Sybilla clenched her hands into fists for a moment and then uncurled her fingers, bringing her back to the task at hand.
She began to whisper into the blackness above her face.
Chapter 14
“Help!” Alys screamed into the trees as she fought to keep her body as still as possible. She had only just stopped swinging, and with hanging upside down, she thought there was a great possibility that she would vomit should she start to sway once more.
It was difficult not to move though. Her left leg felt as though it would pull from her hip and she tried to keep her right leg crossed over and lock her ankles together. Her skirts were fallen up—or down, really—around her face, exposing her legs and lower back to the winter night. Her stomach was only spared because she had her arms held at her sides. The hem of her cloak trailed the ground below her head.
“Help!”
This was very, very bad. She must have stepped into some hunter’s snare, although what he expected to catch with a trap so large was beyond Alys. Perhaps a dragon. Who knew when the man would be through this part of the wood to check his traps in the winter? Any game he secured would stay patiently frozen, waiting for him. Alyshad to return to Piers. Even though she had found no aid for him, she could not let him be alone.
And the thought did cross her mind that she could die like this, feet in the air, her skirts around her face. With all the jibes Alys had sent her eldest sister about her numerous male companions, Sybilla would never let her live it down.
“Ha!” she huffed on a white cloud of breath.
She had to get loose.
Even though it worsened her vertigo, Alys craned her neck back to look at the ground below her for a weapon of some sort. There were a couple of smaller rocks perhaps three feet out from her head, but even when she let her skirts fall back around her face and stretched as far as she could, her fingertips could not reach them. She was too high off the ground, were the rocks even directly beneath her head. They weren’t sharp rocks any matter. She could do little with one save beat her own brains in. Which might soon be a winsome fantasy if it became obvious she was going to hang there for eternity.
She tried to fight down the panic that threatened to step in and take control of her mental faculties. Her left foot was numb now, and an ache was crawling from her ankle to her hip, her buttocks cramping with the strain. She struggled to gather her skirts together to the side of one thigh and secured them in a large, clumsy knot. The wind seemed to tear at her exposed skin. She coughed, cleared her throat of saliva and spat to the side. Then she took a deep breath and craned her head around to find the tree she was suspended from.
It was about ten feet away from her. But even if she could pendulate herself enough to reach it, she didn’t know what she would do once there. Attempt to shimmyup the trunk, upside down, and with one leg tethered? Ridiculous. It was too wide to even get her arms about.
She arched her back, her head swimming as the ground waved beneath her, and then strained with her stomach to bend her chest up to her thighs—if she could grab her ankles, then the rope …
“Aghh!” she screamed as her hip strained—she barely got to a ninety degree angle before falling back down. She lengthened her arms behind her head and tried again, swinging herself harder and throwing her hands toward her feet.
The pain was so that she couldn’t even scream this time. She fell back down and fought with her skirts as she swung and swiveled.
When her vision was unhampered once more—save for the sickening dizziness—she noticed another tree perpendicular to that of her captor, a young tree whose girth was only perhaps the thickness of her thigh, and which had low, spindly bare branches perhaps six feet off the ground. If she could swing herself so that she could grab hold of one of those branches …
What?she asked herself.You’d be stretched across the forest floor like a rabbit on a spit. What good would that do you?
But if she could suspend enough of her weight to loosen the strangle knot, she might be able to kick the loop from her ankle with the other foot. Even if she fell after … well, a fall from that height wasn’t likely to kill her. She hoped.
“Alright then,” she growled, keeping her eyes on the smaller tree and tightening the knot of her skirts. She let her hands go over her head once more, then arched her body to begin swinging.
“Oh!” she gasped, and tried to swallow as she began topick up speed and distance. The blood in her head and behind her eyes seemed to slosh, her ears popped painfully. The wind swept her hair across her face and she clawed it away. “Oooh!”
She was only about three feet from her fingertips reaching the lowest branch. She bowed her body even further on the back swing, ready to launch her momentum.
She cried out as she flew forward, her fingers reaching, reaching—she was going to grab it!
Warm flesh clamped over her outstretched hands, halting her ascent and jarring her stretched body to a halt. Her hip screamed. A man’s face, upside down, appeared before Alys’s.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.
Alys’s heart stopped as she looked at the doubling, tripling image of the grizzled old man before her. Her stomach, however, heaved.
“Let me go,” she choked.
“As you wish.” He smiled and released her hands, and Alys flew backward.
“Heeelp meee!” she cried, screaming shrilly as her head passed inches away from the trunk of the large tree.
“Oh, make up your bloody mind!” the old man admonished. He came to stand beneath the branch that supported her, and on Alys’s next pass, he reached out and seized her arms, bringing her to a gentle halt. He released her, then bent to peer into her face. “What are you doing caught up in my snare?” he demanded.
