I Can See Clearly Now Read Online Free Page B

yourself she
had eyes and a mouth.
    Her voice was a
rustle of autumn leaves as she said, “Bravo. You’re just in time
for dinner. Would you like something to drink?”
    Rel climbed
over the stone sink and let himself down onto the floor, carefully
avoiding the white tiles. With his boots on, he had to place his
feet diagonally across the black tiles. He said, “Sorry, sister, I
came to feed you, I don’t really have time to chat.”
    He expected her
to protest, but instead she simply said, “You’d better get cooking,
then, hadn’t you?”
    Rel took a deep
breath, then walked over to the hearth and sat down on the fire. He
stared at the mad child’s face; if you thought about the fire too
much, first-realm logic took over and you burned. Flames rose
around the hearth, though, eating at the walls and floor of the
bungalow but not touching anything alive.
    Rel closed his
eyes, sat back, and took a step forward. He almost imagined he
could hear the mad child’s scream of frustration in the rush of air
that carried him up the chimney, but even that was strangely muted.
When he opened his eyes, he was walking along the narrow plume of
smoke from a chimney and hearth that stood, bereft of their house,
on the edge of a cliff. The smoke blew out across the chasm - the
bottom was covered in what looked like a lush, dark-blue carpet -
and Rel blew with it, each step carrying him dozens of feet.
    The far side of
the chasm passed by beneath, and Rel let himself lean backward
until he drifted in a river of the fine strands of smoke. The river
parted and he fell towards the stony ground, but all it took was
remembering that he had done this before, and he landed in a pool
of water - First Realm logic said that if he’d survived the fall
first time, he had to survive it this time.
    Logic fatigue
made his head throb as the well started to drain, sucking him down
with it, and then there was just the breathless rush, half-drowning
as he shot down the pipe, sometimes smothered by the water as it
fell with him, sometimes floating on it. Twice he bounced hard off
the side of the tube in sharp corners, but if anything that made
the headache recede slightly.
    It was when he
found himself floating, upside-down, in water that flowed along the
top of the pipe while the bottom half opened to show the field
below that the ache at the front of his brain started to pound. The
pipe curved around through about half the required dimensions, and
suddenly he was stumbling onto a tiny ledge, staggering forward and
pressing himself to the cliff face as gallons of water lashed at
him.
    Behind him was
an open expanse of blue that could only be called sky, except that
it went all the way round from above his head to below the ledge.
In front, the cliff went on as far as he could see in every way,
broken only by the plain steel door that opened onto the ledge.
    You could open
the door, according to Dora, but that way didn’t go to the Court.
Instead, Rel spread his arms and reimagined them as wings. A
handful of feathers, freckled with brown spots and tipped with
shimmering green - he had to work to get that colour; Dora’s
feathers were an exquisite iridescent blue naturally - drifted to
the floor as he flexed, then sprang forward, straight at the
cliff.
    Air caught his
pinions as the cliff ghosted past, as solid as mist, and he swooped
with the feeling of great bags of wind hanging from his shoulders.
For a blessed moment, there was no Second Realm, no Clearsight, no
headache; just a slow, spiralling glide down to the Court. Rel
fought the desire to climb a little and prolong the flight. There
wasn’t time. There never was, but someday...
    Landing
snatched the thought away from him, as he stretched his feet down
towards the weathervane on the Tower of Birds. Boots struck iron,
wings became arms, and swoop became fall. He tumbled down the
sharply-sloping tiles and caught the edge. His head chose that
moment to throb, and he dropped to the walkway with