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Chapter 8

"You're sure you can make it there on that leg?" Stone asks again. I choose not to answer, because I'm not sure myself. It's killing me, and I'm continually falling, but I'm driven by the hope this guy can fix it. I've been pestering Stone for the past hour, trying to get him to talk, but he remains reserved about his own past. However, he's very curious about mine.
"Was your father a Predator?" He asks, after I tell him about my childhood. Perhaps I shouldn't be spilling my life story to a strange boy I met in the woods, but it was a long way to walk, so it just came out.
"I don't know." I say. I'd always assumed my father was a Predator, but my mother had never told me for sure.
"What was his name?"
"No idea." I wonder why he's so interested in my father.
"You don't know your own father's name?"
"I told you! He vanished shortly after I was born! What more do you want! Why do you need to know, anyways?" I shoot back, irritated. So annoying. Suddenly I know how people feel when talking to me.
"My mother's a Predator, she might have known him."
I'm silent for a while. I suddenly realize Stone only talks about his mother, but never about his father.
"Who did you say your father was?"
"I never said."
"Then tell me."
"I-I can't," He sighs, grimacing. "I wish I could, but you wouldn't-I can't-"
"C'mon, I've told you, like, everything," I say exasperatedly, thinking there wasn't much I hadn't told him. Well, I hadn't told him about how I had escaped from the Examination yet... "Can't be that bad."
"It is, actually. You would kill me if I told you."
"Is it really that bad? What, is he an assassin or something?"
I suddenly realize Stone isn't in front of me anymore. I turn around, and he's staring off to the side.
"I might tell you, someday. But not today, not now. I guarantee you'll never see me the same again once I tell you." And he starts walking again. I peer closely at the spot he had been staring at, but see nothing but the leaves of a Macarue tree.
"Why is your grandfather not working in the City anymore?" I ask, wanting to get him back for his interrogation about my father.
"Look," He stops, turning to face me. "I have a complicated family history, OK? It's best if you don't dig into it. I try to forget it." We walk on a while more in silence, me mulling over everything he said. Complicated...
I stumble again, falling sideways, over my bad leg, into a small puddle.
"Crap," I mutter, picking myself up. The left side of my shirt and butt is soaked, dripping with the foul smelling water. Stone turns around, an exasperated look on his face.
"Got any other clothes?"
"At my home," I try wiping the water off. At least it's not acid- That would suck on multiple levels.
"My grandfather owns a small trading post, he might have something. We're not far." Stone turns back around, and starts walking again.
"Why does he have a trading post in the middle of the Wold?" Stone gives me a sidelong half-grin.
"You'll see."
"How much longer?"
"Um," Stone squints up at the sun, gauging the time. Mental note- Ask where he learned to do that. Most Predators and people of the Wold don't estimate the time like that, but simply by the amount of daylight. "A few more hours. It's half a day's journey there, and half back to the trail to the mountains. We've been walking for about two hours... But we're not going very fast because of..."
"I know, that's why we're going there in the first place." I cut him off as he glances at my leg. I glance at it too and wince. The white bandage around it is bloody, but we don't have another one to replace it with. I haven't dared take it off, but the wound is beginning to burn again- I worry infection is setting in.
We walk forever, trudging through the woods. Soon I can't tell if we're walking in circles or not, because every tree begins to look the same, every creek and rock. It's all a blur of fifty foot trees, their trunks as wide as my arm-span. As we get farther into the Wold, away from civilization, the trees are older, bigger, less harmed by construction and man-made radiation. There are less orange and purple blotches on the leaves, more green and brown.
Beasts are everywhere, though. The more natural and unaffected the forest, then the more they flourish. There's growling and snorting, scraping and screaming floating down from the canopy. More than once, there's a rustle of leaves, and the sun showing through the leaves onto the ground is suddenly blotted out by an enormous shadow. On those occasions, me and Stone huddle in the shadow of a tree trunk, among the roots, hoping to conceal ourselves.
Gr-r-o-oowl-l... I stop in my tracks, my cat ears twitching. Stone has stopped too, and his fuzzy black ears are rotating slightly.
"You hear it?"
"Yup.
"Run?"
"Yup."