A World Without Heroes - Brandon Mull [174]
Ferrin gave a final jerk, and then all Jason had in his grasp was the hand. Above him, silhouetted against the lighted surface, he saw Ferrin stroking upward.
Jason maintained a tight grip on the hand. It tried to squirm free, to no avail.
Jason continued to sink. His lungs began to clench for want of oxygen. The water was frigid. How could water this cold not be frozen?
Before long he was in absolute darkness. The surface was no longer visible. Maybe, after all he had suffered, he was simply going to drown.
But suddenly something was different. Without changing direction it felt as though he was now rising rather than sinking. Was it an illusion spawned by disorientation? His speed was increasing. The water seemed to be getting warmer and thicker. The bag of rocks no longer pulled him. His lungs burned, but Jason resisted the urge to inhale.
Abruptly he slammed into a yielding surface with great force. He smelled soil and sensed sunlight, although his eyes were closed.
Opening his eyes, Jason found himself lying on his back in a cornfield, soaking wet and covered in dirt. He could not clearly discern whether he had fallen there or risen up through the ground, though it seemed like the latter. Great clods of soil had been dislodged by his arrival, and several tall stalks of corn had been uprooted and scattered.
He sat up, shaken but uninjured, except for his throbbing head.
All he could see in any direction was corn.
He stood, looking around. Endless rows of corn shifted in a gentle breeze beneath the midday sun. Where was he?
“This better be a cornfield on Earth,” he muttered, trying to brush mud from his clothing, succeeding only in smearing it around.
He still had Ferrin’s hand. He set it down and examined himself. His only clothes were the shirt and the pants. They were crude, and the mud made them look much worse. He had no shoes. He hoped he would not have to walk far.
The hand began to crawl across the ground. Jason picked it up and gave it a slap. The fingers opened and closed rapidly as if to express outrage.
“You’re my only souvenir,” Jason told the hand. “I hope you realize I have to get back there somehow.”
Jason shoved the hand into one of the two deep pockets in the front of his trousers. Whenever it moved, Jason slapped it firmly.
It took Jason ten minutes to unbind himself from the sack of stones. He checked inside the bag, to be sure he wasn’t leaving anything interesting behind. It only contained rocks. He took out the rocks and placed the hand in the bag.
Jason struck off in a straight line. He figured if he went straight long enough, he would find civilization. Somebody had planted and was tending this corn. Eventually he would reach a road.
Before long he came to a farmyard. It had a nicely painted house and a barn. A couple of trucks and four-wheelers were parked in the big driveway. A tire swing hung from a branch. Some toy cars had been left near the swing. Ferrin had been right. This was Earth.
For so long all he had wanted was to get home. But now all he could think about was getting back to Lyrian. He couldn’t leave Rachel stranded there! He couldn’t deprive his friends of the knowledge he now possessed!
He went to the front door of the house, opened the screen, and knocked. A middle-aged woman in a sleeveless shirt answered the door. “Can I help you?”
He suddenly felt unsure what to say. All he knew for certain was that he couldn’t tell the truth. “Hi. My name is Jason Walker. May I please use your telephone?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am thrilled to have the first book in the Beyonders series written and into the hands of readers. This series has been in development for more than ten years, and I’m looking forward to sharing the two upcoming installments. This first book has been through many drafts over several years. When I first attempted to write it, I did not yet have the ability to tell the story effectively. I believe that it has finally