Page 2 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)
The Way to the Waybetween
It was simple to do, though not easy: they are not the same thing.
Christopher took the bus to Euston Station, expecting every moment to be caught and stopped.
Jacques did not make things calmer by attempting to devour the chewing gum he found in Christopher’s pocket and becoming stickily entangled in it.
Christopher boarded the train. It took half his savings, and Jacques insisted on being fed sausages from the buffet car, thick with ketchup, which he smeared gleefully across Christopher’s coat.
His thoughts, all the time, were on the dragons—their opaque knowledge, and their dangerous beauty.
On the ferry Christopher left his hard plastic seat and went to stand outside on the deck. The wind and sea spray had kept the other passengers inside.
Jacques emerged triumphantly, and laid one chewing-gum-flecked claw on Christopher’s chin.
“What are you doing?”
“Investigating your face. How long has it been since we met in the Glimouria Archipelago?”
“Nearly a year.”
“How have you fared? With your new knowledge, and new sorrows, and new delights?”
Christopher smiled. “I dream about her.” He still thought of Mal Arvorian every day.
He spoke to her in his imagination. “But I know she’s there.
Somewhere. I know she’s out there.” And she had taught him that the world was more colossal than he had known.
Sometimes he woke up in the night and the thought of the Archipelago gave him a shock of fresh strange joy.
“Have you heard anything from any Archipelagians? Nighthand, Irian, that odoriferous ratatoska Ratwin?”
Christopher shook his head. “I tried to go back—my grandfather stopped me. So we’ll have to sneak past him. And my dad will be panicking.” He thought of his loving, world-wary father, and felt a sharp pang of guilt touch his excitement. “Your dragon smoke won’t exactly have reassured him.”
Jacques huffed. “There are many that would be thrilled to have a room bear the trace of a dragon’s presence. He should consider it the height of interior design.”
Finally, in the gathering cold and dark, Christopher took a shabby damp-smelling taxi to his grandfather’s house. It was a long drive and took the last of his money. He asked the driver to stop when his cash ran out, and then he walked.
It took an hour on foot for him to reach his grandfather’s gate. He walked along the wooded avenue, under the dark of the trees. Jacques rode triumphantly on his shoulder, the tips of his wings scratching against Christopher’s neck, reminding him that this was real.
Once in sight of the house, Christopher ducked behind a tree and peered out. He could see his grandfather Frank, sitting at his desk, and his heart leaped. Christopher longed to run to the window, to knock on it, to wave—but he mustn’t be seen.
He slipped past and up the hill toward the waybetween; up to the lake at the top that would take him into the Glimouria Archipelago.
But now, as he neared the lake, the thrill and yearning he felt were mixed with a shiver of fear. How could a human survive against a power capable of killing dragons?
Christopher slowed as he reached the top of the hill. The water in the lake glowed green. Jacques gave a low, wordless hoot of urgency.
Christopher walked around the edge of the lake. Below him, deep beneath the surface, the phosphorescent green was bright. He pulled off his boots and hung them round his neck. He hesitated, and Jacques felt the hesitation. The jaculus, for once, did not mock him.
“You cannot both jump and not jump, Christopher,” said Jacques. “You must choose.”
Faith is paradoxical, in that it consists of belief in the possibility of the impossible; his grandfather had told him that.
Christopher thought again of the dragons, and of what dark creature might be hunting them.
He thought of the Archipelagian sky, the impossible blue of the impossible place, into which Mal Arvorian had flown.
To dare is to lose one’s balance; one’s footing in the world. Not to dare is to lose everything worth having.
“Christopher.” Jacques’s claws dug deep into his skin. “Please.”
Dragons do not say please. Christopher took three steps away from the water. Then he gave a yell, a battle cry of love and yes, and he turned and ran and leaped far out into the center of the lake.
It was savagely cold, vicious against his skin. He kicked downward to the depths of the water, where the phosphorescence swirled around his face. He reached out to touch it. A sudden unbearable pressure crushed his chest as the current seized him. He swallowed water and choked.
Christopher spun in the current, looking desperately for the surface.
His head struck a rock and he retched. He was going to drown, his lungs were screaming.
His legs kicked again, frantic, and then his head burst out into cool air, and he saw in the dusk light a face watching him from the banks of a river.
The face was at once lion and human. It was ancient and beautiful. The creature’s great back was tawny in the moonlight, and her four legs were plaited with sinew and muscle. Wings lay along her back, folded, ready. Next to her on the dew-wet grass lay a sword.
It was a sphinx.
Christopher knew that face. Suddenly it no longer mattered that he was bleeding from the temple, staining the river water red. He pulled himself up onto the bank.
“Naravirala!” he said.