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“It’s not much farther,” he assures me as we break through a thicket to face a deep, crystalline riverbed spanning bank to bank from where we stand.
“There you are,” Marcus says before pressing his fingers to his mouth and whistling.
Sparrow rears her head back with a screeching neigh and trots our way with the giddiness of a young foal.
“Shit,” Marcus mutters, surveying the woods left and right before shoving a hand through his hair. “I didn’t realize the route she’d taken until now, but there’s not a dry crossing point for at least half a mile, and it’ll be dark by the time we make it.”
Watching the haunting waves, I utter a terrified, “What are you saying?”
“Looks like we’ll have to ride her across.”
My feet creep back two cautious steps. “Not only no, buthellno.”
Ignorant of my fear, Marcus blocks my retreat and tilts his head.
“Remember when I said I can’t swim?” I gulp. “What I meant to say was, Idon’tswim. At all. Ever.”
“You’re joking?”
“Nope. I hate water, and water hates me.”
Sparrow crams her warm snout into my armpit, nudging me gently. She’s proud as can be having soaked herself from the base of her neck to the tip of her long black tail.
Marcus claps his hand over my shoulder with mock sympathy. “I hate to break it to you, slayer, but the only way home is through this river.”
Sparrow snuffles, shoving me with more force, but my heels are glued to the earth.
“Once we cross, there’s a gate on the other side that opens to the pasture. It’s not that far from here.” He pats the mare’s rump twice before reaching for me. “Giddy up.”
“Absolutely not. I’ll drag both your happy asses back up that trail before I cross this death trap.”
“Get on this fucking horse, or so help me, I’ll put you up there myself.”
My body warns me of the ensuing panic attack by numbing my hands. I search for another escape route, but I don’t know these woods like Marcus does. Getting lost in them is inevitable, though I’m tempted to give it the ol’ Girl Scout try.
“You’re really that scared of a little water?” he prods, sorely underestimating my terror.
“How irrational of me to not want to fall off this deranged animal, have my dead carcass drift out into the ocean, and become shark food.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he quips, stalking toward me.
“Marcus,” I warn, backing up until my heels smack into a foot-tall tree stump. “I swear to god, if you so much as touch—”
“All right, up we go.” In one fell swoop, he squats and drapes me across his back as if I weigh nothing.
His shoulder jams into my rib cage as I rage, “Put me down right this second!”
Sparrow chuffs as he approaches, and I brace my palms against her wet fur, grasping it rougher than I had intended, but I’m steadily losing my vision to the terror hot wiring my central nervous system.
My body moves, but the second my eyes shut, I’m not attached to it anymore. Instead, I’m somewhere frightening, by myself in a pitch-black space where I scream at the top of my lungs for someone to help me, but no one ever answers.
The hair on my forearms pricks to the point of pain, and I clench my jaw hard.
You’re okay, Heather. Everything is okay.
Useless words.
Still, I chant them over and over, just like when I was drowning.
