Week Six Blog The Bear at the Door: Jack

 Jack’s legs were still milling in the air when he saw the treetops below him.  He had been a few feet behind and to the right of Layla when she dissolved into the shimmering air that moved like water just before the white mountain cliffs. 

She was leaning into her half running stride and it was her head that first entered into the undulating green leaves, then her shoulders, her arms holding Ashe and, lastly her right arm trailing behind the rest of her body pulling Lillian in with her. Jack stopped moving his legs and looked below, through the full lush boughs of the tree he saw Layla lying on the lush green grass with Ashe on top of her chest.  He called out hoarsely.  Layla put her hand on Ashe’s back to comfort him and her head turned toward where Lillian lie, motionless. Layla reached out her arm and touched the edge of Lillian’s pink and white top.  Jack called out, loudly this time.  Layla closed her eyes and let her head fall back. His voice echoed back to him. Jack felt the book, cinched under his belt.  He held onto to the bottom edge of the time portal with both hands. 

He wanted to adjust the book safely, but if he let go with one hand, he could not keep a grip on the portal.  The book slid up on his stomach and he grasped it thinking it was more important to preserve the book and wondering what it would feel like to fall through the air and have the tree branches break his fall. 

He would break bones if he survived the fall at all. As his fingers touched the rough wine-coloured binding of the book with his right hand, his left began to slip with the weight of his body. 

He hung in mid-air, suspended. He moved his legs in an instinctive gesture to push himself up and remained where he was, above the treetops. Jack called out again, angry and frustrated to Layla.  Even if she could not see him hidden by the tree leaves, she could hear him. Layla lay still, a breeze blew a wisp of her long hair across her forehead and carried his voice back to him. He looked at the book his father had always taken care to tuck behind the bookshelf each time he opened it to read and scribbling quickly on the pages, something to be kept away from view rather than displayed with the other coloured bound books and clock on the shelf.  He opened the book.  The first white page was blank, so was the next.  All the pages were blank.  Jack’s stomach tightened. He was preserving a book of blank pages and he wished he could be down next to Layla.  He wanted to throw it at her to show her what a stupid thing he had risked going back into the house for while the soldiers were rounding up friends and neighbours, light fire to the church.  Their father had been hiding a useless book.  He wanted to reach out and wake up Lillian from her immobile sleep. He did not understand any of this and was compelled to stay in mid-air while his anger at himself grew and he saw Layla, Ashe and Lillian a few hundred feet away oblivious to his calls.  At that moment, he fell through the air and landed on his back on the opposite side of Lillian.  Layla jerked herself up when he thudded down next to them gasping, the wind knocked out of him and one hand on their father’s book.