Danny Runner and the Phantom Crown

7. Monsters beyond the veil

Danny ducked under a branch that was huge and semi-transparent, as if it were made of a glass shadow.

When he looked closely, all the trees looked the same. He had walked for what seemed like an eternity, away from the marshy area where he had accidentally found himself, and now he was on a dry plain, dotted with very tall trees, their bare branches stretching toward the gray sky.

«It's a strange dream» the boy said.

His voice echoed terribly loud in the silence. If he concentrated, tho, Danny could understand that it wasn't actually an absolute silence: a surf sound permeated the place, like the one you might hear when you put your ear to the opening of a large seashell. There were no birds, no insects. No chirping, no tweeting.

Danny, shivering, kept walking. Dry twigs, and even those looked like smoked glass, snapped under the soles of his shoes with dry sounds.

The ground was bare, grayish, without dead leaves, without tufts of grass. There was nothing there except him and those ghostly trees that looked way more like sculptures than like living organisms: modern decor for a desolated, modern living room.

He tried to look inside one of the trunks, sticking his face into a hollow in the twisted grain of an old pine, a tree that looked like it had been split in half by lightning. Opening his eyes wide in the semi-darkness, he saw nothing: the hollow was smooth inside, like a plastic tube, and almost shiny. To the touch, the bark felt like that of a very ordinary tree, a note that clashed with the glassy appearance.

Danny stepped back, testing the ground with the toe of one shoe. The resulting sound was curiously hard and amplified. He realized, at that moment, that he wasn't breathing... but that he could, somehow, still hear the sound of breathing.

«Is there... is there anyone?» He asked.

It felt strange to be still not breathing, so he took a breath, which tasted strange, electric, and grassy on his tongue. He ran a hand over his face, then turned and retraced his steps.

«Is anyone there? I hear... I hear someone».

Nothing was moving around him. The trees were sparse where he was, spaced twenty feet apart, so it was easy to look in all directions. And there was absolutely no one there.

Yet beneath the constant, disturbing sound of the surf, Danny could hear a faint exhalation and inhalation, familiar, human, like the way he breathed himself, yet out of sync with his breathing in that moment.

«I'm scared» He said.

He smiled. It felt good to say how he felt... and there was no one to judge him for it. He felt a cold, clammy feeling on his exposed gums. The rest of his body felt no discomfort, he felt strong, his feet moved with ease, carrying a body that seemed to weigh only a few grams.

As he walked back, Danny could see water appearing: first streams hidden among the glassy roots of some large trees, then streams, and finally a full-blown swamp. As he dragged his feet through the swamp, Danny heard a rustling sound. He remembered why he had left that place: snakes.

Well, they weren't exactly snakes, but he had no other name for them: they were creatures of some kind, long and thin, that moved by slithering from branch to branch, overlapping each other, writhing, wandering erratically. Now that he saw them, Danny told himself that they were particularly scary, and that the dry, lifeless land from which he had returned certainly seemed terrifying, compared to the simple strangeness of those creatures. At least there was something alive, there.

«What are you?» He asked out loud.

In dreams, it often happens that the strangest creatures can speak, that goldfish can answer with prophetic phrases, that adorable little horses can teach friendship. This, which Danny thought was a dream, was actually not.