“Yes?”
“I, uh, I think I’m falling—”
“I’m falling too.” He tilted my chin up. The look in his eyes twisted my insides. He leaned forward to meet me, and I closed my eyes.
A loud crack sounded, jolting my eyes open. The ground shifted beneath me, and then smaller cracks popped in sequence, like dominoes falling, each movement propelling the next.
“Oh crap. Arrow, I’m falling!”
The ground between us gave way. My fingers slipped through Arrow’s, catching the edges of the falling icicles. I hit the ground with a thud, pressing into the soft ledge of snow below. Ice crystals scratched my hands, digging into me as they reflected the light into rainbows. Beautiful, dangerous, painful.
I pulled the ice shards from my hands, thankful that I’d missed the large chunks glistening by my head. Arrow looked down at me, his forehead scrunched up as he leaned over the edge.
“I’m fine,” I yelled before he could ask.
My hands burned bright red as I clambered up the soft ledge. I tucked them under the cuffs of my sleeve and warmed them with my breath. The climb back up the trail went slowly as I tested each step, cringing as the snow crunched beneath my weight.
Thundering echoes shook the icicles clutching the cliffs. I closed my eyes and hugged the interior wall. When I opened them, I saw Arrow’s leather boots, darkened from the saturating snow, and his outstretched hand.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, looking me up and down. “You have to stop scaring me like that. I can’t lose you.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
We stood an inch apart, my eyes searching his face. “Arrow, I…”
“Me too,” he said, leaning towards me.
The heat from his hands warmed my back, possessively pulling me closer. A fleeting shudder rippled through me as the snow melted under my shirt, lost under the heat of Arrow’s embrace. My fingers wound around his hair, pulling him closer. I eagerly kissed him, letting everything around me disappear.
He pulled away slowly, tracing the outline of my jaw. My lips parted in anticipation. When nothing happened, I opened my eyes and saw the sadness in his. The haunted look on his face chiseled away at my heart. He pulled his hand away and dropped his gaze to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was wrong. We can’t do this.”
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed. “What did I do?”
“It’s nothing that you did. But I can feel it now. It’s different than before. You believe, don’t you?”
“Believe what, about all of this? Yes! Yes, I do. What’s wrong with that?” I asked, reaching out for him.
“Because seeing you fall like that, I finally realized that I’m going to lose you. Whatever I want, whatever you want, it can’t happen. It’s like you said before, none of this is real.” He avoided my hand and turned to walk back up the trail.
“No, no, no,” I said, following him, twisting him around. “You can’t just walk away from me like that and say this is done. I don’t understand why we can’t be together.”
“Because this isn’t real,” he said.
“Yes it is!”
“Maybe what we feel now, but there’s no future in it, in us. You don’t belong here.”
“But what about that kiss?” I asked. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it or that everything you’ve said isn’t true.”
“It can’t be,” he said.
I turned away and clenched my jaw before tears could fall and stared at the ground where he had thrown my heart. I swallowed hard, releasing my tears, and turned to face him.
His hair fell over his eyes, covering but not hiding his obvious longing. The hollowness of his words echoed in my head. They were nothing more than a preventative bandage. And even though I knew my heart would shatter when it ended, not letting it happen at all would be more painful.
I stepped forward and took his hand. He met my gaze, confused.
“But we can’t,” he said.
I covered his lips with my fingers. “I don’t want to lose this chance.”
“But we have no future,” he said. I saw the fight in him dwindling.
I felt his hesitation and conflicting emotions. In my mind, Melody’s warnings against hurting him echoed. “I know, but I love you.” I whispered.
He gave in, cupping my face in his hands. “All right, Alex,” he whispered. “I don’t need a future. I want now.”
“Now,” I said, leaving no room for protest. I rose onto my tiptoes and hooked my hand around his neck, pulling him close.
He met my kiss with his own, pressing me against the mountain wall. Snow melted behind me, but I hardly noticed anything except his cold fingers holding me close, keeping my legs from giving way beneath me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The tingles left by Arrow’s lips lingered. I puckered, refusing to open my eyes and face reality. Even ‘now’ had an expiration date, and I heard it ticking. Arrow must have sensed my unease and pressed his lips against my forehead. I relaxed. Worry would do nothing but steal precious seconds, and I had already lost too many.
Pulling back from the warmth of Arrow’s embrace, my gaze strayed between his eyes and his soft lips. “What do we do now?”
He brushed a snowflake off the tip of my nose with a kiss. “Nothing’s changed. We just continue.”
“Nothing’s…changed?” I asked. He was right and yet so wrong. It had never been so obvious to me that everything was different.
“Nothing for me has changed, Alex. You stole my heart the moment you soared through the air and pummeled that giant. I knew then that everything I thought I understood or wanted was a soft whisper of what I needed. I need you, and now that you’re here, committed, I plan on holding on as long as I can. We’re doing this together.”
Together. I liked the sound of that. My negative reaction to reliance on someone slipped away, replaced by a measure of comfort and reassurance. My tongue tripped over the words I wanted to say, but it didn’t matter. The swelling in my chest poured out of me, and I knew it showed in my eyes.
“Together,” I whispered, and pulled him close for another kiss.
He reluctantly pulled my hands from around his neck, kissing each as he lowered them between us. “We still have a long way to go, and I don’t want to risk these steep cliffs for much longer. Once we round the top of the mountain, the terrain should even out, and it’ll be easy riding until we descend into the foothills.”
“Easy?”
“Well, straightforward at least. After these cliffs, we’ll go through Shadow Valley and then down the foothills.”
“What happens then?” I asked, looking down at our hands entwined under the long sleeves of the cloak.
“Then…” he said. “Then, we’re almost there.”
“Oh,” I said, wishing I hadn’t asked.
“But that’s still a ways off, and we don’t need to think about it right now. Now is about you and me, right?” He grinned mischievously.
“Yes it is,” I said, grabbing his hand as we began the long walk back up the trail.
A trance of new love covered us as we hiked back to the horses and rode through the mountains. Snow glittered in the air, and birds twirled in a majestic dance, their neon feathers streaking across the blue sky. But more captivating than the panorama was the man riding at my side. My eyes drifted over to him, no more than a few feet away, and I smiled.
The hours blended together and, sooner than I expected, we had unloaded and set up for the night. Camping in the mountains proved a challenge, with the only patches of dry ground pressed up against the bases of trees. Even after clearing an extra few feet of snow and widening the area for a fire and the horses, our quarters were tight. I didn’t mind.
I leaned back into his arms, finding the curved spot at the nape of his neck. The warmth from the fire and his skin melted me against him. I sighed. “This is nice.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you stopped fighting
. I was beginning to worry that I had lost my charm somewhere.”
“Oh no, your charm was always there. I just didn’t know what to do with it.”
He chuckled and tossed a green branch into the dwindling flames. Rich, thick smoke floated around us as the leaves crinkled and hissed, succumbing to the heat. “I’m glad we figured it out.”
“You know what I haven’t figured out yet?” I asked.
“What’s that?” He looked down at me with raised eyebrows.
“Promise me you won’t laugh?” I scrunched my nose and turned to face him.
“I promise,” he said, even more intrigued.
“Okay, how do I phrase this…” I hummed. “There are certain similarities between the game I played and this world.”
“Go on,” he said, trying to hide a smirk.
“Well, some of the people I’ve met are similar, the animals too…in the game, there were even fireworks when I completed a level. Since I’ve been comparing this world to what I knew from the game, I wondered…how do I compare to your history and the legend of the Golden Hero?” I bit my lower lip and gazed ahead into the fire, almost afraid to hear his answer.
“Ahhh, I knew you had been comparing me to the game!”
“No, no, not you,” I said in a rush. “I never saw you in the game, I promise. I would’ve remembered.” Heat rose to my cheeks.
“Alex,” he said, turning me to face him. “I don’t know what has caused you to doubt yourself. Nothing I’ve seen from you in your actions, words, or convictions deserves such skepticism. I wish you could see yourself as we do, not just as the Golden Hero, but also as Alex.”
“Oh, I’ve seen what they thought of me. Cale and the other men made it pretty hard to forget.”
“Don’t stop your memories at that initial meeting or gloss over the admiration and respect you earned afterwards. Our people trust in you. I trust in you. Not because of a title but because of your action and commitment. That’s what matters to us, and hopefully to you.”
“You’re right,” I said and leaned back against him.
“But you asked about the Golden Hero. Let me tell you some of the stories I heard as a boy. Granted, most of these were told by entertainers in the castle, so I can’t vouch for the authenticity.” He rested his head against the tree, and I resettled into his arms. “The first time I heard about the Golden Hero, I was five. A traveler from the north visited the castle with silks woven with the brightest gold. My mother loved them, and when she asked him his secret, do you know what he said?”
“Hmmm?”
“He said his thread was spun from the head of the Golden Hero. Naturally that had me hooked, and I hid in the shadows behind the marble pillars, hoping to remain unnoticed.”
“Did you?”
“Oh yes, they never found me, but that poor man…” Arrow stopped his story to shake his head. “He underestimated our love for heroism and, before he could recant his story, he was thrown out of the castle. He never peddled furs in Flourin again after that.”
A deep, rich laugh shook me. I covered my mouth.
“And then a few years later…”
I closed my eyes. The deep, rhythmic timbre of his voice lulled me to sleep. His words mingled with pictures in my mind, and reality and my dreams seemed to blur.
The sun crested the mountains, sending a stream of light onto Arrow’s face. I watched his reluctant waking. The fluttering of his eyelashes quickened, and his shoulders slumped at awkward angles as he exhaled slowly and stretched. His right hand settled along the curve of my waist, and a contented grin appeared on his face before he opened his eyes.
“I could get used to this,” he said lazily, tightening his grip on me.
“I could too,” I said, nuzzling closer to him and pulling the cloak up over my shoulders, hoping to stop my involuntary shivering in the morning wind. “I wish it would warm up a bit though.”
“It will soon enough, I promise. Speaking of…”
“Don’t say it.” I cringed, already knowing what he wanted to say.
“Not saying it won’t change it.”
“I know, and I know we have to go, but give me a few more minutes just sitting here.”
“Anything for you,” he said, reaching for the travel bags at my side. “Can you grab some food?”
The rolls and jerky were on top, and I handed him a few pieces before grabbing two for myself. “What are the chances you packed anything besides rolls and jerky?”
Arrow laughed and took a bite. “Not very good, I’m afraid. We’re stuck with this unless we find something along the way.”
“Somehow I doubt we’ll have such luck.”
“You never know. I’ve seen stranger things happen in these mountains,” he said.
“I thought you hadn’t been up here before,” I said with a quizzical expression.
He looked at me with his crooked grin. “I haven’t.”
I threw a roll and him, then hastily grabbed it back. “I’m not strange,” I said, biting into the bread with an exaggerated pout.
“Ah, Alex, you’re strange in the most wonderful of ways. It makes me smile.”
I looked away and hid my grin beneath another bite of bread, but a flush filled my face. He made me smile, too.
We ate in silence, our eyes carrying on their own conversation until neither one of us could put it off any longer. We had to go.
We packed everything up silently and continued riding along the narrow path. The trail inclined steeply, passing miles of jagged crags. Behind the stone walls, on both sides, fog blocked the view.
“Shadow Alley,” I mused, looking at the outline of the ridges and the darkness above the canyon.
Arrow frowned in the direction of my gaze and nodded.
At the top of the first ridge, he jumped off his horse and motioned for me to follow. My legs wobbled as I landed. Riding all day took some getting used to. I followed slowly as he descended over the ridge and disappeared behind a large outcropping of rocks.
“What is that place? That’s more than shadows,” I said, ducking behind him as translucent creatures floated towards us, materializing from one cloud and blending into another. I swallowed hard. An unending haze of fog filled the crevasses between the mountains.
“That’s our shortcut. It’s the one place I’ve never wanted to explore.”
I looked at his guarded eyes and then back at the wisps of darkness covering the sky.
“We need to be careful when we’re in there. There’s a spell that keeps most shadows off the path, but one shout or false move,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “and it’ll be broken.”
“What happens if it gets broken?”
“I don’t know for sure, but they say that the shadows will devour you, making you one of them, cursed to remain in this valley forever.”
“Game over,” I whispered. Dread prickled down my spine. “So how do we get through it?”
He looked at me for a moment and winked. “Why don’t you tell me? The shortcut was your idea.”
“That’s not funny, and you know it,” I said, squeezing his hand.
His good humor soured. “You’re right, but I honestly don’t know. Not many people attempt this route. We’re on our own in here. All I can promise is that I’ll be by your side through it all.”
My heart beat uncontrollably as his rough lips brushed my cheek. It wasn’t quite the reassurance I was hoping for.
“Let’s go,” I said, pulling away and tucking the cuff of my sleeve over my wrist. I clambered back on my horse. I needed to go before my nerves caught up with me.
The stillness haunted me like the eye of a storm. Whispers of wind pressed against me, and the pit in my stomach dropped. The top layer of snow slithered off the pathway, swirling in mysterious symbols before dispersing with the breeze. Our footsteps disappeared as the wind picked up, moaning. Strong gusts sent my hair flying, blinding me as white crept in from every angle.
The mist rolled in, claim
ing every blade of grass and shrub beneath its shimmering shadow. I watched the landscape change, trying to memorize the twisting path.
“Stay on the path, right behind me. And don’t make a sound,” he warned. “You’ll see their shadowy figures and hear their cries, but they aren’t allowed to touch you unless you scream.”
His tense tone alarmed me. “I’ll be right behind you,” I said.
“They’re fast but not stealthy.” He pointed towards the first of the ghostly figures approaching us. “If you listen closely, you’ll hear them rattle as they move.”
Sure enough, when I slowed my breathing and quieted my mind, I heard the tell-tale rattle. “They’re like rattlesnakes,” I said, giving Arrow a small smile.
“What’s a rattlesnake?”
“Just something from my world,” I said, hurrying to shrink the distance between us. Barely into the canyon and I had already slipped behind.
“You can tell me all about it when we get out. Hand me your reins. I don’t want the horses to get spooked and run off with you.”
I dismounted and handed the reins to him. Normally I wasn’t claustrophobic, but as the fog crowded around us, the air tightened and my chest refused to breathe deeply. I didn’t notice that I had stopped walking until Arrow became a faint shadow in the distance. The fog surrounded me, and I jumped ahead before he disappeared.
I had to stay focused. That was twice in such a short period of time that I had almost lost him.
A rattle jumped out on my left, followed by a pale, disembodied face. Arrow’s warning flashed in my head, and I choked back the scream in my throat. I squinted, hoping I could forget the hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, and walked around, making sure she didn’t follow me.
By the time I turned back to the path, it was empty. Arrow had gone too far ahead. My heart raced as I looked around at the nothingness.
“Arrow?” I whispered.
The mist clung to me like a spiderweb, shrouding me in its cloak of mystery. I brushed at my shoulders, feeling the viscous substance grope at me. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth as I bit into my cheek. I wanted to scream for Arrow to find me.
Dreamscape: Saving Alex Page 28
