The Veridian Gate

The damp chill of the Yorkshire moors vanished in a single stride, replaced by an intoxicating draft scented with crushed cardamom and ozone. Eleanor staggered forward, expecting the suck of peat beneath her boots, but her soles struck pale, chiseled marble veined with luminous cerulean moss. Tiny, bell-like chimes rang out beneath her weight, vibrating through her woolen trousers. When she whipped around to catch her balance, the foggy hillside was gone. In its place stretched a sheer, impossible precipice falling away into an endless ocean of lavender clouds. Great moss-draped landmasses drifted weightlessly in the violet abyss, crowned with broken colonnades and cascading waterfalls whose spray dissolved into silver mist before reaching the depths below. Ribbons of solid light bridged the floating archipelagos, humming like plucked cello strings. Eleanor clutched her brass cartographer's compass to her chest, her knuckles whitening. She looked down at the instrument's glass face, seeking the familiar reassurance of magnetic north. The needle was not spinning wildly as broken compasses do; it was locked rigidly downward, trembling toward the fathomless sea of clouds, while the b…