Page 214 of Mud

He turned around toward the white sky, as the players all charged us, and the vulcera and the eagle charged at them.

The sound of it cut me wide open.

Screams and falls and teeth snapping, animals hissing.

Stop!I shouted in my head, but my chin was shaking now and I couldn’t bring myself to scream.

Taland began to descend the hill.

“Taland, what are you doing?!” I whispered a little while later, more panicked by the second. “This is the Drainage—go back! It will lead us to the Drainage—the Valley is gone!”

“I know, sweetness. Close your eyes for me, will you? It will be over in no time.”

Tears fell from my eyes without stop. I tried to move my hand again, and I managed but only barely. I couldn’t even reach out to grab his jacket. To make him let go of me. To make him stop.

“I can’t move, damn it!” I cried. “Please, please—I can’t move. Stop, Taland. Stop walking!” Or at leastI thoughtI said all of this.

He didn’t.

The sound of the fight we left behind grew more and more distant the farther down the hill we went.

I made the mistake of looking at where we were headed, foolishly hoping I’d find the Valley as I left it, even knowing that I wouldn’t.

But the Drainage of the Iris Roe was very different from the furnace at the Headquarters. This Drainage was simply the ground set with bones and a blinding white sky overhead.

Small bones, like the ones Whitefires kept about them as anchors. Finger bones, small skulls, small ribcages—bones. The ground was completely covered with them as far as my eyes could see.

“Taland,” I choked, as the panic raised the alarms in my head, and my mind began to shut down on me.

“Yes, sweetness?” Taland said and stepped onto the bones.

One step.

“Please,” was all I managed to whisper.

This was the Drainage. If it did what the name suggested,hewas going to be turned to Mud, too. He’d have his color drained out of him. He’d be half dead—just like me.

No. I would never allow it.Take it,I thought, giving him all of my magic, all that foreign substance that was now inside me. It felt wrong, anyway—not like magic should. To him, it would feel right.Take it, all of it…and I opened myself to him the best I knew how.Take the magic, Taland…

“It’s all right. Sleep—we will be just fine,” he whispered, but didn’t take anything from me, not that I felt.

Another step.

The sound of bones breaking under his boots cut me wide open. I was crying so hard it felt like I should be shaking, but I wasn’t. My body was completely paralyzed, and my head slid a bit off his shoulder, and my eyes closed a little more.

Please, please, please,I begged, no longer able to speak out loud.Please, take it.

Taland took another step over those bones. All those fucking bones…

He didn’t stop.

He held me to his chest with all his strength, and though his legs shook, and he wobbled to the sides the farther we went, he never once let go.

Taland was walking right through the Drainage to getme away from those players, while the eagle and the vulcera fought to hold them back.

For me.

They were all fighting for me.

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