E) Part 5

It was as if her senses were a china bowl and her mind a fish,
leaping up into a wider world.
Instantly she was aware of an awkward stillness, as before a storm when
the air is full of energy yet does not know which way to move. Her new
awareness of this, like the beat of a butterfly's wings, was all it
took to become a whirlwind which sucked up her mind
She did not let go the man: what had found her was unconcerned with
him.

***

He fell, rolled into a hollow. Thorns gripped his wrist, ripping it to
the blood beneath as he twisted free to glare up at her. His anger
turned to unease. Too dark to see her face, he sensed a stillness that
scared him, as if she had become a sarcophagus. They had stopped in a
clearing made when some long ago storm had pulled up a tree like a
tooth from the earth's mouth, and brambles and ivy crawled sun-hungry
across the gums

***

as heat can be felt through fine wire, linked by her hair wrapped round
his fist he met what had hit the girl and fear from wounds he'd thought
years healed bled into his mind.

But he was not the hunted here - though if De Grice knew he was with
her? Kell unclenched his hand, used smoothing the fine blond strands to
curb his thoughts lest the echoes of the past be heard. Run! but any
movement would stir trouble. What then? Think! No! be mindless as a
tree. If he reads you, give him pages of wind. Yet, De Grice wanted the
girl, would come anyway? Crushing spiney leaves under his canvassed
knees he crouched, brushing her cheek : she was so cold already - Ge
Grice was close!

He lurched to his feet, head swimming. Air was a slapping indigo hand.
He looked down. She was pale as spilt milk. Chink of metal, armour,
swords? No use crying. Move! Behind the splay of roots , wind severed
knot that had held the tree in place. Far enough? Cheek touched
cobwebbed root, recoiled. Don't feel, be! Sounds louder as a needle
pressing into skin, de Grice coming like a drop of blood. He should
close his eyes?

but a hen transfixed before a fox, he could not. De Grice was the same,
save the sword cut Kell had given him was white now, caught the
moonlight like a word holds a thing in its curved line. Seeing it did
not make Kell feel braver, rather as if he'd carved his name on a
shrine to the god of death.

He watched the Regent stoop over the girl. Who was she not to be
trusted to underlings? Two of them waited behind, one sided as spades,
to do his dirty work. You could not afford to care for more than
yourself and serve such as this. All feelings are handles. De Grice
tensed, intense as a cat sensing prey in the same room. Kell blanked,
shrank to the gleam of a leaf, yellow, shadow scooped scallop edged,
vein ridged; a small hole nibbled from one lobe: remember rasp of
beetle jaws, breeze whispers

Bramble thorns hooked in the girl's skirt, ivy looped her feet, but De
Grice was stronger, tearing her from the wood's fingers, light and
frail as Winter sun to be hidden in the cloud of his coak and borne
away, leaves shrivelling in their wake and Kell gulped the sudden air
of a near escape, shuddering, as if new come from a coccoon ; he could
fly now

but she'd tried to help him. He couldn't help that. Free!

He knew de Grice. She did not deserve to. Only stones are happy on
their own, and even they are broken, with time, into smaller bits to
scrape each other as if in speech with every turn of the tide: talking
to oneself?What is such a life worth?

De Grice from below, a sharp "Goodnight", an old man and woman's shrill
worry unravelling into a soundless hole.

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