Before the Sky Fell

[ Sequel ] Sneak Peek - Book Two

Sequel Sneak Peek

[ 1 ] Conversant

Anaeyl never wanted to bring a child into the world like this. Let alone two children, separated by the flimsy membrane of an alternate world. All she could think, as she watched the woman who looked so much like her give birth was, where is my baby?

Slimy cave walls surrounded her like a womb. Green tentacles stuck to the cave’s sides, creeping out of the cracks and fissures. Anaeyl lay on the stone surface, watching the blood pool around the screaming woman. The piercing shrieks echoed off the rocks.

She had the same hair as Anaeyl, the same smooth skin and curved features. Even her ring was the same, the one Henderson Callow had given to her on her wedding night. But it can’t be me. That can’t be my baby.

The other woman threw her hands against the rocky floor. “Help me, please!”

Anaeyl shuffled to the woman’s side. She grabbed her hand. She couldn’t help but stare at the infant, so similar to the one that she had birthed moments ago, just before the blood pooled around the device and her world turned black as night, then gray as stone.

“My baby,” the woman cried. “Does she live?”

Anaeyl reached down and put her hands beneath the fragile newborn. “It’s a boy,” she said, holding her breath as she waited for a similar sign of life from the small thing. His stomach wasn’t rising up and down as one would hope, and his lips were a blue darker than the water-filled chasm in the center of the cave. She couldn’t bear to tell the woman, to tell herself, that the child was stillborn.

“Please,” the woman said, lifting her head to peer at the lifeless infant. “Please save my baby.”

Anaeyl couldn’t hold back her tears. The woman’s head dropped to the stone. The woman blinked repeatedly, licked her lips, clenched her fists. A quiet came over the cave. It wasn’t a peaceful quiet, but an eerie, stomach-sinking quiet. Anaeyl touched the infant’s neck, hoping, praying for a pulse. None came. “I don’t know what to do.”

The woman’s sobs died down. She blinked again and ran her fingers along Anaeyl’s hand. “Am I dreaming? You look so much like me… so frail… so familiar. Was it the device? What have we done? Please save my baby.”

Anaeyl bent down and pressed her lips against the newborn’s mouth. She puffed in and out, funneling air into his throat. She overlapped her fingers and pushed against his tiny stomach, the same way her father, Malachi, had taught her when she was young. Her tears fell onto the infant’s arms. Live. Please. Live. When his breath didn’t come and the hopelessness didn’t leave, she removed her fingers from his chest.

It was then that Anaeyl spotted the old man, crouched in the corner like a child scared of ghosts. His white hair fell over his eyes. He shook violently and tapped his ancient fingers against his knees.

“You,” Anaeyl said. She stood. Blood dripped down her thighs. Pain pierced her stomach. “You did this.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Frankford Millstone said. “It wasn’t supposed to work.” He clawed at the cave walls and pushed himself up. “Is the child gone?”

The quiet left the cave when Anaeyl screamed at him. “You did this!” She walked over to him, her bloody feet slapping against the cave floor.

Frankford shook his head as if he had gone crazy. He fingered his hair from around his eyes. “No, no you don’t understand. We can go back. To the other world. I can figure it out. We can go back and save her. We can go back and save the baby.”

“There is no back! You did this!”

When Anaeyl reached him, a frenzied rage took over her. She beat him with her fists, clawed at his ragged clothing, and felt his sweat spatter onto her face. He gasped and started sobbing, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. It was his idea to conduct trials on The Maker. It was his idea to play the role of the gods. It was his idea not to tell her husband that she was pregnant. She hit him harder. Frankford Millstone was the one who told her fantasies of magical worlds, of giant monsters that ate rocks and portals to new lands. She kicked his shins as she cried, but then he fell to the floor.

She jolted back and put her hands over her mouth, staring at him as he clenched his chest. His sobs turned into gasps for air. Moments later he passed. The cave was silent again, but for her labored breath. The only other noise was the pit-pat of her blood as it dripped down her thighs and splattered onto the cave floor. Anaeyl fell to the ground as well. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth, thinking of all his promises and all her hopes that he would deliver them.

She should have never played with the device, not that far into her pregnancy. Where her own baby was, she could not say. She had transferred herself into the other world and knew no way to return. The cave looked the same as the one she had come from. Millstone was in that one too. She had taken one last look at her baby before the blood reached the device and Frankford Millstone shouted. Then she was suddenly in another cave, but the same, with a woman who was very different, but the same, and a baby that was just as precious, but dead.

The wind whistled through the opening of the cave and clouds rolled by the gap. Everything still lives out there, but not in here. Anaeyl removed her hands from her knees and laid down. Blood was still coming from between her thighs. If she died of blood loss, so can I. She had to do something, but she couldn’t bring herself to stand. She couldn’t bring herself to do much of anything.

Then Anaeyl heard a whimper. She pushed herself up and turned back towards the woman who looked so much like her, who was her, in a way, but the woman did not move. Another whimper. She nearly fainted when she saw the tiny finger twitch. It was the faintest sign of life, but it was life nonetheless, and that’s all that mattered.