Keon’s eyes were getting heavy. He didn’t know why he was still awake. It was late, he was tired, and his mind was slipping in and out of that weird state of consciousness when your dreams start to intermix with the real world. The sound of his mum washing the dishes became the sound of a helicopter coming to land on the sands of a dusty, war-torn valley when he was suddenly jerked back to reality.
His grip tightened around his phone. He stared again at the picture of the eternity symbol, as though looking at it long enough would somehow yield her secrets.
You can stare at it all you want, Keon...
The buzz of his phone startled him. His fingers fiddled to unlock it. It was a text. A chill ran through his body as he viewed the sender. Another tap opened the message.
I love you, son.
Dad
His eyes moistened, his lips curled, and his breathing grew shallow. Before he knew it, he was typing a reply.
Why aren’t you here then?
He stopped; thumb hovering over send—then swiped ‘home.’ As the tears began to roll, he put the phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ and turned off the screen. He was going to sleep. He refused to be awake anymore.
* * *
The phone was still in his hand as his eyelids slowly sank to meet their lower siblings. He could hear his breathing deepening to roaring snorts. The air thickened. The tick of his alarm clock grew louder as the space between tocks stretched longer.
As his eyelids finally met, the phone slipped from his grasp. Eyes snapping open, his arm shot out to grab it, leaning his entire body over the edge of the bed. He stopped. It hadn’t hit the ground. Instead, it hung there in mid-air, rotating slowly on its axis.
He looked from side to side in bewilderment. Gravity had stopped working. The entire room seemed to have rotated ninety degrees. Or he had. He wasn’t sure, but as he stared at the phone, he noticed a flickering orange glow creeping out from beneath the bed. He swore he could smell freshly baked bread wafting out amongst the fragrance of blooming flowers and dew speckled trees. Suddenly, a soft breeze blew a handful of crispy, brown leaves across the floor.
“Muuum?!”
He waited.
Nothing.
Even the air was still as stone.
Grabbing the phone, Keon turned it over. There was no signal and it didn’t respond to his taps or swipes. He put it back on the bed. Gulping, he pulled himself inch by inch over the edge towards the underside of the bed. The world turned around him as the centre of gravity shifted. His legs suddenly dropped, dangling from the underside of the bed down towards the ceiling. He chanced a glance, eyebrows curling at the oddity of seeing his ceiling light sticking up out of the ground. As he hoisted himself up onto the bottom of the bed, he was blinded by a sudden rush of light. Once his eyes adjusted, he found himself staring through sunlit green leaves into the glow of an early afternoon on a distant horizon.
“What the hell?” he whispered as he crawled towards it.
There was a crunch as the texture of wooden slats gave way to dry leaves. The smell of fresh bread grew stronger the closer he drew to the clearing in the bush. He took one final look back at his upside-down bedroom and moved towards the light.
Parting the leaves and twigs, he gasped; breathing in a nourishing torrent of warm, fresh air; like gaseous silk, rolling through his nostrils and down into his chest. Pushing the bushes aside, he clawed his way through—and fell headlong through a canopy of trees.
* * *
Tumbling head over heels, Keon rolled through multiple leaves and branches, before landing on a soft, grassy incline. Rolling to a stop at the bottom, he took a moment to examine his surroundings.
He was before a breath-taking glade, encircled by a wall of tall trees. Rolling emerald hills stretched beyond a vast forest, the tops of towering dragon blood trees peeking over their rims, brushing against the edges of the heavens. Waterfalls tumbled through the interlocking beams of their tight branches; flowing down gargantuan trunks. Looking up, he saw piercing tendrils of golden light stretching across a crystalline sapphire sky. At least, he thought it was sky. There was something odd about it. It reminded him of a flight the family took overseas three years ago; he was staring out the window, looking down thirty-two thousand feet at the Atlantic. You could just about make out individual waves as they foamed and glinted in the sunlight. It was just like that, only this time he was looking up. The sky wasn’t a sky at all; it was an ocean.
“That’s mad…” he gasped.
As he picked himself up, he felt an odd weight around his body. His pyjamas were gone. In their place was a long, hooded shawl covering a padded dark-red jacket. He couldn’t be sure, but he was almost certain it was a gambeson. He could tell from the diamond patterning of the padding. But why on earth would he be wearing a gambeson? How was he wearing a gambeson?
The jacket was short sleeved, revealing brown leather bracers on his forearms. He was clad in baggy beige trousers that were tied with multiple straps below the knees down to brown boots. Several strips of patterned cloth seemed to hang randomly from beneath the shawl, some embroiled with shapes that looked distinctly Celtic, others woven with red, black, green and yellows. There was something like a box attached to his back, secured to a belt fastened around his waist.
Was he dreaming? There was no other explanation. But he hadn’t fallen asleep—right? You don’t usually recall the start of your dreams; and if this was a dream, he knew exactly how it started. There was one way to know for sure. He walked back up the incline until he found the tree he’d fallen through.
“That can’t be right,” he murmured.
He did a full circuit round the tree. It stood a good few feet away from every other tree and bush around it. Looking up, he could see straight through the canopy into the sky. There was no sign of where he’d fallen through. No sign of his bedroom. Wherever he was, he was stuck—at least until he woke up. If he woke up. He wasn’t so sure he was sleeping anymore. The haze and fog that normally surrounded a dream was absent. He felt more awake than he ever had before.
Looking back towards the glade, he swallowed and slowly made his way down the incline towards the clearing. As he stepped out from amongst the trees, he heard the distant trickle of running water and made off in its direction. Not only was he thirsty, he also wanted to get a better look at what he was wearing.
After a few minutes of trudging through the woods, climbing over gigantic roots and marvelling at the unfamiliar flora around him, he found himself by the banks of a small stream. Pushing through the bulrushes and loosestrife, he scooped up a handful of crystal-clear water and sipped. It was almost sweet to taste, like fresh water from a mountain spring. Plunging both hands in, he scooped and scooped, gulping it down ravenously before splashing some on his face. It was like a nice hot shower, a tall glass of cold coke and a tub of ice-cream all rolled into one, which, as he thought about it, sounded incredibly nasty and sticky.
He shook out the water from his curls. Feeling the hood of his shawl, he pulled it over his head, turning to admire his reflection in the water. He had no idea who his tailor was, but he looked like an absolute legend. Yup, definitely a gambeson.
As he studied the shawl, he noticed an unusual insignia woven onto the back. The unique embroidery shimmered and danced in the sunlight. Straining to get a better look, he could just about make out the shape of a dove surrounded by a shield. In fact, what looked like a dove was actually a lamp flanked by two wings, wreathed in an olive branch. Suddenly he froze.
Beyond his reflection, up in the trees, he could see several shadowy figures descending through the branches down towards him.
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