We've walked for at least a couple hours when the road stops. Well, it doesn't exactly stop so much as it just ends. There is a barricade across the end of the pavement with a sign that says Road Ends. The foliage has been pushed back, ringing where a street should be like Caesar's hairline, but it isn't held back very far.
"I think we're at the top," I say, looking around. What's beyond is just a small peak. "Looks like they stopped the road because there was nowhere else to go."
"Look over there," Garrett says, raising a finger to a tree, off to the right of the abandoned road. The tree looks like it's been plugged into the side of the mountain and grown up, so the very top of it is only as tall as us, even though the entire tree is actually as tall as a house. I don't see anything unusual until I focus.
There is a bike chain, hanging from the branch like greasy pearls. The chain is split and hanging straight down.
"It's not gears, but it's close," I say. He agrees with a hum and a glance around.
"Looks like an arrow."
He can't be thinking what I think he is. It's on the side of the mountain. The very, very steep mountain.
"C'mon, Rebel," he says as he yanks on the cable between us and grins at me. "Let's follow where it leads us."
"It's not a gear. Not really."
"C'mon." Another tug, another grin. I let him lead me to the edge, but that's where I put on the brakes. The proximity of that branch to the ground we're standing on was an optical illusion. The branch isn't even close to where we can lean out and grab it. The tree is a thick antler, growing out of the side of the mountain. And it gets worse. I look down. The slope of this animal's forehead is knobby and unstable and probably drops for miles. I step back with a gulp. Garrett pulls me to his chest, his warmth covering me. I try to bury what's inside me that shouldn't be there.
"That's not fear you're bringing with us, is it?" he asks softly. It's like he's reading my mind.
"Nah," I try to laugh. "I just don't want to go down the same way the motorcycle did."
"We won't. You're going to use your skills and your field. We're going to focus and go down slow."
"You remember we're tied together, right? If I fall, so do you."
"It's the only way I'd have it," he says. "Besides, I'd catch you. Think of it like mountain climbing."
"You know, fear's not always such a bad thing," I say, untangling from him as I step away from the edge. My throat constricts and my voice squeaks. "You always say not to bring fear to a fight, but all that does is make me ashamed of how I feel. I can't control it. And sometimes fear is a good thing! It warns you that you're about to do a really stupid thing or that someone's going to do something to you and that you have to run away..."
Garrett watches me as my gaze jumps from one thing to another. To the dead end sign. To the road that led us here. To the edge of the cliff. To the chain that points straight down. To him.
Fear was why we escaped the hotel. It brought us here. It's asking us to keep going, despite itself, because the biggest fear of all is that we stop and lose everything, for everyone. Part of my brain ignites with a blazing epiphany. There are two kinds of fear, a yin and a yang, an up and a down, a balance.
The fear that we will lose is different from the fear of having lost. I can do something about one of them and that's why the other can't be in my stockpile of skills that I use to get ready for a fight. My eyes find Garrett's.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Let's go."
Use my field and focus, my butt.
We're trying to scale down using the sides of our feet for more surface traction and I put my foot on a wobbly rock, knowing it won't hold, but hoping it does. Knowing should be enough for me not to do it.
I wipe out.
And I take Garrett with me.
Since he's in the lead, I crash into him and he tries to steady us both with his arms. We teeter for that one slow-mo second, the one that gives you enough time to think about how you're probably going to die, and then we fall forward. We tumble and roll and bounce. Our fields don't help a whole lot, since there's nothing to grab hold of and no place to catch our footing. Tumbling down would be fun if we were inside a gigantic, padded hamster ball, but we're not. We're only in our skins, which get punctured and bruised on the way down.
We finally flop to a stop, with me landing on Garrett hard enough that I force a breath out of him. I don't bother to get off him. I can't. I just lay there for a minute, dizzy. I feel him pull in a breath.
"Nalena?" he says.
"Yeah?"
"You okay?"
"I can't move."
"Did you break something?"
"I don't think so. I'm just dizzy."
"Well, you're brilliant."
"Shut up."
"I mean it. Look up," he says. I lift my head and after my eyes crest over his face, I notice the splats of deep purpley-blue around his head. Then I follow the line of his arm as he reaches up, pointing to something beyond and above us. It's a bush. The thing is loaded with blueberries that dangle from their stems, just like the bicycle chain that hangs among them.
"We're laying in blueberries," I say.
"Yeah. You still hungry?"
I climb off him, the dizziness immediately gone, reaching for the first cluster I can grasp. I pull the stem of them free, the binding box whistling as a couple wild berries drop on Garrett's face, below me. They leave juicy streaks on his cheek that I would lick off if I wasn't so hungry. My knees are on either side of his ribs and I sit back on his stomach with a crazy happy laugh, as I dip the strand of berries into his mouth. I pluck some off and eat them too.
When I let him up, Garrett's back is stained a dark violet from the crushed berries beneath him.
"I'm a mess," he says, reaching back to knock some of the stickier, smashed fruit off the back of his arms.
"But you smell like jelly," I tell him. He pauses from running his hand down the back of his head.
"Jelly?" I lean in and close my eyes. I make a big joke of savoring it as I position my nose near his shoulder and breathe him in. But he grabs me around the waist and with my shriek, he hoists me onto his shoulder. "I'll show you jelly, Rebel!"
He carries me through the bushes, in the direction the gears are pointing and he stops.
"Perfect," he laughs. From my position, I can't see anything but his back.
"What? What's perfect?"
"We're going to take a bath."
"What? No..." I think he's got to be teasing, but then I see dirt and stones and he wades us into water. No matter what I say or how I protest, Garrett ignores it, until he's got us out far enough that the surface is licking at his waist.
"Plug your nose, Rebel," he laughs. And he dives in.
We go under together, the soft silence greeting us below the surface. Garrett's lips find mine. He breathes into my mouth and his breath rubs around inside my body like a velvet cloth, polishing stones.
And his lips, underwater, are glass. His arms glide around me and I pull for cable so I can clasp my hands behind his neck. I wind my legs around his waist as Garrett pulls us both up to the surface.
He whips his hair off his eyes with one flip, but I have to take a hand off his shoulders to wipe the water off my own face. He dips back down suddenly and I grab him, in case he's going to submerge us again, but he keeps just our heads above the waterline.
"Don't move," he says. I feel his body responding to mine, the muscles tightening across his chest, his arms pulling me closer, his breathing wearing down until it's ragged at the edges. And I feel him move against the inside of my thigh. It's not scary to feel him either. There's something so simple about it that I slide my hand into his wet hair and guide his mouth to mine again.
His groan is an echo in my skin. My body blazes, a red coal submerged, but still glowing. Garrett adjusts his hips an inch and I suck in a sharp breath. I'm not supposed to feel the things I'm feeling. Boys are supposed to be the ones that get crazy like this, not me...so I'm ashamed at the way I want his tongue deeper in my mouth. It's like my whole body is a fingertip hovering over a hot burner. I am scared of doing it, but at the same time, my body keeps firing off all these urgent messages to touch and to be touched. It's a dirty contradiction that makes me ashamed and furious with desperation at the same time.
Garrett pulls away. He tucks his lower lip into his mouth like it takes tremendous effort as he sets me down, the cable hissing. There is muck beneath my feet. Garrett's staring at the surface of the water, the black silt stirring up between us.
"I'm sorry." His eyes flick up and back down. "I keep doing this to you. I told you at the Celare that I didn't want to do this before the Mandare and I meant it...but you're so...tempting..."
"Then quit saying you're sorry and kiss me." I take a step forward and he takes one back at the same time. The cable box doesn't even register the dance.
"It's not just up to you, Garrett."
"No, it's up to both of us."
The box hisses as I cross my arms over my chest. "But I don't actually get to vote."
"I'd love for you to have a say in it," he says, "but if you're going to say what I really want you to, then I have to say my part first. I want you, Nalena. I want you so much that it hurts in ways I don't even want to explain. I want to do those things with you, everything with you, but I want to be bound to you first. Completely.
"I never ever want either of us to look back and second guess ourselves. The right way is to prove our respect for one another by controlling this urge. It's like a promise, that you'll always know you come first to me and that I will do anything for you, even if it means giving up something I want, more than anything, for myself. I want you to have that promise, that gift, Nalena, but don't doubt for a second that it is a tremendously hard gift for me to give." His grin is flimsy, faltering, and then it completely fails. "And it will be impossible, really, if you don't commit to giving me that great of a gift too."
I uncross my arms and let them splash down at my sides into the water.
"Fine," I grumble. "I'll give you a gift too. Respect and all that."
He smirks. "I was hoping you'd put up more of a fight."
"Forget it. You killed the mood," I say, but he grasps the cable between us and starts drawing me to him, as if I'm a fish on a line. When I dig in my heels, he leaps forward and catches me up.
"We can still kiss," he says. "A lot."
My shoes squish for a long time while we walk, until I finally pound all the water out of them. They make sure to give me blisters first.
We climb down, even further away from the highway and into a ravine. It's impossible to see where we're headed through all the trees, but we do find a bicycle chain coiled like a snake on the ground, a gear embedded in tree trunk like a magnetic earring, and even an empty turtle shell with a design on the back that looks just like two gears, churning together.
It's great to find the signs, but I'm exhausted and the berries aren't exactly sticking like a steak. The blisters and raw skin have changed from just aching to sending sharp little pins through my feet as I walk.
And then there's the binding box. As we swing our arms, the sound becomes a rhythm that, at first, sounds calming. When it becomes a little irritating, I remind myself that it is my connection to Garrett. And then the noise settles into my eardrums: step zzz step zzz step zzz and it is like the sound of a crying baby or a ringing phone or a drippy faucet. I try to jog my steps to break the cadence, but it remains. Step zzz step zzz step zzz. It is so steady, I want to scream.
Garrett stops and I'm so caught up in plotting how to suffocate the binding box with leaves or dirt or my shoelaces--that I almost mow him over. In the silence, I swear I can still hear the sound: step zzz step zzz step zzz, until Garrett speaks.
"I have to use the restroom," he says. That scrubs all the sound out of my head. And restroom makes it even more awkward. We're in the mountains, walking through trees.
"Oh. Uhm...okay," I say. And maybe it's just because he said it, but now I have to go too. Bad. I struggle to convince my bladder that it's mistaken. I can't go in front of Garrett. I don't go in front of people. Even in gym class, there were doors on the stalls. But my bladder is suddenly a water balloon attached to a fire hydrant. "I kind of have to go too."
"Well good. At least I don't have to do it alone."
I can be a warrior.
I can fight.
I can kill.
But I don't know if I can pee in front of Garrett.
The whole binding thing was more exciting when the slant on learning about each other's bodies was leaning in a more romantic direction. But private things like this--that no one else ever needs to see or be part of--I went out of my way to pretend these things would just never happen. Or that there'd be some work-around that everyone was keeping secret, like a binding prank. Ha ha! You got us! We almost peed in front of each other!
Now I'm on the verge of hyperventilating, as I think of what could happen when the time comes to move up the horrid bodily-function scale and do #2 in front of him. I might just saw off my whole arm if it comes to that.
As I'm entertaining the thought, Garrett is talking. I blink, catching only the last part.
"Are you good with that?" he says.
"What? Sorry, I missed what you said."
He grins like he knows I'm busy doing 4-alarm-fire-panic-circles in my head. He points to a mammoth tree trunk, about three yards away.
"I was saying, if we wrap our cable around the exterior of that big tree over there, we might be able to have some privacy. Would you like that?"
"Yeah," I nod and gulp like a starving chimp staring at a banana tree. "Wouldn't you like that?"
He shrugs. "Doesn't really make any difference to me."
As we walk toward the tree, I make my tongue form a word. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why aren't you embarrassed?"
"About this?" He laughs. "It's just something our bodies do. What's the big deal?"
When he says it that way, it does seem really dumb. Basic. At least until we get to the tree and wrap the cable around it and I have to pull down my jeans. I freeze. Thinking about it and actually doing it are two different things, and while the thinking about it made me go a little mental, the doing part is suddenly impossible.
I hear Garrett. He's doing it just fine. And if I don't do it while he's doing it, then he's going to catch me in the middle of doing it when he walks around the edge of the tree.
I fumble down my jeans and squat. And I learn that I've never fully appreciated peeing like I do at this second, the one when you're about to explode if you don't go. I almost groan. Until the binding box zigs and I feel the tugging as Garrett drags up his zipper.
"Don't look!" I shriek. The cable goes still. Garrett's laughter fills the air.
"I'm not!" he reassures me. I can hear the smirk in his voice as he adds, "When did you gulp down the swimming pool, Rebel?"
Ugh. Pee jokes. I still laugh. The binding box jerks again and I shriek with it.
"Stay!"
"I'm not looking...I swear," he says. Garrett's hand appears around the edge of the bark. He's holding out some fat leaves. "But I thought you'd like some toilet paper."
I take it with a mumble, "You better know your Poison Ivy."
"I wouldn't do that to you," he says. The cable relaxes and I imagine him on the other side of the tree, leaning his head on it, looking up into the branches. "Brandon? Maybe. Mark? Definitely. But you? Never."
I do what I need to do, stand and zip.
"You ready to get moving again?" he says.
I step around the edge of the tree and Garrett meets my gaze with that familiar old smile that says he wants to hear everything I'll ever say. It erases the humiliation of wiping with leaves.
I stop worrying about finding the next bike chain to reassure me that we're still on the right path. I stop feeling lost and nervous and unsure of what's coming at me. Instead, in the middle of wherever this is, I stand still and smile back at Garrett, feeling an overwhelming sense of being completely at home.
My worry over whether or not we're going the right way returns after only a half hour of stumbling over the uneven terrain.
"Worried we're not going the right way?" he asks. There isn't a path and the bushes and growth have gotten all kinds of thick. I keep sifting over the landscape for that next breadcrumb of a gear, but haven't seen it yet.
"How'd you know that's what I was thinking?" I ask.
He shrugs. "Because I'm thinking it too? Besides, you're looking hard, like you lost something."
"Sometimes I'd swear you can actually read my mind," I say. "You say exactly what I'm thinking."
"I noticed that. But you do it with me too," he says. He holds back a branch so I don't get fwapped in the face with it, but he's also looking at me with open surprise.
"I do?"
"Yeah. You say things that are answers to questions I'm about to ask." He sounds impressed. "I want to try something."
We pause at the same moment, knee high in the grass as it prickles against my ankles like tiny bug bites. "What?"
"Projecting," he says. "I think we should give it another shot."
"We can try again, but the only time it worked was with the Desino leaf cookies."
"True, but we haven't really tried to do it without them. Not really."
I look him in the eyes and project hard toward his forehead, True.
"True," he repeats. My jaw drops.
"You heard me?"
"No," he laughs. "I just knew you were going to agree. Simple deduction."
"Try now," I say. This time, I send a big fat thought of the number five bolting at him. I picture the numeral, the written word, the roman numeral. I’m stuffing it all into the vat of my thought projection and try to line-drive it into his forehead. Garrett blinks. "What did I say?"
"I don't know. Numbers?"
"Yes!" I squeal, but Garrett shakes his head, disappointed.
"I didn't hear you. I just deducted again."
"That's a pretty good deduction."
"It was either numbers, colors or an apple," he says. "I figured you'd go numbers because it's the most scientific for an experiment like this."
I groan a sigh. If he's just lucky-guessing my every move, I figure I need to do something unexpected. I knot the fingers of my free hand into a fist and throw it at him. Garrett grabs it, absorbing my force in his palm, so it doesn't hit his face. I feel satisfied, but Garrett shakes his head again.
"How'd you know that was coming if you aren't reading my mind?" I ask. He laughs.
"Because you crinkle up around the eyes when you're frustrated. And when you're frustrated, you always want an immediate release for the energy. Like running on the track or... punching me, I guess."
Now I laugh. "You sound like Sean."
He tips his head. "I knew you were going to say that too."
"Like knew or heard me say it?"
"I just new," he squints at me. "Maybe that's what this is, Nalena. Maybe I can't read your mind, but I can anticipate you."
Words return from a long ago conversation. "Common sense and body language are terrible little traitors," I say. "Addo told me that."
"I think that's it," Garrett says. "Ever since I felt you at our parent's Memory ceremony, ever since then, I've felt like I really know you, like as well as I know myself. And after we were in each other's fields, I've been able to do it even more. It's as unconscious as breathing. I don't have to concentrate on making my lungs work, it just happens. It's like I'm subconsciously scanning you all the time. I just have a feeling of what you're going to say or do next and most of the time, it's accurate."
I focus hard on sending the thought: let's practice.
"You want me to keep doing it. Concentrate on it."
"Yeah."
"I could tell because you were crinkling again."
"I don't care how you're doing it, I can't believe it's working. If we don't have to talk to communicate..."
"It would be huge if The Fury captures us," he finishes my thought.
"Yeah."
"Let's practice then."
"That's what I was projecting to you," I say. "Let's practice. You project to me and see if I can get it."
He stares at me and I reach with my mind, focusing hard, trying to stretch outside my cranium and pluck his thoughts out of the air. I pull as if the air is a knotted bed sheet and Garrett's thoughts are hanging onto the end. But I don't get anything clear.
"Apples?" I ask. He shakes his head.
"No."
I try again, trying to focus right on the skin of his forehead, like I'm standing at the door of his mind and all he has to do is open up, so I can snatch his thoughts. But nothing comes.
"Are you aiming it right here?" I ask, pointing to the center of my forehead.
"Yup," he says. "Let me try again. Just relax."
He looks at my mouth this time. I think of it pressed against mine. I think of...
I jump at him. The binding cable zips and I'm tangled in the cable, but I land my lips square on his. His kiss is a confusing mix of subtle, relaxing lime and raw, kinetic energy running jagged down to my toes. It's like being paralyzed while my guts do a rapid-fire tap dance inside my skin. He steps back, our lips the last touch before we separate.
"Yeah," he says, "You got it. That's what I was thinking."
Garrett's kiss leaves me caught in my happy, lightheaded spin. I put my free hand to my temple, as if holding my head can stop the Earth from shaking me off.
"I love the way you think, Rebel," he says and when I sway against him, the ground trembles beneath my feet. It feels like the ground is actually shifting.
It seems a little crazy to think that the ground could actually drop out from beneath us until I realize that this time, it is.
Garrett jumps at me, grabbing hold, and we fall fast--straight down the center of a cavern without walls. It's as dark as Alice's rabbit hole and a whole lot more terrifying, since we are falling at the speed of sound. Our fields blows out, mine inside Garrett's, but I don't scream. We grip each other tight, my stomach in my mouth and my brain glued to the top of my skull, as our feet cut through the darkness. The momentum of the fall forces the air right out of me.
And then I feel the walls at my shoulders. They are like velvet sponges, cushioning us, tapering and pressing us together as we continue to fall. When we finally come to a stop, the sponge walls catch us like sugared almonds in the bottom of a squishy, paper cone.
Breathless, it's pretty obvious right away to both of us, that being crushed together and trying to breathe at the same time, isn't going to work. We begin to breath like we're on a teeter-totter, so our chests don't smash together and stifle the whole project.
On my breath, I say, "We're trapped in the finger of Gumby's mitten."
On Garrett's breath he chuckles and asks, "Can you move anything?"
I push backward with my heel. The wall gives.
"I can move my foot, but I don't know if it's just squishy or if we're going to fall again."
"This is a Veritas tunnel. It was meant to fall down, so the ground is probably right under us...I hope."
"Might as well give it a try," I say. I leverage my foot and shove backward as much as I can. And we fall.
Garrett was right. The floor is only a foot below us and we plerp out of the cushioned, fringed cone bottom like we're falling out of a squid, except there is no slime and no room. The tunnel is round and cement, some kind of pipeline. We grunt and crunch around each other, untangling, until we're laying on our sides facing each other, but I still have to close my eyes when I realize how close the top of the tunnel is to the bottom.
"Why do the tunnels always have to be so tiny?" I can't help but whine a little and when I squirm, the bottom of the tunnel wiggles too. I freeze. Why is the ground wiggling?
"I think we're on wheels," Garrett whispers.
"What do you mean?"
Garrett extends an arm over our heads, feeling around.
"There's a cable," he says, lifting a black cord. The ground gives a jerk and then, without either of us moving a muscle, we begin to glide through the tunnel. The platform beneath us moves through the tunnel like a bumpy magic carpet ride. I can hear wheels grinding against the dirt floor beneath us.
And then the tunnel opens up and we're rolled into a dome. There is a black back pack on the floor beside a masked figure in a rubbery black suit. The suit is also embedded with dozens of glinting, silver ball bearings that make me think alien. Except that I can see a smile.
So, maybe, happy alien, with a punk rock style.
The figure peels up the glinting mask. Nok's familiar face comes into sight.
"You follow gears!" he says. "Good, Nalena and Garrett!"
"How are you?" I say and when I lay a hand on his arm, it rolls right off, because of the bearings.
"Me good, but not good here," Nok says. "We go."
"Where are we going?"
"Zoo." Nok says solemnly. I expected to hear home or Core or even down to the holler, but not zoo. How can there be a zoo in the mountains? Are there mountain zoos? Full of what? Goats and snakes and mosquitos? Nok smirks.
I forgot. He can hear my thoughts. Sorry, I project. I just expected something else.
Nok shoots me a forgiving smile and turns back to Garrett. "I suit you. Then we go."
"Suit us?"
"What do you have in mind?" Garrett says. Nok pulls two pouches from a backpack and shakes them out. They look like fringed black, fruit rolls as they unfurl, with silver bearings embedded in them. When I look more closely, the strips aren't strips. They look like shiny black, infant PJs.
"Move suit," Nok says. "I show."
"Good thing," I say as Nok hands one of the strips to me. "Because I have no idea what you want me to do with this."
"Hold," Nok says, lifting the suit up against Garrett's chest.
Garrett hangs onto the suit and Nok takes hold of the edges and stretches the suit. He pulls hard, sliding his fingers across the material--maybe rubber or silicone--working outward as it extends. What began as a tiny patch of rubber expands like a magic glove made of silver steelies and thick, black cellophane. Nok pulls and yanks and tugs and the rubber stretches out slowly, the stuff clinging to Garrett's skin. Nok lifts it a few times, the stuff sucking at Garrett's skin like tape as it is repositioned, but it doesn't take any hair off of Garrett's arms. Nok fits the suit to Garrett by pinching and sealing the seams by running the edges between his index finger and thumb.
"What are the silver things for?" I ask.
"Move," Nok says, leaving Garrett's mask up over his face. Nok covers Garrett's hand, but leaves the wrist a little open, like a split pea pod with the cable threaded through. Nok doesn't seem happy with it, but he moves on to me.
Garrett flexes inside the suit, bending his elbows and knees. The suit flexes with him. The silver steelies glint in their crater holes.
"How does it feel?" I ask as Nok motions for me to hold my suit to my chest, just like Garrett did.
"Like skin--made of rubber cement and marbles," Garrett says, "except I can't feel any of it besides the temperature of the ball bearings. They're cold, but only tiny snowflake cold. You press on them and you almost feel it, but if you're not pressing them to your skin, you don't at all. It's cool."
"Cool," Nok says as he moves around me, stretching the suit so it clings to my skin. My face is reflected at least two dozen times in the ball bearings on my arm alone.
Nok pats my calf and I lift each foot in turn, as if I'm a horse he's shoeing. The feet take more peeling off and re-adjusting than the rest of me, but when he does my second foot, I slip around on the first. I'm like a rolly rag doll and when Garrett grabs hold of me, we wobble-dance together, laughing nervously as we try to stay upright.
"How is this ever going to work?" I ask. Nok shakes his head and clucks his tongue.
"No time teach. I tow. Put down mask." He rolls down his own and we roll down ours too. Although there is an open patch for my mouth, there are marbles embedded in the silicone over my forehead, cheeks, and chin. There are steel balls all over this suit--down the arms and legs, all over my scalp, in lines and circles all over my torso. Almost every inch of me is covered in either silicone or steelie.
Where I look out of the mask, it is covered with dark patches of material, but as I peer out of them, they don't dull the light at all. If anything, the tunnel looks normal, if not brighter. Weird.
"See in dark," Nok circles his eyes with one finger as he strings a rope into Garrett's palms and then mine, like we're Christmas trees and he decorating us with lights. "Now hold. Tight. I tow."
"Tow?" I ask, but Nok springs into the widest tunnel, skating away like a gold-medal Olympian, on the tiny bearings under his feet. The rope snakes after him, the coil of it at our feet and lessening by the second.
"The tunnel's too small!" I shriek. It's fine for Nok, but it's the size of a doggie door for Garrett and I. I open my mouth to shout at Nok, to let him know this won't work, that he's going to take off our heads...we can't even squat down that much to skate through the tiny opening, but then the rope gives a massive jerk that sends Garrett and I stumbling on our bearings. We're yanked onto the tunnel floor, sprawled on our stomachs, but still hanging tight to the tow rope. I see Nok's plan perfectly as we shoot forward, through the mouth of the tunnel, dragged along at the speed of light behind him.
I keep the forearm and elbow of my bound hand to the floor and I keep hold on the rope with everything I've got. I just hope that my mask doesn't peel off and leave bits of my face behind on this ride. My field glazes out around me and, suddenly, instead of being scared to pieces, I get that breathless excitement that comes from roller coaster rides. We twirl through the cylindrical tunnels, rolling over the ceiling and floor and walls on my stomach and back and sides; we fly around curves and catch a little air on the downward bends. The ride flips me sideways and upside down, but there isn't even one break in the glide. Whatever this suit is made of, it's something way better than sticky grocery cart wheels.
The ball bearings throw sparks on the turns and I can't help it when I let out a long wooo hooo inside the mask. It's muffled, but I'm sure Nok heard it and that I'm in trouble as the rope goes slack and our move suits coast to a sudden, gritty halt.