I opened my eyes to the sight of bars again, except they were the wooden bars of a cage this time.
Oh damn. I winced and tried to sit up, only to hit my head on the ceiling of the cage. “Ow,” I said and happened to look outside.
My stomach did a dive. “Whoa—” I jumped and scooted back to the other side of the small, square cage that I was in, suspended from the top of a very tall tree.
My heart started to pound as the cage swung with my every movement. “Oh no…” I swallowed hard. I was sure I had never been afraid of heights before but without the protection of the Lake and my magic, I was no longer feeling very confident about anything.
I looked around and spotted another wooden box cage hanging to my right, quite out of my reach. Josh was inside of it, still unconscious. I panned my gaze downward.
About a dozen or so men were gathered around the base of the big tree, men of all the same description—burly, bearded, reeking of liquor, and all speaking in the same course slur.
I looked up to where our cages dangled, following the line of rope that held us aloft to a tree branch, then back down to the large stakes buried in the ground, beside four men who looked to have been tasked to watch them.
I sat back disheartened. What were they going to do to us? I thought in panicked dread.
Mages always had ulterior motives. Monsters were driven only by instincts. But men… Men were incredibly unpredictable creatures.
Josh stirred in his cage. I perked up and crawled over to the side of my cage nearest to him. “Hey,” I hissed. “Wake up. Hey!”
He groaned as he rolled over. He jumped, startled when he realized where he was, and likewise hit his head.
I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t move so much,” I advised. “The cages are being tethered from quite high up.”
Josh tried to sit up as best he could in the small space before looking around and seeing the same things that I’d seen for myself. He looked up at me in my cage across from him then cursed under his breath.
I swallowed again. “Are these the men you were hiding from? What did you do to them?”
He scowled. “I didn’t do anything to them. What makes you think I’m the one who did anything?”
I blinked, taken aback by his brusque tone. “Sorry, I just thought—”
“You just assumed I’m always the bad guy, right?” he cut in. “I never win,” he muttered to himself.
I winced again, feeling a little guilty, and watched him sulk in his cage. I never did give him the benefit of the doubt. I never gave him a chance. I was going to say something when a louder, raucous voice called up to us.
“You there’s finally awake!” the man shouted and in just as loud a voice told someone to shift our cages down a bit lower.
A commotion began among the men as they jostled to have a closer look at their captives.
I gripped the bars tight. The cages swung erratically as we were lowered about halfway down. “How do we get out of this?” I called out to Josh.
He met my gaze in a no-possible-way-we’re-fish-food kind of way.
I grimaced and looked back down. This much closer to the ground, I could see several of the men with familiar objects in their hands.
One burly guy with a red bandanna on his head was dismantling a pair of pink-and-white scissors. The other one beside him was peering at the reflecting circle with a wondrous expression on his face.
My eyes widened and my breathing started to quicken as I anxiously scanned the number of men, my gaze stopping at the hands of the same one who looked to be their leader.
The one who was shouting up to us and shouting instructions at everyone, one of the biggest men in the group, gripped the crystal case of the relic firmly in his hand.
“Oh no. The relic,” I breathed coarsely.
Josh heard me and his hand flew to his back pocket where the relic wasn’t before he searched all his other pockets. “They took everything.”
“Tha’s better.” The big guy nodded as soon as the cages stopped descending. “So you finally came back, junior,” he called up to Josh. “Back to pay your debts, I hope.”
Josh’s expression turned sour. “I don’t owe you jerks anything.”
The guy looked slightly offended. He shook his head at Josh in disapproval. “Now, now, let’s not have manners like that in front of the lady.” He turned a leering gaze at me. “G’day, miss. So sorry you had to get involved in all this but you sure keep bad company around.”
Some of the men whistled and I made a face in distaste.
“Quite surprising you need any more women, the way you took all of ours away,” the man drawled.
I shot Josh a surprised look. He did what?
“I didn’t do anything none of you didn’t deserve,” Josh defended. “Besides, those women left of their own wills because you guys are lazy bums.”
The guy growled. “Quiet, you!” he snapped before turning his gaze back to me. “Why don’t we just talk to the little lady here?”
A thin, lanky guy came up to him to whisper something in his ear and the big guy nodded. “Yeah alright, Thalmus,” he said then gestured to them all, looking up at me. “Some of us here’s been wondering what kinda hair’s that,” he called up to me. “Ain’t nobody ‘round these parts with that kinda hair. Bet people’d pay good money to get their hands on hair like that. And not just the hair, am I right?” He laughed, elbowing the thin man.
I shuddered, making a face again, and edged back into the cage, gathering my hair in my hands protectively.
“Leave her alone,” Josh barked. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Yeah? Well, suppose you lookee what we got right here?” He held up the crystal cylinder in his hand.
“That’s mine.” Josh gritted his teeth.
The big guy howled and the other guys laughed boisterously. “I guess years of rumors’ finally paying off,” he commented. “We here’s gonna sell it and make a bundle. Betcha lots of people’ll pay good money to get their hands on this treasure.”
Josh’s scowl deepened.
I shook my head. These men didn’t even have any idea what they were presently in possession of. They probably didn’t know it would do them better to keep it instead of selling it, but they seemed like simple-minded folk. They probably wouldn’t even know what to do with that kind of power.
“Didn’t even know if them stories were true,” the big guy continued, peering at the relic close to his nose. “Didn’t know it came with a fairy wench either.”
I sucked in my breath, turning horrified eyes to Josh.
He was watching me. “It’s okay.” He tried to calm me down. “It’s going to be okay—cripe!” He cursed under his breath, trying to reach out to me but my cage was too far away. “Don’t panic, okay? Don’t even think about it,” he tried to assure. “I’ll take care of this.”
I swallowed again, my chest heaving. I pulled my legs up to hug my knees, trying to fight down the chills. Somebody help.
The men ignored us for a while, letting us dangle above them as the Great Star begun to set.
I sighed, re-evaluating the situation after much thought.
The important thing was not to panic.
Even though this was a no-win situation.
I mean, I was sure there was no way Josh could handle all of them at once.
With my powers practically gone the way they were at the moment, he and I couldn’t handle all of them at once.
And that was assuming we had the chance to get out of these cages first to try to fend them off.
Even the odds of losing them in the woods weren’t good since we had no idea how deep into the forest we were. It was too thick to see in any direction. The Great Star could only indicate that we had to run east to get away.
I cast an irritated glance over at Josh in the other cage, suddenly in suspicious disbelief about how he could have managed to sneak past the guards back at Cephiron. Surely, he should be able to get himself out of a wooden cage much easier than a dungeon.
He had claimed that he was a resourceful person. Could he still be a resourceful person without the objects from his world that these men had taken? Shouldn’t he still be? I watched him for a while, attempting to weigh our chances of survival.
He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even blinking.
I frowned again then looked back up at the sky, still unsettled.
The days seemed to be going by so quickly. And there was no way to turn back the time. I couldn’t go back to my peaceful Forest. I couldn’t restore things.
I had quite again naively thought that if Josh had succeeded in retrieving the legendary relic from the Mystic Lake, perhaps the fates had decided upon a greater purpose for him, such that he would be granted the ability to protect the relic and to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
But now someone else had the relic. Someone possibly dangerous and definitely vile.
The men below laughed for whatever reason and a nerve in the back of my neck ticked.
I gritted my teeth. It was the frustration that I was partly to blame for the present situation that was making me the most angry.
But of course, I couldn’t blame myself.
I shot Josh a dirty look across the way. “This is all your fault,” I hissed.
He looked over at me, his expression already dull.
“And don’t tell me you did nothing again,” I added. “Because earlier that big guy said you did do something.”
“Yeah, and you believe him more than me.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “I know they wouldn’t go to such great lengths to capture someone whom they just disliked. So what was it? Did you cheat them somehow? Did you steal their money?”
He was already shaking his head. “I didn’t do anything, okay? It’s just—this village used to be run solely by the men. All the women just took their crap, got beat up, shouted at…” He shook his head quickly with a frown as though from a bitter memory before he went on.
“All these guys did all day was get drunk and lounge around while the women worked. And it just so happened that with the couple I had stayed with, the wife and I got to talking about their…condition.” Then he added, offhand, “And I happened to mention that she didn’t need to be putting up with her husband. I told her about how it could be, how it was for some in my world.”
He shrugged again. “She believed me and left him. After that, I guess all the women started to believe they could also do better, so one by one they all left the village.”
I looked at him, shaking my head. “Why did you do that?”
He threw his hands up. “I don’t believe this! You think I should’ve just left them alone to get beaten up, don’t you?”
I pursed my lips. “Well, I think you must have disturbed a village that had its own workings—”
He shot me a skeptical look then shook his head again. “Never mind,” he dismissed. “You wouldn’t understand. I forgot I was talking to the guardian of routine and permanence and all things that do not change.”
“That is not what I am,” I declared pointedly.
Josh gave me an oh-please expression.
I gave him a suffering look. “If I were, then shouldn’t I still be in the Forest?” I countered. “Nothing would’ve changed and everything would’ve still been the way they always were. But nooo, you had to come along and make a mess of everything. If you had listened to me and left the relic alone, this would not have happened and we would not be hanging in these trees waiting for these barbarians to slaughter us.”
“Relax,” he spoke calmly. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Take care of this?” my voice went up a few decibels. “You keep saying that. But as far as I can tell, I’m still in this cage. And you’re just sitting there doing—oh—wait—nothing!” I snapped before launching into it, muttering indignantly to myself. “This is unbelievable. This can’t be happening to me. I shouldn’t even be here. If these people lay even one finger on me, I swear someone is going to pay. I knew I should’ve just stayed behind—”
“Hey,” he called. “Shut up.”
I winced, taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”
Josh sat up and looked toward the horizon where the Great Star was almost parallel then he cocked his head as if straining to listen for something.
I blinked. What the hell was he doing now?
He started to push backward in his cage and then forward. He did it a few more times, eventually moving it so that his cage began to swing back and forth.
“What are you doing?” I shot him another weird look yet again.
But after a few moments, his cage had swung far enough for him to snatch a couple of leaves or flowers or something off the nearest tree branch then he hunched over them for a while in his cage.
I squinted to try to see what he was doing with the leaves but the shadows of the falling dusk were getting in the way.
Then he swung out once more in an attempt to grab hold of the other end of the rope that held his cage suspended up the tree. It took him a few tries but he finally caught it. He groaned in the strain as he reached out and rubbed some type of sap onto the rope.
I looked warily down at the barbarians to see if any of them could see what was going on up here but most of them were sleeping, the rest were drunk.
I looked back up at Josh as he finished and raised my eyebrows at him expectantly but all he said between labored gasps was “Cross your fingers.”
Cross my what? I was going to ask for an explanation when I heard a faint screeching sound from far away.
And it seemed to be coming closer.
“Uh… What’s…that…?”