Page 17 of Soul of Shadow #1
Outside, the sun had begun to set behind the trees, drizzling darkness into the forest. Charlie opened the front door to leave the house. Elias walked right through it, reaching into his stomach and pulling out the box once he was out in the open air.
“How’d you do that?” she asked, pointing at the box.
“My body is one big pocket,” he said, grinning his shadow-filled smile. “Anything I put inside it becomes intangible. I can store it there as long as I need, and when I pull it back out, it goes back to solid.”
“That’s … creepy.”
“But useful.”
They crossed the porch and descended the front steps. When they reached the grass, Elias stopped and reopened the box’s lid, holding it out to Charlie.
“What do I do with it?” she asked.
“You eat it,” he said, pushing the box closer to her. “Obviously.”
Tentatively, she reached out a hand and picked up one of the eyaerberries. It was cool to the touch, as if it had been stored in a refrigerator, not an old fireplace. Its flesh was tender, perfectly ripe. She held it up and studied it closely. It didn’t look dangerous; it looked delicious.
“Enjoy,” said Elias. When Charlie looked back up at him, his eyes flickered with cruel amusement. “It’s as much curse as it is gift.”
She hesitated for only a moment before putting the eyaerberry into her mouth and biting down.
It burst open on her tongue. Her mouth flooded with sweet-tart juice.
It flooded her taste buds, trickling down the back of her throat.
It seemed to seep into her entire body, sending a cold, fizzy rush through her veins, making her fingers tremble, her toes prickle, zipping to the very top of her head, like a shock of electricity.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Balled her hands into fists.
Tilted her head back as the zinging tartness reached its crux, and she thought, This is what it feels like to become lightning .
Gradually, the electricity ebbed. Fizzled away until it was a cool, lingering tingle that ghosted along the surface of her skin. And when she opened her eyes again—
When she opened her eyes, she saw .
The forest was alive. The grass shimmered.
The flowers glowed. The leaves of the trees quivered and hummed.
White and blue orbs of light hung from the tree branches.
Purple fireflies buzzed through the air.
Down by her feet, neon-red mushrooms sprouted from the dirt and white dandelions shone like electric snowflakes.
There were colors—colors she had never seen before.
Pinky-purply blues and magenta-white greens and colors for which she had no name, no earthly description.
It was as if eating the eyaerberry had stripped away nature’s dull outer layer, revealing the long-buried, richly colored, star-bright flesh beneath .
Charlie had the sudden urge to put on sunglasses. It was almost too much.
Almost .
She stepped toward the forest, her mouth hanging open. “What—” She choked on her own voice. “What is all of this?”
“This,” said Shadow Elias behind her, “is Asgard.”
Charlie took another step. At the forest’s edge, a pink snake slithered through the weeds.
In the sky above, a sparkling two-headed bird leapt from a treetop and swooped up into the night.
Bright-green vines wound around the tree trunks, seeming to almost pulsate, as if they were breathing.
Every color was brighter. Every scent like a strong gust of perfume—the grass, the dirt, the berries, the wood of the trees…
Charlie smelled things she couldn’t even begin to recognize.
It was like waking up on a different planet, inside a different body.
“I don’t—” She shook her head, entirely overwhelmed, lost for where to look next.
At the luminous orange sap seeping out of the tree trunks?
At the sun sinking fast above, almost blinding in its brightness?
At the purple fireflies that swooped overhead, their buzzing so pronounced it sounded almost like laughter?
At last, she collected herself enough to ask, “What do you mean this is Asgard?”
When Elias didn’t immediately respond, she turned around.
He was gone.