Nada's Escape

57- Saltation.

For ten minutes my head against the pillow only has safe, sleepy thoughts. Then the shiver from last night creeps up unannounced. No images this time, just terror. Its intensity increases like a steady hand on the volume dial, winding my nerves up tight.

I jerk from bed, room lit once again from the lamp post outside. I wander out and through the quiet night. The feyflies whisper my name under their breaths and I pause beneath them, sorry that those I'd released have been replaced. It's intriguing that someone watches the lamp posts. I venture further until I reach the Academy. I creep through a hall filled with tall windows and taller shadows to the training space. It's unlocked.

I push on the door and in the flutter of feyfly light Darcell stretches his body along a series of poses. I keep quiet behind the half-open door. It's a warm-up, I think, a mindful dance that makes me want to linger. He moves through the steps like a form of water, not one of flesh and bone, with an expression both serene and focused. It's strangely calming to watch.

After some time he pauses. He turns to the door, to me, and folds over in an elaborate bow. My heart beats hard at the approaching confrontation, and I swivel one foot back on a sandalled heel, ready to run. But he doesn't say a word, just hides a smile behind a lowered fringe.

He slides a long, thin blade from a sheath by the wall and begins the same movements, arcing the blade around him in a deadlier dance. I feel the sleepiness creep up on me again and in that state I might have watched him longer, lulled by the rhythmicity of his movements.

Whilst Darcell had dominated the very centre of the room before, he now practices closer to the tower staircase behind, making space for someone else. Though I should slip away, I pad into that space instead. I begin to stretch, waiting for the cutting remark but he stays silent, apparently absorbed in his own movements. So I try and focus on stretching out the aches of my muscles, though it's difficult with Darcell always in the corner of my eye.

I push myself off the floor and start punching the air instead. I begin to visualise defeating the nameless fears of my nightmares. Somewhere between the exercise and the breaks for gasping I almost, almost, lose awareness of Darcell altogether.

Time passes in midnight bursts: fierce honing of punches, jabs and kicks, silent snatching glances of Darcell and pauses for my mind to babble with criticism and correction. Each part of me becomes tired, looser. Despite the nightmares, my double bed becomes more and more appetising. One of those snatching glances shows Darcell sheathing the thin sword. Time to go?

Opening my mouth for the question, the pressure of a hundred silent minutes builds behind my eyes. I let the question go, twisting my heels to face the wall, leaning into a stretch I barely need. Rocking there, I try and focus on the needs of the body instead of the intellect, lunging forward and side-ways at varying widths until just the right section of muscle ... sings.

Darcell moves slow in my vision as I turn. Even with eyes firmly sighted away from him I can see he's offering me something. I allow myself to notice it's a bottle of water but in the silent static of the space it's difficult to convince myself to move for it.

"I haven't put my lips on it, if that's what you're worried about." He cracks the blue seal of the lid, expression easy as the silence shatters all around us. I examine his face closely, seeing a tiny line of worry between his mellow green eyes.

"Thanks," I whisper, letting cool invigoration rush from the bottle and down my throat. "I wasn't worried though."

Though his smile is sunny his tone is low and touched with disbelief, "If you say so..." He takes the bottle back and also guzzles it down. I take this minor distraction as my queue to skedaddle and so I turn for the door.

Darcell beats me there, reaching across me to open it before us, blade sheath sliding down to knock against my shoulder. He closes my fingers around the bottle, crushing it a little, then lets me go, dashing down the corridor like a speeding arrow.

I frown at the bottle, wondering if it can make any more sense of that than me. Did he have to be the fastest out of the room or something?

I take the long way back to the Warrior Circle, puzzling over Darcell, and then the mysterious Boreas. The feyflies still whisper my name and I wonder if that means they know something. I stop under a lamp post to ask.

"Are you going to set us free like the others?" The tinny voice is faintly melodic, like a song heard through radio static.

"You know about that?" I ask, incredulous.

"One told us, they did. We know you're looking for the free one." I think it's the same voice that replies.

"We'd help too, if only you gave us the chance." Another feyfly pipes up, the chimes cooler in their voice.

"So that's why you're chanting my name." I reply, eyeing up how easy it will be to scale the post.

"The saviour." Is the esoteric reply from the melodic feyfly.

"All right. I'll let you go if you promise to try and find Boreas for me."

"This one will," replies the first.

"And this one," echoes the second.

"And us." Two new voices, barely distinguishable.

So I launch myself up the lamppost, the metal imperfect enough to grip with hands and feet. I used to climb a pole out the back of my house like this. It only takes a tiny push on the latch and I release another lamp of feyflies to the night, making sure none of them have Boreas' colouring. These are all royal golds, yellows and reds however, similarly coloured like cousins in a Christmas photo.

My eyelids flutter, weighed down by the darkness left in the feyflies' wake. I feel a twinge of guilt passing the rest of the lamps, whose occupants still whisper my name. I'm tempted to release them all, only I don't want to draw the Huntsmen's attention to it. Or me. I'll have to be more cautious, perhaps keeping the disappearances random to allay suspicion.

I stumble through the kind, fresh-scented night to my bed and with a smile curl into it, forgetting that nightmares exist.