Chasing Sparks

Chapter 6.2

Three hours later Wren was still jogging. He had made good progress and was pleased his luck had held. Nothing too big had crossed his path yet.

Wren was also beginning to suspect that the earring he now wore was doing more than just giving him nightvision. He could smell some animals hidden in the bush from over twenty paces and heard the movement of some really tiny creatures that in the past he would never have noticed. It seemed the earring was enhancing all his senses, not just his vision.

As he jogged on, he instinctively began to fall back into the meditative state where he subconsciously listened to the sound of his footfalls and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He carried on like this for a while, but was suddenly awakened by a huge surge of energy around his body, like a rush of adrenaline.

He knew he was in imminent danger. Wren wheeled around looking for the source but by the time he looked up into the branches above him it was too late. A huge weight came crashing down on him, knocking him to the floor.

As he struggled to get back up, he felt something lock its jaws on his ankle and drag him onto his back. Wren panicked and kicked out wildly at whatever was biting his leg. He then groped to the side looking for the stick he’d dropped when he fell. He found it and started wildy jabbing at the creature’s head. He could see what it was now, a tree lion.

Wren heard a whine and felt the release of the pressure on his ankle, as one of his jabs caught the lion in the eye. He immediately leapt up pushing the flimsy branches above his head to one side. But as he tried to put pressure on his ankle he found himself stumbling forward. Something wasn’t right. So, favouring his one good leg, he held his stick out in front of him trying to keep the lion at bay.

He could see the lion’s eye was closed where he had caught it and Wren thought, if he could just poke it one more time in that eye, it might think better of continuing this attack. So, he continued prodding as best he could.

The lion began growling and backing away, seemingly undecided as to whether its skinny prey was worth the effort but it wasn't long before Wren got his answer.

The lion sprang at him. It was past his stick defence in no time and knocked him to the ground with considerable force. Its paws then pinned him to the forest floor as its jaws reached out for his slender neck. Wren instinctively gripped the lion’s own neck and fended the mouth away from him as best he could.

They stayed locked in this position for a few seconds with both the lion and Wren straining to overpower each other. The lion then changed tack and started to rake its paws down Wren’s body. Pain exploded immediately in Wren’s chest as the claws bit deep into his flesh. Wren instinctively tried to squirm out from under the lion’s paws but didn’t dare let go of its neck.

Ignoring the pain, that seemed everywhere in his body now, he shifted his weight to the side and simultaneously moved his arms and the lion the other way. He felt the lion’s weight come off his body and hit the ground next to him. The lion then made its mistake. It tried to roll away from Wren, exposing its back to him. Wren wasted no time wrapping his arms and legs around the lion’s back and pulling it close making sure to keep the mouth away from his body.

He placed the crook of one elbow under the lion’s throat, while pulling the lion’s head back with his other hand and clamping his legs firmly around the lion’s body. And then Wren just held it there, squeezing as hard as he could.

He strained with the effort, his arms and legs aching as his muscles tensed. He felt the lion writhing and squirming, paws flailing in the air in a desperate attempt to get free. But Wren wasn’t going to let go. He just lay on his side crushing the lion against him. As he squeezed, the pain didn’t matter anymore, he just crushed and squeezed.

He didn’t know how long he had lain there but the lion was lying limp in his arms when he eventually let go. Dead, suffocated.

As he pushed the big cat away, the pain that had been masked by the adrenaline of the last few moments, came roaring back into his body. His ankle and chest both screamed at him. His chest was covered in blood and looked a mess. His ankle looked worse, and he could even see bone poking through the skin.

Along with the pain, a thought wriggled its way into Wren’s mind. If his ankle was broken it would just be a matter of time before the Seekers caught him.

As he lay there trying to keep the desperation of his position from overwhelming him, he started to notice the energy of the spark pulsing stronger inside him. He could feel the energy wanted to be used.

He slowly pulled what was left of his bloody ripped top from his body. Claw marks were visible in some places on his chest but in others, it was just red raw where the skin had been ripped clean off. As he looked at his gouged chest, he felt the spark’s energy begin to flow into the area. He felt a tingling in his chest and then a slight numbness.

Wren realised he could release more energy from the spark and let it pour into his wounded chest. He then gasped as he saw the bloody raw wound start to dry and scab over. He knew the energy was healing him. The pain too was beginning to subside as the scab grew. The scab then started to dry around the edges and looked the way he thought his chest might look in a week’s time, should it have healed naturally.

He didn’t know how he knew but he had the feeling he had emptied about half the spark’s energy in the short time it had been healing his chest. He then stopped the flow immediately, realising his mistake. Idiot, he thought. He should have been focussing on his ankle.

He then looked at his wrecked ankle and channeled the remaining energy into this region, focussing his attention, as best he could on the broken bone. He felt the same tingling feeling of numbness as the energy healed his ankle. He also felt like the energy was actually moving his ankle bone. That should have been incredibly painful, but the strange surrounding numbness seemed to suppress the pain and his ankle just tingled. He kept on pouring energy into the ankle until the spark was empty and only a tiny trickle of energy flowed from it.

Wren then looked again at his foot. An ugly scab had formed over the damaged area, just like his chest. He tried to flex his foot up and down. It was very stiff and there was still some pain but to his amazement the foot moved up and down. The broken bone had reconnected itself, and remarkably, it seemed the energy had moved the bone so the join had been made in the correct place. Madness.

And as he gingerly got back to his feet, he thought, maybe I can survive a little longer yet.