AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This is the same.
Except there is no sun, no screaming, no laughing kids, and I’m not wearing a swimming costume. The tunnel is dark, half filled with gushing cold water going so fast and taking me with it. My forehead slaps against soft tree roots and I get knocked around on hard stony ground.
I don’t even scream because it all happens too fast. Shock has stolen my voice, even my breath. All I can hear is the echoing whoosh of water gushing through an enclosed space. It goes on for a long time. Or whatfeelslike a long time, but my mind is frozen with shock. My only thoughts… Dark. Dark. Dark.
Then it’s suddenly light.
Blinding light.
The tunnel comes to an end and spits me out past a rocky edge, and I fall.
My life flashes through my mind, or maybe not all my life, just the scary things I know about this place.Catcher Hill comes to a sheer cliff face over the sea. Myles mentioned something about danger, the need for a guard rail to stop people wandering too close to the edge. It was never done because everyone thought the thorny jungle would keep everyone away. I have a moment to thinkI’m going to die, now, falling into the sea from a high cliff. The scream that didn’t come earlier now tears out of me in a frightened long shriek. Then I hit the water.
Bright light blinds me. My head pounds and all I can hear is the WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH of water and the whining after-effect of my scream.
Then small things begin to register.
Air.
I’m not drowning. I’m lying on my back half-in-half-out of water. Pebbles under me.
This isn’t the sea at all. It’s a shallow pond. The rock from which I’d fallen is not too far above me, more like the height of a first-floor window. A stream cascades off them and splashes on rocks nearby, showering me with clean cold water.
I stare up at the sky and the waterfall. And I wait. Slowly, my ears stop hearing the echo of underground and start picking up the splashing water, and…birdsong.
I don’t think I’m in heaven because I’m cold and wet. And my hands and face feel…scratched and achy.
Eventually, I collect my thoughts together and sit up. The pond is small and seems shallow, tall grasses sway in the mild breeze on the bank, and there are … flowers. Daisies.
What happened to the thorny bushes? I turn this way and that before moving my legs. Yes, they move, they’re not broken. Standing up carefully until my legs are steady, I can finally see what’s around me.
Ah, there are the bushes. Tall, thick with tangled thorns and twigs, they grow on the slope above me then stop, held back by a round rocky border. Inside the circle, it’s a flat clearing, like an overgrown wild meadow around the pond. I know Catcher Hill comes to a cliff-edge over the sea, and this must be very close, but the sea isn’t visible from here. I wade out of the water onto the bank and flop down on the grass which feels warm from the sun and soft like a cushion.
There’s a distant shout.
ELODIE!
And again.
Someone is calling my name from what feels like a long way away. The shouting comes again a little closer and it’s accompanied by the sound of breaking wood.
And then a branch of orange glow moves violently, as a pair of long heavy-duty sheers cut into it.
Hal hits down repeatedly with a loud THWACK, THWACK until the entire bush breaks away. He crashes through breathing fast. He still has my cardigan. Funny the things we notice at such times. Pink mohair from John Lewis that Andrew bought me for my last birthday.
“ELODIE!” Hal cups his hands to his mouth and shouts.
He scans to left and right before he sees me and breaks through the last of the briars to rush towards me. About a foot away he stops, staring at me as if he can’t believe his eyes. I have a moment to notice that he’s covered in scratches, that his face is deathly white, so white that pale freckles have become visible across the bridge of his nose and over his cheekbones.
Then he drops to his knees and pulls me into a desperate hug. No words. Only his arms squeezing me into him as if to absorb me into his body. His head presses over my shoulder and into my neck.
His breath comes in fast and harsh, and his heartbeat hammers in his chest. He is hard and soft, gentle and savage. I feel nothing else; the world has shrunk to this crushing hug and the force of his arms around me. Gradually it makes me melt into him, and emotions starts to flow through me, first a trickle then a river. Feelings I never knew I had, like a deep craving for something always out of reach and finally found in this possessive protective embrace.
We cling to each other for a long time. It’s only when his arm shifts up to circle my neck that a sharp pain makes me gasp. Instantly he releases me.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He pants. “Are you okay?”
I rub at the ache in my collar bone, probably a bang from the water tunnel.
