Chapter 63 - Nyal's Story part 12

Nyal dreamed she had been caught in a howling windstorm. Buffeted by the wind, she sought shelter in a copse of trees. She crouched down in the dream, covering her head in her arms, but the wind lashed her with the branches of the trees, drawing welts across her skin. She cried out, but her cries drowned in the roar of the storm. She tried curling her body into a ball, but the limbs slashed her without reprieve. Each swelling hash mark was a sizzling brand of pain. Thunder boomed overhead, a pantheon of gods clapping at her torment. They weren't her gods. She didn't believe in gods. But they cheered her agonies all the same.

Nyal lurched awake. She was flying through the treetops, the forest a blur around her, green and gray, with brief flashes of blue and white. She was traveling so fast she could barely lift her cheek from Gon's chest. It was like a strong but invisible hand pressing her body against his. She tried to turn her head, to look ahead of them, see where they were going, and a slender tree branch slashed across her cheek. She felt her skin part, felt warm blood trickle across her face to her lips. If that limb had struck her in the eye, it would have blinded it. She turned her face inwards, seeking safety in her husband's chest, and felt Gon's hand curl protectively around her head.

How long had she been unconscious this time? The last thing she remembered was Gon warning her. He had said he was going to move very quickly, and that it would not be pleasant. She had told him she was ready, not realizing just how fast and unpleasant their journey through the forest was going to be. And then he had launched himself into the treetops, and his sudden acceleration had clubbed her in the head. She had been propelled into oblivion, shot like an arrow into the dark heart of nothingness.

The pain was bad. Burning welts crisscrossed her arms and legs where she had been whipped by passing tree branches. Her stomach hurt where the Foul One had kicked her the day before. Her back and ribcage ached where Gon had caught her, fracturing several bones and snapping three ribs in the process, and her chest burned where one of those broken ribs had punctured her lungs.

But she knew pain. Pain was an old acquaintance. Not a friend! No, not someone she'd willingly invite in. But someone who insisted on visiting regularly. An annoying relative, perhaps. Someone she was forced by custom to accommodate, but whose prattling she had long ago learned to hold at a distance from her thoughts. Those long winter nights of aching joints had made her a master of pain.

Gon stopped abruptly, and she felt the slap of that invisible hand, striking from the opposite direction this time. Dizzy, she turned to peer ahead. She did not know where they were. They were nowhere she had ever ventured. A thickly wooded hillside, the floor of the forest covered in a thick layer of duff—leaves and bark, needles and twigs.

"Do you see them?" she asked, once she'd found her voice.

"No, but I can smell them," Gon answered her. His smile was predatory. His strange gold eyes glittered hungrily. "They smell of blood and human shit. We are much nearer now."

"Tell me, before we continue on," Nyal said, her lungs burning, "why did you not aid us when they raided the village yesterday?"

He glanced down at her, eyebrows arched. "I was to the south, feeding on the plains," he said. "I cannot be everywhere at once, my love."

"Then you are no god," Nyal said.

Gon laughed.

His response satisfied her. She settled her face into his chest. "Let us move quickly. I quail at the thought of what those beasts have done to our granddaughters."

Gon nodded, and the forest melted.