Coldbrook (Hammer)(23)

A fly landed on the back of her hand. She studied it, the first time she’d seen a living insect from this world, and did not recognise it as any of those caught by the eradicator. And prompted by this thought she turned around again to see from where she had emerged.

The breach sat in a hollow in the hillside, a fresh wound in the land. Shards of stone and clumps of soil were scattered around the hollow, and the breach itself existed as a vaguely wavering smudge of light ten feet across, opaque and mysterious. Holly squinted, but could not see within. There was no framing to it on this side, and she remembered Jonah saying something about it mirroring itself in the target area. It held a hypnotic power. She closed her eyes and a staggering loneliness hit her. Would she ever be able to go back through? Could she?

She muttered to herself, ‘What have I done?’ She looked up at the brightening sky, stars still just visible but fading quickly, half-moon sitting low above the valley.

Satpal had so wanted to see the alternate world’s stars. She tried to spot a constellation she knew, but there were too few now, and she looked away, afraid of seeing nothing, afraid that—

Something called softly. She turned back to the breach, terrified that Melinda had come through. But there was no movement there, and when the call came again she looked up at the hawks, swooping now instead of circling.

‘Gaia,’ she said. The breach was too close. Terror had already stepped between worlds. She could not stay here.

Holly started walking. She followed the stream and aimed for one of the ridge lines. From there she hoped she would have a good view across the surrounding countryside. She had no idea what she would see. As she went she assessed what she had come through with, and it was not much. The clothing she wore – casual shirt, trousers, boots, none of it heavyweight. There were two pens in her pocket, and her satphone. She checked it: no signal. She gave a short bark of laughter: of course not. As she walked, she checked behind her regularly. She kept her eyes peeled for movement because she knew for sure that this world was inhabited. The man who had come through had brought some unknown, sickening danger with him, and now she was stranded in his world. She would have to be careful every step of the way.

The loneliness was constant and bruising, and several times she found herself singing childhood songs under her breath as she climbed over rocks, skirted marshy areas of ground, and passed into a heavily wooded area. Her clothes were damp from the earlier misty rain, but she was not too cold. What will happen when I do get too cold? she thought. Or if I fall and break my ankle? Or if I get lost and can’t find my way back here? At the back of her mind was the idea that she was still within reach of home, however different the breach looked from this side, and however terrible, however unbelievable the events that had happened in Control. She would have to give them time to get some kind of order restored and perhaps then they’d send someone through to find her. But the ridge and whatever might lie beyond beckoned, and she could not ignore the call.

‘Just be careful,’ Holly whispered to herself.

As she climbed slowly out of the small valley, dawn brought this new world – this Gaia – to life around her. Crickets scratched in the grasses and heather, birds welcomed in the dawn from the tree canopy with songs she knew and some she did not, and a muted sunlight touched the hilltop above her. She emerged from the woodland onto a bare slope, still in the opposite ridge’s shadow, but a growing feeling of warmth was close and inviting.

A few hundred feet from the ridge she passed into sunlight and turned to stare back at the sun. It was a yellow smudge against the clouds, still splaying exotic colours across much of the sky before her. She’d never seen such a gorgeous sunrise. Looking back down along the valley she could still just make out the shimmer of the breach, a slightly blurred area against the valley floor. It was the only familiar sight in this new world, and she was keen to keep it in view.

Holly had left the stream behind now and was climbing directly for the ridgeline. The closer it drew the faster she moved, spurred on by the thought that she was the first person from her Earth to witness this world. The sunlight felt both familiar and shatteringly alien across the back of her neck, like a surprise kiss from a stranger. That’s our sun, she thought, but of course that was not quite true. She had already seen, and felt, and smelled this world’s subtle differences, and witnessed the horror of a more extreme divergence. There really was no telling how unlike her own planet it might be.

There might be mountains up here, she thought, or lakes, or cities or ruins, or something unrecognisable. And when at last she reached the top of the ridge and stood staring out over the vista ahead of her it took her breath away.