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“Guess!”
“A few seconds!”
Sam kept sawing. Pitted and slightly bent from overuse and Sam’s attempts to sharpen it on rocks, the knife’s blade was dull. He clenched his teeth and worked harder.
The second guyline snapped. Sam moved to the third.
“Running out of time,” Remi called.
Twang!
The opposite end of the platform was dangling by a single riser now, fluttering like a kite in the wind. With both hands clutching guylines, Remi was all but hanging, with only one foot perched on the edge of the platform. Sam’s left hand was grasping the line beside hers like a talon.
“One more!” he shouted, and started sawing. “Come on . . . Come on . . .”
Twang!
The end of the platform swung free, now hanging vertically below them. Sam was about to drop his knife when he changed his mind. He folded the blade closed against his cheek. He clamped his right hand on a guyline.
Remi was already lowering herself down the risers so her body was behind the platform. Sam climbed down toward her. He peeked around the edge of the platform and saw a wall of green rushing toward him.
Their world began tumbling. Though having taken a good portion of the impact, the clawing branches immediately spun the platform around. They found themselves hurtling through a gauntlet of whipping boughs. They tucked their chins and closed their eyes. Sam unclenched his right hand from the riser and tried to cover Remi’s face with his forearm.
On instinct she shouted, “Let go!”
Then they were falling through the tree, their fall softened by branches.
They jolted to a stop.
Sam opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a croak. He tried again. “Remi!”
“Here,” came the faint reply. “Below you.”
Lying faceup and diagonally across a pair of boughs, Sam carefully rolled onto his belly. Ten feet below, Remi was lying on the ground in a pile of pine needles. Her face was scratched as though someone had swiped her with a wire brush. Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“How bad are you?” he asked.
She forced a smile and gave him a weak thumbs-up. “And you, intrepid pilot?”
“Let me lie here for a bit and I’ll let you know.”
After a time, Sam began the task of climbing down.
“Don’t move,” he told Remi. “Just lie there.”
“If you insist.”
Sam felt as though he’d been pummeled by a bat-wielding gang, but all of his major joints and muscles seemed to be working properly, if sluggishly.
Using his right hand, Sam lowered himself from the last branch and dropped in a heap beside Remi. She cupped his face with a hand and said, “Never a dull moment with you.”
“Nope.”
“Sam, your neck.”
He reached up and touched the spot Remi had indicated. His fingers came back bloody. After a bit of probing he found a three-inch vertical gash below his ear.
“It’ll coagulate,” he told her. “Let’s check you out.”
