Wild is the Witch (53)
He sighs, heavy and loud, then digs through his pack for his first aid kit. He starts cleaning the cut, and I hold my leg steady and look up at the trees. My knee is throbbing, and the gash stings every time Pike goes near it. I suck in a sharp breath and hold it, trying to stay calm.
“I don’t understand,” Pike says as he cleans up the blood. “This clearly hurts like hell, you need stitches, but you keep going on about the owl. I don’t get it.”
“That owl, he’s important, okay? He’s important.” My tone is pleading, begging him to understand, but how could he? How could he possibly know the weight of the situation we’re in?
“Why is it so important? Explain it to me, please.”
“I’ve told you before, it’s a threatened species, and this one is ours. He’s my responsibility.” I hear how weak it sounds, how ridiculous it is given our current situation. But it’s all I can think of to say.
It starts to rain, small drops at first that turn big and cold in the span of a breath. I look up and blink, water pouring over us and washing away the blood on my leg.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Pike says, not looking at me. He pulls a bandage from his kit and tears it open. “You always know exactly where the owl is, and sometimes it looks as if you’re in a trance,” he says quietly, almost like he’s thinking out loud.
He’s gentle as he cleans the cut on my leg, even as he’s questioning me. Even as he’s realizing I’m not telling him the truth. It breaks something open inside me.
“Please tell me what I’m missing.” He’s so close to me, and I have the incredible urge to reach out and touch him, to feel the raindrops on his skin.
“There’s nothing. It’s been a long few days and we’re both exhausted. Let’s just find the owl and get down the mountain so I can deal with my leg.” The words sound hollow coming out of my mouth.
“Don’t patronize me,” Pike says, and it kills me, the way he sounds more upset than angry. He trusted me with his deepest hurt, and I can’t even give him the truth.
A million different words form in my mouth, but I can’t make myself say any of them.
Pike finishes wrapping my leg, then he packs up his things and his eyes meet mine. His gaze is intense, willing me to speak, but I don’t say a word.
He shakes his head and walks away.
Twenty
I want to go after him, but I’m frozen in place. My vision fades, replaced with total darkness, and tiny pinpricks of light appear, bright and sparkling, like the stars away from the city. Relief rushes through me as I realize Cassandra is on her way, using magic on me to find my location.
Almost as soon as it comes, though, it’s gone. She got what she needed. I know it’s a good thing, I know I’m in over my head, but I can’t help the way my stomach rolls with unease and dread crawls up my throat. I want her help. I need her help. And yet all I can see is the look on Amy’s face in that field when Cassandra removed her ability to sense magic, as if the entire world had vanished to nothing. Total emptiness.
I’m relieved Cassandra’s coming, relieved for Pike and anyone else who could get in the way of this curse. And I’m terrified for me.
I push myself off the ground and try to get reoriented, unsteady from Cassandra’s magic. Pike is in the distance, and I tell myself to ignore him, to let him go and finish this on my own. But seeing him walk away, his back to me and his head down, it’s unbearable. It physically hurts, my body aching with the sight of it. I replay our conversation from earlier, the way he shared his pain and grief, and I can’t let him walk away. I can’t.
“Pike, wait!” I call after him, running away from the owl and toward the person who has become so much to me in so little time. My knee screams with the pain of it, and I can already feel fresh blood moving down my leg. But still, I run.
Pike keeps walking, and I hurry after him, slowing when the decline gets steeper. The rain falls steadily, and the moss-covered rocks and fallen trees are slick as ice.
I want to yell at Pike that we don’t have time for this, that he’s being childish by walking away. But more than that, I want to beg him not to be mad at me, to hear me out when the time comes, still holding onto a foolish hope that I won’t have to give him up.
“Pike, please!” I finally catch up to him, but he doesn’t stop. I grab his wrist and turn him, forcing him to meet my eyes. “Pike, I’m sorry, okay? I’m exhausted and my leg is killing me, I’m afraid the owl is hurt and I miss my mom, and watching you walk away from me did something weird to my insides and I don’t like it.” I take an unsteady breath. “Please don’t give up on me now. Please.” I’m out of breath by the time I’m done talking. The patter of raindrops echo around us, and my clothes are soaked through, but I don’t care.
Pike exhales, and I watch the way his shoulders lower with the motion. His jaw is tense, and I can’t read his face. “So you aren’t keeping anything from me?”
I don’t want to lie to him, but there isn’t enough time for the conversation we need to have. I will tell him, one day, when there isn’t an owl carrying a deadly curse. And when I do, I’ll tell him everything, leaving nothing out. Then I’ll ask for his forgiveness.