Page 14 of Death of a Mortal

Nella realized I was no longer beside her. When she doubled back, the fear reflected in her eyes made my stomach drop—I must have looked bad for her to look at me that way.

“We’re almost there, Naci. Just a little further, and we can rest and drink.”

I held her hand and took slow, heavy steps, as if my limbs were made of stone. The stream was slowly getting closer. Something so close had never felt so far away. I felt dizzy from the pain and far more disoriented from the half vision than I had back at the fallen branch. The last of my strength was fading as I clung to consciousness with everything I had. I kept focusing on Nella, keeping one thing running through my head: she needs me.

We finally made it to the edge of a stream that was shallow enough to see the rocky bottom. I fell to my knees at the water’s edge and plunged my hands in. It was icy cold but felt so soothing on my flushed skin. As I drank mouthfuls of water, one after another, Nella knelt beside me and drank her fill, too, then waited for me to finish.

“If you’ll lie back, I’ll pour some water on your burns. It’s not much of a cleaning, but it’s the best we can do for now.”

I did as she asked, thinking the cold would at least feel good against the scalding skin. As she dribbled the first handful of water over the side of my face, I heard a crackle. I twitched in pain rather than relief and wondered if Aemilia’s magic could somehow still be alive in my skin.

“Nella, no more. The magic…” I panted. “It’s still there…does not like water.”

A look of abject horror came over her as darkness tinted the corner of my vision in my one good eye, and the sick feeling in mystomach heightened. I was on the verge of passing out, but I fought as hard as I could to keep consciousness…

* * *

A bird’s crowroused me from what felt like a deep slumber. Pain overwhelmed my senses, and when I opened my eyes, I registered only seeing one side of the world around me. I bolted upright, but Nella was there beside me, holding my hand with tears lining her eyes. I wondered how long I had been out as the memory of how we’d gotten here and why came crashing back. It had been long enough that the sun was now setting.

“You’ve been moaning and breathing heavily and muttering. You…didn’t sound okay.” She looked nervous when she added the last bit.

I felt as though my head and limbs weighed far too much. I pushed myself to my knees as Nella reached for me, clearly worried I might collapse. Lumbering to my feet, I felt my quickened heartbeat and the sweat drip down my face, which I assumed was the onset of a fever.

“We’ll just take it slow until we find a path out. It’s bound to lead us to a town where we can find maybe a doctor or a healer?” Nella looked around, assessing our surroundings, and it broke me to see the girl I wanted to protect more than anything needing to be the one protecting me. I swore to myself that I would get through this.

We walked on as evening turned to night, and I worried we were heading even deeper into the woods, away from any path that would lead us out. We’d been in the forest now for nearly a full day with no food. This was going to turn dire quickly.

A nagging feeling like we were being followed had me looking back over my shoulder every other minute, each turn of my neck making my half vision spot, but I could hear no footsteps, no breaking twigs, no breath of wind, not even a bird’s chirp or a squirrel’sjump from tree limb to tree limb. The forest was too quiet—forests were never silent. This felt…wrong.

I looked up and around us, finding nothing but small shards of moonlight breaking through the canopy’s unnaturally still leaves.

“Nella,” I whispered, “does this feel off to you?”

She looked up, just as I had. We stilled and stood back to back, looking for any sign of where we should go—or not go—as a large black bird sailed overhead. It stopped and landed on a thick branch just off to my right, only a few feet above us. I swore it stared at us as it cocked its head from side to side, close enough to see its glassy eyes even in the darkness.

It flew up and away a short distance before landing on another branch a few trees away. It again stared at us, and after a few seconds, crowed.

I looked around at Nella and asked with a fever-dream laugh, “Do you get the feeling that the bird has been following us?”

“There are so many birds in the forest, no way we’ve only been seeing this one,” Nella said.

“I haven’t seen any birds other than black ones, and nootheranimals for that matter.”

She considered my words for another moment as the world pulsated around me in my delirium. The bird crowed once more, louder this time.

“I feel like it’s calling to us.”

The familiar soothing, flickering heat was building in my chest again. Then again, I was likely imagining things.

I took a step toward the bird, but Nella grabbed my arm.

“Naci! We don’t know that’s the right way! We can’t just follow a bird!”

But as I took another step toward the bird, it crowed again, as if in encouragement.

So I kept walking. Nella followed, still holding onto my arm, until we stopped directly under the bird. It turned its head to focus a beady eye on us before it took off once more, landing again on abranch several trees ahead of us. We followed, and it crowed. It became obvious the bird wanted us to follow. I found my pain lessening by the minute. If I’d been of sound mind, I would have known I was likely slipping into shock.

The next time the black bird took off, it didn’t land. Instead, it wove left and right ahead of us to match our walking speed. On we went, following the bird until we found a small clearing. It landed on a branch at the edge and just watched us.