His mouth twitches, and I have to work not to stare at it, because he has a great mouth.
“Only if you run away from me,” he whispers.
“Got it.” I nod.
He holds my gaze for a second longer. “Wait right here.”
“Like I’m going to go anywhere.”
“I never know with you.”
He disappears into the undergrowth for two or three minutes. When he comes back, he has a handful of large, broad leaves. The kind with a waxy surface and thick central veins. He also has several strips of the soft fibrous moss that grows in thick mats along the base of the trees out here. He tears the moss into workable pieces and folds one of the leaves in half along its spine, testing its flex.
He kneels back down in front of me.
He picks something from the cut on my heel with two fingers.
I wince.
“Sorry.”
He holds up a thorn.
“That explains why my sole hurt so badly.”
He nods.
Then he layers a pad of folded moss over one of my cuts and wraps the whole thing in leaves, tucking the edges under in a way that holds without needing anything to tie it. He does thesame with the bruising on my right foot, padding the ball of it, wrapping, and tucking.
He sits back and looks at his work.
“That should feel much better,” he says.
“Much. Thank you.” I smile.
He gives a single nod and pushes to his feet.
I stand up. I take a few steps. The improvised padding takes the edge off, enough that the wince I’ve been swallowing every third step stops coming. It still pulls. It still aches when I hit the ground at the wrong angle. But it’s manageable now.
“I think I should carry you for a while,” he says, and picks me up in the next breath.
“No…um Magma, don’t…um I?—”
“It’ll just be for a little while. You need to give your feet a break.”
“You can’t carry me. That isn’t fair to you. I can walk, I?—”
“I know you can walk.” He adjusts his hold, and I am now very securely against his chest with very little say in the matter. He starts moving through the jungle in fast strides. I’m embarrassed by how much faster he is. “Don’t argue with me on this.”
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“Magma.”
“Carla.” He says my name back at me in the same tone I used on him, which is both infuriating and, annoyingly, a little funny.
“It isn’t right. You’ve been walking all morning. You need your energy.”
