Our sluggish pace makes me uneasy at first as we slowly drift across the great expanse of water. I glance back toward shore, expecting soldiers to emerge and try to stop us, but then I realize that there’s nothing they could do. Even if they were to cut the rope, it wouldn’t stop us from moving forward.
As we get further out, I start looking at the glove that Wade is wearing more closely. There are many nicks in it, even areas where the metal has been penetrated and is stained with blood. He was lying to me. There’s plenty to be worried about.
“Do you know how deep the river is?” I ask.
“Never been foolish enough to try and figure that out,” he answers.
The river crossing drags on for a while, but luckily remains uneventful, that is until the light above us begins to disappear.
“Take this,” Wade says with great urgency, removing his glove and handing it to me.
He immediately returns to pulling on the rope, now with bare hands. I hurry and get the glove on to assist him.
“The sun keeps some of the more fearsome creatures away, so we need to reach shore before it’s gone.”
My heart begins to pound hard against my chest as darkness swiftly spreads across the sky above. The shore seems so far away, and despite the extra effort, our pace remains more like a crawl than the sprint it needs to be. Seconds feel like hours as we frantically work with all our might to get there. The water starts to ripple beneath us, though nothing surfaces.
When we get close enough, Wade jumps off of the boat into the shallow water and pulls the raft the rest of the way, picking me up and setting me on the shore. There, he prompts me to run toward the nearest tree and start climbing. I do as he says and get as high as I can to a place hidden by the leaves that surround me. Only then do I turn around and look for him.
I find him sliding the end of the rope into a shallow part of the river among some tall bushes. The raft is nowhere in sight, so he must have already hidden it. Once he finishes, he comes out of the water and hurries toward the tree, climbing up it to where I am before finally taking a break to catch his breath.
“That wasn’t too bad,” he says quietly, breathing hard and letting out a relieved smile.
I don’t share his calm. Up to this point, he hasn’t seemed panicked at all, but now he’s acting like we were running for our lives. It makes me hesitant to speak, so I instead start uncoiling my rope and carefully fasten myself to the tree. He does the same, glancing at me periodically. I ignore his looks of concern and stay focused on what I am doing.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Sort of,” I reply, pausing because I am unsure if I want to say what I am about to. “It’s just, a day ago I feel like you would have never asked that question. It seems very—”
“Two-faced,” he suggests.
“Yeah,” I say.
A long silence follows. I try to look off into the dark and ignore Wade’s presence. I felt more comfortable when I thought he wanted to remain distant, indifferent toward me. Now that he seems to care, I feel somewhat awkward, though it’s not an unusual response for me.
I haven’t let anyone get close to me since my sisters died. Pushing people away somehow helped me to cope, whether it was Eason or even my father at times. I didn’t mind trying to get Wade to open up because I needed answers, but now that he’s doing the same to me, I can feel my old self returning.
“We probably should talk as little as possible now that we’re on this side of the river,” Wade whispers, “but I just want you to know that I’m only holding things back from you because the truth is a bit overwhelming, at least it was for me. Once we get to Sanctuary, I’ll answer any question you have, even the ones they don’t want you to ask.”
“Thanks,” I say, forcing a smile.
The kind gesture doesn’t really satisfy my thirst for knowledge because it seems like everything he tells me or alludes to only leaves me wanting more. What could make this place so mysterious that I wouldn’t be able to handle the truth right now, and what sorts of things could the people at Sanctuary not want me knowing about?
The Necromancer’s warning echoes through my mind again and again, like an insect trapped in my head that simply won’t go away. Even as the soothing moonlight shines down on me, I struggle to find the peace of mind I need to fall asleep.
To my surprise, Wade has somehow managed to nod off fairly quickly. At first, I take this as a sign that we really are safe up here out of view, but then another possibility occurs to me. That we are in such danger that there’s no point even keeping an eye open to it. We either live or die in this place he referred to as a nightmare. The thought is completely unsettling and makes it difficult for me to rest, though my tired body eventually yields and I am able to drift away.
A quiet growl awakens me, and my eyes pop open, jumping straight to Wade. He looks back at me with a grave expression on his face, his finger pressed to his lips as he points at the ground below us. I nearly scream when I see that a terrifying beast is standing just a few feet from the base of the tree.
To my relief, it does not look our way and is instead preoccupied with something further inland from the river. I cannot see what it is at first because a heavy branch is in my way, but then it begins charging speedily in our direction, a grotesque lizard adorned with horns and a spiked tail.
The other beast begins barreling toward it, and the two of them come together in an open area between a ridge and the tree line. The collision is thunderous, both combatants crying and roaring loudly as they struggle for dominance, scratching and biting at each other with great ferocity. I cringe as they rip into each other’s flesh, producing an unsettlingly bloody scene.
It seems like they could go on like this for a long time, but with a sudden lash of its tail, the great lizard, which is easily the larger of the two, bashes through the neck of the beast, knocking its lifeless victim to the ground. The lizard lets out another roar and uses the horns sticking out from its neck and shoulders to lift its defeated foe from the ground, almost like a person reaching out to pick up something heavy. Within seconds, it disappears back over the ridge and out of sight.
“That’s why we stay out of the light,” Wade says.
With no predators in sight, we hurriedly pack things up and climb down the tree. Once we step beyond its cover, I can feel the heat of the sun again on my back. We head north to escape it, following the river until it comes to a large lake up against the cliffs, one fed both by the river and by the waterfalls that drop off of the plateau surrounding Kalepo.