Chapter 12: Chapter 12 – Anywhere But Here

The ride to wherever the girl's home was, remained uneventful. The voice in Matthew's head, which he assumed to be Emily, stayed quiet, and the girl didn't offer much in the way of conversation.

For the entire time they were in the cloud, she seemed incredibly tense, replying to Matthew's nervous questions with terse responses. She kept biting the nails of her right hand while holding the left one permanently around his waist.

Matthew couldn't say he wasn't grateful for this hand since it was the only thing keeping him from falling off the broom. But it was also incredibly frustrating to be forced to wait for her to let go so that Emily could speak again.

He desperately needed to find out what was happening and what to avoid.

He tried to remember everything Emily had said in his kitchen the night before. She had claimed to be a witch possessing Clare's body, which seemed to be true. She also said that witches had familiars taking the form of their anima. Matthew had no idea what that meant but imagined it had something to do with his current situation.

Honestly, he felt quite hard done by. Despite 'awakening', he was yet to gain any magical powers that might help him escape this current… predicament.

If Emily had been able to speak, then maybe she could have advised him on how to control the powers he supposedly had, but she was currently muted by the hand around his waist, leaving Matthew high and dry.

The sensation of flying on the broom wasn't dissimilar to riding a motorbike. It felt precarious and far too fast for comfort. In Matthew's humble opinion, the broom should have had a seat or handles of some kind to make flying a little more comfortable and a lot less death-defying.

Despite his best efforts, he wasn't able to get anything out of the girl along the journey. Her lips remained set in a grim line, and her eyes faced forward, fixated on a single point in the fog.

Their descent was heralded by a shudder as the broom plunged down. It seemed the increased load only made it rise slower. When it came falling back down to earth, the opposite happened.

Matthew's stomach remained where it had been in the sky before he started falling, and his eyes went so wide they might have rolled out of his head.

As they began to plummet, the girl's brows knitted in concentration and her hand left Matthew's waist to grip the broom.

In that instant, Emily spoke.

'Matthew, listen to me!'

'I'm listening!' He thought back.

'I need you to say 'Gearrtha' The fact that her voice was in his head made it easy for Matthew to understand just how urgent this was. Her every emotion and worry was translated directly into consciousness as though he felt what she felt himself.

'What will that do?' Matthew asked back anxiously.

'It's Irish. It means to cut. Since the local gods speak Irish and we are using their Laylines for power, we need to speak the command in their language.'

Matthew swallowed hard and blinked. He wasn't sure if he was ready. After he broke the bonds, what was he supposed to do next? The girl had poison tentacles coming out of her hair, and he had a voice in his head. It was obvious who would win that fight.

'It's urgent, and I need you to do this as quickly as possible. We are almost at the ground, and she shouldn't die after you push her off the broom,'

Matthew froze, 'What?'

'DO IT!' Emily screamed directly into his head. Along with the scream came a precise image of how to pronounce the word. He needed to roll his tongue a certain way and emphasize letters he normally wouldn't.

The girl was behind him, which meant he would have to turn round on the falling broom if he wanted to push her off. Something that seemed less and less appealing the more time passed.

'What are you waiting for? Do it!'

Suddenly their speed lowered, and the girl began pulling up on the broom, straining against their combined weight to level out their steep descent. Her teeth were clenched, and her knuckles were white as she gripped the broom handles.

'Shit, shit, shit!' 

Matthew didn't know if he could trust Emily, but he also didn't want to be executed. Thus, he did as he was told.

He opened his mouth and concentrated on the image he had in his head. Following his instincts, he said the word.

"Gearttha," His tongue tripped slightly, and it didn't sound exactly like it should have, but it was good enough.

As he spoke, a feeling welled up inside him. His heartbeat accelerated, and a warm stream of… something entered his body through his hands and feet, flowing into his heart and throughout the rest of him. 

The warm something filtered through his heart and raced up his throat, where it poured out of his mouth, infusing the word with meaning, with intent.

"What are you doing!?" The girl shouted, reaching towards Matthew.

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But it was too late. The second he had spoken, the bonds had shattered, and he was left free. 

Matthew threw caution to the wind and whirled around, grabbing the girl's outstretched hands. She had been reaching towards him, and now he was gripping her arms like a vice. They stared at each other in the white cloud, her eyes wide, his terrified. 

"Don't-"

Matthew didn't let her finish. He pulled on her arms and twisted, hauling her off the broom. As she fell, a tentacle shot out from her ponytail, racing up towards him. Visions of his friends passing out flashed across his face, and Matthew knew it would be over if he didn't do something.

In the instant before the tentacle struck, Emily spoke again.

'Say, Sciath,' With the thought, Matthew could sense her exhaustion. She sounded drained, spent beyond belief.

Another vision passed through his mind, and he understood just how to say the word. Following the same instinct as before, Matthew spoke…

"Sciath," In mid-air, just before his face, the tentacle slammed into something invisible. It looked like it was pressed up against a window, banging useless against a glass screen. 

Eventually, the tentacle was repulsed by the screen, and it followed the girl as she fell out of the cloud, plunging towards the unseen ground below.

'Matthew, I need you to grab the broom and fly it away,' Emily said, sounding even weaker than before.

'But how do I do that?' Matthew looked down at the broom, which appeared indistinguishable from an ordinary broom, aside from the bristles, which were pitch black.

'Place your hands on the handle and pull up. You might feel a strange sensation as this happens, but it's normal,' As Emily said this, she conveyed to Matthew how this sensation would feel. It was the exact same thing he had felt when he said the first magical world. 

It was akin to adrenaline, where he became hyper-aware of his body and the things going on within. And then the warm flow of energy would pass through him and into the broom, fuelling it. 

Matthew did as he was told, grabbing the broom and pulling up. He strained against the weight and felt slightly lightheaded as the warm energy trickled from his hands into the broom. The longer passed, the worse he felt.

The broom shuddered and started flying again, moving far quicker now that its load had been lightened. 

Matthew couldn't see anything inside the cloud, so he had no idea where he was going. All he could feel was the gradual drop in altitude. He had no idea if he was going North, South, East or West. But he could tell for sure that he was going down. And fast at that.

'What now!?' He asked nervously.

'You need to land the broom somewhere and then run away. The girl probably has a way to track it, so we'll have to put some distance between us and the broom.'

Matthew looked around at the impenetrable wall of fog and frowned, 'How am I supposed to see where I'm going? What If I crash into a building or something?'

'Do you remember the direction she kept looking in?'

'Yeah,'

'Try there; that's probably where the lookout spot is,'

Matthew searched the area the girl had been looking at but found only densely packed fog. Everything looked the same as everything else, and he was keenly aware of the ground rushing up to greet them.

Finally, he found it. A spot indistinguishable from the rest when first observed, which quickly let him see through the cloud. It was like looking through a letterbox where the outside world had been shrunk to fit the small gap.

He could see trees rushing past beneath him, and in the distance, a river snaked through a sparse forest. There were footpaths along the river and pedestrians gazing up at solitary white cloud on a collision course with the ground.

"Shit,"

Matthew was barely able to steer the broom away from the top of a tree that whizzed past before he splashed into the river, swallowing a mouthful of murky brown water and raising a wave that swamped over the riverbank and onto the footpath. Luckily there were no pedestrians nearby to see him climb out of the river.

But unluckily, it was winter, and his clothes were soaked.

He dragged himself onto the riverbank, spluttering and wheezing as he spat out the silty brown water. In that moment, Matthew wished he could be anywhere but there. Even school would be better than this.

 

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