It’s #bookqw and my heroine isn’t in a ‘take’ charge moment.
More from Chapter 3:
Fern tried pulling her feet free of some scrubby bush. Her right ankle was stuck and numb. It didn’t hurt, but it was super cold, colder than the rest of her. She couldn’t see what held her trapped, and a buzz of panic rose, intensifying her struggle. She put more muscle into it and felt something pulling on it, on her.
Fingers tingling, she clutched the tree, using it and all her strength to haul her leg free. It was like dragging a bag of mulch. Her numb foot was coated in murky slime. Strings of it stretched back to the bushes, pulling at her like a bungee cord.
She scrunched to the tree, got a better hold on it and looped one arm under her leg to hold it against the slime’s pull. I just need to lose the shoe. No way was she touching the slime, so she dug her heel in and wiggled. The laces were tight. A stick to loosen them would help. She reached—
“He wouldn’t be wrong, so she has to be here,” said a male voice. “Keep looking for a gap.”
Fern sat up fast. The slime yanked on her leg, nearly jerking her free from the tree. She held on. No one was in sight, but she heard erratic breathing between the kite’s weoo calls. Leaves rustled from two different directions as something moved closer… A guy crawled into view. Her breath caught, and he pivoted, close enough to touch if her arm hadn’t been around the tree. His rusty-red hair fell in curling waves around his face. Freckles dusted his cheeks.
“Hey, lass, there you be. Raven?” he called over his shoulder. “This way.”
For a moment, she just stared, because—geez—one second she’d been alone, and the next here was this big guy. He looked in his late teens, with green eyes and an accent. Scottish, or Irish, she didn’t know, but he wore some kind of traditional clothes, a pullover shirt with laces at the neck. He crouched on his heels, taking her in from wet hair to her slimed foot.
“Ach, that’s nae good,” he said.
She shivered. Think. His arrival isn’t so different from how I got here, so he’s likely a neighbor of Gran’s and not dangerous. But her pounding heart didn’t believe that. Despite what she’d promised Mom, she struggled to get both feet beneath her in case she needed to defend herself. The muck pulled back, harder this time. Her grasp on the tree slipped to fingertips caught on the bark.
The guy lunged and wrapped a large hand around her free wrist. “Do’na let the rip take you in!” He grabbed her other arm, too, and hauled against the slime.
An unstoppable tremble coursed through Fern, which had nothing to do with her wet clothes. She seized his wrists, found a root or something to brace her left foot against and shoved with everything she had toward this freckled stranger who had become her lifeline.
“Raven!” he shouted, fingers digging into her flesh as he struggled to hold her. “Help.”
Leaves crushed right beside them. Someone invisible grunted. “Watch out,” groaned her rescuer, just before a knee popped into sight between two trees and a body stumbled after it.
The ground tilted toward the bushes. Gasping, Fern lost her footing and thumped onto her belly, sliding—
“Ohmigod, no!”
The rescuer heaved backward and dug in his boot heels. She jerked to a stop, muscles straining. Above them, the new guy—Raven?—swayed off-balance, his hair swinging in a long, black braid. He flailed his arms—and wings. Huge, black wings.
Impossible.
~~~
Thanks for reading!
The Witch of the Meadows is available to buy on Amazon. Or read free with your Kindle Unlimited subscription.
Leave a Reply