Nothing comes.
"Catch her."
I understand in an instant. There is no space left for reason. No place where my voice might reach them. The air itself has turned against me.
I push to my feet, slipping between bodies before hands can close, before anyone understands I am no longer where they expect me to be. Islip between shoulders, past outstretched hands that grasp too late. Someone catches at my sleeve—I wrench free. Fabric tears. I do not look back.
I run.
The ground rushes beneath my bare feet, hard-packed earth giving way to dust, to scattered stones that bite into my soles. My breath tears in and out of me, wild and alive. The village loses its shape, voices breaking behind me into shouts, into pursuit.
But I am faster.
I always have been, and they are already falling behind.
The air rushes against my skin, filling my lungs with something exhilarating. My heart hammers, wild and strong, each beat driving me forward. My dress tangles at my legs, heavy now with dirt, but I gather it without slowing.
The earth knows me.
My feet find their way without thought, avoiding stones, adjusting to dips and rises, remembering paths I have walked in darkness and silence. The wind lifts my hair, pulls it loose from its bindings, and for a fleeting moment something breaks free in me with it.
I have not run like this in so long. A sound escapes me—half breath, half something else—and it rises into a laugh before I can stop it, bright with something close to joy.
The forest draws nearer. The trees stand ahead, dark and waiting, the line between village and wild clear and absolute. I can see them now, their trunks rising dark against the light, branches shifting in the wind. The air changes as I near them, carrying the scent of moss and earth and something deeper. I feel it on my skin before I reach it, the forest opening to me, calling me home.
I am almost there.
The shouts behind me fade, swallowed by distance, by my speed, by the pull of the trees that open before me like a mouth.
One more step.
I cross the threshold—
And something strikes.
The pain is sudden. Absolute. It tears through my leg with a force so violent it steals the ground from beneath me. My body folds before Iunderstand what has happened, my foot failing me, my weight collapsing forward.
A cry rips from my throat, raw and broken, the sound tearing itself free without my consent. It echoes into the trees, into the open space beyond them, as though the forest itself must hear it.
The earth rises to meet me, and I fall.
The ground swims beneath me. For a moment I do not understand what has happened. My body lies twisted where it fell, breath caught somewhere between my ribs, the world reduced to a ringing silence that presses in on my ears. I try to move, but I cannot.
Something holds me.
I lift my head.
My foot is no longer mine.
Iron teeth have closed around it, the trap buried beneath leaves now sprung wide and clamped tight. The metal sunk so far into flesh it has become part of me, crushing through it, splitting it open. I see white where there should not be—bone forced into the open air, slick and shining beneath torn skin. Blood spills freely, running over the iron, dripping into the soil, soaking the earth until it turns black and wet beneath me.
My mouth opens. No sound comes.
The pain seeps in slowly, as though my body must first understand what it is being asked to endure. It travels upward my leg, sudden enough to fracture thought. My fingers claw at the dirt. My breath stutters, shallow and broken.
No.
No.
