My cry is silenced in his grip.
The pressure builds in my face, the air cut off too long, and my legs are squirming now—but all I can feel is the pull of my thumb bending back and back and back…
He’s gonna snap it right off.
“The thumb of a hand.” The blizzards of his stare are unwavering. “Stumpy.” He tugs my thumb a touch more, and the bones scream. “Short.” Tugs again, and the tendons are aching. “Unappealing.” He brings his face closer to mine, the tip of his nose inching too close. “Suggest it again, and I will take what you are… the thumb of a hand.”
He releases me.
Just like that, his fist is gone from my neck, and I crumple to the earth.
I don’t feel the impact of the ground rushing up to meet me. I hear my landing, distantly, like an echo from another place. All I feel are the pulsations in my head, thumping and thumping, and the suction of a ragged breath clawing through me.
I worm onto my back, my hands clutched to my throat.
The warrior advances on me with a single step.
The foliage should crunch under his boot, but it doesn’t make a sound.
The whispery rage of his voice swirls around the snow, “You are my ward. My captive to keep alive—or kill. You decide that fate. You decide if you ever see your friend again… or if you bleed out at my boots.”
I squint up at him, the glow of red around his lean, strong silhouette, and the sight of it has my body tensing.
His stare is a glass sword aimed down at me. “If I give you an order, you obey. Now wash—or I will do it for you.” He kicks the cloths closer to me. “I will not be gentle.”
I scoot back.
The heels of my boots push me just a reach away from him, a feeble retreat.
But it’s one he allows.
His stare follows.
He watches as, gradually, my hands slip away from my neck, and slap down to the earth.
My breaths start to ease, though my throat is still sandpaper, and I have to throw my gaze down to his boots, because the rage is stirring in me.
The urge to kick out at him is strong, to boot into his shin or his crotch. An echo of the old me, the one before the blackout, who felt cornered too easily, threw hands too quickly.
Maybe I’m a little relieved she’s still in there, somewhere, even if she doesn’t emerge more than a flicker.
As though he can sense that flicker, the potential strike that might steal my instincts and outrace my rationale, he is unmoving, standing, watching me.
A grunt draws through me like a grater to my lungs as I roll onto my knees. I keep the hot anger of my red cheek to him as I angle myself towards the pile of clothes.
The rage starts to settle into bitterness.
It twists my swollen, bloody mouth as the words murmur in my mind, ‘Thumbs aren’t unexceptional, they’re evolution, they are literally what separates us from apes, but you do you, fucker.’
Can’t exactly say that, though.
Doubt I’ll survive the full retort.
Emily’s pretzeled body streaming blood through a swaying net flashes in my mind—and flinches me.
That could be me next.
So I keep my mouth shut as I unzip my winter jacket, then drape it over the foliage, like a little picnic blanket to protect myself from the cold ground.
