With one swipe the mama bear sliced Bastiaan’s throat.

Chapter 47
Myrthe

Blood splashed my face.

Bastiaan’s hand slid out of my grip. He crumpled to the sand. Before I knew what I was doing, my skate blades were in my hands. I chopped at the bear paw, sending the blades into the mist again and again like a hatchet. Feeling them connect with bone, flesh, fur.

A roar of pain.

I struck again. Again. With no plans of stopping.

An anvil of fur hit me from the left and I went flying. A great flump shook the ground. I pushed myself up, black spots swimming in my blurred vision.

The bear lay dead. Half inside the Summer Trial and half inside the Autumn Trial. Its face slashed to ribbons.

I scrambled to Bastiaan’s side.

He had a hand clamped over his throat, but blood trickled through every crack between his fingers. The slice went beyond his throat and into his shoulder. His eyes were open. Seeing. Panicked.

Perhaps it was my weeks of building walls against my emotions. Or maybe it was the shock of the moment. But I stared hard into his eyes and said in a calm, firm voice, “This is not your end.”

A scorpion crawled onto his arm. I crushed it with my fist and threw the carcass far from me, my hands flying almost as fast as my mind. I tore off the sleeve of my shirt and wrapped it around Bastiaan’s neck. Then I packed sand over the section already bleeding through and wound my other sleeve around that. If nothing else, it might help the wound clot better.

I only needed long enough to get to the Well.

The Well would heal him. And if it didn’t, the Well would free me of my curse and I could use a wish. It always seemed to be the answer that came to mind, and I believed there was a reason for that. The Well was hope.

And hope never failed.

Bastiaan wasn’t coughing, so I had to hope blood wasn’t pouring into his lungs. I knew so little about healing. If only I had a wish now!

I looped his arm over my shoulder and heaved. He twitched and I knocked another scorpion off his hand. My weak knee buckled.

“Help me!” I grunted, trying to get him upright.

He managed to get his feet under him, and I angled him on my back like a turtle shell. Hunched over, I plodded through the sand. He tried to move his legs, to take off some of the weight, but his movements were sluggish and sleepy. His head drooped onto my shoulder, soaking blood through what was left of my coat and shirt.

Heat bit my foot and I hissed, but it wasn’t a sting. It was the burn of hot ground. Sun-baked sand. Forward. Forward.