Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

23.4 Two Paths

A wide highway lit up by dirty white streetlamps, stretches into the night. The image rushes forward, as if I'm racing along the centre of the highway on the hood of a car. I get the sense of darkness creeping up behind.

My fingers slip past Finley's in the gardens and yet I'm still seeing the racing road and its glowing white lines. I hold both these moments in my awareness, though it takes all my focus. Finley's blue-shaded eyelids are closed but something slides side-to-side beneath them, corneas tracking an internal tennis match. I re-centre my weight on the branch.

I begin to feel the wind rushing past on the bright highway. The streetlight just before me blinks out and darkness pools in its wake, a suffocating solid mass. I, or I guess it must be we because this isn't my dream, plunge headlong into it, striving for the next pool of illumination. Right as we reach it the lamp blinks out and the darkness rushes past to overtake us. The long line of lights reaches out before us, but faster and faster each is swallowed by the liquid darkness.

Movement slows and the shadow clings to our eyelashes, like macabre mascara, making it harder to see and the air tastes stale. Is this becoming a nightmare? But there's no fear...

I whack Finley's hand, the force of the movement almost upsetting me. As the rough bark rips into my legs and hands, I see Finley flinch away from the whack and make his own grab for his branch. The world swings and my blood rushes to my head for a moment. As the heat recedes again I cock my head at Finley.

"Rough awakening?" I ask wryly as he gets control of himself, grimacing.

"What. Happened." Finley huffs, shock stealing the expression from his words.

"I think..." I shake my head and remind myself that nothing is impossible these days, "I just saw into your dream."

"Wow." He whispers, rolling as close to me as his branch allows. It's the sort of wordless moment where I meet his eyes, forgetful in my amazement. Clear hazel at this distance. Just as wildly curious as mine. I roll forward myself, balancing so I'm hanging on the curving edge of the branch.

"Maybe that's your-" He starts.

"Don't." Awareness of the yawning gap to the ground has me breaking the moment, glaring down at the giant red bowl Finley had dropped into the foliage. "I don't have powers. All these things you've added up are coincidence, or you."

"Could be..." He concedes.

"Even breaking Penny's sweetheart's oath." I stretch my gaze up to the overgrown stone wall that borders the cottage garden, tracing its arches for foreign movement.

"So you didn't do it?" Finley asks and I sense he too is being careful now. So he'd been entirely out of it when I brought up Penny's ribbon. Had I imagined he'd responded?

"I couldn't." I press my hands to the branch under my torso, bunching up the muscle there. "Still we should try it together."

I jump up onto my toes so that I'm crouching on the branch, ready to leap back to the ground.

"Yes, let's do that." Finley says but I barely hear because I'm launching my bare feet along my branch and leaping for another to my left. Swinging controlled from that branch to a lower one, I land with only the barest grasp on my balance. But it doesn't matter because I'm crouching there and falling outstretched for the final branch in my sequence. It digs into my palms like fire but I keep my hold, straining to let go at just the right point to land, smacking my soles, on the mud and stone path.

"How do you feel about this? This us?" Finley's words register late, kept back in the queue for my attention as I leapt for the ground. My heart gallops and not just from the rush of the fall. I grimace, hiding my burning face from the tree. Why do you have to ask that? Why now?

I refuse to answer that question. Gathering my courage in both hands, I plant a hand on my hip and rotate on a heel, "You just fell asleep in a tree. You're only fit to nap."

He's closer than I would have thought, wading through the flowers just halfway between me and the trunk, holding the lurid red pasta bowl. I look at his trampled path in dismay.

"You're meant to use the paths, so no one knows I've been hiding out here." I turn my sass on him.

His mouth twitches with regret, "Sorry. Hopefully tonight's rain will have them filling the gap quickly."

As he nears I turn in expectation of some forgetful glance but he too turns away, careful. In my mind I follow the path stretching before me, winding deeper into the Huntsmen's fantastical gardens. He rubs a hand through his hair, raising chunks of it that even I can see, side on as we are.

"You're right. I'm not in much condition for conversation. But I'll make sure we finish this. Later tonight, I'll come find you." His whisper sounds closer than we're actually standing. I might nod, I'm not sure. All I know is my hair shifts in the windless garden as he walks out of the window of my view. A shiver races down my spine: excitement or trepidation?