Page 44 of Stalking Wendy Darling

LIGHTBREAK

It took me an hour to wash most of the sea monster’s gunk from my hair, and even now it was still stained green. That’s what you got for throwing two grenades into a huge octopus’s stomach while you were still inside the damn thing.

Not my finest hour. I could still smell the rotten fish scent of its stomach. My arms were covered in a red, painful rash from its stomach acid, and my face stung in multiple places. I had to be as red as a chilli.1 At least I still had hair. That was the only positive I’d found.

To catalogue my current negatives:

I washed up on a pebbled beach that bruised every last bit of my body.

The ocean stole most of my knives.?

I had no grenades left.

Instead of being discovered by a gallant stranger or a pretty princess who’d vowed that we were best friends from that day forward, a veritable giant with a mean scowl and evil eyes grabbed me.

Said evil-eyed giant carried me, kicking and screaming, to the town that sprawled across the pebbled beach and sold me to ‘The Collector’ for twenty gold coins.

I wasn’t even worth a hundred gold coins. Not even fifty. A measly twenty. I was so damn offended.

No amount of threats, manic laughter, fighting, or spitting had stopped me being sold to this so-called collector.

Everyone seemed to be terrified of the guy, which didn’t bode well. The hulking meathead who threw me into a cage on the back of a cart to deliver me to The Collector seemed like he’d piss himself the closer we got to the imposing stone fortress on the hill. It was made of flat slabs of grey stone, harsh angles, and it didn’t even have a tower. No rope bridge or drawbridge or any sort of bridge to speak of. Boring.

Meathead drove his cart through a break in the solid wall topped with thorn-sharp wire and I was hauled, cage and all, into a dark hallway.

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