Page 41 of Dragon 7

What the Trees Knew

Hiro

Another scream tore through the trees.

Then another, right behind it, higher and rawer than the last.

I'm coming. I'm coming. Hold on.

The wind shifted off the slope ahead, and it carried a new scent into me, under the salt and the gun oil and the green crush of the leaves.

Copper.

Blood.

I had spilled enough of it to know it in the dark with my eyes shut. But this blood was hers. I knew it the way I knew my own name before my mind could argue.

Someone cut her? No! I’ll fucking cut them open!! And all their family! I’ve got to get there faster!

The ground was too slow.

Fast, almost in a blur, I planted a boot against the nearest trunk and ran three strides straight up the bark, then caught the lowest limb with both hands and swung up onto it.

Come on! Push!

The branch bowed deep under my weight and flung me higher.

I let it throw me.

Then I ran the trees.

The canopy became a road only I could see. I jumped from one branch to the next before the last one finished bending, riding the bounce of each limb into the leap for the one ahead.

Pine needles whipped my face.

Cold air tore past my ears.

Below me the forest floor dropped away into black, and I stayed up where the moonlight lived, weightless as smoke off a snuffed candle.

Nyomi’s screams grew closer.

A branch dipped under my heel. I rode it down and let it sling me across a gap no man should clear.

For half a breath I hung over nothing, arms wide, the whole dark island spread beneath me. . .then I dropped, and my boot found the next tree.

I ran on.

Her scream came again.

Even closer.

For one breath the screaming sounded like her laugh in the kitchen, the way she threw her whole head back when something caught her funny, loud, unbothered, and alive. Then it broke back into agony, and the wrongness of it nearly tore me out of the trees, and under it now came chanting.

Many voices wound around her cries like rope around a throat.

What are they doing to her? And why are they chanting!?

Then suddenly all this red came up to meet me.