Free Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 by Louise Cusack Page A

battle would prove the more wounding.

CHAPTER NINE
    V andal clung to the skinny wrist in his hand, knowing it was part of Magoria. Home. He had to find his way back. But even with his eyes open, his world was not as he’d left it. Colours he’d taken for granted jarred and clashed and hurt his brain. Was this how his father had felt on first entering their world?
    ‘Petra,’ he groaned, swivelling his head, trying to track down the thin face he’d glimpsed, hoping to find the body attached to the arm he clung to. ‘I’m lost.’
    There was a second’s pause before she said, ‘I’m here. I’m right here beside you. Why can’t you see me?’
    He shook his head, struggled to make sense of the jumble his sight had become. ‘Between worlds. Can’t …’
    ‘You’re frightening me,’ she said, and he felt a wrench on his hand, but that only made him squeeze her wrist tighter, desperate not to lose his one link to home. ‘Are you on drugs?’ she asked.
    ‘Not … No.’ It was too hard to speak, too hard to see. Even with his eyes opened widely. Then suddenly it was dark. He gasped, as though drowning. Again.
    ‘I’ve covered your eyes,’ she whispered, close to his face. The scent of her girlie perfume dazzled him. It was probably faint, but like the bright colours that had tortured his brain, it overwhelmed him. ‘Can you close them?’ she asked.
    He tried to obey, felt muscles move in his face but couldn’t be sure the right ones had obeyed.
    ‘Are they closed?’ she asked.
    ‘ Aaah. ’ His powers of speech were disintegrating. Vandal felt her breath on his face and the mintiness stung his nose. There was a caramel chocolate underneath it, though, as if she’d eaten a Mars Bar and then brushed her teeth. ‘ Uhhhh. ’ The guttural sound came from deep in his belly where something weird was happening. Pulling. Pressure. He didn’t want to throw up again. But his stomach didn’t feel sick. Just … odd.
    Brightness returned. ‘My face is right in front of you,’ she said softly and the tone of it, like velvety orchid petals sliding into his mind, intensified the pulling sensation. What was happening to him? ‘Open your eyes. Only a slit,’ she instructed.
    He tried to comply. His cheeks tensed and then twitched. He could feel that. And he could still feel her thin wrist in his sweaty palm. Her pulse had quickened into an epileptic drumbeat. She inhaled deeply and a loud thought jarred into his mind. God help me, he smells like a thunderstorm. If I never get to kiss him conscious, I’ll die from aching.
    He shook his head, felt it rattle. Was this madness? Deadness? Lostness? Was there such a word as lostness? The idea took hold of him and he drifted with it. His body went slack.
    ‘Vandal, stay with me,’ she said, so loudly his cars hurt. But he was still going. Losing himself. He couldn’t feel his fingers on her arm any more and that frightened him. He didn’t want to be lost in the limbo between worlds. He tried to tell her that but his lips wouldn’t work. Yet they must have moved because he heard her say, ‘Are you trying to talk? I can’t understand you. Try again.’
    He struggled. This time really struggled. ‘Can’t … feel,’ he managed, but the swirling inside his mind was sucking him away from her.
    ‘You have to …’ She sounded so young. So frightened. But she also sounded like Petra and he clung to that. He’d heard her voice in the debating class, passionate about the poetry of some dead guy, raving about the plight of penguins, something. Activist. Lunatic in her own lunchtime. But he knew that voice, and she was here. He struggled not to lose it, not to lose Magoria. ‘If you die,’ she was saying, ‘like this in my arms, it’s like … I’m not Juliet. I couldn’t …’
    The idiocy of her babbling touched something inside him that spread calm focus to the furthest corners of his body. The distancing sensation evaporated and he felt the return of his