Outlaw

7. Calypso

Day 4

They were hunting me. I sat bolt upright, my bedrolls falling off and pooling around me like a puddle. It was like the world had come down on my shoulders, pressing me further into the ground. I looked over to the east and saw the tip of the sun barely peeking over the horizon. Good. It was still early, I still had time. I gathered up my stuff and put it into my pack and refilled my water flask. After checking my food supply, I found that it was dangerously low, in any normal situation I would have spent some of the day trying to fill it up back to a sustainable level but today the adrenaline had already kicked in and so I did what I had been doing alot these past few days; I ran.

I remembered the lady's words

"No technology, just plain old tracking."

Just plain old tracking eh. Well then, I had a chance, a small chance, but still a chance none the less. The idea filled me with hope and gave wings to my feet, carrying me along. I glanced around, my hazel eyes taking in my surroundings as if for the first time, the trees created a ravine which I was running along the bottom of. Unimaginably tall trunks towered above me, giant sentinels observing the ongoing events from their lofty perch in the heavens, not intervening, but not quite distant at the same time. It was like they were calling silent encouragements from up above, telling me I could do this.

The stream that I had been following since I started out gurgled by my side as it had done for the past few days. What had used to be a gentle, joyous song was now a powerful anthem, I watched the stream part around rocks, gently pushing them forward while still flowing around them, I watched as a rock teetered and, with a final push from the insistent water, toppled into the stream, the water creating a hill over the new terrain. I thought about just how immensely powerful yet gently patient the liquid was, not to insistent but not so laid back that it never got anything done. I admired that; I wished I could be more like that.

Mostly, the landscape rushed past in a blur of unmemorable colours and shapes, all blending into one in a mottled hue of greens and browns with the occasional splash of colour. Usually, this would have been peaceful, I would sit down on a fluffy, dry patch of grass by the river, under a willow tree on my picnic blanket and start eating the picnic lunch my wonderful mother had prepared especially for me. But I wasn't in a normal situation, with fresh food all wrapped up in my picnic blanket, ready for me to eat at my leisure, I didn't have a loving, kind, compassionate mother waiting upon my safe return by the fire in our safe little village home. My life wasn't the picture perfect fairytale, my existence was full of danger and running...

And lies.

The realisation that, for the past three years of my life, I had practically been alone for all the company my mother had provided, I had been neglected, and forgotten about in the storm that was her grief at the passing of my father. I felt as though she believed that she was the only one mourning his death, the only one who had ever loved him and would continue to love him even when he was gone, the only person who thought about him every day, THE ONLY PERSON WHO WOULD TRADE THEIR LIFE FOR HIS WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT! The only person who feels guilty...

Well, she's wrong. I do all that and more, I just hope that he would be forgiving of my mistakes.

I was brought out of my reverie when the sound of trucks came into my hearing, they sounded eerily like the ones I had heard in my dream. Suddenly it hit me: they were the trucks from my dream! They had found me already. How? I had bargained on one more day at least before they caught up with me. What kind of plain old tracking were they using?

A million questions swirled in a hurricane of desperate thoughts, clawing at my attention.
How did they find me?
How are they so close already?
How close are they to me exactly?
Did she even keep her word of three days?
Why?

It was as though bad luck followed me like a cloud. They had found me already, I knew now that I stood no chance in this race, and finally I figured it out: I had lost before I even started. The creepy lady, whoever she may be, already knew that no matter how good I was, or how fast I could run, she would always be there to catch me up. I could never succeed. I might as well lay down and give up right here and now, it wasn't like I could survive more than a day at most - I was starting to think the tree trunk, crazy lady was sounding like a very plausible option right about now.

From the sounds of it, I deemed there to be at least twenty trucks. TWENTY! Each probably held at least five soldiers if not more, that's two hundred armed, trained soldiers. What if she was there; the lady? She could find me even if I hid at the ends of the Earth, or up in the heavens with the tree sentinels, she would still track me down. The thought sent shivers up my spine, chilling me to the core. In my panicked frenzy, I forgot to keep my eyes on where I was going, seeing it but not entirely focusing if you know what I mean (I know you would think that I'd learnt my lesson from the last few times this happened, but I didn't). In my lack of concentration, I didn't see the fact that a trapdoor had just been opened in front of me and I fell through said void of inky blackness into nothing, screaming on my way down...