With the map in the bite of my teeth, the compass in my pocket, the torch dangling from my wrist, and the weight of the satchel trying to drag me back down to the pine needles dusting the floor below, the most annoying part of the hike is that every time I dig the toe of a boot into the damp hill, and I think I have a grip, I don’t.
Mud clumps under the sole of my boot before it gives out, and I start sliding back down again.
Connie is having the same trouble beside me.
A metre’s gap wedged between us, but I hear the grating raspy beat of her breath as though she’s right at my ear.
Her hand swipes out for the tree sprouted in front of her. The tree whose trunk is barely as thick as my thigh. This hill is covered in them, baby trees, thin trunks, and thick shrub.
We use everything we can to pull ourselves up the incline.
One wrong move, and it’s a hard, long fall down.
I wish I had my gloves.
Trunk after branch after shrub, my palms are red, raw and torn.
Leaves shower down on me. Get stuck in my hair, drift over the tip of my nose, catch on the hood of my rain jacket.
It’s a proper scaling, not an upwards hike, and it surprises me that Connie can keep up.
But she does.
All the way to the top.
I reach it first, the flat soil, and flop onto my back.
I tug the map out of my bite.
My teeth ache from the pressure. I roll out the tension, and listen to the hoarse breaths running ragged through Connie.
I almost think she has what I do. The effects of the blackout virus ruining my lungs. The reason I reach into my pocket and take a puff from the inhaler—but just one, because I need to ration.
But it’s not the virus that’s weakened Connie.
It’s the starvation, the trekking, the horrible conditions that all the captives have endured.
I’ve been lucky compared to them.
But Connie wasn’t just a captive.
She’s a mate to one of those warriors.
And I doubt he’ll let up searching for her.
Even with the flood watering down our scents, and the distance that the wave carried us out, I don’t feel the least bit safe.
“Come on.” I roll onto my knees, hand pressing into the dirt. The light washes over the foliage. “Your mate will be chasing you.”
Every second we waste is another step closer for him.
“Mate?” she echoes as she staggers to her feet. “Oh, the British way—as in friend?”
I throw her a furrowed look. “No. Mate as in evate. That’s… That’s what they call their person. Their, I don’t know, soul mate or whatever.”
It doesn’t matter anyway.
It shouldn’t matter—not if we manage to get away.
