Wild is the Witch (59)

Now that Pike’s gone, I can work on unbinding the curse. Even through all the pain, I feel hope sprout somewhere deep inside me—after everything, maybe all I will have lost is Pike’s affection.

Still, it feels insurmountable, and I force myself to breathe, to focus on the curse. Without my binding herbs, I’ll need to improvise, and I scour the forest for something to use.

Then a scream cuts through the silence.

Pike.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to the owl. “Please, hold on just a little longer.”

As quickly as possible, I send more particles to his nicked artery, hoping to give him more time. I wrap his nerves in magic to take away some of the pain, and I gently stroke his feathers before promising to be right back.

Then I jump up and run in the direction of Pike’s scream.

“Pike!” I yell, moving through the trees as fast as my knee will let me. “I’m coming!”

I hear a groan and follow the sound, but it’s so faint, far quieter than his scream. “Pike, where are you?” I shout, standing still to hear his reply.

It comes in the form of a moan, and I rush toward it, then stop abruptly when the earth beneath me starts to fall away. I scramble back from the crumbling dirt, and that’s when I notice the ravine, gaping and deep, covered with sideways trees and boulders the size of truck tires. The ground is uneven and steep, full of dense vegetation and jagged stumps left by fallen trees, and I peer over the edge in search of Pike.

“Pike, I’m here!” I call, straining to see through the snarl of branches and underbrush.

“Iris?” He says it like a question, and I squint into the distance and finally find him, spread out halfway down the ravine, covered in mud.

“Just hold on—I’m coming,” I say, lowering myself to the ground and sliding down the ravine. I wince when my hands go over sharp rocks and sticker bushes grab at my skin. I see his glasses halfway down, and I grab them and stick them in the collar of my shirt. I keep moving, lower and lower, until I’m finally close enough to hear Pike’s breathing. It’s shallow and quick, and I scramble over to where he’s sprawled out on the dirt, clutching his right leg to his chest.

“I’m here,” I say, stopping beside him and trying to assess the damage. I hand him his glasses, and his fingers linger on mine for a beat longer than I expect, images from our night in the tent flooding my mind. Then he takes them from me and the memory recedes.

“Let me look at your leg,” I say.

He doesn’t reply but lets go of his knee with shaky hands. I slowly extend his leg and pull up his hiking pants, inhaling sharply.

“What is it?”

I look at him. “Your leg is broken.”

“How can you tell?” he asks through clenched teeth.

“Because your bone is sticking out through your skin.”

His breathing gets faster, and he tries to sit up, straining to see what I’m looking at. “Shit shit shit shit shit,” he says over and over, his voice getting more panicked.

I gently push his chest back and take his hand in mine. “You’re okay,” I tell him. “You’re going to be fine.”

He lays his head back and looks up at the sky, wincing in pain. “Grab my sat phone,” he says, trying to roll onto his side. “It’s in the first pocket.”

I unzip the pocket and pull out the phone, but there’s a huge crack down the center. “It’s broken,” I say. “You must have gone over a rock when you fell.”

“Shit,” he says, leaning back, his breaths shaky. “You need to go for help. There’s no way you can get me up the ravine by yourself.”

I follow his eyes, watching the layer of fog drift over us like a blanket, hiding us from the rest of the world. The wind doesn’t reach us here, and I haven’t seen a single soul on this mountain.

“Who am I going to find? It’s just us up here.”

“We can wait”—he pauses, sucks in a breath—“for the firefighters. They said they were coming.”

“I don’t think they’re coming,” I say. “The fire is out.”

Pike leans back in the dirt, inhaling sharply. Then I remember Cassandra. She said she was coming, and I felt her magic tracking me. She must be somewhere on this mountain. I wish I could call, tell her that things have deteriorated with the owl, but I have no way of reaching her, no way of making her come any faster.

I exhale and push my hands through my hair, thinking. I can get him out of here; if I can stabilize his leg enough so he can help me, I can get him up the ravine. I’ll have to use magic to dull the pain, otherwise he won’t be able to tolerate it. But if he’ll let me, I can do it.

“I can get you out,” I say.

He looks at me then, and his eyes widen when he realizes what I’m saying. “No, absolutely not.”

“Why?” I ask, impatience lacing my tone. “We’re not all bad, you know.”

“The fact that you’ve been lying to me since the day we met suggests otherwise,” he says through a grimace. He brings his leg to his chest and rocks back and forth.

“I don’t owe you my secrets,” I say, lifting my eyes to his. “The idea that I would share myself with you just because we work together is as ridiculous as me thinking you owed me your brother’s history. We don’t have a right to those things—they’re earned.”