The rabbit kicked me the second it was free.
“You ungrateful little shite!” I exclaimed.
He began to move away slowly before darting off into the bushes and disappearing.
“You’re welcome, Bugs!” I yelled after it, chuckling a little.
A gust of wind hit my back and caused me to shiver. I placed my dirty hands on my thighs and rubbed them against the fabric of my leggings. I shivered a little as the breeze cut through me, and I flinched when thunder roared across the Heavens. I pushed myself upwards, but before I got a solid footing on the ground, my left foot slipped from underneath me thanks to the soaking wet leaves that scattered my surroundings.
“Branna?” Ryder’s voice called from behind me.
He sounded a bit of a distance away, and I imagined him standing on the front porch of the cabin looking for me.
“Ryder!” I screamed just as I fell forward.
I hit the ground hard, left shoulder first, and then awkwardly and painfully began to slide down the embankment. It all happened rapidly fast. One moment I was falling, then I was airborne, and the next second, I was submerged under a body of freezing water. My eyes were open, but all I could see was mass darkness.
That darkness had hold of me and put up a fight to keep me in its grasp.
Water.
I was underwater.
The cold stabbed my skin like tiny pinpricked needles. Water and debris cloaked me, and what felt like the longest few seconds of my life quickly became the hardest and most painful. I kicked my legs and used my arms to slice through the water in an effort to thrust myself to the surface, but it quickly became apparent that the current had a firm hold and wasn’t letting go anytime soon.
It was then that a fire ignited in the centre of my chest, and almost instantly spread to my aching lungs. It was ironic that being under a pool of ice-cold water awakened a burning fire within me. It was as if I could hear my lungs screaming until it registered in my mind that it wasn’t my lungs screaming, it was me. When my lungs were spent of oxygen, silence wrapped its arms around me, and with the company of the swaying current, it began to lull me to sleep.
I was being swallowed whole by darkness, and I was acutely aware of it.
Ryder took centre stage in my mind. Flashes from the moment I met him were replaced with images from throughout our years together. They flicked through my mind like a high-speed slideshow. It slowed down at our wedding day, and once more, my heart swelled as he made his vows to me, declared his love for me, and later made me his forever. Fast forward to seeing his face when I informed him that he was going to be a father to our baby.
My husband. Our baby. My sister. My family. My life.
I looked upwards and was surprised to see light within the darkness. Each one of those I loved had me using the last of my strength to reach up to the rippled light that shone above me. Something hard struck my palm, so I latched onto it. I felt myself being pulled to a stop as the current rushed around me. I gripped the object and heaved myself upwards, and the second I broke the surface, I began to choke. I coughed, spluttered, and greedily sucked oxygen into my inflamed lungs. I used my free hand to grab what felt like a log or a large tree branch.
I pulled myself onto the bank of the river, I put all of my weight onto the sopping wet log, and just when I was about to breathe a sigh of relief for making it onto solid ground, disaster struck. Literally. I screamed as the log that saved me snapped in two and fell on me. It landed on my left leg and pinned it to the freezing cold, wet, muddy ground.
My heart slammed into my chest, and I began to cry, not being able to believe what had just happened and how bad the situation was that I had found myself in. I felt the pain of a stitch in my side as I continued to breathe heavily, but nothing compared to the sickening feeling that took up residence in my belly.
I placed my hands over my abdomen and said, “Please kick.”
Nothing.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please move for Mammy.”
The baby had kicked not ten minutes ago inside the cabin, but I had a stomach churning feeling that something could be wrong after what had just happened to me. I looked up at the starlit sky as I cried.
“Please, God,” I pleaded. “Don’t take me baby from me.”
I expected only silence, but faintly, I heard a familiar voice call out... my name.