Lullaby (The Fable Series, Book 2)

Chapter One

The dream begins with me running through the dark midnight forest.

The night-cloaked trees cluster around me like the walls of a gloomy maze, but I won't get lost.

I know the way. He's calling me. The one I love.

I glide over small streams, hollow moss-encrusted tree trunks, a sea of ferns. From time to time I look up. Stars wheel through the patches of black sky peeking through the forest canopy overhead. As I run, the sky lightens to a deep royal blue, paling to lilac speckled with the ghosts of the fading stars.

Day is coming.

I have to hurry.

I'm almost there, but I won't reach him in time.

So I call his name, hoping he'll hear me.

But no sound comes out. I've forgotten his name. In fact, I've forgotten his face, my face, my name, everything.

How am I supposed to find him again if I can't even remember what he looks like?

The gurgling melody of water rushing over stones rings through the trees. I run towards the sound, deeper and deeper into the forest. I come to the edge of a babbling brook. Something is pulling me, and I walk along its edge, picking my way over mossy emerald boulders. I stop when I reach a small, still pool, shining silver as a bright mirror embedded in the forest floor.

Tiny green and turquoise dragonflies dance above the water's surface, their jeweled armor glinting in the dim starlight.

I crouch down and lean over the pool's edge to look at my reflection.

I'm met with an unfamiliar face.

Long wavy hair as white as new-fallen snow.

And eyes that for some reason I'm sure should be pale green, but are bright silver instead, like molten metal gleaming beneath dark lashes.

The way I'm dressed is just as peculiar. I look down and see that I'm wearing a gossamer gown made of some diaphanous material; a sheath of silvery spider silk dotted with tiny pearls, light as sea foam, hanging on the air.

Is this me? Has this always been me? I must be dr-

A movement in the forest interrupts my thoughts. A dark shape takes form several feet away, unfurling from the ground like a column of black smoke. The shadow moves towards me.

I claw at my chest, as a sharp pain stabs my heart.

Beloved. My beloved. Her voice is waves crashing against rocks, the rustling of leaves on a tree, the wind whistling through mountain valleys.

She sends out tendrils of darkness, reaching to me across the silver water, and in that moment I know.

She's hunted me for a thousand years.

She'll never stop.

All I can do is run.

So I sprint through the forest, away from the pool, away from her. Fingers of smoke claw at the air behind me, but I'm one step ahead. I race towards a distant light, until I break into the clearing.

A wooden cabin sits in the centre of a wide glade. I'm no longer running - I fly through the air, pulled by invisible strings.

Below me, a neatly laid-out vegetable patch drinks in the pooling sunbeams of the newborn day, lettuces reaching upwards drunk with starfire.

And above me, the sky is all aflutter, a bright blur of stars drowning in a sea of dawn, sucked beneath the radiant waves of the inevitable morning.