Dried tears tightened the skin on his cheeks, his breath became gasps. The escaping from the wagon seemed like it would be the difficult part, he didn’t expect the getting away to be so hard.
Where do I go?
Ahead-though he didn’t know how far-he knew more dead soldiers camped all across the salt flats, and there was water on either side of them. He swam well for a six-year-old, but not well enough to escape in the sea. And where would he swim if he could? Father had shown him his maps, he knew Kanos, the land of the enemy, lay across the Small Sea. He didn’t want to go there, even if he could. He thought of his toy dragon and the way the woman made it fly.
If I could fly, I could get away.
His foot struck a rock painfully and he tumbled to the ground, his head barely missing the trunk of a stout tree. He pulled his knee to his chest and grabbed his toe, biting back the urge to yell and give away his position. The guards were looking for him; they wouldn’t give up until they found him.
The tumult of waves and wind swirled around him, sounding to his ears like men crashing through the brush. He looked around, panicked, pulse racing, until his gaze fell on the tree towering over him. More brown leaves clung to its branches than most of the other trees-leaves that could provide cover. He stood and reached over his head but found the lowest branch a foot out of reach.
I can’t fly, but I can climb.
He jumped, his fingers brushing the branch’s rough bark, and a leaf broke free to float past his head. His eyes followed it to the ground. When he looked up, he saw torchlight bobbing through the trees in the distance. That’s why he hadn’t seen his pursuers since hiding in the fallen tree-they’d gone back for torches.
Graymon leaped for the branch again. Cool moss teased his fingers, but the limb was too high. Shuffling his feet along the ground to avoid tripping, he circled the tree in search of a lower branch or a stump on which to stand. On the far side of the tree, he found a swell in the dirt directly under a low branch; when he stood on it on his tiptoes, he could wrap his fingers around the limb. The feel of the wood in his hands gave him hope.
If I can get high enough in the tree, they won’t see me.
He lifted his feet, hanging from the branch as he struggled to pull himself up, but his arms weren’t strong enough. Dangling like a bat sleeping the day away, he thought desperately, keeping his eyes on the tree instead of watching the torch get closer. He’d climbed trees like this before back home in Achtindel. His favorite to climb was one that grew in the courtyard; nanny was always getting after him for climbing it because she thought it was too high, but the fear of being caught made him forget how he got up to the first branch. He breathed deep and relaxed all the muscles in his body, his feet swinging gently above the ground while he concentrated, remembering the tree.
Then it came to him how he did it.
The soles of his boots scraped the bark of the tree trunk as he walked his way up the side. With a grunt of effort, he pulled himself atop the branch and lay on it, hugging it tight, his body shivering uncontrollably.
After a minute, Graymon realized he couldn’t stay there. The branch might have been high for him, but it left him no higher than his pursuer’s eye level. He struggled to his feet, balancing precariously, and climbed to the next branch, then the next. Pride and a sense of accomplishment pushed fear aside momentarily as the boy perched higher in the tree than he’d ever climbed before.
I wish da could see me.
The snap of a branch brought him back to his situation and he pressed himself tight against the tree trunk. The dead men had come much closer while he was ascending to his hiding place, close enough that when he stretched out to peer around the curve of the tree, he saw the shapes of five men gathered around the torch, searching through the brush.
And looking up into the trees above.
Graymon thought back to when he’d run from his captors.
How many were there?
He closed his eyes and tried to picture the men around the cook fire, to count them again in his head. He knew their number to be more than five, to be sure, but how many? There had been one on the other side, he remembered, but how many around the fire? Six? Seven? He played with the picture in his head, changing the number of men he saw until he thought he got it right. So good was his imagination, he smelled smoke as though the fire burned right here, right now.
“Nine,” he said finally, satisfied with his recollection, then remembered where he was and slapped his hand over his mouth. Something glided past his face, but it was no leaf this time. Whatever it was floated up instead of down.
What floats up?
Pins and needles collected in his right leg, so he shifted his position, carefully keeping his back to the trunk of the tree. Another something floated by his nose and he saw it-wispy and insubstantial. He reached for it and it disappeared through his grip.
Thoughts of fairies and sprites came to mind and he looked around for more. Perhaps they’d come to help him, to whisk him away to their fairy kingdom and keep him safe from the dead men. The tree brightened around him-the fairies had brought a light to comfort him and make him less afraid. He sighed and relaxed against the tree, convinced he’d be saved until realization hit.
Smoke.
Not fairies floating by his nose, but smoke. And the smell wasn’t in his thoughts, nor the light brought to comfort him. It was here to capture him.
“Here,” the man at the foot of Graymon’s tree grunted.
Startled, Graymon looked down from his perch into rheumy eyes staring up from a decayed face. He screamed and pulled away, his foot slipping on a patch of moss, but he hooked his arm around the limb, keeping himself from falling all the way to the ground. He panted and squirmed, feet searching frantically for the limb he knew to be somewhere below, but his energy waned. All the running and hiding, fear and stress and cold became too much for him. He yelped as his hold slipped and he lurched down a couple of inches.
“Come down, boy,” the dead thing growled.
Graymon looked over his shoulder and saw the man holding the torch high above his head, flames licking at the soles of his damp boots. The boy hooked his other arm over the branch and kicked his feet at the flames, but doing so made him lose his grip. He fell off the branch, scraping his wrists on the rough bark. His hip found the limb he’d been searching for with his feet, spinning him in the air as he bounced off it. He struck the ground hard.
The crack of his arm breaking beneath him sounded loud in his ears, a sound he wouldn’t soon forget, but the pain was mercifully brief as consciousness fled him like dust blowing before a brisk wind.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She took two steps toward them dragging her sword at her side, the tip scraping the floor. Her hips swayed slightly when she moved, just the way Khirro remembered. Just the way they had in his dreams every night since he saw her die.
“Elyea? Is it really you?”
His hands throbbed. Blood rushed through his limbs.
How can this be?
Athryn remained statue-like beside him. She advanced another step; a board creaked under her foot, confirming she was solid, real. In the dim light, Khirro saw this woman’s hair was cut short and ragged, not long and flowing like Elyea’s.
Maybe it’s not her.
But her height, the shape of her body, the sound of her voice, all these things seemed like his lost love.