Page 11 of Escape from the Green

"Oh," was about all my twisted tongue could force out, sounding airy and foreign.

"Then we're going to find a place to sit for a while. I think you need to get some food in you."

Right.

Because I was acting like such a freak.

I needed to get it together.

We weren't going to get very far if I kept getting lost in my own head.

And we had to get far.

We had to get as far as possible.

I wasn't stupid; they would come for me.

Even into the human realm my mother so looked down her nose on. For me, for what she had planned for me, yeah, she would go there. Just to drag me back. Just to ruin my life. Just to suck out the tiniest bit of hope I still had inside me.

So I needed to stop thinking about things like how scarred Drake's hand was, and focus on surviving, pushing my body harder, getting as far as possible.

"I can go for a while longer," I assured him, willing myself to believe it as well. At his dubious look, I felt my lips tipping up slightly. "If maybe we stop running so fast," I conceded.

His hand tightened, pulling me forward toward the incline that was, well, a lot steeper than I realized. My hand tightened on his this time, needing the reassurance.

"Slow is better than not at all," he told me before moving down the incline without warning, pulling me with him.

My stomach pitched even with his strong hand holding onto mine. I couldn't help but figure it was a definite possibility that if I lost my footing, catching Drake off guard, I could send us both toppling down this never-ending cliff, ending up who-knew-where. Under feet of snow. Was this cliff high enough for an avalanche? If the screaming of my thigh muscles were anything to go by, it certainly seemed possible.

"Amy," Drake's voice called, sounding amused, making my head snap to look over at him. "You can let up. We're on flat land," he informed me. And, sure enough, we were.

It was right about then that I realized my hand was aching from holding his so hard. I snatch mine away, seeing red marks from the outline of my fingers on his as I did so.

That was embarrassing.

Apparently, outside of my parents' home, I lost whatever small bit of calm and collected I had managed to hold onto in that house.

"Let's just go another mile or so," he suggested, casting a look over at me that could be called nothing other than worry. That I hadn't thought this through?

That he wasn't sure I could make it?

Or that he simply questioned my sanity?

I wasn't sure.

And maybe there were shreds of truth on all of those concerns.

I was acting a bit out of character. But then I had just escaped my prison - erhm, home - in the middle of winter without as many supplies as I should have had. It was a shock to the system. It was making a dozen different thoughts assault me at once. It was hard to continue to act completely within your wits when your wits were, well, flighty and, ah, witless.

As for having given it thought, well, that was all I had done. For years. For my entire life. Every time my mother would scold me about my manners, about my ineptness, about my utter lack of skills.

My half-brother and half-sister had them.

And my mother was supposed to be stronger than their mother.

I should have been in possession of skills that she could be proud of, that she could have used to her advantage.

She wondered if age might bring them about.