I scream his name, trying to warn him and at the same time trying to figure out what’s happening, which is pretty much impossible to do because it’s so ridiculously dark. I reach for my cell. If I can flip it open it’ll give us a little light, but before I can reach it, Astley slams his body over mine, covering it, protecting it with his own. And that’s when the arrows start hitting, one after another, after another. They slice through his parka and into his skin. I can hear the pain of it, feel it as he shudders from the impact. His body starts falling down, pulled by gravity onto the hard floor, which seems made of some kind of stone. Twisting around, I try to catch him, manage to wrap my arms around him a bit before the first arrow slams into my shoulder. Pain spirals out, but I’m so mad I can ignore it, so scared it seems like nothing. Then another hits, and another, and it’s like I haven’t slept in eight hundred years and I suddenly really, really need to sleep. They must have put something on the arrows, something to cause drowsiness. Just drowsiness, I hope, and not death. I don’t know … I just know the darkness is getting darker and my hands can’t find Astley … anymore … and I’m …
Gone.
It’s the smell of my own burning flesh that wakes me. It’s a nasty smell that can rouse you out of unconsciousness no matter how deep that unconsciousness is. My head is drooping and I’m staring at my feet, which are on a stone floor. There’s some sort of fluorescent lighting coming from above me giving everything a yellowish ugly glow. Only one of my boots is still on. My left sock stretches red and woolly as I cautiously move my toes, trying to regain my orientation, trying to remember what happened. There’s an arrow sticking out of my shoulder. There’s another in my arm.
“She’s waking up already, how quick,” says someone with a high, bell-like voice. It sounds familiar. It sounds like Isla, Astley’s mother. Lovely.
Lifting my head so I can actually see the room confirms it. She’s over by the sprawled-out form of Astley. She’s yanking arrows out of him. He doesn’t move. He’s bloody, unconscious, but I can feel his breath as if it’s my own, so I know that he’s still alive, my king. Thank God. I try to calm my breath as I look at the metal door that slammed behind us.
Issie is over by the door, tied up, with duct tape over her mouth. Anger grows inside of me as I take in the rip in her coat sleeve, her big scared eyes, the dirt on her face. An arrow sticks out of the forearm of her puffy coat. It’s my responsibility to keep her safe, and here I am freaking stuck to a wall, groggy and captured.
I don’t like this.
Okay, that’s an understatement.
I am really hating this.
The rest of the room holds cross-country skiing equipment, big and white hotel towels, bins full of toiletries. It’s a supply building. They lured us into a supply building? Maybe the snowcat people who told Astley about the skis in here were paid off, which is horrible. How can people do this sort of thing for money? And now that the lights are on, I can see that there are three male pixies all dressed in wool sweaters. They crowd around Isla, putting chains on Astley. One more, a brooding ugly giant of a man, is closer to me.
Nick will be trying to get in here once we’ve been gone too long. He’ll try to bash down that door, but it looks pretty strong and who knows how long I’ve been out. He may have already given up. Amelie would think to go find a key. Maybe they’ll be here soon … that is, if they’re still alive. Swallowing hard, I promise myself that they have to still be alive if we are. It’s obvious that Isla wanted us for some reason—I just don’t know the reason yet.
Isla’s tiny, golden-haired self yanks one more arrow out of Astley and then she nods to her pixie henchmen, who drag him even farther away from me and a tiny bit closer to Issie. He doesn’t even grunt. His whole body is defenseless and still.
“You could at least put a towel under his head,” I say, nodding toward the mountains of them. “There are enough.”
She gives me her attention and melodramatically raises an eyebrow. “That’s very sweet, Zara.”
“What can I say?” I spunk back. “I’m a caregiver by nature.”
The larger of the pixie men grabs a thick white towel and shoves it underneath Astley’s head. The entire time he does this, Isla watches me. Occasionally her tongue darts out between her lips, which makes me think of a snake, or Jared Leto during a television interview. And while she watches me, I desperately try to come up with a plan. My cell phone is still in my pocket, which means nothing because there is no signal here. The only weapons I can see other than my own hands and feet are some cross-country skis and poles that hang from the walls. To get them, I’d have to get my wrists free in order to remove the ankle chains. Struggling against the binds, which are simple iron chains, sears my skin even more. Gasping from the pain, I try to think of another way. We should have taken extra anti-iron pills this morning. Our stupidity only makes me angrier and more desperate.
Why doesn’t Astley move?
Why doesn’t anyone come help us?
All sorts of horrible scenarios of what’s going to happen to Issie and Astley twist around in my head, which only serves to freak me out when I need to be calm, need to find a way out of this.
Isla wipes her hands on a towel, which she delicately folds back into a perfect square before depositing it on the floor. All that time she took making it perfect was wasted. It crumples and lies there flat and discarded, close to Astley, who still doesn’t move.
Move, I try to order him. Move.
His finger twitches, but that is all.
Issie shuffles an inch closer to him. She makes eyes at me.
Isla’s voice shifts my attention to her, which is good because I don’t want to give Issie away. “You expect me to kill you, don’t you? You think I followed you out here where there would be fewer witnesses?”
She steps on another towel as she flits closer to me. It slips a bit on the floor but she doesn’t lose her balance, just holds my gaze as I don’t answer her.
“I do not need to kill you,” she says, smiling.
Her breath smells of mint and basil. It is beautiful breath and she is a beautiful creature, but beauty doesn’t equal good and it certainly doesn’t equal sane.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asks. Her voice loses its lilt, so she’s losing patience with me. “I said that I do not need to kill you. Are you listening to me? You don’t seem to be paying attention.”