The GreenHouse

Chapter 2

JACK

2 months later

The winds roar and cartwheel violently around my head.  Dark, ashy rain pelts me, soaking through my clothes and encasing me in a thin layer of ice. The jagged black rocks jutting out of the snow are streaked red, as their serrated edges carve bloody patterns into my hands. My body is on the brink of saying goodbye to this world. I can feel it teetering on a precipice somewhere on the edge of this existence.

Death has been following me for quite some time now. Stalking in my shadows. Patiently waiting for me to fall into its clutches. And it would be so easy. Just close my eyes and let go. Tumble peacefully into its welcoming arms. And it would be so welcome. The months of walking that seem never to end. Each step a battle of wills, testing every single screaming, aching fiber in my body.

But I have to see it. I have to see what lies beyond the steep rise I now cling to. I grab the next rock; another dagger, another red streak, another stab of pain.

At the start of this journey, it had been the green leaf, now frozen in a block of ice that had kept me going. The dreams I had of it at night, when it came alive and danced around me, fueled my days. But when the dreams stopped, it was the memories of my mother laughing, her fiery red hair tumbling into her face, that kept me moving. But as the days, weeks, months passed, her memories began to fade. Dissolve. Disappear. And just when I thought I couldn't go any further, I saw it.

Tiny. Faint. Yellow. It appeared out of nowhere. A glow peeping over the horizon that beckoned me. And every painful step brought me closer to it. Some steps were so painful that I'd screamed as the cold pounded my bones like a hammer. But each night, as I lay down to sleep, the glow was a little bit closer and closer, and closer until...

I reach up and grab the next rock, hoisting my body onto it. I look up at the top of the rise, a few more to go, a few more to go. The glow is no longer faint, it illuminates the sky, painting everything with a warm orange light.

A few more. A few more.

The muscles in my arms tremble. My joints strain painfully. My lungs burn, sucking the cold air in, in short, sharp painful bursts. I close my eyes for a second... death immediately calls for me. He's right beside me, waiting. I flick my eyes open as fast as I can, escaping his grasp yet again.

It takes everything I have to grab hold of the last rock and claw myself onto it, and when I do, when I'm finally at the top and peer over the rise... there it is.

A strange structure in the snow. It's huge. Green and gold and incandescent. I'm mesmerized. It pulls me in, exerting a force on me that is stronger than anything I've ever felt. I taste the salt on my lips as tears of relief stream down my chapped face, stinging it as they fall. For a second the light in the structure seems to dim. I blink a few time to make sure I'm not hallucinating, but then it's bright again, and I know for certain... this is real.

I've found it.

I take the horn from my bag and raise it to my lips. I taste blood, and the pain is almost unbearable. But I blow. As hard as I can. I'm not sure whether the sound with cut through the cries of the wind, so I wait and listen. And then... I hear it.

The cheer of a hundred voices rises up from the ground below. The hundreds who've been following me for months. The hundreds who put all their faith into a leaf, a leaf frozen in a block of ice.

****

RUBY

2 months later