Chapter 25 Perfectly Straight Teeth #2
Well, I’m escaping like a rabbit. Henry is doing a peculiar limping hop, face twisted in pain. His ankle.
My own steps slow as I realize he won’t be fast enough to outrun the thug. It seems wrong to leave him behind, and yet …
“Go on!” he yells, shooing me away. I meet his eyes and give him a little nod.
Perhaps he only means to be chivalrous—he seemed quite taken with my beauty—but I’m betting that the thug will chase me, so leaving Henry behind might actually give him a chance to limp off somewhere.
If I stay behind, the thug will grab both of us, and what’s the chance that there’s another root cellar with a gnaw-able door around here?
So I run. I have the self-control to not waste time looking back, no matter how desperately I’d like to. The thug’s clamor warns me that he’s still pursuing, and probably gaining on me, so I set my face to the hedge and do my best to fly.
Wings! Now that would have been a useful Gift!
The hedge rises up in front of me and presents the problem of now what? My eyes dart side-to-side, but I don’t have time to waste running around, looking for an opening. Through it is, brambles and all.
I throw myself into the unwelcoming branches and immediately regret it. What did I expect, that they’d part like butter for me? Well, they are not. I console myself with the thought that at least Henry will have a bit more time to slink away.
I squeeze and wriggle myself further into the hedge, grimacing at the sound of ripping fabric. I use an elbow to shove a branch away from my face, hunching my other shoulder up to avoid another that’s threatening to impale me. A shimmy, a push, an embarrassing tearing noise—
But I’m far enough in the hedge that the thug, who’s caught up, is slightly inconvenienced. While I’m jammed sideways among the branches, attempting to weasel my way to the other side and freedom, he pauses and glowers at the bushes in general and me in particular.
“You’re a troublesome one,” he grunts. I break a narrow branch and gain another inch.
He parts the branches with one of his meaty arms, or tries to, but finds that they’re no more hospitable to him than they were to me. I don’t bother suppressing my smile when one of the narrower, whippy ones escapes his hold and snaps back across his cheek.
The thug growls.
My smile drops. No point antagonizing a man who is already annoyed, and will very soon have me in his custody again: this time, without much hope of egress.
But I’m not going to give up. I’m far enough through the hedge now that there’s no point in stopping; I’m bound to face the branches whichever way I go, so I may as well press on. If the thug gets ahold of me and drags me back through, it will be uncomfortable.
A particularly thick branch stops me. It’s too big for me to push aside, and too crowded to go around. I wriggle down into a crouch and contort my body to squeeze underneath the twisted limbs.
My limbs will be quite as twisted, if I ever get out of this. What was I thinking?
I manage to get underneath, but am presented with a problem: there’s no way I can stand back up.
Here, in the middle of the hedge, the branches are far too intertwined to separate.
If I could part them far enough for me to stand, I’d be unable to move either forward or backward, embraced by a deathly tight mass.
Well, I’d used my teeth to get myself out of the cellar, and if I can do that … maybe I can do this, too. The crashing of the thug proves that he’s still struggling through behind me, but the steady stream of profanities suggests that he’s not finding it any easier than I am.
There’s a little clearance, down below the lowest branches—certainly not enough, but a little. I slither forward, bit by bit, on my belly, ignoring the twigs that catch in my hair and rake along my back. This gown will be sliced irreparably before I’m through, but I’m making progress. Of a sort.
The thug is still swearing. I can’t turn my head far enough to see if the imprecations are helping him, but the thought gives me an idea. “I’m graceful,” I whisper. “Melusine gave me Grace.”
Perhaps it’s my imagination, but it seems to help. I think I slide a fraction further on my next wriggle.
“I’m a skilled dancer,” I continue. “What is this, but dancing with bushes?”
It’s my imagination, surely—the branches don’t actually bend themselves out of my way. That would be ridiculous. I’m only imagining that when I duck my head to avoid a particularly thorny bough, it respectfully moves the other direction.
I’m addled from hunger and nights spent sleeping on the mountains. On the other hand, if it’s working, it’s working.
“I’m nimble.” I gain a few more inches. “I’m poised.” Or at least, as poised as one can be while swimming through the undersides of a thicket. “And Lem needs me to get through here.”
I don’t know why I added this last bit. It has no effect on the branches—not that I’m claiming that anything else I said did, either, because wouldn’t that be ridiculous?—but it certainly has a strengthening effect on me. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t believe it.
Lem needs me. So I scramble and scrape and mutter things about grace and elegance and ignore the struggling thug behind me, and bit by bit, I squirm my way beneath the hedge.
I’m nearly through—nearly there—just another little bit to go—
And then I realize that on the other side of the hedge is a fence.