The Gift

The Gift

Norah’s world had ended; it was falling apart before her eyes. Will walked away from her, his head shaking in disgust, down the theatre steps and out of her life.
She’d ruined everything. She’d failed her exams because she stayed out all night with him; she’d left home to follow him. It wasn’t her fault that she was so tired, that she couldn’t cope anymore.

It wasn’t her fault that she was fading, the ground beneath her feet falling away beneath her. It wasn’t her fault that Will was out so much of the time, and Hayden had been there when she needed him.

She let out a sharp, harsh cry, the sound ripped from her throat. She felt her knees buckle beneath her, as she sank to the ground, unheeding of the dirty grey concrete.

“I wish… I was gone.” It was a whisper, the last plea of a dying girl. She wanted to be anywhere but there. She was tired of being her, of being Norah Johnson in the cold, harsh world of reality.

She wanted nothing more than to vanish into the world in her head. The world she wrote her songs about, the world she dreamed about when she had nothing more to hold on to.

She felt the last parts of her mind slip through the cracks, and gladly followed into unconsciousness.

***

When she woke up, the ground beneath her was soft and scratchy. Dry, warm straw that shone gold in the midday sun.

The sky was the wrong colour. Not green or purple or something strange like that, but simply the brightest, clearest blue she had ever seen. The kind of blue only found in tubes of paint or oil pastels, so pure that to call it ‘blue’ was almost an insult. So very far from the clouded, lurid orange night sky remembered last.

There was noise, too. All around her, clamouring, discordant chatter, shouts of strange, gnarled beings from behind stalls; sibilant whispers of tall, translucent women and melodic laughter from tall, beautiful creatures.

She stood, moving slowly off the straw pile and onto the warm sandstone floor, into the bustling street that seemed so familiar and so wrong. She moved dreamily through the marketplace, her movements slow and lifeless, her eyes feasting on the chaotic grace of the marketplace.

One stand pulled her in, enticing, mesmerizing, laden with the most luscious, ripest fruit she had ever encountered. She took a step toward it, drawn in by the musical quality of the chaotic sound. The colours almost hurt her eyes, they were wonderfully vivid, so vibrant that they almost seemed to glow. Crimson red enough that it could have poured from her veins; indigo the colour of the sky at dusk; blue that could have been cut straight from the sky above her.

The man behind the stall, a tall, dark haired man who leant against the sandstone wall, smirked at her interest, and beckoned. He was lean, catlike, impossibly graceful and totally at ease in the frenzied scene

She felt her lips go dry, her mouth suddenly parched and starving. The strange man’s gaze became more and more intense, his sinister smile enticing and repellent all at once. Her feet began to move forward of their own accord, in unconscious response to his wordless command.

Did she know him?

Why did her mind flee from him?

She glanced once more at the stall, which was now right in front of her. All doubts flew from her mind, replaced by intense temptation and a hunger like she had never known. She felt like she would barter her soul for just one taste of the succulent morsels before her.

The stranger stepped forward, though Norah was so far gone by now that she barely registered his movement, his new proximity.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice started to scream.

A hand, slim, pale and elegant, came into her line of vision. It held a plum, round and ripe, dark as star sapphire and oh, so tempting.

This was the most beautiful gift she had ever received.

He raised it, holding it to her lips. The screaming intensified. It warred with the numb, dream-like fogginess that argued there was no harm in just one little taste.

The world wouldn’t end with one little bite.

Right?