Page 3 of The Light Between Worlds

After a moment a sound begins. It’s neither air raid siren nor bombshell. Ringing through the air, it’s low and insistent, halfway between the bellow of a bull and the bugle of an elk. It pulls at my blood and bones until I want to crawl out of my own skin to answer it. Jamie, Phil, and I stare at each other, wide-eyed.

“Hold on to me,” Jamie orders, panic lacing his words. We join hands and I can barely breathe, I’m so afraid. Under that fear, though, there’s something new and unexpected—anticipation.

The call grows louder and louder until at last light explodes around us. I blink and squint, eyes watering, sure I’ll see only rubble and devastation when my vision clears. But the light stays constant, unlike the flash and sizzle of shelling. It resolves into afternoon sunshine and my heart leaps to find that, impossibly, we’re standing in a wood.

After the confines of the bunker everything in me sings to be surrounded by sun and trees and good clean air. There’s a pungent green smell all about, and a riot of birdsong undercut by the sound of running water. Wind lifts the hair from my forehead, and it’s not a bitter February blast but a soft spring breeze.

Jamie and Philippa glance at each other, wide-eyed as a pair of ghosts.

“Did we—” Philippa begins, and Jamie shrugs.

Ahead of us a tall and regal shape steps from between the trees. It’s a stag, his hide the color of autumn leaves, a thick red ruff of fur around his broad shoulders. He wears his branching antlers like a crown.

Instinctively, Philippa pushes me behind her, but I pull away. There is something about this place—about the earth beneath my feet and the branches above my head and the stag stepping toward us and the wild rightness of it all. A moment ago, I was afraid and broken, and now I feel as if the splintered pieces within me have begun knitting back together.

Walking forward, I meet the stag before a tumbledown, moss-covered boulder.

“Hello,” I say quietly. “I’m Evelyn.”

In answer, the creature steps forward. He lowers his great head and presses his velvet muzzle to my cheek. I feel a whuff of hot air that smells of grass and leaves and wildflowers. When he speaks, it’s a heart-deep rumble that comes up from his chest and there’s a fierce joy in his strange voice.

“Little one. Welcome to the Woodlands.”

“This can’t be happening,” I hear Philippa mutter to Jamie behind me. “Either we’re dead or there’s been some sort of gas attack, something new that causes delusions.”

“I don’t know.” Jamie sounds torn. “It looks real enough, Philippa.”

“But itcan’tbe. And even if it is, what about Mum and Dad? What’s happened to them? They’re still back in the middle of all that shelling.”

I feel a pang of regret at Philippa’s words. But the stag fixes his fathomless dark eyes on me and for the first time that I can recall I am struck by a sudden and unshakable impression that all shall be well.

Anywhere but here, I said. Somehow, I’ve got my wish.

“If we really have gone—someplace else—and they find us missing from the shelter, they’ll think the worst. Jamie, it’ll break their hearts.” Though I don’t look back, I know Philippa’s near tears. I can hear it in her voice.

The stag brushes past me. I turn to watch him go, and see Phil standing with her arms wrapped tight around her waist, the only unhappy thing in this lovely, verdant wood. But when the stag approaches she straightens, pushes her shoulders back, raises her chin.

“Whoever and whatever you are, you’ve got to send us back,” Philippa shakily demands. “We have family and a war going on. We can’t be spared.”

Guilt lodges in the pit of my stomach because I love our parents but they’re nearly strangers, I’ve seen them so little the last four years. All I want is to stay in this place, away from the sound of falling bombs.

The stag tilts his head to one side. “I called you because you called to me first. Was there some mistake?”

Philippa and Jamie look questioningly at each other. I twine my hands together, wishing to sink into the ground. When they turn to me, I flush, hot and embarrassed.

“Evie, what—” Jamie begins.

“It was me.” The words come out all at once. “When we were in the shelter I wished to be somewhere else and I thought of a peaceful place and I wanted it more than anything. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not possible,” Philippa insists again. She stares off into the trees with her lips pressed tight together.

The stag still stands, watching us curiously.

“What do your eyes tell you?” he asks. “Your ears? Your nose? Yourskin? The Woodlands are real enough, and though I’ve never called between the worlds before, it’s within my gift.”

“This is all a mistake. You’ll have to send us back,” Philippa says, and Jamie nods reluctantly.

Ice pours through my veins. I can’t. I can’t. Whatever troubles this world may hold, at least for now they’re further off than the ones we left behind.