The Cradle of All Worlds. Jeremy Lachlan

Stairs. Something snaps inside me, breaks free, and the furious tide overflows. I can feel the cracks in the stone snaking their way up and down the Stairs, tearing across the square. I can feel the whole island shaking to its very core.

ROCK AND RUIN

      What just happened? I’m holding my palm against my chest, stemming the flow of blood with my tunic, covered in a cold sweat and shaking. Violet’s yelling in my ear, but I can’t focus. My hand’s killing me. My vision’s gone fuzzy. The air’s thick with noise.

      ‘Come on, Jane, we have to go!’ Violet slaps me, hauls me to my feet. ‘Now!’

      Bluehaven’s being torn apart. It’s chaos. The horse gallops around the square, still tethered to the wagon. Peg is out for the count or worse. Some of the crowd flood into the alleyways, heading for their homes or the ocean. Others stick to the open spaces, but nowhere’s safe. The ground cracks at their feet. Windows shatter, walls crumble. I can’t see Dad anywhere.

      ‘We have to get out of here.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ Violet says. ‘Where’d you get that idea, genius?’

      She grabs my uninjured hand and pulls me down the stairs. I’m too slow and clumsy. Don’t even see Atlas coming till he’s nearly on top of me. He has that bloody knife out again, but one swift kick from Violet and he’s on his knees, clutching his groin and grimacing.

      ‘Told you I’d get him,’ she says.

      Through the screaming crowd now. A lamp post falls. A stage collapses. We change course again and again, ducking and stumbling across the square. I feel lightheaded. The blood from my hand’s running freely down my chest, but I can’t stop, have to find Dad.

      The thought fuels me.

      A woman screams and points behind us. Enormous chunks of the Sacred Stairs are breaking free, crashing down the hill. Bouncing through the terraced farms, flattening trees and farmers’ huts, tumbling into the square and obliterating both effigies in a shower of sticks. The cracks at our feet open wide, some half a metre or more. Me and Violet jump one hand-in-hand, take a hard left when the horse and wagon thunders past. We’re running alongside the Town Hall now, weaving between the stone columns. Definitely not the safest place to be.

      The column ahead crumbles. I pick Violet up, leap over a fallen boulder, and dive into the Town Hall foyer just as the great doors slam shut behind us, blocked by the falling rubble.

      ‘Inside?’ Violet cries. ‘You brought us inside? What if the roof collapses?’

      ‘Working on it.’ The chequered floor’s covered in dust and debris. The high-domed ceiling’s falling apart, and the statue in the centre of the foyer has already lost its head. There are other survivors in here, too, none of them happy to see me. The Hollows. Eric Junior. Old Mrs Jones. Meredith Platt. Basically, everyone dumb enough to head indoors during a quake. They arm themselves with any weapon they can find – rocks, paperweights, shards of glass from the broken windows high on the wall, a chair. ‘Oh, give me a break . . .’

      Mrs Hollow snatches Violet from my arms with a high-pitched, ‘Hands off my daughter!’ Violet tries to get free, but Mr Hollow grabs her, too. Not, I suspect to protect her, but to use her as a human shield. Nobody else moves. They’re not as brave as Atlas. Even Eric Junior hangs back now.

      Everyone’s terrified. Well, everyone but Winifred Robin.

      She’s in here too, walking calmly towards me. ‘Hold out your hand.’

      ‘Where’s my dad? What did you do with him?’

      ‘Your hand, Jane,’ she says. The domed ceiling cracks again. More chunks of rock rain down. People scatter and shout but Winifred doesn’t blink an eye. ‘Hold it out. Now.’

      ‘Dad,’ I cry, even though I know he can’t hear me.

      I trip and fall backwards. My tunic’s drenched in blood, my head’s spinning. But then Winifred grabs my left arm, tucks something small into my bloodied hand, and everything changes. The ground gives a final, almighty shudder, as if the island itself has shrugged, sat down and sighed. The quake has stopped. Everything’s gone quiet.

      If it weren’t for the settling dust I’d think time itself had frozen.

      I sit up, blinking. Winifred smiles at me. But before either of us can say a word, somebody screams outside. Several people, actually. Cries of outrage, of fear. Eric Junior tries the doors but they won’t budge. People crane their heads up to the broken windows high on the wall instead, gathering beneath them like little light-starved flowers.

      ‘What’s going on out there?’ Mr Hollow asks.

      ‘It has happened,’ Winifred says, and she closes her eyes, as if listening to a beautiful song. A favourite tune she hasn’t heard in years. ‘The Manor has woken from its slumber.’

THE DEPARTURE

      At first, everyone in the foyer’s too stunned to move, but it isn’t long before they’re all bustling around the doors, trying to get them open. I’m still on the floor, staring at an old, tarnished brass key resting alongside the gash in my palm. I let it slip between my fingers. It lands on the floor with a dull thud. Winifred bends down and quickly ties off a bandage around my hand. I can feel her watching me, hear Violet calling my name, but I can’t stop looking at the bloodied key lying there in the dust. There’s a symbol on its handle. The one Winifred drew on the back of my photo. The almost-triangle in a circle.

      ‘Jane, you better come look.’

      Violet’s standing on her mum’s shoulders, looking through one of the broken windows. Strange. It’s probably the most intimate moment I’ve ever seen them share.

      ‘Don’t talk to her, Violet,’ Mrs Hollow grunts. ‘You know you’re not allowed. Why should she look anyway? The last thing we want to do is let her curse us all over ag–’

      ‘It’s your dad, Jane,’ Violet says. ‘He’s outside and he’s . . . he’s . . .’

      I’m up in a flash, heading towards a small upturned desk in the corner of the foyer. I pick it up, turn it over and slam it against the wall beneath another broken window, shooting daggers at Winifred Robin all the while. ‘I swear if anything happens to him –’

      ‘You cannot stop him, Jane.’

      ‘Stop him from what ?’

      Onto the desk now. I leap for the tall, narrow window, pull myself up and look through the shattered glass. It’s a war zone outside. The square’s a mess. Pillars of smoke rise from the town beyond. The horse and cage have disappeared. People are stepping out of the shadows. Stumbling. Crying. Staring and pointing up the Sacred Stairs.

      ‘Violet, where –’

      And then I see him, my dad, scrambling up the Stairs, already halfway to the top.

      ‘He is about to enter the Manor, Jane,’ Winifred says. ‘He has been chosen.’

      ‘WHAT? ’

      It isn’t even me who says this. It’s the Hollows. Eric Junior. Pretty much every idiot in the room. Everyone’s glareing at Winifred.

      ‘Now listen here, you home-wrecker!’ Mrs Hollow shoves Violet back into Mr Hollow’s arms. ‘First you break into my house and free that – that man. Then you interrupt the festival just when it’s getting interesting, and now you have the nerve to suggest –’

      ‘I have the nerve to do a great many things, Beatrice. Do not forget who you are talking to. I have let you get away with many horrible deeds in the past, but those days have come to an end. A new age in Bluehaven has begun and John Doe is leading the way. Now are you going to keep arguing