Page 4 of Black Hearted
“No,” she answered, and I could hear a touch of disgust in her voice. “Nobody here has powers like that.”
I was about to respond when I lost my footing, and we went down. Nellie screamed. Keeping my grip on the lightning rope, I twisted onto my stomach so that Nellie was above the liquid as it pushed us toward the edge.
“We’re okay. We’re going to go over the edge, but my lightning rope will keep us from falling. Don’t be afraid.”
“We’re gonna dieeeeee!” Nellie screamed in my ear so loudly as we went over the edge and began to free fall so quickly that I winced.
But then, just when I was hoping that the lightning rope would pull taut, it suddenly did, stopping our descent with a sharp jerk that made my shoulder ache.
We hung in midair, black oil raining down on us. Concentrating, I slowly extended the rope, trying to look down to gauge how far it was to the bottom, but every time I did, black oil dripped into my eyes.
Nellie sputtered behind me.
“Don’t swallow it,” I warned her.
“I’m trying,” she snapped, and then I felt one of her hands fall away from around my neck. She cried out.
“Keep both hands on me.” Fear gripped me as her legs slipped down my waist.
“I’m slipping! Zane!” she cried, and then she was gone—no longer hanging onto me.
A surge of desperation slammed into me, and I felt sick. It was as if time stopped, and my brain processed a million thoughts in a single second. The way she had said my name clawed at my heart. I had promised nothing would happen to her, and now …
I did the only thing I could think of.
Keeping the lightning rope connected to the tree above, I released the tension, allowing myself to plummet downward as I frantically searched the falling water below until I caught sight of Nellie, about to smack face-first into a lake of thick oil.
I pulled harder than ever before for my power. As I felt my gift respond, I flicked my free hand quickly toward her, wrapped another rope around her waist, and yanked her back up to me. The second I had her in my arms, I pulled the upper shadow rope taut, slowing our descent before jerking to a stop.
But something was wrong. I felt it briefly, and then, perhaps because my conjuring the two ropes had been too much, the one connected to the tree above snapped. We both began to fall again. Nellie’s scream didn’t last as long this time.
Luckily, we were only ten feet from the lake of oil, and we went in with a splash.
I bobbed up immediately, searching for Nellie.
“Zane, I can’t swim,” she called out, flailing in the thick oil a little ways from me.
I still had one rope attached to her, so I pulled on it, and she came closer as I treaded to keep us from sinking.
She reached me and frantically climbed onto my back, clinging to my neck. “I thought I was a goner,” she sobbed.
“You’re okay,” I said. I tried to console her, but I was shaken myself. Why had my power failed? Two ropes should not have been too much. But I hardly had time to think about it as I searched for the shore.
The lake that we’d fallen into funneled us into a river of oil. Since I could keep our heads above the thick substance, I decided to let it carry us farther down, away from the mountain. As we traveled, Nellie held on tightly, and I tried to imagine how scary this was for her. She was a young girl stuck with a strange person from another place, and she was unable to swim in a thick river of black oil. I spoke calmly to her, and eventually, she seemed to become less tense.
It wasn’t long before I saw a town with a desolate landscape. It wasn’t as bad as what we’d just come from—there were withered crops, but oil didn’t cover the ground as it had the mountain.
Pulling us from the river, I rolled onto the shore, panting as Nellie lay beside me, both of us covered head to toe in the foul stuff.
Her chest heaved as she stared at me wide-eyed. “We’re alive.”
I chuckled at her assessment. “We are.”
She peered at the town and shook her head. “Sad that Orange Hills looks like this now.”
I perked up, remembering Orange Hills on the map.
“How far is the capital of the Spring Court from here?” I asked her.
