Girl of Myth and Legend Read Free Page A

I’m definitely sitting down on a chair with, let’s see, with my dad in front of me, who’s suddenly developed symptoms of Nutcase Syndrome, and… oh wait, that’s the here and now.’ I’m about to push his hands away from me. ‘I’m starting to think it’s you who needs to go to the hos—’
    Like a brush of paint swiping across my vision, the living room changes into fire and darkness and smoke and ruin. I leap up from my seat with a gasp.
    ‘Dad?’ He’s no longer with me.
    Where the carpet was is now a famished ground, cracked and scorched, and there’s a tide of heat that makes my throat itch and long for water. The air is stifling. Debris of destroyed buildings surrounds me, smoke filling up my lungs. In the distance I see the remains of a gothic skyscraper. It glints silver and by the way it’s leaning it’s going to fall.
    This world is red: the sky, the atmosphere, the ground, the remains of buildings—all dark red. I glance at the sun: instead I find a blazing, blood-red eclipse. Silence reigns in the sinister world—it’s almost a noise itself.
    My foot hits something soft. I look down. I wish I hadn’t. Bodies—everywhere. Hundreds of them. A battlefield. They’re covered in ash and dirt, some with their eyes open, distant. I move back, hyperventilating, then turn, preparing to run, when I realise what I’m facing. Lying against a large slab of concrete are four corpses, and though I’ve never seen these people in my life, I feel like I have, because a great welling of shame envelops me as if I should feel guilty for their deaths. I focus on the girl with bright blue hair. I know you , I think. Oh God, I know you. But I don’t.
    The ground beneath me begins to tremble, the pieces of rubble bouncing and clattering. I peer up and my jaw drops. The sky is folding in on itself, the remaining stars glinting into non-existence. The sun becomes distorted under the heavy red mist.
    ‘Da-Dad? Dad! I don’t want to be here! Please, let me out! Now! Dad! Please !’
    The quaking stops—then I hear something, no, someone, emerging from the midst of the chaos, and a breath escapes me. The debris clears from her path as if some invisible force is shifting it, and around her is what I can only describe as an aura radiating an unfathomable darkness, but that’s not what bewilders me. Though the girl is older than me, I think… no, I’m certain this girl is me .
    Her clothes are ripped and dirty, her body cut and bleed-ing. Her face is impassive and her eyes reflect such lifelessness, such emptiness, that it sends a shiver through my body. Her expression may be indifferent, and yet, as if we’re connected, as if I can feel her heart beating in my chest, I feel her rage , her determination, her immeasurable, consuming despair, as if it were my own. But there is something more than anguish in her: there is a purpose; there is an end. She holds her palms out at her side and around them forms a dark vapour.
    ‘Please, don’t !’ A voice. A man’s voice unfamiliar to me, but I know it. I know it with my entire being. ‘Don’t let this world end in sorrow! I beg of you, Leonie!’
    My other self stops, though she doesn’t turn her gaze. ‘What use is this world to me without you in it?’ It is my voice, and yet so foreign to me. She walks through the path of destruction, the distortion of the world increasing. I, however, turn to the one who has spoken, the one who I’d live and die for, but before their figure moulds into place—
    I jump onto my feet, slamming against the wall of the cottage. I stare wide-eyed at Dad, trying to regain control of my breath. He looks just as horrified as I feel.
    The living room.
    I’m back in the living room.
    I love this living room.
    ‘Wh-what just…?’ I stutter.
    ‘The future,’ he says, as if showing someone the future is an everyday thing.
    ‘The future,’ I repeat dumbly. ‘The future. That was the future. My future.’ My heart won’t stop