She breathed in. Shallow, heavy, but with the time that passed finally slower and slower and no longer so rushed. With the certainty of the passing seconds, the burning seemed to subside, and the horrible tingling that had afflicted her legs and arms, like a horde of ants slowly receded as the tide and the ebb knew how to alternate creepily. Still, she did not dare to stir or attempt another escape. Moments, minutes perhaps, passed-or mere seconds? She could not measure the time they remained motionless. As if hunter and prey had to become aware of the end of the chase and the situation, and had to come to terms with the fact that this game for life had come to an end so abruptly.
Leaves puffed around her trickled around her shoulders and tickled unpleasantly on her cheek and neck. It tickled, it prickled, and Luke wasn't sure - didn't want to think about it - if there weren't creatures crawling around in the leaves. The tree trunk that had broken the fall loomed right next to them like the significant cliffs near the Isle of the Lost. Dry twigs beneath the foliage of colorful leaves cracked treacherously as soon as she tried to shift her position just a little, and the pressure on her body made her tense her limbs nervously to look for a way to perhaps free herself after all. But the weight of the pirate, who towered over her by more than a head even as she stood, pressed her unyieldingly into the forest floor, which at least had not caught her hard as stone.
Still, her flesh throbbed with pain in more than one place, where stones or branches had pressed into her in the fall and no doubt left their marks even under her clothes. Scratch marks, even tears in her flesh, and bruises would heal with time. Next to the deadly shadow above her, it was all beside the point. The captain, whom hell itself should have spat out again- and who remained just as motionless above her, as if his pulse would also have to sink again first. The waves had rushed up against each other and now, after the raging storm, calm had to return slowly so that the waves could roll onto the beach in their usual rhythmic manner. And so the silence lay between them. Nothing more than motionless waiting, thumping heartbeat and roaring of her pulse in her ears, while she stared towards the captain, on whose features the shadows crept by like ghosts.
Under heavy breathing, her eyes were on him. Languishing, uncertain, hesitant. She had escaped his blade, had balanced her life on death's edge as she had leaped from the window, and there no more separated her from certain death than the slippery rope. She had run until her legs were weak - and yet now he had caught her.
Ah, she wanted to cry out in frustration! If it wasn't her life she had gambled away on this- she might have taken a twisted... Joy, almost FUN could have felt thereby. Life tasted much more intense when not sitting on an upholstered armchair, tasting it from a finely cut and gold-brushed crystal glass. Wasn't it much sweeter when you drank morning dew from leaves, stole honey from a bee's nest, and accepted the price of a bee sting for it? That's how life tasted best: direct, undiluted, in all its facets.
If he wasn't who he was, she wouldn't have this dark certainty that she might not live to see tomorrow - she would have challenged him to Revenge, grinning cheekily, to race him again. As it was, however, she swallowed hard and finally pulled at her wrists to free them- to no avail. Hook was stronger than she was, and as long as he kept a firm grip on her hands, she would not be able to reach her saber at her belt, nor the knife she carried.
For a moment she almost believed Hook would not answer her again. When the iron grip of the hook loosened around her one hand, it went up with the intention to push him away - but it already died when he embraced her with his other. Although she tugged with both hands, he managed to enclose her with only one. Firm, unyielding pressure that became painful as soon as she kept pulling and tugging, until she groaned, pursed her lips, and held still again.... completely frozen at the moment when the sharpened tip of the hook dragged over her face, passed over her skin.
YOU ARE READING
A Neverland Tale - HOOKED (eng)
Fantasy** Only one thing can still prevent Neverland's downfall: In the dark times when a star's light perishes, a new one must be found! ** Neverland - a world in which simply everything was possible as long as you could dream it. But behind a shining lig...
