Chapter 21 #2
Where were the buildings, the roads, and the people? Or, if he’d brought her somewhere more secluded, even the grass, the trees, or a river? Instead of all those familiar sights, there were only what looked like white, fluffy clouds where the ground should have been.
“What the hell is going on?”
She raced along the glass, leaving a trail of moisture where her breath had steamed up the panes, but however far she ran, there was more of the same; stretching blue nothingness and the immediacy of cumulus clouds, surrounded by their wispy cirrus counterparts.
“This isn’t possible.” She shook her head, her feet pausing. “We can’t only be surrounded by clouds and sky. Where’s the Earth?”
But leaning against the window, she remembered something that Kronos had said to Shelley before she’d fallen asleep.
He’d told her to wait by the door to the cloud garden, making the place sound like a recreational space where they might take tea in the afternoons.
Perhaps what she was seeing outside was only another of Kronos’ illusions, the view beyond the glass no more credible than any of the other impossible things she’d seen him do.
It wasn’t really sky. It was a garden, but he’d created the mirage that there were only clouds outside.
The idea ricocheted in her head. The clouds couldn’t be real, but the cloud garden he’d spoken about was. That was why he’d instructed Shelley to wait there for him. She presumed that exit was where they’d departed from.
Somewhere, there was a door that led to that garden, and where there was a door, there was a way out.
Adrenaline flooded her system as her gaze darted along the huge expanse of glass. Shelley had waited somewhere, which meant the door had to be close by.
Her feet were moving again, and she stumbled forward, her fingers skimming the glass the way they’d once done in her suffocating cell. She didn’t know how long she searched for before the exit came into sight, but as she approached the entryway, she was breathless with anticipation.
This is it!
She didn’t know why Kronos hadn’t come back, where he was, or how she’d deal with the idea of never seeing him again, but in that moment, there was only the prospect of blessed freedom. Staring into the blue beyond the glass, she yearned for that even more than the liberation of his touch.
She wanted her life back, needed to detox from whatever he’d given her and figure out what came next. She hadn’t forgotten the paradoxical pleasure of the last few hours, but whatever was waiting on the other side of that door was suddenly more important.
The doorway was cut into the glass, its presence noted only by the thin white outline of its frame, but to Kris, it looked like heaven.
Reaching it, she ran her hands along the frame as far as she could stretch, searching for any sign of a lock or a handle.
However closely she skimmed the surface, though, she saw no evidence of a way in or out.
“Damn it!’ she hollered.
It had to be a door. He’d called it one, hadn’t he? So where was the lever that granted her access to the outside?
She scrutinized the framework a second time, certain there was something she was missing, but when the latest search turned up nothing new, the anxiety inside her spiraled.
Maybe Kronos called it ‘a door’, but it didn’t truly act as one?
She’d seen him enter and leave rooms without using doors numerous times. Hell, she’d traveled that way with him herself, although she still couldn’t fathom how the mystery had worked.
What if the framework she’d found was only a false hope and not actually a door at all?
What if there was no way out?
Frustration bloomed at the desolate idea. She was so close that the concept of having that opportunity ripped from her at the last minute was more than cruel.
“Come on!’ she screeched, kicking out at the glass with the ball of her foot as heat gathered on her cheeks. “Do I need some sort of fucking magic word?”
She stilled at that, the concept burgeoning. It sounded preposterous to her, but based on what she’d ascertained about Kronos, maybe that was precisely what was required. He could have the door rigged with artificial intelligence to respond to a certain trigger word.
The more she mulled on the concept, the more likely it sounded.
A man who called himself Kronos, who fancied himself as more than mortal, and who created the illusion that he had magical abilities… what word would that man say to open his door?
She twisted, looking out into his so-called cloud garden.
She didn’t know much about Greek mythology, but she recognized the name Kronos as one of its deities.
Maybe the word she needed would be Greek.
Not that the idea helped Kris much. She most definitely was not Greek, and neither had she studied its ancient histories, but her friend, Ana, was from Greece and she’d studied Classics at undergraduate level.
Ana had also attempted to teach Kris a little of her language.
Leaning against the glass, she closed her eyes, pulling the blanket tighter as she tried to recall what Ana had told her.
“She told me how to say the word open.” Her eyes blinked open with excitement, and she spun to announce the declaration. “Oh my God, she told me!” Catching her breath, she shifted her weight and tried to think. “What the hell was it?”
It took a couple of moments of panic for the answer to come to her, but when it did, it sprang forward like the green shoots of spring.
“Aνοιχτ?!” She screeched the word, unsure if she’d pronounced it correctly, yet thrilled that she remembered. “Aνοιχτ?!”
She called out the word again, and there was a gust of cold air behind her. Heart in her mouth, she turned on her heels, her eyes widening when she realized the rectangle of glass that had once prevented her from leaving had now entirely vanished.
The door to the cloud garden was open.