Under Zenith by Shannen Crane Camp Page B

I could observe, the grassy hill I was perched on didn’t drop off into a cliff. It simply ended. As if the entire hill were floating in midair.
    “This hill-- ”
    “Island,” Hayden corrected.
    “Island,” I said, trying the word on for size, but not quite liking the description for our current environment. “It’s…what? Floating?”
    “Like I said Casper , I don’t make up the rules. This place is all you.”
    “But when would I ever imagine up a floating island? It doesn’t make any sense,” I asked, standing with him and backing away from the edge carefully.
    “Your cousin Reagan was playing a video game when you went to visit her in Oregon a few years back and you saw it there,” Hayden told me, reporting back details of my life in such a matter-of-fact way that I almost believed it wasn’t weird.
    “How did you-- ”
    “I already told you. I’m your Guide. I know things.”              
    “Except what you did before you got here,” I said.
    I knew it was a low blow, but I was so sick of his smug grin that I had to do something to put him in his place.
    “We’re going to be late for your second task,” he answered simply.
    It was obvious  t hat he liked me even less than I liked him and simply wanted to get the tasks over with as soon as possible so that he could get rid of me.
    Of course I didn’t understand why he didn’t just let me fall off the edge of the island. That would have saved him a lot of trouble in the long run. Then again, if his job was to get me to my Destination, I guess he had to follow those rules no matter how little he cared for me. He had to do his job the best he could.
    “Shouldn’t we be walking a little slower so we don’t fall off this island and die?” I asked Hayden in a sing song voice.
    The f og was so thick that I knew by the time we saw a drop off it would be too late. We would have just walked casually to our deaths…our second deaths I guess.
    “If you hadn’t taken a little detour this morning , we wouldn’t have to walk so fast now,” he answered.
    “I thought I heard something.”
    “Great, now you’ve gone nuts. Normally we wait until the last task for that bit to kick in, but it’s good that you’re getting an early start on it,” he said dryly.
    The dewy grass squeaked under our feet and I suddenly wished I could take off my cowboy boots and just enjoy the less than sunny day, rather than following a grumpy British guy to a task that would probably force me to do all sorts of unpleasant things.
    “Who did you hear?” he asked after a few minutes of us walking in silence.
    To say that I was surprised to hear Hayden ask me a personal question was the understatement of the century. I wasn’t sure what his angle was, but I knew he couldn’t just be asking to be nice. It wasn’t like him.
    “I thought I heard my mom,” I told him timidly. I didn’t want to sound too crazy. “And then my brother.”
    Hayden didn’t say anything to my remarks; he simply kept up his impossible pace that required me to do an awkward half jog by his side.
    “Well?” I said in annoyance.
    “Well, what?”
    “Well, what does that mean?”
    “That you’re crazy? I don’t know,” he said, sounding much more like his old self again.
    “Ugh. What is that, your new catch phrase?” I asked. “’I don’t know.’ ‘I don’t know’,” I said in the best imitation of his voice that I could muster.
    It was a pretty awful imitation. My British accent wasn’t exactly up to scratch.
    He didn’t respond (surprise, surprise), but instead kept walking in silence.
    The fog was slowly lessening and I could just make out the hazy surroundings that were veiled in mystery only moments before. From what I could tell (and I couldn’t tell much), it looked like we were surrounded by a number of floating islands just like the one we were currently standing on.
    Each one kind of resembled an ice cream cone of earth with a grassy hill on top; a