She held the ring to the light of the lamp hanging above her head. The flame flickered against the rough brick that enclosed her.
She looked hastily to the bars of the door that held steadfast and then away again. The hallway outside it was empty, as it had been for the last four hours. What her fate would be, she had no idea. She only knew the ring was her only chance.
She looked up to the light again. Her pale hands shone red against the source of it.
It was the last possession she would ever own.
One of a collection that always seemed to wake Terra Carter woke her this night. She rose groggily from her bed and advanced immediately to the pantry downstairs, as she always did when bad dreams woke her in a hunger at dawn. The next night when she saw it for just a second—flashed there and back; saw the trees, a tower, and then her closed eyelids once more—she thought it was another dream. She had no idea that her necklace was building to something much bigger. Three nights later, when it happened again, in fact, she would already have forgotten that this very night was when her whole story really began.
PART ONE: MONSTER
******
The dream was different this time.
Dark, everything was dark. Something flew over Terra, only, it wasn't a bird. She looked up, but nothing was there. Large towers stood above her. They were dark, depressing. But Terra kept running.
She ran down the alleyway surrounded by the buildings that never seemed to end. All the air was suddenly being sucked out from her lungs. She couldn't breathe! She tried to crawl out but there was no use. She turned on her back and saw something. Something black. Blacker than the sky. But what was it? It swirled in the sky and swooped down...
Terra opened her eyes, shivering, both hands to the neck before she realized it was just the dream. The air was cold, like it had been before, but that was a dream also. She lay for a minute flat on her back, on the hard uneven surface, and looked up into the blackness as her eyes came into focus. Then she furrowed her brows.
A black sky stretched above her, stars lighting it all around.
Her frame of vision was a circle. The length of sky she could see was surrounded in a semi—circle of tree tops until they met up with a semi—circle on the other side of tall, flat, stone rooftops. This was not home. This was the first irrational thought that came to mind. She sat up slowly, looking around bewildered through the darkness, and then stood, brushing her hands across the cold stone ground as she helped herself up. Cold. Stone. The feeling lasting too long to be a dream, surely.
Where were the boxes? Where was Gran's letter? Then the fear began to register.
She was standing on a hard rock surface in the middle of a large circular clearing.
Maybe she had been kidnapped or she had been sleepwalking. Maybe she was somewhere in Eurasia, like in one of those horror movies where the main character gets kidnapped and taken to some foreign country. This was her first decisive theory.
Gray stone towers gaped down in front of her, old and abandoned like ancient, defensive war towers she had seen in pictures, except there were dozens of them. The darkness cast shadows that dyed the spaces in between the towers black.
There were alleyways between the towers formed from long thin breaks in their numbers. They were so long she could not see the end of them. And they were familiar. Even among these alien surroundings.
Regardless of it all, she was still dreaming. This was her second, likely more rational, conclusion. She backed up from the stone towers, tripping over a rock. She flayed her arms out behind her not prepared for the impact that then went up her hip. Ouch. That hurt. Hurt.
Terra closed her eyes and then opened them again. The towers were still there in front of her; and on all sides of her and behind her were trees—a whole forest of trees.
The trees met the towers and they clashed together forming the large circle around the clearing. The towers coalescing with the trees as if a part of the forest. Grass and weeds grew wild everywhere. Ivy and moss grew up the sides of the buildings and the bark of the trees. The towers looked uninhabited to Terra: what was she thinking? Hadn't she seen these towers before? It was a dream.
She saw a shadow flicker across the stone of one. She dropped down to her hands and knees, backing away into the shelter of the trees. She stopped a few feet from the tree cover, panic settling in.
Terra felt a sharp pain around her neck. She let out a gasp of pain and took the ring of the necklace in her hands. The burning stopped abruptly, so she looked around, searching for the shadow she had seen.
All she saw were the alleyways across the clearing in front of her.
She was not at home anymore. How far away was she from home? She turned around distractedly toward the clustered forest.
She thought she had felt something: a presence.
Just a dream.
She heard something else in the corner of the clearing behind her. She stood, turning back around to the alleyway to see a dark silhouette standing against a building. She stared at the dark shape as it moved through the shadows.
He was a person.
The stranger walked closer to her, slowly, hands stiff at the sides, in a crouching position as if on guard. He was obviously a male, very tall, and lean, and dark. Everything about him was dark: black hair, dark green eyes, dark clothes. Sweat beaded his forehead as if he had been running and his hair was wet and sticky: it was unkempt and fell almost over his eyes. Muscles were evident on his uncovered forearms and along his chest as his shirt faltered there.
