Lady of the Wasteland
Jon Jacks
Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent
Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak
Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife
Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches
The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – Gorgesque
Text copyright© 2015 Jon Jacks
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Chapter 1
There used to be a lake here.
A vast lake.
Containing all manner of fish, shoals of them: even whales and, yes, monstrous sea serpents.
So deep. So cool. So magical.
So otherworldly.
My world.
My lake.
The one I ruled over.
The one I drew my powers from.
The one that was me, as I was the lake.
I’m not used to walking; especially not across a dried, cracked landscape, in which my subjects lie gasping, perishing.
Not used to the whistling moans of dying whales. The pitiful writhing of serpents half trapped in baked ground.
Not used to feeling a wind pummelling my face, a wind that I can’t control.
A wish – a wish to help, to redirect the wind, to conjure up cooling springs of water: that’s all it would have taken, when I still possessed my powers.
I went to sleep, it seems; and woke to this
The end of my world.
Of the world as anyone knows it
*
Wherever I go, I’m no longer recognised.
How could they know me?
Few had ever seen me.
Of those that did, none dared look directly at me.
The glow might blind them, at least make them look away, their eyes too pained to stare any longer.
Any longer?
The longer I stay like this, the more human I become, more susceptible to their foolish ideas of the world, to their thoughts, their emotions.
Emotions recognising beauty, not reality.
Lies, not truth.
From a high tower, the most handsome man I have ever seen is smiling down at me. And in the courtyard standing below that tower, a tree stands within its very centre, growing upside down.
But – is it upside down?
I’m no longer sure.
The longer this goes on, the more I will forget.
Forget, even, who I really am.
And who is that?
Who am I?
*
Chapter 2
‘Come on Viv!’
Despite the water’s constant muting of the encouraging cries of her school friends, Viviana drew on that powerful sense of urgency to find those extra reserves of energy that would help her win the race.
She drew inspiration, too, from the way her friends were all excitedly rising from their seats as the swimmers spun around at the edges of the swimming pool, heading into the penultimate length. She only caught odd glimpses of all this, of course, and then only through water-glazed eyes as she took in air, her head partially breaking the surface every now and again in mid stroke.
Whenever she could, she focused most of her blurred gaze upon Aden, who was proudly smiling down on her.
She would win this tournament for him!
To show him that she was worthy of his love for her.
Aden vanished in a wallowing of water as Viviana plunged her head under the waves once more, the arm she’d arch high in the air also dipping aggressively into the waters, powering her forward.
There was a flash of brightest red in the waters flowing just beneath her, such that she briefly thought it might be a swirl of blood, that someone might have injured themselves in the last sharp turn against the wall.
As her head rose again from the waters, her interest was no longer on the cheering crowds, but on that flash of scarlet.
As her head dipped beneath the surface once more, she saw that it wasn’t – thankfully – blood after all, but the glow of a brilliantly petalled poppy, incongruously drifting in the violently stirred currents.
She tried to ignore it, to treat it with the indifference it deserved, to concentrate on winning the race.
But as she raised and dipped her face yet again, there were flashes of other, even brighter colours below her.
A shoal of glittering fish.
*
The waters now stretched endlessly away from her, without any discernible depth.
Her ears rang to the mournful cry of a whale rising from those dark, green depths.
Her eyes widened as a monstrous serpent followed on close behind, striking out at her with its gaping, reddened maw.
*
Now hardly anyone was cheering. Those that were were congratulating their own friends for winning, or at least completing the race as, one by one, they reached out for and touched the pool’s end.
Most of the crowd, however, even her own friends, were jeering, or even crying out for retribution against Viviana. She had disrupted the other swimmers as she’d urgently swum for the sides of the pool.
She couldn’t understand what had happened.
Hadn’t anyone else seen the fish, the whale, the serpent?
Of course, she knew what the answer to that stupid question was – for the pool’s waters were sparklingly clear.
Naturally, there weren’t any sea creatures in there.
Not even the tiniest fish. And especially not a mythical serpent.
She urgently glanced around, looking for Aden amongst the crowds.
But he was no longer there.
Rather, amongst all those furiously contorted faces, it was another boy who stood out, his expression intent and curious.
It seemed his eyes never left her, even as she ashamedly turned away from the pool, deliberately limping as if she were suffering from cramp.
Who was he?
*
Chapter 3
Aden abruptly appeared alongside her, concernedly draping a thick, soft towel around her quaking shoulders.
Everyone had thought she would easily win the swimming tournament.
Instead, she had lost, and disgracefully too, barging into other competitors in her rush to vacate the pool.
‘Cramp: sorry,’ she whispered to Aden, regretting her lie, but unsure how else she could explain her stupidity.
‘Did you cut yourself?’ Aden asked, glancing down in alarm at her red-streaked heel.
‘Not that I–’
Viviana looked back over her shoulder as she raised her heel up off the floor.
It w
asn’t blood.
It was a poppy petal, sticking to her wet skin.
*
All the kids at school loved holding a grudge.
Especially a fashionable grudge, one that everyone could join in with.
Such as moaning that the Golden Girl of the swimming team had proved more useless than lead when it had counted.
They’d lost to teams they’d spent months boasting they would easily trounce.
It wasn’t just that Viviana had lost her first race; she’d even refused to go back in the water.
Like it scared her.
Like she was some scaredy-cat six-year-old who needed her inflatable armbands.
No one (accept Aden, naturally) was prepared to accept her excuse that she’d suffered cramp.
No one would sit with her in class.
No one would walk down the corridors with her between classes. (Accept, once again, Aden.)
Both boys and girls, of varying sizes, barged into her, making out, if she complained, that it was an accident, that they’d ‘got a sudden touch of cramp’.
Someone even tripped her up, sending her tumbling with her books and pen case. Yet when she whirled around to challenge the culprit, she was met only with laughing or grinning faces.
Of course, the most dangerous area for her was the rows of lockers, where everyone chaotically accumulated, where teachers rarely trod, and nowhere near frequently enough to prevent any jeering from getting out of hand.
With its endless, high rows of metal cabinets, the locker area could have been specifically designed to allow trouble makers to work with impunity.
‘You owe me, Vivid!’
Viviana had such incredibly black hair she’d gained the name ‘Vivid’ amongst some of the kids, a name sometimes extended to ‘Livid Vivid’ if she were ever in a particularly bad mood.
The hefty boy who had almost taken her hand off as he’d abruptly slammed her locker shut was called ‘Barn’ Doorney for equally obvious reasons.
‘I bet money on you!’ he added with a belligerent glower. ‘Money I lost, cos you lost!’
‘You’re not supposed to place bets!’ Viviana countered coolly, calmly opening her locker once more.
‘I’m not supposed to lose; not when everyone’s seen you swim like you’re a fish!’
‘Leave her alone.’
Viviana turned, expecting her rescuer to be Aden: but it wasn’t. It was the new boy, the boy she’d seen staring oddly at her from the crowds during the tournament.
Viviana was suddenly infuriated.
Aden rushing to her defence was one thing: some other guy – who’d obviously confused her for some weak-kneed little girl who required saving from a cumbersome thug like Barn – was a different thing entirely.
She brought the ball of her heel down hard on top of the unsuspecting Barn’s foot, catching him in the delicate spot where it arches up into the leg. Eyes watering in agony, Barn groaned, collapsed slightly: and Viviana sharply brought up a stiffly held index finger, catching him in that even more delicate spot that lies beneath the nose.
She pushed up unforgivingly hard with her finger, causing Barn’s eyes to water even more as he tried to rise away from it. Naturally, he found this impossible, as Viviana’s heel was still pushing down heavily on his foot.
‘Did you know,’ she hissed, close to his painfully grimacing face, ‘that I’m pushing up on your nasal bone – and that if I suddenly pushed even a little harder, I could push it right up into what little of your brain exists up there?’
Her eyes were cold, stern, as she intently stared into the petrified Barn’s own eyes.
He couldn’t nod: the pain being exerted by her rigid finger made that extremely unwise.
His eyes watered all the more, pleading for mercy.
Viviana glanced the new boy’s way.
‘You were saying?’ she asked him coolly.
‘Er, leave him alone?’ the boy replied with a wan smile.
*
Chapter 4
God!
Why did people presume she was helpless just because she was a girl?
Sure, she looked like a girl – thank goodness!
But she had an underlying layer of well-toned muscles (including, most importantly, muscles where most people didn’t even realise muscles existed) giving her an athletic agility anyone might envy.
She had no real idea how she’d ended up with a body like this: she was just lucky, she guessed.
The way some people seemed to eat whatever kind of junk they fancied, and yet ended up looking like they were on a top-model’s lettuce and prunes diet. As opposed to those others who did everything right, and yet everything went wrong for them.
Whoever said life was fair?
She couldn’t be bothered with attending the morning’s first class.
She was too wound up.
Too much in ‘Livid Vivid’ mode.
Perhaps that’s what gave her her wiry muscles; the way she was always tensed, flexing them beneath her skin, giving them an almost endless workout.
Out in the air, away from the claustrophobic, crowded confines of the school, she could think more clearly.
Think things through.
Like; who was this new kid, thinking she was some maiden in distress, requiring a white knight on a charger?
Yeah – he was handsome enough. If you were into that kind of look.
That sort of pretty maleness that had you wondering just how well he could pass off as a girl if he donned a long-haired wig.
Whereas Aden – well, he had that sort of crueller look: like, ‘Hey, mess with me at your peril’ kinda hardness.
She liked that.
It made her feel, well; sorta more feminine when she was with him.
*
Not that she had to be with Aden to feel more feminine, of course.
She could do that simply by letting down her hair: loosening it from the tightly drawn-back ponytail she usually pulled it into, letting it all fall softly about her face with a few gentle shakes.
She’d noticed how, when looking at herself within a mirror, that softer cloud of hair somehow magically transformed the sterner angularity of her face into one of more gently contoured curves.
Like a glorious curtain, framing her cheeks, bringing attention to the sparkling intelligence of her eyes.
Well, that’s what she thought, anyway!
Reaching behind and above her shoulders, she deftly dragged off the band holding her hair into its ponytail. With a few shakes of her head, of her hair, she let it all drop softly and gently about her face, like a comforting snowfall.
The strands draping across her face and over her eyes lightly tickled her skin and, as they briefly refracted the sun into a harder glare, made her blink.
In those fleeting seconds of brightness, the sun seemed to be crazily drawing closer, the blazing whiteness of the light abruptly transforming into the sharpest yellow.
A circle of yellow sunlight that delicately struck her in her face.
It took her by surprise, naturally.
And then she laughed: chuckling at her foolishness.
The ‘sun’ fell from her face, allowing her to neatly catch it in her hand.
It was a daisy; a large one, but – of course – no sun.
Certainly, it looked like a sun: the rounded, semi-sphere of yellow, its expanding pure white rays.
A sun in miniature, graced with the sparkling gem of a glistening dew drop.
The ‘Day’s Eye’; called that, she’d recalled reading somewhere, because it opened on a morning, but closed on an evening.
Viviana glanced up, shielding her eyes from the glare of the real sun, wondering where the daisy might have fallen from. High above her, a hawk was soaring across the sky: was he the one responsible for the daisy falling her way?
As if the flight of the hawk had somehow crazily awakened within her a greater awareness of her surroundings, Viviana noticed next a squirrel hiding
within the crook of a nearby tree, such that its wariness could have also been down to the bird of prey’s passing. Whether this were the case or not, as the hawk swept completely out of view, the squirrel at last made its move, darting higher up the tree’s trunk, heading it seemed as high it would be possible to go.
Its hurried passage shook the tree’s many branches, with far more force than Viviana would have expected it to, the morning dew that rested upon the innumerable leaves dislodged and scattering as an airborne mist. Light and cool, the mist fell from the overarching branches and, caught in a whirling breeze, enveloped Viviana in its soft veil.
Within the mist, the branches blanched, sparkled, as if abruptly doused in ice. And then, suddenly, they weren’t the stems of a tree, but the branches of purely white antlers, the antlers of four harts nibbling indifferently at the leaves as if they would carelessly devour every one.
Harts? There weren’t any herds of deer based around here, Viviana realised, wondering if she were simply conjuring these creatures up within her furiously whirling mind.
But then, where was here?
She didn’t recognise any of her surroundings, as if the mist had miraculously led her immediately astray, or at least made everything unrecognisable to her. Far from standing almost directly beneath the widely spreading tree, as she had been only seconds ago, she could have been caught up within its infinitely stretching shoots, the rolling, meandering road she was walking upon just one of countless intertwining branches.
And just a little farther along that road, there was a performing bear, securely chained to a post.
*
Chapter 5
Who could have done this?
Who could do anything so cruel?
As if to humiliate the poor bear even further, it had been forced to wear a decorative large white ruff, its dancing obviously rewarded with honey, much of which was smeared across its snout.
‘Who’d tie you up like this?’ Viviana wondered out loud, glancing about herself in the hope that she might see someone who could explain what was going on.
‘I don’t know,’ the bear answered innocently. ‘I can’t remember how I ended up here at all.’