AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That eerie raven shadow swam through the grass before they hit a dirt path and it flattened out, beginning its slow circles when they slipped into the most relaxed town by-far. The gates were completely peeled back, and carts were rolled out along the main road. Noel parked the bike off to the side before the raven fluttered down to the striped awning and cawed.
“Damn flying rodent,” Noel hissed. He scooped a pebble off the road and wound up his arm to throw it.
“No! Don’t!” Grey lurched toward him and grabbed his wrist.
“That thing is going to give away our position if we don’t do something about it.”
Caw.
Noel gritted his teeth. “Come down here, you little bastard.”
“Noel, it’s just a bird. It’s just following because I couldn’t sleep last night, and I fed it a little. Don’t hurt it.”
“You fed it? Grey?—”
Grey’s brows knit together. “Yes. It probably just wants more food.”
“Your food. Don’t feed that thing your rations when you need them.”
He drew back and rubbed at his arms. “I… I’m really starting to think that we should reconsider splitting up, especially if the Grand Capital?—”
Noel threw the pebble down. “We’re not discussing this right now,” he breathed. “Come on. Let’s go find some paint and get the hell out of here before they catch up.” He turned on his heel and stalked off toward the multi-colored sign over bolts of dyed cloth.
The skittering of Grey on his heels made his stomach twist with guilt, but he shoved his way through the door to dust motes stirring up in the pale sunlight among small, mismatched jars of colors, fabric swatches, yarn, canvas, and brushes. When the door jingled shut and the room stilled, Noel glanced back to Grey’s wide, dark eye tracing the shelves before he crept toward it, like it was some wild animal he might scare off. He plucked up one of the jars and turned it over in his hands.
“Can I help you two?”
Noel’s head whipped around to the beaming shop keep with soft, dark eyes and a kind smile marred at the edge by a long scar down her cheek. Grey stiffened along the shelves, gripping his potential prize a little tighter. Noel strode up to the counter. “Yes, actually. We’re looking for some pigments and canvas.”
She grinned and tucked her limp bob behind her ear. “I’ll get that all cut up for you. Do you need it stretched, or?—”
“No,” Grey piped up. “We can do that ourselves. Could we get a couple squares of it? Like”—he held up his hands—“this wide?” He slapped on a tight, painful-looking grin, and Noel turned back to the shop keep with a hesitant nod.
“Right away,” she said, beaming as she reached for one of the rolls lined up along the back shelf.
Noel watched her unroll it across the countertop and slip her scissors into the metal groove. The rhythmic cutting might as well be the ticking of the grandfather clock in his parent’s living room counting down the minutes until dark, but now it might as well be the seconds until they were found. Sweat beaded on his palms, making his hands sticky against the wood counter while he waited on Grey to decide on his pigments and brushes.
The shop keep nudged the rolls toward him and rattled off a price that almost flew over his head when Grey stepped up next to him and rummaged through his bag. Coins on the counter. Supplies tucked into his arms. A jingle of the bell before feeling the heat of the sun on his face again.
“Do you have any ideas on where there’s a field of flowers we’d be able to spend some time in?” Grey asked. “I know a lot of places like that are usually by faerie circles, but there are a few that aren’t…”
Noel bit his lip and shook his head. “Isn’t there something else you could paint? Does it have to be flowers? Can’t it be something else?”
“The fair folk glorify nature, remember? And finding something with a ton of colors will probably be the best to capture that because it’s a taste of what they fought to preserve.”
Noel’s shoulders sagged as they came to a halt next to his bike, the raven preening itself on its striped temporary roost to taunt him. “There’s bound to be one near the delta though, which is probably the safest place to do anything since we can just cross the river if something finds us.”
He jumped at another shrill caw from the bird and gritted his teeth. Instead of shrinking back like Grey had at just about everything else that posed a threat, his shoulders fell as he turned his face to stare up at the creature with a worried look. The way those beady little eyes peered back down sent an uneasy feeling through Noel, so he grabbed Grey’s arm.
“We should get a move on.”
Grey shook his head and pulled free. “Noel, I don’t want to drag you down with everything. If you don’t want to joi?—”
His heart seized, and then he ripped some of the supplies from his arms. “Don’t talk like that. Get on the bike.” Noel jerked his chin toward the seat with a scowl.
The pain reflected in Grey’s eyes ripped him apart at the seams, but he climbed on anyway while Noel tucked away as much as he could into his bag: an insurance policy for him not to take off at a moment’s notice. When Grey’s arms encircled him, Noel forced out a long breath and revved the engine.
Gravel rumbled under rubber and the town fell away into the eerie serenity of the distant, looming woods and raven shadows. The sciomancer’s warning for them to split up slowly surfaced to the forefront of his thoughts, despite how he desperately tried to will it back—to cover it up with his newfound argument that they’d be stronger working together as a unit than peeling off in two different directions.
