stabbed through the heart, not by me, but by Lucas. Where Major Zungu is bellowing orders, guards swarm like angry bees and Mr Frye is searching for me, shouting my name, not knowing I’m watching him from above his head.
Lucas has fallen in a spray of blood near the door. In my head I see flashes of the day I was picked for the Purification. My heart thuds as it did when the soldiers tried to shove me over the edge of the mountain to join the bloodied bodies of my friends, bashed against the rocks.
I’m on a beam of greenish light, twisted like a rope, spiralling upward. Another beam spirals down, just within arm’s reach. Slowly it rises, and I close my eyes, trying to block out the image of Lucas, dead in my place. Or am I dead too?
I check my body, limb by limb.
Nothing hurts. No blood on my robe. My pulse is still beating in my wrist, and my chest rises with every breath. How did I pass through the roof without hurting myself if I’m not dead?
My hand goes to the necklace. That must be it. In the chaos, as I was about to stab the general, Lucas took the knife, and pressed the missing amulet into my hand. I pushed it into the empty clasp …
The portal between Earth and Celestia opened, just as the Book of the Goddess promised. She will be coming back to Earth to heal it. Soon everything will be alright again. Peace will be restored. There will be enough food for everyone, and shelter and fresh water. The Earth will flourish again, as it did the day she made it.
My eyes flick open as I hear Micah’s voice. I’m above the buildings, looking down on Micah who stands at the top of the stairs, addressing the crowd of soldiers lining the courtyard. “The new leader of Table Island City,” he bellows, and Major Zungu comes strutting along the colonnade to a roar from the crowd.
“Repeat after me!” Micah shouts. “I pledge allegiance to Major Mandla Zungu.”
I gave him everything – my farm, my power, my heart. And he wanted me dead. Soon the Goddess will come down the portal, and we’ll go back to Earth together. She’ll punish him for what he did to me, her flesh and blood.
Earth is so far below me now, it’s the size of a peach. Rows of flickering, dotted lights lead from my feet down, down, down, until they’re so tiny I can only just see them drawing together on the islands at the tip of Africa.
Sparks of light flicker on the horizon and then an emerald green glow slowly rises, building, growing until it fills the sky and rolls towards me in a huge wave of colour. I brace myself, wondering if I’ll be swept away, but as it pours over me it floods every cell of my body with shimmering, dancing light. It smells of wet earth, buchu, fynbos, compost – all the smells I love, but magnified a million times. The sounds of woodland echo around me. Rustling leaves, birdsong, even gurgling water. And then a voice says, “Ebba.”
LUCAS
I appear to be dead.
What an extraordinary situation. My body was prostate on the floor of the council chamber, and judging by the number of bullet holes in my chest, I have certainly, as the poet said, shuffled off this mortal coil. But I now appear to be rising through solid rock on a twisted current of air and light that resembles a helix. A fact that no one in the chamber appears to have noticed.
I suspect this must be the portal to Celestia, opened when Ebba added the final amulet to the necklace. But why am I on it?
Below me, mayhem prevails in the council chamber, and there is no sign of Ebba. Have they dragged her to the dungeons already? Where is the Goddess? She is supposed to return through the portal.
Looking up, I catch sight of Ebba far above me, clinging to the helix as the light fades.
I wonder how far the space between the worlds extends, and how long it will take to cross it. I wish to get away from Earth as fast as possible, so I begin to climb the helix, feeling for footholds where the strands cross, and pulling myself up as though it were a rope ladder.
It’s growing colder as the darkness increases. I climb faster, trying to keep warm, but soon it is as dark as night, and I’ve lost sight of Ebba. Two small lights glint near me. Are those eyes?
A shape, a shadow, a human form, floats by me. Fingers grasp at me, long scrawny fingers with clawed nails. I try and keep inside the helix, but with each revolution I am turned to the outside and the figure leans in, trying to claw at me.
They’re coming from all sides – ten, twenty shapes, half human, half bird with sharp beaks and powerful wings – and as they reach me, the light falls on their faces and I recognise them.
That’s my mother. Her skin is rotting away and the flesh has fallen off her elongated fingers. She prods at me, hissing my name. “Lucasss.”
Behind her Hal is staring blindly through empty eye sockets. Half his face has fallen away but I know him by the dimple in his half rotted cheek. They’re all there: my father, missing his lower jaw, his hooked nose turned into a razor-sharp beak, the other wives, my half-sisters and -brothers, all tugging at the helix with skeletal hands. Crowding in on me, they pluck at my robe, my arms, my hair. They’re going to pull me off, rip me to pieces and throw me into the darkness.
Have they seen Ebba, or is it only me they are interested in?
“Climb!” I yell to her. “Hurry up! Climb!”
She’s not listening. She’s staring up at the other helix which has begun to vibrate, sending rays of emerald light pulsing across the darkness. The ghosts of my family shrink back, shrieking as the greenness floods over us, burying Ebba in light.
EBBA
The helix has stopped. I hold my breath, not moving. It feels as though all of creation is suspended with me, waiting with longing for the voice to speak again … When it comes, it sounds from all sides at once, in layers of harmonies like gurgling streams and doves and the rumble of thunder after a drought.
“Ebba …”
“Goddess!”
