William guided him to a large overhang of rock that jutted out like a boxers chin. It offered plenty of cool shadows for Neanna to rest in. Laying her on the ground, William peeled back her cloak like a nurse removing a bandage from a wound. Wafts of smoke curled upwards from her skin, which looked blistered and sore.

Knocking her black coloured fringe from her eyes, Zach gazed down at her scorched face. Zach knew for the second time since their meeting, she had risked her own life to save his.

‘Will she be okay?’ Zach whispered not wanting to disturb her.

William looked at her through his magnified lenses and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She was out in the sun for longer than I’ve known before. Her skin looks pretty raw. Time will tell, I guess. All we can do is wait.’

William slumped down in the shade and pulled some of the lunar bear meat from his bag. He unfolded the leaves that it had been wrapped in and began gnawing on it. Zach sat opposite him and rubbed his wrists which were red and sore from where the handcuffs had been.

‘Not going to eat?’ William mumbled, swirling the meat around the inside of his mouth.

‘I’d prefer mine cooked instead of raw,’ Zach grimaced as William smacked his lips together and then licked his fingers clean.

‘I could always get a fire going,’ William suggested. ‘There’s plenty of deadwood lying around this place from shipwrecks.’

Watching William pick stringy pieces of meat from between his crooked teeth, Zach shook his head and said:

‘Nah, you’re okay. I’ll eat later.’

They sat without speaking and listened to the sound of the thick black waves crashing against the beach. Zach broke the silence and said, ‘well, we’re back where we started I guess.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Back on the beach, with no way of crossing the sea.’

‘We’ve crossed it,’ William said,

‘How can you be so sure?’

Pointing one long finger into the distance, William said, ‘see those four big shadows in the distance?’

Zach looked in the direction that William was pointing. Way off in the distance four enormous towers soared up into the sky like giants trying to reach out and touch the clouds.

‘They’re the search towers that surround the Prison of Eternal Despair.’

‘I thought you said that it was built underground?’

‘I said the prisoners were kept underground,’ William said, and if it were possible his eyes grew even bigger behind those lenses.

‘So who’s this prisoner?’ Zach asked as Neanna murmured from the corner of the overhang.

‘He has the key,’ William reminded him.

‘Yeah, I know that,’ Zack said. ‘But who is he?’

William placed the leaves on the ground beside him and folded his arms over his knees, which he had drawn up beneath his chin.

‘So who’s the prisoner?’ Zach asked again.

‘He’s my granddad,’ William said.

‘Oh,’ Zach gasped. ‘What did he do to get himself sent to prison?’

‘Nothing,’ William said, without looking up. ‘He got sent there because of me.’

‘Because of you?’ Zach said confused. ‘What did you do?’

‘I opened the box,’ William said.

Zach sat and shook his head. ‘But I don’t understand William. Why would opening that box get your Granddad thrown into prison?’

William raised his head and stared into Zach’s eyes. ‘Because if I hadn’t have opened it, none of this would’ve happened.’

‘None of what?’

‘Everything,’ William said. ‘If I had done as my dad had instructed then we wouldn’t be sitting here right now having this conversation. My father wouldn’t be blind, Endra wouldn’t be being eaten by the desert, Neanna’s people wouldn’t have been cursed, mine wouldn’t have fled to the snowstorm mountains and your sister and my Queen wouldn’t be dying!’

Zach sat and tried to comprehend what it was that William had told him. ‘I can’t believe that you could be responsible for everything that has gone bad in our two worlds. It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem possible.’

‘I’ll tell ya what I did. Then you’ll see why I had to come and find the key if I am to stand any chance of putting right everything that has gone so wrong. But more than anything I want to hear my father say that he forgives me.’

Chapter 26

The blistering sun sat at its highest point above the Onyx Sea and its rays sparkled on the waves like glitter. William rolled Neanna to the furthest corner of the rocky overhang and tightened the cloak about her. Content that she was well covered from the light of the sun, William slumped against the rocky wall and looked at Zach through his thick lenses. Although William was tall, muscular and not only looked older but seemed wiser than Zach, like an older brother, he now looked smaller, lost – fragile somehow.

‘My dad was an ironsmith by trade. The best in the whole of Endra. His father was one before him and it was hoped that one day I would follow them both in the family business.

‘On the same day every year the Queen would summon my dad and granddad to the Splinter. Knowing how skilled a craftsman they were, she entrusted them to repair the seals on the box that contained the heart of Endra.’

‘Why did the seals need to be repaired?’ Zach asked, spinning the chamber of one of his crossbows with his thumb.

‘They call whatever is in the box the heart of Endra. But one thing’s for sure, it’s powerful and after a time it erodes the box. The Queen was fearful that its power may escape from it. Therefore once a year, if it needed repairing or not, my dad and granddad would be entrusted to check its seals and carry out any repairs. My granddad was also a gifted locksmith, and it would be his task to cut a new key and lock for the box. There was only ever to be the one key, the Queen forbid a second to be made.’

Holstering his crossbow, Zach lent forward and said, ‘so where do you fit into all of this?’

‘I shouldn’t have been a part of this at all. Just my dad and granddad were trusted to enter the Splinter and work on the box. But every year I pleaded with my dad to take me with him and every year, keeping his promise to the Queen, he refused. So one year, I snuck aboard my dad’s stagecoach, and without him knowing, I went to the Splinter.’

William toyed with the hair that sprouted from his chin. He remembered how hungry he had become whilst hiding under the pile of rough sacks in the rear of the carriage for the three days and nights it had taken to cross the wastelands to the Splinter.

He had hidden there as the smell of roasted Bloat meat had wafted from the campfire his dad had made. On the second night, William’s stomach had growled so loud with hunger, he feared that his father and his granddad would discover him.

William lay beneath the sacks and wiped the saliva from his mouth with the back of his hands. Closing his eyes he imagined what could be inside the box that his family had been entrusted to repair for so many years. He remembered how on his dad’s return from previous trips he had hung around his giant legs and begged to know what was inside.

‘Please dad, tell me. What did you see inside the box?’

Ruffling up his hair with his huge hands, Warden would look down at him with his big brown eyes and smiled. ‘The Heart of Endra....or so they say.’

‘But was does it look like?’ William would howl.

‘Your granddad and me don’t get to open the box, the queen forbids it. I mend any of the boxes seals and your grandfather fits a new lock and key. Then we come home and forget all about it.’

‘But don’t you want to know what’s inside the box?’ William pestered.

Warden hunkered down so he was at William’s height and looked into his pale green eyes.

‘Sometimes in life you don’t always get to find out what’s inside the box. Just like you don’t always get answers to all your questions’

Then, saying not another word about it, Warden would get up and unpacked the stagecoach.

William lay in the dark at the back of the carriage and dreamt of what could be inside the box.

On the third day the Stagecoach began to slow, and poking his head from beneath the sacks, William peered through the coaches windows as it passed through the enormous gates of the Splinter. The gates towered so far into the sky that he lost sight of them amongst the clouds. The Splinter was surrounded by a complex maze of white cobbled streets, which were lined with a thousand different kinds of shops, selling everything from the most delicious looking candy to succulent loins of meat. William was amazed to discover that there appeared to be a secret city built behind the gates of the Splinter.

Warden and William’s granddad guided the stagecoach deeper into this city and towards the Splinter itself. They passed a thriving market where traders sold mouth-watering looking fruit, plants, animals and medicines. There were street-side conjures, dancers and bands playing the sweetest of music.

Some of the people that milled around the market place were dressed in clothes of the like William had never seen before. They wore short-sleeved shirts with odd looking words across the front. Some of these read ‘Nike’, ‘I New York’ and others ‘Adidas’. Their legs were covered in a blue material similar to his own but different – somehow cheaper. On their feet they wore flimsy looking shoes that had rubber soles and motifs on the sides.

As William stared wide-eyed from his hiding place, he got the overwhelming feeling that this was a happy place – a place of peace and tranquillity.

Warden steered the stagecoach away from the main plaza and up a long winding strip to the rear of the Splinter. The vehicle came to a halt outside a large set of wooden doors. William listened from the dark as someone approached the stagecoach.

‘Has it been a year already since I last saw you?’ a voice asked.

Pressing one eye to a gap in the carriage window, William saw a short, squat man standing and looking up at Warden.