The Cradle of All Worlds - Jeremy Lachlan

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       THE TRUTH ABOUT JANE

       This is not the end

       GRIM TIDINGS

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

       THE JANE DOE CHRONICLES: BOOK TWO

      This is not the beginning

      Her lantern chases shadows through the dark. Cobwebs tear at her fingertips; spiders flee. She runs a hand over the stone wall of the tunnel and breathes in deep, savouring the damp, the dirt, the unknown. She has missed this. People call her an old relic, but they are fools. Winifred Robin is one of the Great Adventurers. She may be old, but her story is far from complete. Tonight, something has changed. She intends to find out what, and why.

      Winifred was conducting research down in the catacombs when the quake struck. The ground shook, the scrolls trembled. Candles toppled from the walls, snuffed out. A deep sound rumbled towards her – the echo of breaking stone – but it is not so much what she heard as what she felt moments later that intrigued her. A sinister breath. A breeze.

      It blows towards her now, making the cobwebs dance.

      She is close.

      There is a chasm around the next bend. A long, black void so thick with thousand-year dark even the lantern light shies away from it. Winifred does not consider turning back, not for a second. This is a woman who has defeated armies, cheated death, battled gods. There are only two things she fears in all the worlds. Heights are not one of them.

      Lantern hooked onto her belt, she climbs around the edge. A rock clatters into the chasm. The darkness takes it. She never hears it land. She swipes away the odd spider as she navigates the wall. Hairy, palm-sized things. The breeze swirls around her from the depths, but she makes it safely to the other side. Straightens her crimson cloak. Chances a smile.

      She proceeds with caution now. The island of Bluehaven is riddled with abandoned mines and passages, but this one has sat here in secret for thousands of years, sealed off from the world. Now, on the second anniversary of the Night of All Catastrophes – two years since the quakes began – it has opened.

      She does not believe in coincidence. She knows secrets are kept for a reason.

      There is a small, rock-hewn chamber at the end of the tunnel. Winifred’s lantern splashes golden light upon the walls when she steps inside. She frowns. There are no chasms in here, no spiders. In fact, there is nothing at all.

      The chamber is empty.

      She turns on the spot, searching, hoping for a secret passage, another path. Could somebody have been here before her? Climbed up the chasm from a different tunnel?

      The floor is bare. No footprints. No deathly triggers set into the stone. She paces around the chamber, runs a hand over the back wall, and that is when she finds it. A small, faded symbol; rust red, like dried blood. An ancient hieroglyph. A triangle with one inward-curving side, like a ship’s sail or a wave, encased within a circle.

      Incredible. Winifred knows the symbol – has been scouring the Great Library for two years trying to uncover its meaning, and here it is. It has been right under her feet all along, but how? Why?

      The symbol calls to her. Whispers in a foreign, archaic tongue.

      She touches it. The symbol flashes, white and blinding. A phantom gust of wind howls through the chamber, kicking up her cloak, swirling dust. Winifred tries to pull her hand away from the wall, but it is stuck, fixed to the symbol as if seared to a burning hotplate.

      The pain is excruciating. Not in her hand, though. In her head.

      Winifred sees things. Flashes before her eyes. A story unravelling in her mind like a book read at speed. But not just a story. This is real – or at least, it will be.

      This is a vision of things to come.

      There is a chase. A cage. A sacrifice. There is a long journey, a trickster, and an ally. There are horrors from Winifred’s own past, born from the sands of a distant world, that fill her with a certain cold dread she hasn’t felt in years. There is rock and ruin. Death and destruction. Just as Winifred thinks she can take no more, the phantom wind ceases, the stone in front of her splinters into a thousand cracks, and she is thrown back from the wall.

      The darkness takes her, too.

      Winifred is not certain how long she is out. By the time she comes to, her lantern has almost burned dry. The dust has settled. The symbol has vanished. She feels strange. Drained of all energy, yet filled with something more. A grim sense of purpose. The vision was a gift, a warning, a set of instructions from the Makers themselves. Winifred has seen, but more than that, she understands. There are things she must do. Terrible things.

      This godly gift comes with a price.

      Winifred stands. Holds a scarred, bony hand to the cracked wall. She now knows what lies beyond this stone. A wonder beyond wonders. Her hand trembles. She cannot remember the last time she cried, but she allows herself a moment now. She weeps for the things she has done, for the things she is about to do, and for the long road laid out before her. When she has finished, she clears her throat and straightens her crimson cloak once more.

      Enough. She must leave this place – leave and never return – for the wonder beyond the wall is meant for someone else. This is not Winifred’s story, after all.

      It is Jane Doe’s. The child with the amber eyes.

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      I’m in trouble again. Occupational hazard when you’re known as the Cursed One, the Unwanted, the Bringer of Bad Juju, a Djinn. Bad weather, spoiled crops, missing pets – I always cop the blame. I don’t have a clue what I’ve done this time. All I know is, Mrs Hollow’s performing another cleansing ritual at the top of the basement stairs, spitting on the landing, flapping a sprig of thyme. Muttering things like ‘repugnant abomination’ and ‘catastrophic blemish of unfathomable proportions’ under her breath.

      Clearly, she’s been looking up big words in the dictionary again. Never a good sign.

      Normally, I’d settle in for the long haul. Sit in the shadows, chew my fingernails, hum a tune. Not today, though.

      Today, I actually have somewhere to be. Today, I have a secret.

      I step into the wedge of light cast by the open door. ‘Um. Mrs Hollow?’

      ‘Shh!’ The woman’s tall and lanky. Twitchy eyes ten sizes too big through her glasses. Basically a six-foot-tall praying mantis on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She pulls half a lemon from the pocket of her apron and squeezes it along the doorframe. ‘Need to focus.’

      ‘Right. The spit-and-twirl. Sorry.’

      Mrs Hollow ditches the lemon and thyme, spits on her hands – ptooey ptooey – spins in a circle and shouts, ‘Be gone!’ Then she freezes with her hands held high, fingers splayed.

      Nothing happens, of course, but it sure looks impressive.

      ‘Good one,’ I say. ‘Thing is, I’m kinda busting for the loo –’

      ‘Ugh. Damn it.’ Mrs Hollow snaps out

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