The Hunt

Chapter 22: Naya

My strangled screams rip through the air, and fiery pain seizes my arm and makes my whole body shudder and convulse in pain. Warm blood is pooling around me, gushing all over the ground and out of the agonizing wound.

Before the knife can come down again, the leader guy is tackled to the side and lets out a shout.

It's Javaar, and he is on top of the leader guy punching him, bringing down his knuckles on the man's head over and over again.

"Naya run!" Javaar spits blood from his mouth, and struggles to hold the man down.

I see the chunky man with a weapon of some sort coming at me, and adrenaline and the thought of survival drives me to scramble away and stumble to my feet.

I can't see, because it's dark, and my vision is blurring as the throbbing and agony in my arm takes over.

My knife. Where's my knife.

I spot it on the ground sitting in pools of dark liquid, and I stumble over to get it.

The chunky man is wrestling with Javaar, and the leader guy is unconscious, maybe dead. The woman has stepped in and is struggling to get the weapon from the chunky man's grasp.

I collapse onto the tree next to me, a wave of nausea dulling my senses. I feel like I'm going to pass out at any minute.

All of a sudden there are more shouts, and a hand grabs my good arm. Javaar is yanking me to my feet again, and shouting at me.

Then I am running. Javaar is dragging me behind him, and I am stumbling to keep my feet moving across the ground.

I manage to stay conscious until even running for my life is too painful.

I wake up on the ground. Every part of my body is sore and aching, and I can't feel my arm.

I look down at it and see a cloth wrapped around what might be a very ugly wound. I decide not to even look at it.

I use my good arm to slowly prop myself up against the nearest tree, and let out a shaky sigh as I am in a sitting position.

My sack is gone. It must have been left behind in all the chaos. But I do see one thing familiar, and that's my knife, sitting a few feet away from me. Javaar must have grabbed it.

It's daytime, but I don't see Javaar anywhere. The boy must have been taking care of me, because I can see a few of his things over by my knife.

I'm not dead, so he hasn't decided to kill me yet.

Still exhausted, and not nearly cautious enough to worry about other exiles, I fall back asleep.

The sun is setting when I wake up. Javaar is sitting by his stuff, sharpening my knife.

He has a black eye and bruises all along his neck and ankles. No cuts though.

Suddenly, I realize that my hood is down. I throw it back over my head quickly.

"Don't bother. I've already seen your face," Javaar mumbles.

"Why did you help me?" I ask.

He looks up, "We're young, remember? We need all the help we can get."

"I think you would have been better off if you had let him kill me."

"Don't be modest Naya. You planned the biggest freaking attack on Surga's military this forest has ever seen, and didn't get caught. Why wouldn't I want you as an ally?"

I don't respond. I feel uncomfortable around the word ally, especially since I'm planning to kill this boy tonight.

"Where were you?" I ask. I woke up multiple times, and he wasn't around.

"I needed medicine for your arm, before it got infected. I stole some from this group of exiles north of here," Javaar crawls over, and hands me my knife, and my sack, which he must have taken with him, "And here. I managed to get these out."

I snatch the sack and secure it back on my waist, checking to see if everything is still in it. I take the knife and feel the smooth curve of it in my hands. The familiar touch of safety I haven't felt in a while.

"So what do we do now?" I ask.

"Find the key to The Box, of course," Javaar says, as if it's a simple task.

"I doubt things have died down by the wall," I say.

His eyes meet mine, and this time, I'm almost certain he can see through the hood, "Well it's the only thing we got to go on, isn't it."

I feel like any further into this conversation and he will get angry, and so I just stop talking and play with my knife again.

When the sky is dark, Javaar falls asleep almost immediately. I'm not surprised. He's probably been up watching me and stealing medicine from exiles, so he hasn't gotten much sleep.

I watch him, making sure he's asleep, and then slither quietly over to him.

I look at him, sleeping peacefully on the ground, with his tousled black hair covering his beat up face. I think of the fight, when he had saved my life by tackling the man. He did that because I was a valuable ally.

But he trusts me now. He healed me and now trusts me enough to watch out for him as he sleeps. He trusts me enough to want to find the key with me, and set out on this quest to get a life that he never had.

I think of what Javaar's life would be in Surga. As an orphan, maybe he'd join an orphanage, with other boys to play with and no titles or anything. With enough food to fill up the empty skeleton that is his body, and soft beds so he could sleep at night and not be reminded of his time as an exile.

I shake my head. I need to kill him. Now. It's too dangerous to have someone like this walking around, knowing the things I told him. I feel the curve of the knife in my fingers.

But then, as I imagine my knife going through his chest, I imagine his large catlike eyes flying open, and staring me straight in the eyes as he watches his life drain away. I imagine what he would be thinking. Maybe he would be thinking about why I would do that to him. Maybe he would be thinking about his life in the forest. Maybe he would be thinking about the life he might have had in Surga if he found the box. The life I took away from him.

I shake my head again. I have to do this. It's for my own survival. Like all the other times I've killed people.

I take out my knife and it hovers next to his chest.

All I need to do is stick the knife in his chest. Then I'm free to go find the key by myself. Just stick the knife in his chest.

I'm so close. All I need to do is kill him. Just one clean kill.

My knife hovers over him.

"Damn!" I shout and throw my knife across the way into a tree. I can't do it. I can't kill the prince of the forest.

"Is everything okay?" Javaar sits up immediately.

"It's fine, my arm just hurts," I choke out, and crawl back to my tree, shaking from the inside out.

Javaar has defeated me. I am weak now.

I wake up as the sun pierces through my eyelids.

Sitting up, and immediately feeling my arm stiffen in pain, I look around. It's the same clearing. My knife is lodged at the bottom of a tree across the way. The blankets I'm sleeping on are covered in dirt. That's it though. Nothing else. No extra supplies.

And that's when I realize my mistake, and what has happened, and why I am silent with shock.

Javaar is gone.

Gone gone.