Hunting For The Sun

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

The scream of brakes and the shuddering of wheels were hardly nice ways to wake up. I was stone cold and as stiff as a frozen turkey. When I awoke I had a start of panic, as I found my face pressed against something and thought that I couldn't breathe. I jerked backwards, banging my head against a crate and realising that I had been snuggled up against Adam, who didn't look like he had ever been asleep. I blushed outrageously, averting my eyes and concentrating on rubbing my cheeks back into life.

'Good night's sleep?' Adam asked politely, that desperately sexy hint of a smile in his mahogany eyes.

'Considering the situation, yes,' I said loftily, determined not to feel like an idiot. I stretched my leg out and prodded Neit in the arm.

'You, sleepy head,' I said quietly, kicking Raven too. She rolled over and put her hands over her head. I could hear shouts as the roustabouts unloaded the carriages, heading down the train. My tone grew more urgent.

'Come on you two, hurry up!'

Raven blinked blearily into life, just as I heard a door slam perilously close. Raven's instincts saved us, I suppose. She immediately curled and rolled off the other side of the flatbed. Adam snatched Neit's grunting form and held her against his chest, dropping down the other side as I vaulted down after them. We waited in a huddled silence as the tarpaulin was thrown off. It crashed down like a wave over us, and I snatched the opportunity to make a break for it.

Crawling through gravel and coal dust under a sheet of blue plastic was hard work. All I had to keep me going in the right direction was the original sight I'd taken in the direction of some huts. I stopped at the edge of the tarpaulin, waiting for the coast to be clear. The stench of smoke and tar burned my nostrils and the inside of my throat. Huge rusting barrels stood around on packing crates and wooden pallets; burly men shouted orders in a dialect I found unintelligible, running here and there; stationmaster types stood around the place with clipboards tucked under their hairy armpits and stubs of pencils behind their ears, and columns of smoke stretched into the grey air as far as I could see. Beyond that, there was wasteland.

The Wasteland, to be precise. In the furthest distance my vision could possibly reach, the majestic London Wall rose, hacking into the skyline as though seeking to claim even that for itself. I was filled with loathing for the place; I suppose open space had got to me a bit.

I hurled myself behind an oil drum, sidling along until I could duck backward inside an empty crate and pull the lid up so that I could see out but not be seen. My goal became the old empty looking hut by the iron gates. I peered out of a knothole in the opposite direction. The rails that our train had been on finished here, but another adjacent rail snaked off towards London, through all the scanners and ID systems on the way, I could guess.

Most of the cargo from our train was unloaded and left stacked around the station, but some crates, among others, were loaded onto the next train and thundered off into the city. A hazy, dusty heat permeated the air around me, soaking into my lungs like a sponge drinking in dirty water. My legs wobbled under me as I ran, paused, ran, paused, unused to working after a long train journey. All I knew was that I had to keep going, drawing in rasping breaths as silently as my lungs would allow and skittering my feet through the grey-dusted gravel.

I didn't know how we were going on after this. I had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me that once we escaped this Auschwitz-like unloading station, we would be trekking the five miles across the Wastelands to El Karem, where we had agree to meet the others.

Despite the heat currently, it was plain to me that I was only burning up because I was so exhausted and dressed for the Northern Winter, from which we had come. The tiredness in my very bones, unperturbed by my long sleep, had mounted into something akin to a fever. I was sweating and choking on the dusty air, which raided my sore throat like a swarm of hornets. If I could just sit down...

But I knew that that would not be happening, at least any time soon. We were on the move towards a warring city. The crates clinked with ammo belts and guns as they were forklifted past me. Huge showers of polystyrene 'S's sprayed the ground as heavy, lethal guns and assorted magical weapons were hurled between burly men, stripped to vests and dungarees in the heat of working.

Another fountain of those little polystyrene wiggles flowed into my hideout - currently a metal container - as several M16s were unloaded perilously close to me. I could smell the sweat on the grunting man who delved into the box as though his very life depended on it.

'Where are you going to put the empty crates?' he shouted to a foreman.

'Oh, I don't know. Get some of the younger boys to put all the packaging back in then dump them a mile into the Wasteland. I don't want that mess all over my yard.'

A very hairy godsend in oily dungarees. As the gorilla went to find some minions to shove the bits back into the box, I threw myself out of my hideout, hooking my hands over the rim of the box and back flipping into it. I snuggled down in the packaging, covering myself entirely and lying very still and taking the shallowest breaths so as not to disturb the incredibly noisy polystyrene.

Satisfied, I looked up into the whiteness around me. These really were very big crates. I hadn't seen much of what was unloaded; I only knew that there was an awful lot of it. I heard footsteps above me and froze entirely, feeling more packing fall into the crate and hearing the lid bang on. Whoever was loading it tapped a few nails in perfunctorily and shouted to the men with the forklift trucks.

I heard a rumbling, then a creaking crunch as the crate lifted up and was dumped into the back of a truck. Several more crates like mine met the same fate, and then a metallic clang signified the slamming of the back gate. I gathered soon that we were heading off when more muffled shouts and a rumbling beneath me reached me in the box.

I still didn't want to move. The crate was big, but not that big, and my head was curled uncomfortably around, my chin almost resting on my chest. I didn't dare shift in case I was exposed when we reached the other end. After a while, I did anyway. Curled in a foetal position on my side, I prayed that the other end wouldn't be too rough. I tested my boundaries, shoving upwards on the foam to find that I was packed in so tightly that my hand could barely move.

The smell of metal, wood and oil filled my head and made me reel. I curled in on myself, trying to make more space in the box. I had a crushing sense of claustrophobia as the nails holding the lid in multiplied in my mind, and I was buried alive in here by mounds of empty, identical crates. Imaginary Neit, Adam and Raven called for me, but I couldn't shout to them as I was so buried that they would never hear.

Some sick part of me seized upon this terror and played with it, filling the box with water and drowning me, or burying me under cement to hide the evidence of the weapons being transported. By the time the truck ground to a halt I was nearly sobbing in dread.

With a metallic roar, the truck gate slid up and light flowed through a chink in the crate. I rolled towards it, pressing my eye against the gap and seeing the dusty grey emptiness of the London Wasteland that housed EK. Someone was pushing against my box and it rolled out of the truck. I slammed my hands and feet against the sides, sitting up now and not caring if they opened the crates or not. My head banged on the lid, almost displacing it and null-and-voiding my fears of being trapped. I curled my head in and took deeper breaths to calm myself.

The crate rolled for several feet, aided by heavy kicks to its top edge, throwing me around like a rag-doll. When at last I stopped tumbling head over heels, I felt the ground shake as the truck - or as I deduced from the number of boxes there were when I got out, trucks - drove away.

I was lying on my front with my knees curled up under my chest and my arms braced against the sides. I was trembling and bruised, but once I was certain that the coast was clear, I rolled onto my to offer vicious double-footed kicks to the sides. The board to the left of my original position gave out with a crunch, slamming into the dust and filling my polystyrene hell with sunshine.

Unable to stand just yet, I rolled out and crouched wearily.

Like a flower unfurling from the snow, Adam stood up a few feet away. I gave a hoarse yelp and wobbled towards him, trying to restrain myself but catching him in an embrace. He held onto me tightly for a moment, then released me as though it had never happened.

'Are you alright?' he asked, holding my shoulders and ducking to look into my wide, fearful eyes.

'Claustrophobic,' I squeaked quietly.

'Me too,' he admitted, smiling gently without moving his mouth.

'Where are the others?' I asked, chronically embarrassed that I was almost pissing myself in front of him and worried that I was staring into those amazing eyes - like looking down a path into a wood that disappeared into a curving shadow. They started the most amazing gold at the outside and flowed into ebony in the middle. I stopped myself, grabbing my dragon talisman and looking jerkily over the mess of crates.

'I don't know,' Adam said. 'There might be another load to come.'

When at last her voice came to me, it was very faint and crackly.

She may have said something else, but I lost the signal, so to speak.

'They're going to come on the next load,' I told Adam, sitting down. I yelped and got up again sharply as a nail jabbed into my backside. Instead, I started pacing around.

'Please sit down,' Adam implored after five minutes. 'You're making me tired just watching you. We hardly slept at all last night, and from what Neit said you lot have been doing this for months.'

'Over a year,' I corrected absently, continuing to pace.

'You need to get a good night's sleep,' he told me, looking at me critically. I paused briefly to return his gaze, but soon went back to pacing. 'You've got black circles under your eyes, and your eyelids are blue with veins.'

I didn't particularly want to hear him summarise how awful I looked, so I continued to walk in the hope that he would get too tired to talk.

'You can't be eating enough, either. You're as thin as a rake. When did you last have a square meal?'

I thought about it.

'Back at the Temple,' I replied. 'That was before we travelled all the way down to Nottingham from Hogwarts, which is a good few miles from the Temple.'

Adam looked shocked. 'If you were my wife I'd never let you go hungry,' he said fervently.

I stared at him.

'Not like Draco Malfoy does,' he added.

'I'm not married,' I said stiffly.

'You aren't?' he looked surprised.

'No,' I snapped.

'Sorry,' he said after a while. 'I thought Malfoy wasn't looking after you at all and I'd heard that you two were married since London.'

'We weren't,' I said, forgiving him for the slight of saying I was married. Not my scene at all in those days. I'd hardly be able to offer security and three square meals a day to any man. Also, he'd nearly made my heart rip itself out of my throat when he said 'if you were my wife...'

'Where is he now? I know he's meant to be with you lot.'

'He's in El Karem, where we're headed.'

'I've never met him.'

'No, I shouldn't think you have. Not a lot of people have met him.' Unless they're rich and famous, I added to myself.

He just sat there looking at me as the conversation died on the rocks. I had a raging temptation to kiss him, but I knew that Draco would choose that moment to tap into my mind and would find out.

So we sat in silence. I didn't need to look at him; I had already memorised his face on the train journey.

'You are so beautiful,' he said in awe.

I choked, unable to answer. I felt a hot flush ride up my face as he put a hand against the scruff of my neck, hurling me face down into the polystyrene. I could hear the growling of the lorry engines as I shifted deeper into the polystyrene. I found myself against the wooden lid of another box and with my body pressed against Adam's. I looked up at him. His tanned face was bowed against my head as his arms folded around me in the small heap of packaging.

'Do you really mean that?' I whispered.

'How could I not?' he murmured back, still not looking at me.

I breathed in his scent, soap and grass and wood. It went to my head and I felt quite faint, a trembling delight in my stomach. I wondered how it would be if I was to shift myself up and kiss him right there. My insides froze and I couldn't bring myself to do it.

'Three trucks,' he muttered, listening sharply.

A jolt of enthusiasm rocketed through my body like vertigo. I shifted up, sliding a hand into his hair and locking my fingers there. He looked at me, beautiful eyes half-lidded. I stretched my neck and brought my lips to his, struggling not to slide back down into the dip in the earth again.

And he was kissing me back, his lips infinitely soft and warm against my own cold, stiff mouth. I rapped an arm around his muscular body, pulling myself closer to him. My tongue met his as the metal doors slammed down and he jerked away from me, lying totally still in the whiteness and waiting for the trucks to go.

My mind was reeling and my heart couldn't keep up with the amount of blood required in my brain, making me light-headed and woozy as my heart thundered away and my limbs lay flaccid.

When silence filled the Wasteland once more, save for the cawing of what sounded like Carrion birds, I sat up, pushing through the wiggles and rising like Frankenstein's monster or similar to go and look for the others.

'Raven!' I croaked. 'Neit?'

'Over here,' I heard Raven say, and vaulted a couple of boxes to reach her. The tall sorceress was stretching some cricks out of her back.

'God that was a horrendous journey,' she exclaimed. 'Lisette. Heel.'

Neit shoved through the wreckage.

'Over here, Elena,' she grinned. 'Battered, but all in one piece.'

I felt a sudden dull throb under my eye and realised that must have smacked my face against my hand. I recalled it, as the crate crashed off the back of the lorry and onto the ground and my backside had lifted off the floor. I had banged my head on the lid and then ducked, knocking my eye with my fist as I rolled over again.

'Adam here?' Raven checked. I averted my eyes.

'Here somewhere, yes. I found him earlier but he told me off for pacing and said I looked wasted and thought I was married to Draco, so I suppose he's lying under a box somewhere.

'I'm here,' he said quietly, just behind me. I coughed, not looking at him. I seemed to be avoiding a lot of people's eyes at that moment in time.

'Are we off to EK, then?' I said, a little too brightly. 'I'm dying to see everyone again.'

Raven gave me a strange look. 'Yes, I suppose we'll be off once we've caught our breath a bit.'

I nodded, trying to respect their tiredness, but I wanted to get moving again. I wanted another chance to kiss Adam. I wanted to see Draco. I wanted to see Ori. I wanted to see all the people I'd neglected and I wanted to be in the only place I'd really ever felt at home. I wanted to mount a war against the people I had once served and who now saw me as an arrogant interfering little child. I'd show them. Damn straight.

'Are you ready?' I snapped, after a minute of silence.

Raven grinned wearily at me. 'Seeing as you're so hopping to fall back into the arms of your one-and-only,' she replied.

I jarred a little at that, praying I wasn't blushing, and studiously avoided looking at Adam, although I longed to.

'Well, folks,' I said, looking around me to get my bearings. I pointed into the distance. 'El Karem is thattaway.'