Hunting For The Sun

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

Oh would you stop looking at me like that? Everyone has changeable moments! I know I've done some stupid things, but this was meant to be; I know it. I don't care what you say. It happened a good while ago now, and besides, who's telling this story? Me or you? (I think you'll find it's the former.)

Never mind the icy wind scraping across the plain and using the ridgeline as a half-pipe, the ground was hard as iron and about as warm. I pulled muscles all down my back. I must have been getting soft. My face was stuck to Draco's neck and I peeled it off with a sticky smacking noise. Draco didn't wake; he rolled over and grunted, folding his arms around himself. I smiled, pillowing my head on my hand to watch his chest rise and fall softly.

'Like how he looks when he's asleep? I guess he's more agreeable like this than when he's awake.'

Ori.

I felt like I'd snapped my head around to face him but I hadn't. I turned so slowly that it was agonising. He sat there, knees up against his chest and hair already in his eyes again. I wanted so much to look at the floor. I could even picture it: the mess of sleeping bags; the tangle of legs; the darkness of our shelter, and my own knees. I still didn't look down. Everything seemed detached, like bullet-time. The record was skipping ahead but the music wasn't playing.

It sounds like I was some kind of retard, doesn't it? The lights are on, but no one's home, a few sandwiches short of a picnic, not the sharpest knife in the draw; but I tell you, I was sharp enough to break open my own chest and slash my heart out, hurling it onto the floor in front of him screaming, 'TAKE IT! TAKE IT ALREADY!' so loud that my vocal cords ripped and I tumbled to the ground, screaming soundlessly in a torturous and broken pain.

But I didn't.

I just sat there and stared at him. Why do things all look so simple when you close one eye? I was tempted at the time to do just that, to see if it changed anything.

'Why are you winking at me?' Ori asked after a while.

I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again, and then opened it one more time.

I heard Draco groan and roll over behind me.

''M cold,' he grunted, looping my waist with an arm and pulling me back down again.

I gave a small gasp and rolled into the circle of his arms, gazing at Ori open-mouthed for a time before Draco rolled me back to face him. I heard someone get up and cast a spell to open the shelter, then slam it shut with a crackle of magic after him or herself.

~

I didn't sleep. I don't think I could have done, even though I realised that it wasn't light outside when I had awoken. That must mean it could have been anything up to about seven a.m. at that time of year. I wanted to get going, but I was scared.

'Up, up, up, up, up, up.' Raven's talons jabbed me sharply in the back. I grunted.

''M awake, 'm awaaake.' I rolled over and sat up, wrapping my arms around my body.

'Sun up yet?' Perse asked, lifting her hair over her head and twisting it lazily. For a moment, as the loose curls tumbled down around her face, she looked as though her head was wreathed in flames.

'Nope,' Raven answered, parting the shelter with a glimmering finger. 'We've got about another hour before sunrise. I thought we'd get going early.'

'You thought wrong,' Adura mumbled, pulling the covers up over her head.

'I'll get the cold water,' Cloud grinned and shifted heavily onto his feet, fiddling around for his things.

'ALL RIGHT!' Adura squealed, throwing the covers back and leaping up. She rubbed her head drowsily. 'Meh,' she grunted.

I rolled onto my knees, then stood up. I looked around for Ori, but he wasn't here.

'Everyone present and correct...' Raven began, but she spotted that Ori wasn't there as soon as she said it.

'He vanished a while ago. I saw him go,' I answered for him. 'He was in a huff.'

Raven nodded, giving me a shrewd look as she said lightly, 'Happens all the time.' I answered her frown with a slight nod of confirmation. 'We need to sort out who's going where, everyone. El Karem, the Ministry or Nottingham?'

'I thought we'd done that,' Skye said.

'Well, we did,' Raven admitted. 'But I get the sinister lurking feeling that something's changed since then.' She didn't look at me, which was somehow specific, I felt.

Eventually, everyone gathered in the middle of our shelter. Raven sunk cross-legged to the ground, flicking her silky midnight hair, streaked with red, back over her shoulder. I leaned forwards over my own crossed legs, resting my elbows on the floor and cradling my chin in my hands.

'Now, we have - what? - nine people. Three to each place. Simple. Now, the essential people are Rae to Nottingham, Draco to London and Cloud to El Karem.'

I gave a broken look to Draco, sitting up and sliding my hand behind his back to clasp his right hand in mine.

'You three are perfectly capable of picking teams, I'm sure. Off you go.'

'I need Raven with me,' I snapped quickly.

Raven shrugged and made her way over to me. Draco nodded and looked around shrewdly.

'I'll take Skye,' Draco decided. She smiled faintly and crossed the shelter to his side.

'Ori, even though he isn't here right now,' Cloud grinned.

'Neit,' I said, glad that choosing Ori was not an option and therefore not on my mind.

'Perse, then,' Draco nodded.

'Adura,' Cloud smiled kindly.

'Is that sorted, then? Rae, me and Neit; Draco, Skye and Perse; Cloud, Adura and Ori.'

There was a murmur of assent and Raven nodded, satisfied.

'We will leave when the shelter's all packed,' she told us.

~

It took surprisingly little time to have us standing out in the eerie morning dusk, glancing around ourselves and shivering madly. No one seemed to want to talk, so we stood there aimlessly, nibbling our fingernails and wondering if we should say something. Needless to say, no one seemed to think it necessary enough to snap the taught silence.

We all knew what was coming, especially me. My heart was lodged in my throat, stretching the skin with every beat, aching wildly. I clung to Draco's hand like a lost child, alternately wanting to kiss it softly, then drop it and run to Ori, whom we had retrieved and who now stood on the other side of the circle from me. Time scraped by, the clouds drifting overhead in the icy movement of the air.

'Nottingham, eh?' Raven said, handing us a stick with the word 'Sherwood' stained onto it in black lipstick. I took it, kissing Draco's lips and reaching out to Neit and Raven. Raven turned to me when she had given the others theirs. 'After three, my lovelies. One, two, three!'

There was a snap and I felt my innards wrenched back as my navel wrenched forwards. I yelped out in pain, clinging to the stick like those vibrating 'electrifying' machines in arcades. It felt like I was glued to it as the world shot up my nostrils and into my mouth. My cheeks were rippling in the G and I tried to clench them to make the unpleasant sensation stop. As we hurtled toward the ground, I stretched a leg out, clutching the log to my body and tumbling over it neatly, rolling onto my feet with my hands out in the misty silence of a huge forest.

I flicked my now dusty fringe of hair back out of my eyes; I shook my head, loosening a veritable cloud of dried dirt. Raven got slowly to her feet as Neit brushed her white clothes with her hands.

'Where are we?' I breathed, looking around me.

'Welcome to Sherwood Forest, ladies,' said a voice. I stepped back against a tree, looking up. On a branch about ten feet above the ground stood a man in green and brown, pointing an arrow at my head. I could see the end wreathed in green fire. He was clearly a wizard. I chanced a glance out of the corner of my eye. All the branches were filled with such people, and all of them had weapons pointing squarely at us.

'Who are you three beauties?' he asked in unctuous, honeyed tones.

'My name is Raven Sarius, this is Neit Seraphim and Rae Kelwaedd,' Raven told him imperiously. 'You are disrupting an important journey, and I suggest you get out of our way.'

'Ooh, feisty. Maybe you could stay by me?' he suggested, giving a harsh burst of laughter. He was unshaven and skinny, but clearly quite strong. His straggly bracken coloured hair scraped his shoulders as he turned to see the reaction of his comrades.

'I'd like to see you try to make me,' Raven said lightly, dropping a tiny - for Raven - emphasis on 'try'.

'No problem. Any objections to handcuffs, my raven-haired sweetheart?' That grating laugh sounded again, echoing through the trees as his band of men took it up.

'Only if you do,' she smiled sweetly. I don't think he understood, because he looked pleased with himself.

'What about you two?' he asked, leering at Neit and I in turn. 'Fancy a little group - hug?'

'I'd sooner eat shit,' I said sincerely, giving him a twinge of a smirk at the end. He laughed.

'Well, that could be arranged, if you really want.'

'I somehow doubt that,' I shrugged. 'Lay a finger on me, and I'll kill you.'

I drew both of my guns subtly behind my back, slipping the safety catch to almost off. Raven heard the slight - I keep them well oiled - click and turned her head ever so slightly in acknowledgement. She held her fingers behind her back and swirled them. A small buzz of red sparks appeared, spelling out the letters 'w h e n I s a y n o w y o u s h o o t m r p l a y a o f f h i s p e r c h o k ?'

It took me a little while to decipher, but I lifted three fingers and swirled the letters OK out of the air. Neit glanced ever so slightly at me. I closed one eye slightly before returning my attention to the ugly bloke, who was now discussing with his pals who would get whom.

'So what do you plan to do now?' Raven snapped. I whipped my pistols out from behind my back, sliding the catches over fully and firing into the trees. The man in green yelled and stumbled back to the trunk of the tree while several of his friends dropped from the trees like flies. For this, my bullets, Raven's spells and Neit's astonishing acrobatics were equally responsible. Arrows streaking green fire sizzled through the air, thudding into trees and the ground.

I slipped the catches on, folding my pistols across my body and rolling sideways, stepping up and slamming my back against a tree as a now earthbound man ran towards me. I used my force off the tree to flip my legs up and catch him under the chin, snapping his neck back with a sickening crunch. I kicked his body away, leaning a hand against the tree and taking the safety catches off again. I dropped behind it to check that my guns were fully loaded, snapping the empty cartridges out and slamming new ones in. I pressed my feet against a rock and my back against the tree, lifting my body horizontal off the ground and rolling across my shoulders to bring my left knee down and scramble my foot underneath, firing as I ran.

Someone shouted a Summoning Spell to my guns but I clenched my fingers around the handles until I was sure my knuckles would rip through my skin, resulting in me being dragged with them. I slammed into the ugly man who had been at the front. Even though my feet were tingling from the bumpy scrape across the ground, I leaned back, holding my elbow up to protect my face, and kicked him solidly in the chest. As he crashed against the tree, I slammed my foot into his stomach and put all my weight onto it. His hands snapped in to grab it, but, taking careful aim, I shot them off.

His screams raked my ears, spreading high over the canopy and soaring down into the valleys. The spurting stumps of his wrists flailed.

'Who are you?' I snapped coldly.

He didn't seem to hear me; his screams were too loud. I waved a hand, sealing the pain from his mind briefly.

'WHAT IS YOUR NAME?'

'Robin Hood,' he groaned. 'They call me Robin Hood.'

'Why?' I snapped, pointing the pistols at his head. In my tiredness my hands shook, and, looking down the barrels, I could see the sight wavering.

'I'm an outlaw from Salime's world. I'm a rebel,' he said proudly.

'Which cause?' I demanded promptly.

He hesitated. 'Hogwarts.'

'Then you're no friend of mine.'

I clicked the catch right back, just to be sure, taking careful aim at his head. He tried to cover his face with the bleeding stumps of his arms. I lifted my foot and kicked them out of the way, putting a bullet through each eye. This time, he didn't scream, so I turned away, gesturing at the blood which had sprayed onto my clothes and watching it vanish for a second before I looked up.

Raven nodded to me.

'You're a fine little killer,' she smiled. 'I'm proud of what you've become.'

Neit looked disgusted. I couldn't look at her somehow.

'You shot his hands off.' It was a statement, not a question.

'I did,' I said, getting a bit angry. The clearing was empty, and I knew I couldn't have done away with more than five of at least twenty. Raven, good though she was, would not have done about fifteen by herself in that time.

'Why?'

'Because I wanted to,' I snapped savagely.

'You're what? Eighteen? Doesn't it trouble you that you've killed so many so brutally?'

'No.'

She looked taken aback.

'No, I don't care. This world is not what it should have been when I was born. Voldemort's return and all the Death Eaters' laws have dragged everything forward into some horrific place where everyone has to fight to live. I first killed when I was seven. I don't know that I want to live any other way now. Killing is necessary, and no one cares any more.'

Even as I spoke, I knew that I almost wanted a world where I didn't have to do this. It would have been so nice to go to school all the time, to live in a house, to live without fear for my life, to live with my parents instead of having to watch them die. 1996. That was when it all got shot to hell. Before that, sure we were scared, but we lived normally aside from all the defences. In 1997, the war started. That night I already told you about. I was seven, almost eight then.

'Maybe they should care.'

'Maybe you should shut your face.'

She didn't look at me, just pursed her lips and looked elsewhere. I glanced defiantly at Raven, but she gave me a small grin and a wink.

'He said he was called Robin Hood,' I reported after the silence had outstayed its welcome. 'Hogwarts rebel.'

'Guessed as much,' Raven grunted. She gave a grunt of displeasure. 'So melodramatic.'

I nodded my agreement, deliberately ignoring Neit.

'Look, we need to move on sharpish,' Raven sighed. 'There's not long before the armies get moving again. We know they're at camp here.'

So we walked. And we walked, we walked and we walked, and then, just for a change of pace, we walked some more. My pack was cutting into my shoulders and it seemed that my trousers became wedged further up my backside with every step I took, despite my efforts to fish them out. We were moving uphill, trying to get a good vantage-point for Raven to see where the army was. My legs burned and my throat was dry and hoarse from the stinging spring air. It was cool, but not cold enough to be a relief. It was just slightly annoying and too muggy. It seemed like there was no oxygen to be had in the air. No wonder; there were hardly any leaves on the trees yet. Despite the relative warmth, it was a late winter, so a late spring. I longed within for the dusty, grassy warmth of summer to come and swamp us. My cheeks were freezing and my fingers were numb even in my gloves. I would have been so much happier if it was just warm enough to climb this in shorts or something. As it was, I thought, reaching behind me to fish my trousers out of my arse, I was stuck.

Raven halted our hike, looking up and hooking her thumbs into her pack straps.

'I think we're about high enough now,' she decided.

I looked back. We were about a half-mile above the rest of the wood now. Spread out to the East was a massive camp. It went on for miles. I gave a choked cry.

'You're bloody kidding me!' I snapped. 'I can't make them all stop. No.'

'You can,' Raven assured me, looking into my eyes sincerely. 'If anyone can, you can.'

'What if no one can?!' I demanded shrilly.

'Then you can't either,' Raven shrugged.

I scowled at her.

'Look, think of Robin Hood. Would you want his brutal and most gruesome death to be for nothing? We could turn around and go home now...I think that would be a waste. Let's get over there.' She even resisted a glance at Neit. I was almost proud of her.

Trembling inside, but detached again, seeing the world flick past in separate scenes, I nodded.