HAVEN ✓

Seven

Much to my regret, the brief surge of bravery doesn't last forever. It's as if the ground itself is sucking the calm out of me. In its place, reality is pumping anxiety into my limbs. This is real. I crossed the Wall.

I'm in the Outlands.

I tamp down the intense out-of-place vibe that washes over me and focus on the task at hand. It's easy enough to formulate a plan, but as today shows, even the best laid plans often go awry. Things like pride and fear hinder progress, and I try desperately to clear my mind.

Step one was to cross into the Outlands. Step two is to find Markee. Step three? Hopefully make it back to Herald with her, safe and sound. What happens between each of those steps is where it gets unclear. But the end goal is always the same: get Markee and get out.

The forest in front of me looks undisturbed. The Outlander has left no sign of which direction he took Markee. I close my eyes and try to listen for footsteps. Brushwood moving. Anything that will help me find my friend, but the only sounds that reach my ears are the crescendoing footsteps from the hundreds of Outlanders headed my way. I've delayed too long.

Like feeding oxygen to a fire, the sound flares up the anxiety surging tumultuously through me. It courses from the tips of my fingers to the top of my spine, and down my legs until the soles of my feet tingle with tension. I feel like if I don't move soon, my muscles will turn to stone like rigor mortis upon death. If I don't get out of here, that might actually be a possibility. I need to find the right path that Markee's captor took before the horde has caught up to me. If they find me too, who knows what they'll do to me. Take me as a second prisoner? Kill me on the spot? Will they grind up my bones and eat me for dinner tonight, like the children's stories say?

The closer they get, the more restless I become. I don't know which direction to go except forward so that's just what I do. I put one foot in front of the other until I'm one step away from the thicket. Once under the canopy, it's like a spring is released, and all the tension previously petrifying my limbs now fuels me to run, to try and catch up with Markee. My feet eat up the ground as I dash through the forest, my eyes scanning the woods for any human life. Luckily, there isn't much underbrush to slow me down like the thick woods of Herald. This part of the forest is young, and gives me a clear view as I zip around tree trunks.

I run until the sun is slanting through the trees at a different angle. I run until the stitch in my side is unbearable. I run until I don't pick my foot high enough over a tree root and stumble, my shoulder catching me as I crash into the ground.

I lay there, my chest heaving, and want to cry from the pain. Why did I think I could do this? There is no way I could accomplish a rescue attempt like this. It's a job labeled for someone like Markee, for her strength and her courage. For her unbridled energy. For her fearlessness. Why did I ever think I could save Markee when, all my life, she's been the one saving me?

I picture her as she was last week when she visited me at Vera's. It was her shoulder I cried on. Then I remember her in school, always standing up for me when the other kids thought it was okay to keep picking on me just because I was too shy to tell them to stop. When Rhett was taken, she didn't leave my house for a week. I remember the pajamas with bright yellow polka-dots she wore when she slept over that first night. We were both nestled under the covers, exhausted from crying, but she held my hand fiercely. She was always keeping me grounded, when I just wanted to float away from it all. From the blame, my parent's grief, myself.

Maybe that's why we were inseparable. I needed Markee to counteract my own timid personality and the situations it got me in.

And now Markee needs me.

I can't blow my chance to be there for her after all the times she was there for me, supported me, lifted me. As impossible as this audacious mission may seem, I know Markee would have been able to do it. But she's the one who was taken, and the only person who has the slightest chance of bringing her home is laying in the dirt with tears stinging her eyes.