Willow inhaled deeply through her nose, double-checking to make sure it hadn’t just been an odd combination of other scents. But no, the green stink of the drug was an unmistakable burn inside her nostrils. No matter what way she looked at it, Willow knew it was a problem. If it was her cousins, there was a chance they could be found out for being sasquatches. Whereas if it was strangers, they could still stumble onto the family’s property and see something they shouldn’t, leading to the same results.
Making a face, Willow knew she didn’t really have a choice in the matter. She turned back to Rune, saying, “I’m going to just check down the trail into the forest a bit. I’ll be right back.”
He shrugged and pulled his gaze away from the cliff’s edge to look at her. “I’ll come. No reason to separate. Besides, I can’t trust you not to sneak attack me.”
Willow groaned inwardly, but managed a smile. Rune was the last person she wanted to bring with her when there was potential for coming across her cousins, high. She could only pray that if it were them, that they weren’t squatching out. “I wouldn’t do that. My cousins keep doing it to me, so I know how much it sucks to have it happen.”
“Oh yeah, you’re the last boss for your younger cousins. Been attacked recently?”
She shook her head as she started walking towards the path’s mouth, barely visible through the overhanging trees that crowded it. “Nah. Eloise said they were going to do extra training with Andre before they challenged me again. I figure I’ve got another week or two before they get bored and jump me.”
Rune chuckled, grabbing the branch Willow held before it could snap back and smack him in the face. “Makes me glad it’s only me and my mom.”
“You have no idea.”
Ducking under another low-hanging limb, he said “Where does this trail go anyway?”
“It runs down towards the back end of the ridge, past the unclimable bits. It eventually snakes down the side, back to the forest floor. It’s mostly used by serious hikers and rock climbers. Most casual visitors prefer the easier path that we took.”
“Of course. Not content with taking me up a climb that only you would call ‘easy’, now you’re going to subject me to the rigors of something only a creature with hooves can get down successfully. You really are trying to kill me.”
Willow had to grin, despite the worry that still ate at her stomach. “How else am I going to shut you up?”
“Remind me, why are we friends?”
“Because I’m the only person that can stand you.”
“Yes, my massive intellect is quite daunting for most.”
“I’d watch what you say. I know there are some chestnut trees nearby. I bet I can find some that still have spikeballs and nail you with them,” Willow said, not bothering to lower her voice. She hoped that if it were her cousins, they’d hear and run off before her and Rune reached them.
Rune frowned. “What’s a spikeball?”
“It’s what me and my cousins call them. There these green balls with spikes that chestnuts are in the middle of. If you break them open, often the chestnut is white, and if you carve into it, when it grows the brown shell from the air getting at it, the design will stay on it. We used to do it all the time when we were kids.”
“You really did grow up feral,” he said, batting a hanging vines out of his face.
“Says the guy with a chair on his roof.”
“Chairs are civilized. Natural projectiles harvested from trees are not. Next, you’re going to tell me about how you and your family go into the heart of the forest armed with nothing and survive for weeks out there.”
Willow felt sweat break out along her back as she went hot and cold. That was far too close to what the family did do upon occasion. She forced a laugh. “No. We only do long camping trips when we travel. We know this forest so well, it’d be like staying in a hotel in town.”
Rune chuckled. “Thanks for the city analogy for my poor, wilderless brain.”
“Wilderless? I’m pretty sure that’s not a word.”
“It is now.”
She shook her head. “And you want to be a reporter.”
“I’m experimenting with language. It’s allowed. If it weren’t for people like William Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll, who created words when the English language lacked the necessary ones to properly express themselves, why, we’d be living in a world like 1984. That’d be double plus ungood.”
“You would quote that at me,” Willow said, just as she rounded a curve in the trail. The path led out of the trees and into a wide clearing, ringed all around with the same thick woods they’d been walking through. What had Willow stopping to stare were the plants that filled almost the entirety of the clearing.
Taller even than her in places, with thick, leafy stalks that waved in the breeze that ran through them, Willow recognized this particular plant from class. Not Biology, but Health class. Her nose twitched as the scent of them washed over her. Rune, who’d stopped beside her, was staring at them with an open mouth, skin swiftly paling. “Willow,” he whispered, eyes wide. “This is a pot field!”
Before she could reply that she knew and they should leave, another voice rang out. “Don’t move!”
Willow turned in the direction of the male voice, her eyes focusing immediately on the dark grey metal that surrounded the black hole facing them. She froze, Rune doing the same, their gazes locked onto the gun pointed straight at them.
YOU ARE READING
Silver Bound Girl
FantasyWillow's a Byron and they aren't just your average family. Not just because there are so many of them, but because they have secrets and traditions far outside the norm. Like spending as much time outside as in, and doing everything to keep rumours...
