Chapter Twenty-one
Barely escaping from their clutches, Nara dived front into the air, her legs restricted by fabrics of her heavy wet dress to land gracefully. Her back had hit a trunk of a tree before she fell under an archway of old mossy trees. The bad landing tore a painful grunt from her lungs. Pain speared her skull and her whole back. She blinked a few times. Her left hand throbbed. Her smallest finger was dislocated, it was the one sending the intense pulse through her entire hand. Biting her lower lip, teeth digging on the lip painful, Nara straightened her crooked finger. A painful moan rose in her chest, causing her to blink rapidly again. Lucky’s tormented cries had her lifting her mudded face from the ground and stare under the archway in horror as the wretched ghost creatures clawed and tore at Lucky ruthlessly. One of the shadow creature’s face widened to smoky jagged teeth and sank its boorish mouth on Lucky’s neck. Black wisps enclosed the head of the horse and rot its flesh. A soundless scream escaped her mouth at the savagery. Pain tore through her as unbearable sadness constricted her chest. Nara crawled and picked up the dagger lying in a puddle across her. She had to get going because soon the beasts would turn to her. She eyed the creatures once more to make certain they still haven’t seen her.
Crap!
One of them paused its feasting and sniffed the air for a moment. Nara stilled, noting its white wisps socket eyes searching the opposite direction then turned her way. It rose from its crouch.
She knew when to run. And she did, ignoring the pain shooting up her legs. The fog was now everywhere save for the rain which was letting up to a drizzle. Not caring where she was running, she just ran. Surviving was all that mattered.
Nara slammed into something solid, or perhaps it slammed into her. Either way, she was thankful it wasn’t one of the creatures, recalling when she had slashed one, her dagger passed through it as if she was jabbing air. Her relief was replaced by sharp panic when strong hands held arms and steadied her. She lifted her head and met smoldering features and familiar gray eyes peering at her intensely. “Did I not tell you to stay close to me?” Finn muttered.
She was about to say something when a flapping cloak caught her attention. Nara turned, squinted and watched the prince leap from his ride into the air and landed with elegance and balance atop one of the mossy bent thick branch form the archway. He drew one arrow after the other from the quiver on his back and used a bow to shoot with precision at the creatures. A minute lapsed before the prince leapt down, mounted his horses and headed toward the creatures, the fog swallowing his form.
“Climb on,” Finn told her, motioning for her to sit behind him on his royal horse. Nara hoisted herself up, and without another word, they followed the prince.
“Thank you for coming back for me” she whispered after much deliberation, folding her hands between her thighs and the dagger resting on her lap.
“You are welcome” Finn replied, softly.
“However, you should really thank the prince. He is the one who just saved you” he added in the same tone as he halted beside the prince’s horse. Nara licked her lips, his words and actions causing a contradiction of what she has always considered them to be all these years and what they have just done for her.
She glanced at the prince and found the same inscrutable expression he exercised on his face regularly. He had arrows in one of his hands, their points coated with dark red powder and rotten grime. She looked at the bodies lying on his feet. Her stomach blanched, and nausea noosed her throat. The bodies of what she supposed to be the ghostly creatures, were human corpses. Their rotten smell wafted around them, forcing her to breathe through her mouth. They look like some mutated abomination. As if someone replaced parts of their anatomy with other creatures, the hands with bones bird’s wings and mouth of a terrible beast with sharp teeth. Earth worms and maggots crawled from their decayed bones and chewed on their soiled and rotten flesh.
Nara’s eyes shook as she stared at Lucky.
Calemir watched as she brought her palm up and covered her mouth, and looked at the horse who no longer had flesh the whole upper part of its body, just its skull and ribcage shielding what’s left of its organs and whole heart. Rage burned within her gaze. Opening her mouth, she whispered soundlessly… Her mouth formed words like…she was counting.
“We call them the cursed spirits,” Finn said solemnly, looking at the grisly display. “They consume the flesh of their prey leaving the heart for last with delusive attempts to walk the earth as they did once.”
“9…7…21…” her face twisted tightly, her chin trembled as she counted more loudly… “1…2...3…” she shook her head and yelled, “DARN IT!”
“They eat anything…” Finn paused mid-sentence, staring at the girl as if she had grown another pair of head. He also stopped stacking the arrows back in the quiver.
The girl screamed and started kicking one of the corpses. She kept doing it over and over, screaming in rage and thrusting her boot into the corpses.
What the… Finn glanced his way. “Hey…” Finn began gently. She wasn’t listening, her whole body began to tremble.
Moving toward her, Calemir grabbed Nara’s arm and jerked her. “Look at me” he spoke softly. She tried to pull from his grip, her head shaking violently.
“Be still!” he ordered grabbing her face with one hand and placing the other on her mouth to muffle her screams. He forced her to look at him.
“Be calm and silent” Calemir commanded. Nara’s brown eyes widened, terrified.
“If you don’t shut up, more of those will come” his eyes bored into hers, annoyance shinning in them. “It’s either you keep quiet, or we leave you here, got it?”
Nara swallowed and breathed hard, nostrils flaring, the sharp breath warming the space between thumb and forefinger sat just below her nose. Calemir removed his hand from her mouth and held the sides of her face firmly. After a long second, his command sank in her head, past the rage, pain twisting and overwhelming her. He let the emotion slip from her to him until all she could feel were his warm hands on her face and the heat of him being close to her. She blinked tears and nodded her head lightly, her breathing slowing. I’m calm her body seemed to say.
Calemir understood. He dropped his hands and stepped back, giving her the space she needed.