Chapter 55- please
The forest swallows me whole.
The moment I break past the edge of the camp and stumble beneath the trees, the world changes.
The open dark of the road disappears behind me, replaced by something tighter, denser, hungrier.
Branches weave overhead like fingers locking together, blotting out the moon in broken pieces.
The air turns damp and cold. The ground softens beneath my feet in some places and becomes treacherous in others, roots twisting up from the earth like traps laid by the forest itself.
I run anyway.
I don't know where I'm going.
I don't know if I'm even moving in the right direction.
All I know is that if I stop if I so much as hesitate they will catch me.
And if they catch me, this was all for nothing.
Elias throwing himself at that guard.
The way his broken body still found enough strength to move.
The way his lips formed that one word.
Run.
I hear it now with every ragged breath I drag into my lungs.
Run.
The trees slash at me as I push through them.
Thin branches whip across my face and shoulders, catching in my hair, clawing at my skin, tearing what remains of my gown into useless ribbons.
Twigs snap beneath my feet, too loud, far too loud, each sound feeling like a flare thrown into the dark to mark where I am.
My body is already failing me.
My legs are weak from hunger, from bruises, from too many nights without rest and too many days spent in fear. My wrists burn where the rope peeled skin away. My scalp still throbs from where Isaac dragged me backward by my braid. Every breath hurts. Every step feels slower than it should.
But fear makes a body lie to itself.
It tells aching limbs they can still move.
It tells a broken chest it can still breathe.
It tells a hunted girl she is not finished yet.
So I run harder.
Behind me, the forest erupts.
Voices.
Boots.
Men crashing through the brush with no care for silence now that they know where I went. The shouts split through the dark, too close, too loud, carrying between the trees until they seem to come from everywhere at once.
"She went this way!"
"Spread out!"
"Don't let her get away!"
One voice rises above the others, angrier, sharper, full of the kind of rage that only humiliation breeds.
Isaac.
My stomach turns, but my feet do not stop.
My body begs to slow down. My lungs are already burning, my breath tearing out of me in broken pieces, but I force myself forward. I throw one hand out to catch the trunk of a tree as I nearly slide on wet leaves, use it to keep myself upright, then lurch onward again.
The forest is too close.
That is what frightens me most.
Not the dark.
Not the men behind me.
The closeness.
The way the branches lean inward, the way the undergrowth catches at my ankles, the way every path seems to narrow the moment I choose it. It feels as though the woods are not opening for me but folding around me, boxing me in, trapping me inside their breath.
The air is too damp, too thin, too full of the smell of earth and decay. My pulse is everywhere inside my throat, inside my ears, inside the wound at the back of my skull that still throbs every time I move too sharply.
Please.
The plea forms somewhere low in my chest.
Not to God.
To my own body.
Please.
Just a little more.
A little farther.
A little faster.
Please don't fail me now.
I don't even realize I'm crying until tears blur the dark into streaks of silver and black. I don't wipe them away. I can't spare the hand. I can barely spare the breath.
The voices behind me grow louder.
Too loud.
Too near.
I hear the crack of a branch snapping close enough that my heart leaps painfully against my ribs. They're gaining on me. Of course they are. They are fed. Rested. Armed.
I am none of those things.
Another root catches my foot.
I stumble so hard I nearly pitch forward onto my face, my hands flying out instinctively to catch myself on the trunk of a tree. Bark grinds into my palms. For one horrible second I cling there, panting, blind with panic.
No.
Move.
MOVE.
I push away from the tree and run again, this time limping more noticeably than before, though I don't remember injuring my foot. Perhaps I had. Perhaps everything simply hurts too much now for one pain to stand apart from the others.
A shout rises to my left.
Another to my right.
They're spreading out.
Trying to drive me like prey.
That realization chills me so deeply I nearly stop breathing altogether.
They are hunting me.
Not chasing.
Hunting.
The difference is small and monstrous.
My thoughts begin to scatter.
If I go left...
No, too dense.
Right...
No, voices.
Straight ahead.
Just straight ahead.
Get through the dark.
Get away from the camp.
Get away from him.
The forest opens slightly for three blessed strides, and I take them greedily, my body surging forward with a desperate burst of speed I do not know how I still possess.
Then something cuts through the air.
A whistle.
Low and sharp and wrong.
I do not understand it at first.
Then pain tears through my leg.
It is so sudden, so violent, that for one breath I cannot make sense of it. My body jerks. My foot hits the ground wrong. The world pitches sideways.
Then the scream leaves me.
It rips out of my throat without permission, raw and high and full of shock.
I hit the ground hard.
The impact knocks what little air I had left from my lungs. Dirt slams into my mouth, damp leaves crushing beneath me as pain explodes from my leg in bright, unbearable waves. For a second I cannot see. Cannot breathe. Cannot think.
The realization comes with a sickening slowness.
There is an arrow in my leg.
No.
No, no, no—
I grab for it instinctively and nearly black out from the agony. My fingers brush the shaft and my vision whites out so completely I think perhaps this is it, perhaps this is where my body simply decides it has suffered enough.
Behind me, the voices sharpen.
"She's down!"
"Move!"
Panic floods me, hotter than pain, stronger than pain.
No.
Not here.
Not now.
Not after all of this.
I drag myself forward.
My hands claw through dirt and leaves as I pull my body across the ground, trying to rise, trying to stand, my injured leg collapsing beneath me the moment I put weight on it. Another scream tears loose before I can stop it, thinner now, ragged and desperate.
Get up.
Get up.
GET UP.
I don't know if I command it or pray it.
I grip the trunk of a sapling and force myself halfway upright, my injured leg barely touching the ground, the arrow jutting out grotesquely from my flesh. The pain is so huge it becomes almost abstract, too large to fit inside one body.
I stagger.
Then I move.
Not running anymore.
Not really.
But forward.
Limping. Falling. Catching myself. Dragging my broken body through brush and roots and mud as the voices close behind me.
I can hear them.
I can hear them so clearly now breathing hard, branches crashing, curses thrown into the dark.
Isaac again, somewhere near enough that his voice punches straight through the trees.
"Bring her back alive!"
Terror hits me so hard it makes my vision pulse.
Faster.
Please.
Please just a little more.
I beg my body like it might still love me enough to listen.
My lungs burn as though I've swallowed fire. My leg feels wet now, warm blood slipping down into my shoe, making every step slick and unstable.
Another branch tears across my cheek.
Another root nearly sends me down.
I don't know how much farther I can go.
I don't know if I can go any farther at all.
And then..
Hands.
They seize me out of the dark.
Strong hands, one on my arm, another catching me around the waist before I can fall. I scream instantly, all thought gone, every nerve in my body collapsing into one raw burst of panic.
"No..no, let me go...let me go!"
I thrash against the grip with everything I have left, though it is not much now, not nearly enough. My body feels half-ruined, my movements weak and frantic, but I fight anyway. I claw, kick, twist, trying to wrench myself free before they can drag me back.
"Easy," a voice says sharply.
"Please..please don't..."
"I'm not going to hurt you."
Lies.
They all say that.
I jerk harder Pain shoots up through me so violently my body folds with it, but the hands hold me upright keeping me from falling.
"Let me go!" I sob. "Please, please, please..."
Another voice, lower this time, urgent.
"She's bleeding badly."
The first voice again, closer now.
Torchlight flares.
I flinch so hard my teeth clack together.
The flame is raised toward my face, and for one awful second I can't see anything except light hot and blinding and far too bright after the dark. My eyes squeeze shut on instinct.
Then slowly, through tears and panic and pain, I open them again.