Those Who Fall by Rachael Arsenault

Author:Rachael Arsenault [Arsenault, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“How are we doing for time and distance?” Tara asked. She was walking ahead of Emily and me, not encumbered by a backpack (like me) or an injury (like Emily). As she spoke, she turned to face us, walking backward. Just watching her made my calves hurt. I was glad we had a few days rest so the bruising on my left leg could settle into a persistent but manageable ache.

“Hang on. Let me check.” Emily deftly unlocked her phone with one hand, something I had never been able to do with my own phone because of my short fingers. Once she checked the map again, she said, “We’re a little over halfway there.”

“How much longer is that?” I asked.

“Half an hour-ish?”

“Half an hour,” I sighed, wiping sweat from my eyes. “Cool. Great. We can make that.”

But whether or not we could keep going for another thirty minutes wasn’t really the question. The question was whether or not Farida would still be around after that much time had passed. The fight was probably long since over by now, which meant she was either victorious and well on her way, or she had lost and was—

I didn’t want to think too hard about that.

As we continued walking, moving further and further away from the highway that I was used to following the edge of, the trees around us grew less skeletal and became intermixed with evergreens, forming a thicker and thicker canopy to block out the sun. It made the air in the woods cooler and easier to breathe through our exertion, pleasantly scented with pine needles, but the underbrush was also getting denser. It tangled persistently around our legs, determined to stall our progress, and I found myself wishing, not for the first time, that there was a nice, clear-cut hiking trail that could lead us straight to Farida.

And then, miraculously, there was one.

“What the hell?” Emily muttered. We all slowed to a stop.

A path had been carved through the undergrowth, stretching out on our left so far that it disappeared into the darkness of the dense trees and we couldn’t see where it began. It curved past us and continued on straight ahead. But it didn’t look like someone had cut their way through, or like a car had plowed through here, or anything like that. It was like everything had been uprooted and tossed aside, leaving the dirt below exposed and crumbling — and much, much easier to walk over.

“Should we follow it?” I asked hesitantly.

Emily did her strange head shrugging motion again. “It’s going in the right direction, at least for now.”

“But this might be from whoever’s fighting Farida,” Tara said. When Emily and I both turned to look at her, she bit her lip and sort of wrung her hands. “Well, it was hard to tell from what I saw during my scry, but it seemed like the other person was making plants grow up around Farida to trap her.”

“Great,” Emily bit out sarcastically, her part-curious, part-suspicious stare shifting into a full-out glare.

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