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I’m not ready to be without her. I need my Mama. I want to cry and beg, scream at her that we needed her still How can we still live when she is dead? I press my face into her chest and cry. The fire becoming unbearably hot against my skin as it inches closer to where I lay huddled in my mother’s arms. I cuddle tighter to her side and sing the soft melody she would sing to me, while I wait to be given my Mama back to me. I feel the fire on my pants, but I’m too tired to scream, I’m too tired to move. I just want my family.
I hear the shouts of the men and women around me, but my eyes feel glued shut. My chest still aches with the effort to breathe, and I don’t know if I want to. I can feel a small hand pushing back my hair from my face and hear his whispers in my ear to not leave him alone, that he’ll protect us now, and when his hand finds mine I squeeze his just as tightly as he holds mine.
“Open your eyes, twerp.” It takes what feels like hours but is more likely just a few minutes before my eyes open just the slightest bit. The only thing I see is a pair of big, brown eyes rimmed in red.
The next day two days pass by in a similar fashion. I feel fucking gross, I want a shower, a real toilet, and a bed. I’m thankful that I remembered to pack a toothbrush and I’ve been keeping my hair tied in a high pony to keep it out of my eyes, but the ends are caked in leaves and dirt. At this point, I’m sure I must smell horrendous.
I think I’m getting closer. A snapped branch still weeps at the ends when I find it and although this could be anything, in the three days I’ve been in this forest I haven’t come across so much as a fox, let alone something big enough to break something this thick. It must be her. I find nothing else and as the sun sets I set up yet another campsite.
My eyes snap open. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour and I fight back a whimper at just how freaking exhausted I really am. During the day when I’m moving and so focused on what needs to get down, I can barely feel it, but in moments like this when the world is silent around me, the ache is bone deep. The fire looks like it has long since burnt out and the night air deepens the stiffness in my body. My eyes feel like lead and before I can fully understand what is happening I hear it. A rustling coming from behind me.
I fight against my instinct to look at whatever is behind me, but I can feel a small tremor start to racket my body. I’m not scared, but I also don’t like being unaware of the danger that around me. The need to see what’s going on is almost physical. The metal teeth of the zip on my bag hums as whoever is there begins to filter through it and I take the opportunity to slowly reach down for my blade.
When I hear the clank of tins hit the ground, I pounce, lunging at them and pinning them underneath me. I look into the fear-stricken green eyes of Carlie. Her hair is matted, looking more brown than red with all of the mud caked through it, her lips are dry and chapped like she hasn’t had a lick of water in days. I guess she hasn’t. From her position underneath me, I can feel her bones sticking into me and upon closer inspection, what I thought may have just been prominent cheekbones actually look hollow.
I recognize the look. She’s desperate, starving, and ready to fight like a fucking animal. I don’t get a chance to secure my hold before her forehead collides with my nose, and she’s lifting her feet up to kick me off of her. Before I can scramble to my feet, she’s gone.
Grabbing the kit beside my makeshift bed, I take chase after her, listening to the pounding of her footsteps on the ground. I wipe the blood pouring from my nose as I run after her. She’s surprisingly fast, but she’s tired and hungry, probably excruciatingly thirsty if she had taken the chance to raid my camp. It’s not long before I have her in my sights and I pick up my pace trying to get closer and closer to her.
“Wait! Stop!” Her answering cry is a crackled cry, and she digs her heels in faster to try get away from me. I know how I must look to her, a predator in the night chasing down the prey, but I can’t stop. I have to get her, by any means necessary, even if it’s the last thing I want to do.
I steel my spine for what I have to do next and send up an apology to the sky, hoping that someone may hear my pleas and take pity on me. I try to keep the pace as I reach into my kit and pick three blades. My focus is split between correcting my grip on the knives and running at a sprint that I don’t see the root sticking up until it’s too late, leaving me to topple to the ground.
I grunt in pain as one of my own weapons pierces through the flesh in my arm. I’m heaving in deep breaths as I rest my forearm against the ground, trying to find it in me to get up. What a story this will be one day. If I survive this. I hope I survive this. Using every ounce of strength I possess; I push to my feet and take off once again. I’m slower now, the need to hold the knife secure in my arm to stop the jolting movements from my feet pounding against the ground. I don’t have time to stop and secure it properly. I’ll lose her if I do.
Her red hair is stark against the green and brown of our surroundings and it doesn’t long until I can see her again. Calling out to her once more in a ditch effort to get her to stop, I’m left feeling hopeless as I pull back one of the knives not imbedded in my skin and launch it in her direction. It pierces a tree only inches from where her hip is, and I pull it quickly when I run past. If she knows, she doesn’t scream, she doesn’t make a sound, but still her steps don’t so much as falter.
I pull my arm back again, launching the knife forward, hitting my mark. Her scream echoes through the entire forest and as I continue to make my way to her, she’s crawling on her elbows and knees, dragging the leg that the knife found home in. She looks up at me with tears streaming down her face, mumbling incoherently. I bend down to try help her to her feet but when I touch her shoulder, she wails louder than I’ve ever heard before.
“I can’t go back there!”
Chapter Twenty
The force in her words leaves me stunned. I knew that whatever she was running from wasn’t good, but as I look at her now she looks… broken. Her voice fills the heavy silence with echoes of her memories as she recedes into her mind, rocking back and forth with her face pressed firmly into the ground. Her hands fist into the dirt so hard that I can see the break in her nails as she loses herself into whatever nightmare she’s living.
I can only stand there and stare at her, my eyes wide as I watch her mind splinter. My first thoughts are that she’s escaped a mental institution, but it doesn’t add up with the rest of her. She wears nothing but a long-sleeved flowy dress so indecently short that it covers literally nothing from her current position. Her pail skin is a ruin of purple bruises and weeping welts. What captures my attention most though is the raising skin on the base of her neck, it’s reddened around the edges even though it doesn’t look new.
I can’t make it out properly in the little exposed light, but it almost looks like a cat hissing. I refrain from looking closer to not aggravate the girl more, but I do bend down in front of her. I don’t know what I can do to help her through her state, and I can’t leave her here, so I sit and wait her out, humming a soft lullaby from my spot in front of her.
I don’t know the words, but the melody has stuck with me my whole life. I don’t know how many times I loop through it, but her breaths begin to level out even though she doesn’t lift her head. More minutes go by, and I keep humming, and eventually she lifts her head slowly off the ground to look at me. I can’t imagine I look much better than she does, blood and dirt on my face, a hand still holding the knife that remains lodged in my arm. I don’t smile at her, I have a feeling that it would make me look insane, no one should smile in this situation. I give her a few more minutes to calm down before I tell her she needs to follow me.
She hangs her head, resigned to do as she’s told, but I see the tears begin to well-up again in her already swollen eyes. We don’t make it a step before she’s tumbling back to the floor, the adrenaline of the situation having caused both of us to forget about the weapon sticking out of her calf.
I run my hand over my face, grumbling about how things have turned out. We must be about a half mile out from where I caught her rummaging through my things and at least another thirty from the car. At this point we must be closer to a town than we are going back that way and I debate about forcing us to keep moving forward or turning around. I sigh, putting it out of my mind for the moment. I need to take out the knives and somehow get her moving.
I move to go to her steps back, her scream laced with fear and agony radiating from her leg. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” She screams it over and over again, as I practically leap away from her with my hands out in front of her.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to take it out.” I point to her leg and she follows my eyeline quickly but now that she’s not in the throws of hysteria, she refuses to have me out of her sights for more than a second. Her eyebrows dance, presumably as she thinks about what she’s going to do now, but eventually she nods with a trembling lip.
I move towards her slowly, like I’m worried she’ll attack me at any minute. I am a little worried about that, and she watches me with the same caution written on her face. I bend to look at the wound, trying to gage at how deep it is and how to fix it when I so clearly don’t have anything on me right now. I poke and prod at the skin around it, her skin is ice cold and even though she so clearly is in pain, she barely flinches. After this week is up, I’m taking to my bed and not leaving for a fucking week, I swear to God.
Sighing, I start to take off my jumper that I put on before I went to sleep, knowing I had a lighter sweater on underneath. Carlie starts screaming again as the jumper slides off my shoulders and before I have a moment to react, she’s lashing out at me, pushing and scratching at my face, wailing at me not to touch her. Her hand pushes at the knife in my arm and I howl from the pain slicing through me.
I kick out at her, sending her sprawling to the ground as I try and tell her to stop, that I won’t touch her, that I’m trying to help her. She keeps fighting me and I’m left with no choice. I bend down, securing her leg as much as I can and yank the knife free. Her pain rackets through her and I swear I feel every second of it. I keep her pinned beneath me as I pull off my sweater and cut the material of my shirt underneath around my stomach into two strips.
She’s still sobbing into her hands as I bend down, wrapping the material as many times as I can around the opening and tie it tightly. It won’t hold for long, but hopefully long enough until we get back to my bag. I do the same thing to my arm, pulling out the blade and wrapping it tightly with the other strip.
Carlie watches me, her sobs stifled now as I put my sweater back on and offer the jumper to her. I’m a little scared that the girl is going to freeze to death. When she doesn’t immediately take it, I sigh again and put it down in front of her, then take a few large steps away. She still looks wary as she pulls it over her head, but once she’s got it smoothed out, I speak again.
