Page 20 of Of Blood and Banes
I sink my fingers into the floor, desperate to not leave them, my fingernails cracking under the pressure. But the wooden boards beneath my nails wave like liquid, and despite how manytimes I frantically try to claw at them, they meld into a sea of brown. And then…green.
As if someone snapped their fingers, sounds explode around me. Birds tweet and chirp, and a river gurgles nearby. The flat green beneath my hands pop into vibrant sprigs of grass, bursting between my fingers. A crisp moisture hangs in the warm air, and I scan my surroundings. Dew drops glisten against the pine needles, the grass, the rocks. The gushing river splitting the Northern Forest shines almost white with snow runoff from Dragon’s Back Ridge. The water spills out past the shallow riverbanks my brother and I played in last summer, swallowing much of the land and growing dangerously close to the roots of the pine trees. I push up to my feet, and a pain flares in my right kneecap.
“Ow!”I whine, my voice still childlike, then grab my doll resting on the ground near me.
“I told you to stop running around! It rained last night so everything is going to be slippery.”
I toss a glance over my shoulder at my brother. He’s bent over near my father’s gravesite, laying wildflowers we picked in the hills near our home at the cross’s base.
I still can’t see his face.
“I’ll only stop if you can catch me!”My childish amusement kicks my voice into something high-pitched. I sprint past him with my doll in one hand.
“No! Stop!” My brother rises to his feet out of the corner of my eye.
Wind whips my hair behind me, the river roaring next to me as I race the currents downstream. His heavy footsteps sound behind me, closing in. I swear I can almost sense his fingers reaching out to grab at my collar. My feet nearly glide off the ground. The bend of the river approaches quickly, and I skirtright to run alongside it, stumbling as my feet lose traction on the slippery grass from such a tight curve.
“Kat—” his voice is interrupted by a loud thump and splashing sound.
I turn. My brother slides across the ground, and the river pulls hungrily at his legs, sucking him into its abyss inch by inch as he claws at the ground.
Hold on.
“Aiden!”I scream, my throat burning from how hard I shout his name. I dash forward, sliding to my knees and diving for his hand.
Hold on.
Before I can wrap my fingers around him, the river’s current drags his legs sideways, pulling him deeper into the water. He scrambles, digging desperately at the ground glistening with dew, but it’s no use. The river swallows him up to his chest, and the shock of the icy water drags a strangled gasp from his lips.
Hold on.
I snatch his wrist, my hand too small to wrap around his completely. As soon as I touch him, his head snaps up to me.
Hisface.
I know it all too well.
I’ve memorized every etched wrinkle creasing his pinched brows. The expanse of white around his brown irises. The unmistakable horror coating every inch of his expression before it settles into a Gods-fearing acceptance.
I know what comes next. I’ve tried so hard to push this memory out of my mind. This is the very last time I see him. And yet…and yet I can’t look away. I can’t close my eyes. Everything moves in slow-motion, trapping me in the moment and forcing me to look at him. The river behind him rushes by with a speed that’s eerie, and the hammering pulse in my ears slows.
His skin, normally flushed with rosiness by our days playing in the sun, is zapped ghostly white. Gritting his teeth, his forearms tremble with all the strength he can muster into anchoring himself to the riverbank. His brown doe eyes hook into every corner of my soul.
“Hold on!”I cry, wrapping another hand around his other wrist. Summoning every bit of strength a five-year-old has, I pull him as hard as I can. But my heels slip on the grass, and I fall back, breaking my grasp on him. I fling forward, scrambling to him and snatching his wrists once more.
“No, Kat! Let go! Or you’ll get swept off, too!” he barks.
But I can’t. I can’t let him go. A fierce determination flares within me, and I wrap my fingers even tighter around his wrists. My fingers ache at how hard I grip him. My arms tremble.
“Let…” he grunts, heaving himself up on one forearm to pry my fingers off his wrist. The motion allows the river to tear him farther back away from me.
His eyes meet mine.
One.
Last.
Time.
