of emerald light almost blind me with their brilliance.
“Ebba, you have done well. You’ve brought the necklace.”
She reaches her arm towards me and the air begins to vibrate and sing, a sound that cuts deeper than my heart, to a new place that is stretching and growing like leaves unfurling.
“Theia …” It comes out like a sigh of joy and love and coming home.
“You deserve to be rewarded,” she says as she touches the necklace. It heats up, pulsing against my breastbone. “What do you want more than anything in the world?”
The words spill out of me so easily, before I can even think. “I want to go home and find Samantha-Lee gone. I want things back to how they were between us before she arrived, when Micah loved me more than anyone, more than the resistance.”
Her fingers are undoing the clasp of the necklace around my neck, her face inches from mine. Her eyes are green and mysterious and her shining pupils hold a story, the story of humankind, of the world, of things too vast for me to understand.
“That’s what you want? Are you sure?” Her voice ripples, winding and flowing like rivulets of rain.
Am I sure? I close my eyes and I see them … all the people I love. I want Letti to be happy again, and her baby safe. I want Shorty to be alive again. Could I ask for my mother and father to come back to Greenhaven with me, so we can be a family?
Her hands are cool against my skin as she lifts the necklace off. Then suddenly her hands jerk away and she coughs. Fog floods in from all sides. I can’t see my fingers, I can’t breathe … The fog sucks up the green light, dragging her, pulling her away from me, away from the portal.
“Here!” she shouts, flinging the necklace at me. It’s just a glimmer in the grey but I catch it with shaking hands. “Don’t take it off.”
I tie it around my neck as her voice fades, thickening until it drops like stone. The cloud swirls around me, sucking and tugging at the necklace so it cuts into my neck. I grab onto it, trying to cover it with my arms and hands. It’s going to break. I’m going to be ripped off the portal. I grab the rope of light, hanging on, too scared to do anything but clutch tightly and keep my head down.
“Get off the portal!” It’s Lucas, rising up the shaft of light below me. “Can’t you see Prospiroh is throwing meteorites at Earth?”
Trembling, I peer down the shaft. I can’t see what he’s pointing at, though the fear on his face is clear. I can barely see Earth through the fog. But I have to go back. Surely he can’t hurt Earth if the necklace is there.
“I must go back to Greenhaven.”
“You can’t,” he pants, right below me now, pushing me upward. “He’s taken Theia. You have to close the portal.”
“I can’t leave my sabenzis. What if he harms them?”
“Look at that one.” He points down the portal. “It only just missed.”
“I can’t see anything.”
He stares at me, then gives me another shove. “Just believe me. Go. Go.”
Then Isi is above me, grabbing the shoulder of my robe in her teeth.
“Isi?” I gasp. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s no time to talk. Just go!” Lucas shouts. Together they force me through the fog, away from Earth, from everyone I love … until suddenly I’m on solid ground.
I sink onto sand, and Isi drops next to me, panting. A moment later Lucas appears. The bloodstains have vanished from his robe, and there is no sign of the gunshot wounds.
The fog begins to swirl and then to drift away. The portal clicks shut. Am I in Celestia? Am I dead? Is Celestia like paradise?
Will everyone be happy and content, humans and animals living together in peace? Will my mother hold me in her arms, and will I see her face and know her at last?
But when the mist clears, my heart drops.
It’s a desert. It’s just sand the colour of dried blood, rocks and an endless orange sky pressing down on me. No life, nothing growing or moving. Just Lucas, Isi and me. “What are we going to do …” I start to say. But then I see Lucas’s face. He’s gazing around him in amazement. Amazement and joy.
CHAPTER 2
LUCAS
I’m sitting on the softest grass and a flock of purple and green birds squawk from the branches of a spreading tree with spotted leaves. No earthly bird, even in the days before mankind began to destroy the planet, ever looked like these long-legged creatures gobbling berries and shrieking raucously.
Ebba is gaping too, but not with delight. Why does she look so disappointed? Is this not good enough for her?
I can’t think what to say, and she looks as though she requires a hug or some other consolation. I break off a sprig of a plant and the fragrance of lemon fills the air. I rub it between my fingers and wait, wondering what I should do next. The sun catches her hair and the curls shine like copper. Her face is very lovely, even though it is dirty, and the hem of her robe is torn.
She looks up and catches me watching her. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you grinning like that?”
Isi scuttles behind a rock with her tail down.
“Er … I’m smiling because this world is so extraordinary.”
“You’re joking, right?” She points – to the sky, the tree, the shrubs that smell so wonderful and are covered in small multi-coloured flowers. “Seriously? How can this be Celestia? There’s nothing here.”
I scratch my head. Is she trying to annoy me?
Then I realise what is happening. She genuinely can’t see anything. “You were intended to go back to Earth with the Goddess, so you shouldn’t be here. You aren’t dead yet, so you can’t see the real Celestia.”
She stares, then gets on her hands and knees, crawling frantically across the grass, patting the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for the portal. My friends … they’ll be looking for me. Where is it? Help me find it.”
She’s in such a panic that without thinking, I crouch next to her and pat her shoulder. “It’s alright. It will be alright. Just stay calm.”
She throws herself against my chest and begins to sob. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Micah told the guards about the plan. He wanted me dead.”
I pat her back tentatively. Her hair smells warm and earthy. I have never touched her before and her soft shape is beguiling, unlike her torrent of emotion, which I find utterly
