A Deal in the Dark #2
I felt as though my head and limbs weighed far too much. I pushed myself to my knees as Nella reached for me, clearly worried I might collapse. Lumbering to my feet, I felt my quickened heartbeat and the sweat drip down my face, which I assumed was the onset of a fever.
“We’ll just take it slow until we find a path out.
It’s bound to lead us to a town where we can find maybe a doctor or a healer?
” Nella looked around, assessing our surroundings, and it broke me to see the girl I wanted to protect more than anything needing to be the one protecting me.
I swore to myself that I would get through this.
We walked on as evening turned to night, and I worried we were heading even deeper into the woods, away from any path that would lead us out. We’d been in the forest now for nearly a full day with no food. This was going to turn dire quickly.
A nagging feeling like we were being followed had me looking back over my shoulder every other minute, each turn of my neck making my half vision spot, but I could hear no footsteps, no breaking twigs, no breath of wind, not even a bird’s chirp or a squirrel’s jump from tree limb to tree limb.
The forest was too quiet—forests were never silent. This felt…wrong.
I looked up and around us, finding nothing but small shards of moonlight breaking through the canopy’s unnaturally still leaves.
“Nella,” I whispered, “does this feel off to you?”
She looked up, just as I had. We stilled and stood back to back, looking for any sign of where we should go—or not go—as a large black bird sailed overhead.
It stopped and landed on a thick branch just off to my right, only a few feet above us.
I swore it stared at us as it cocked its head from side to side, close enough to see its glassy eyes even in the darkness.
It flew up and away a short distance before landing on another branch a few trees away. It again stared at us, and after a few seconds, crowed.
I looked around at Nella and asked with a fever-dream laugh, “Do you get the feeling that the bird has been following us?”
“There are so many birds in the forest, no way we’ve only been seeing this one,” Nella said.
“I haven’t seen any birds other than black ones, and no other animals for that matter.”
She considered my words for another moment as the world pulsated around me in my delirium. The bird crowed once more, louder this time.
“I feel like it’s calling to us.”
The familiar soothing, flickering heat was building in my chest again. Then again, I was likely imagining things.
I took a step toward the bird, but Nella grabbed my arm.
“Naci! We don’t know that’s the right way! We can’t just follow a bird!”
But as I took another step toward the bird, it crowed again, as if in encouragement.
So I kept walking. Nella followed, still holding onto my arm, until we stopped directly under the bird.
It turned its head to focus a beady eye on us before it took off once more, landing again on a branch several trees ahead of us.
We followed, and it crowed. It became obvious the bird wanted us to follow.
I found my pain lessening by the minute.
If I’d been of sound mind, I would have known I was likely slipping into shock.
The next time the black bird took off, it didn’t land. Instead, it wove left and right ahead of us to match our walking speed. On we went, following the bird until we found a small clearing. It landed on a branch at the edge and just watched us.
“Are you trying to lead us somewhere?” I asked it. I wasn’t sure if my voice sounded as loopy as I felt.
The way it stared was…jarring, like it saw more than just two girls stumbling through the woods, like it was more sentient than the average bird.
Its only response came as a tilt of its head.
It looked the opposite direction from where we stood and took off at the exact moment we heard a terrifying noise sound through the forest, like a cross between a high-pitched scream and a low, throaty growl—like it was two voices but somehow fused as one, separate but combined.
It set my every nerve on edge and made the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand straight up.
Reality crashed over my foggy brain, the returning adrenaline blocking out the fever-induced lightness. The voice seemed to come from everywhere. I didn’t know which direction to retreat.
Had that damned bird led us into a trap?
Nella tensed beside me and shifted closer with a sharp intake of breath.
The wind picked up around our feet, swirling in a circle, lifting the leaves from the ground in a wide vortex.
Another…wail was the best way to describe it, echoed around us.
This time, it sounded closer. Was it a banshee?
Were wailing banshees even real? It was the first terrifying thought that came to mind at the sound, but I was pretty sure they weren’t real.
My mind felt clearer. The pain was just a background distraction I found I could ignore in this desperate situation.
I knew enough about the fae from school, but not much about the creatures that lived in their lands, bound by the invisible border constructed by a fae king long ago—allegedly.
Mortals had no way of knowing if such a force existed, as we couldn’t sense magic.
So we went on the word of the cruel king that he was protecting the mortals from the fae creatures we knew nothing about.
I suppose the fact that insane mythical creatures hadn’t turned up in our mortal town so close to the border meant that there was likely at least some truth to the magical barrier.
The thing in the forest continued to wail.
The sound inched closer, but every time I contemplated running in one direction, the next wail seemed to come from where I had planned on going, making my panic reach a crescendo.
We were left stumbling around, bumping into each other in a small circle, feeling very vulnerable.
The sound was making my ears throb to the point where I had to let go of Nella to clasp my hands over them.
She dropped to her knees behind me as fear took over and propelled me.
I dropped next to her and wrapped her in my arms as she screamed.
Releasing my own ears doubled the pain pressing on my eardrums and seemed to push into my actual brain, feeling like it was swelling and pressing against my skull and ready to explode.