It would be a perfect kill.
The bowstring was drawn. The shaft of the black arrow shrank to its vanishing point, tipped with the sharp, ebony head. She could feel the air on every inch of her bare, pale flesh. It was warm and soft, the caress of her truest love; the wilderness. Thrushes twittered lazily in the heat of the afternoon, and across the glittering stream, a hind was feeding in the clover. She could see every hair on its hide, right down to the ticked shades of sandy brown and pale cream. The animal’s shoulder muscle knotted and glided beneath its skin as it took a slow step, seeking a fresh mouthful. Behind the flesh, she could picture its pulsating heart. The steady bellows of its lungs.
She meant to loose the arrow. Why hadn’t she? Now she was looking off into the trees. The deer was gone, and she felt a keen disappointment that she had lost it. Where the deer had been standing, two figures now appeared, framed by the verdant boughs and trailing moss of the forest. A pale light seemed to shine out from behind them.
“Ma?” she heard herself murmuring. “...Pa?”
The man was balding, and his posture slightly bent with age. But his shoulders were still broad, and his craggy face smiled. His thick fingers were wound through those of the woman beside him. Her hair was still mostly the same earthy brown, but shot through with silver, wrapped in a careless bun at the back of her head. Time had been a little gentler to her face, and the lines were not so deep. She, too, smiled across the sparkling water.
The huntress lowered her bow and stepped forward, breathless with disbelief. “Pa? Ma?” she called again, louder this time. Her bare foot sank into the coolness of the water. Pebbles and soft mud squished together beneath her toes.
Her father turned a meaningful look on his wife, and then slowly pivoted away so that his shoulder now faced his daughter. Together, they began to withdraw, moving along the edge of the wood, their movements eerily sluggish.
At the same moment, she noticed a change in the water. The stream was flowing south, and as she looked north along its shimmering length, the color of the water darkened. Fast-flowing towards her now, was what looked like a shadow beneath the surface. An immediate sense of dread overcame her, and before she could withdraw her foot, the shadow neared, and she could see that it was not any lack of sunlight. The water was crimson. The water was blood.
It swept past her with a sudden, rushing sound, and the stream was no longer a stream, but a wide, frothing river. Her foot burned as if the water were boiling, and she cried out in shock and hurt. The sun was blotted out, the sky turned to soot and ash, and all she could think was that her father and mother would be swept up in the torrent.
“Pa!” she screamed, and her voice was drowned under the river’s thundering roar. “Don’t go that way! Pa!” Behind the roiling, sloshing water, she could see them still, faint and dim. They seemed to be moving north, heedless of the horror pouring down from that direction.
The water seared at her ankle, and she had a terrible notion that if she pulled her foot back now, it would be stripped entirely of flesh, and she would see nothing but white, steaming bones. There was nothing to do but go forward. The river was rising with each passing second. She had to warn her parents. She had to save them.
She pressed forward into the river, and smelled the metallic stench of blood, even as the water stung and burned at her legs. “Pa! Ma!” she choked, waving her arms. “Turn around!”
The river had swallowed her up to her waist by now. She knew it was all for naught. She was going to die. Still she pushed on, staggering against the foul, red current, waving her arms more and more weakly, gasping out her impotent warnings.
She had to save them.
Narys awoke with a start, crying out, her limbs all spasming at once. For several seconds, she could not recall where she was, and she stared at nothing with bugged eyes, panting heavily while her fingers clutched at the grass beneath her.
