Page 51 of Horns & Heart
Reeds grew thick farther to my left, though some had gotten stuck to me as I’d made my way to shore.Had there been reeds like this before?I pulled one from where it clung to the zipper of my jacket.It was a light lime green and sort of…furry?More like catkin than any reed I’d ever seen.Not that I was the outdoorsy type at all, but still.
“Shit.”
I scrambled to my feet.It made me cough and wheeze, and it took me a few moments to shake away the black spots that stubbornly lingered in my vision.
“Ink!”
I looked around but saw no one.Panic, desperation, and cold dug their sharp, sharp claws into me, fighting to see which would get to mess up my head first.
I cupped my hands to my mouth.“Inkiri!”
I kept looking at the scenery and wishing I would see something I recognized, but no.I was only halfway decent with landmarks, and since Inkiri and the others had been next to me, I hadn’t been paying that much attention.
Still, this wasn’t right, so not right.I turned and scanned the tree line, hoping Inkiri or one of the others would suddenly appear there.
The forest was thicker than before, and I didn’t recognize the kinds of trees I could see.Not only could I not tell whether they were birch or beech, these trees didn’t look how trees were supposed to look.As I got closer, I saw smooth trunks rather than the rough texture of bark, and the branches and leaves were sort of fern-like.They reminded me of that creepy Gothic moss that hung around outside haunted antebellum mansions in the South.
It creeped me out.Not just the moss that wasn’t moss, the whole setting.I was elsewhere.Not Earth.Was this Aër?
I walked up and down the shore, scared.Had Vergis abandoned me here?He certainly hadn’t followed.Or worse, had the creep planned all of this?The cola ash people and the attack?I knew Nokim and Vergis had talked about our route, but I could see how Vergis might’ve fudged where we were going and lulled the others into a false sense of security.
“Fuck.Fuck,” I said.Gran would tell me my mouth needed washing out with soap, and she’d probably tell me to put a teaspoon full in my mouth and think on where I wanted to go in life, butfuck,this situation warranted cussing.
I stopped pacing and ran my hands through my wet hair.The cold didn’t need any kind of special invitation to make itself known.It was a lot colder here than the mild and sunny day in May I’d just been violently ripped out of.I needed a plan, any kind of plan.Standing around wouldn’t help me.Night would eventually fall, and it’d get colder still.Or something even worse would happen.I didn’t even want to think about all the things that were worse than hypothermia.
My choices were limited if I didn’t want to stay on the shore: left, right, or straight into the woods.Both left and right options would leave me exposed, to the wind I could feel against my cooling skin already as well as to the cola ash people.Or Vergis, if he wanted to come after me later.
If his plan was to just leave me here, that was a terrible thought all its own.I wouldn’t last outside in the elements for very long.I had nothing on me.Inkiri had my backpack—not that anything in there would help me survive this kind of wilderness.It had dry clothes though, and as my teeth began to chatter, I was really missing those.
I decided to go into the woods.There had to be cover in there, at least, and maybe those fern-like leaves could work as a blanket of some sort.Was it better to leave my clothes on or take them off?I didn’t know all this survival stuff.My hope was that everything would just gradually dry as I walked, as my body heat helped get it dry.
The first thing I noticed when I crossed the tree line was that the grass was different.It reminded me of thyme.The trees loomed all around me, some much bigger in circumference than any I’d seen before.For some reason I was hoping that with the next step, things would be normal again, but no such luck.Not after the first ten steps, nor after the first hundred.The sounds and even the smells were not those of home.
Gradually, my ability to pay attention to my surroundings narrowed to only the most immediate things.Worry filled my mind, for Inkiri especially.I didn’t like the way he’d said goodbye.He hadn’t been certain he’d make it.I couldn’t fathom him not making it.I’d seen him cut into the cola ash people, the power with which he’d moved, the ease and grace.There had been so many of them though.
I’d started to imagine him holding me and clicking at me, not just for another few nights but for all my nights at some point over the past few days.I barely knew him, but that had stopped mattering.I wanted to get to know him, I did.And I would.He had to be okay, he just had to.
I walked for a while.I wasn’t sure how long, not really.My mind grew sluggish, my body heavy.I was trembling all over, and I kept stumbling, especially since all those strange, smooth trees made it difficult to move.The fern-like branches were always just about to slap me in the face, and my feet got stuck almost every other step.I barely managed to stop myself from falling several times.All I wanted was to sit down and rest, just for a minute.
When I reached out to rest a hand on a tree, I touched something sticky and yelped.I didn’t have the energy to jump away, so I sort of stumbled, then fell.The light had faded some since I’d walked into the woods, and I was disoriented.My brain couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing as I lay there on my back, staring up at the canopy of foreign growth.
My lizard brain was fully present and on high alert though, and the fear hit me like a boxer’s weighted glove.My heart started hammering, adrenaline pumping into my bloodstream.
Something was up there, suspended in the foliage, somethingbig.The closest thing my mind could link it to wasspider.A huge spider.The size of a small pony.
The body was a dark orange, and the legs… Oh, those legs alone would give me nightmares.Night terrors.The eyes were shiny, and I could only make them out on account of their slightly darker orange color.Unlike an Earth spider, this one had something along the lines of fur, but it looked stiffer, spikier, like bristles.On top of its body were what looked like feelers.They connected to the yucky gel-like stuff that clung to the trees in the area.And there was a lot of it.I had walked into this thing’s nest.Or its hunting ground.
It made a noise that curdled my blood and made me shiver harder.Nails on a blackboard, glass breaking, metal rasping against metal.And then it descended, those legs using the trees to lower that massive, round, disgusting body.Toward me.
With all the strength I had, I tried to get up and move.But it was faster.I never got my feet back under me.The spider’s squishy, yet substantial body landed on my legs.
I made a noise, strangled and aborted when its head came closer to mine and I saw that it had a mouth studded with pincers.Why did you need a mouth full of pincers?No, scratch that, I didn’t want to know.
I didnotwant to die, I didn’t.But a part of me realized that this was it.The apocalypse hadn’t taken me, but this monster right here, it would eat me, and I would be gone.Inkiri would never know where my bones were.Provided the monster left that much of me.
Worse, I would never know if I could grow to truly love Inkiri, and that flooded my heart with sadness.I’d said it once by accident, and now it could never be true.
