Beyond All Doubt (In watty awards 2011!)

Mertu village. Day two.

Jumping over the fence I can’t stop thinking about Daniels kiss and why he had done it, maybe to stop me from going out cold and it’s the first thing he does when we get over the fence.

“Lift your hair up and turn around so I can have a look.” I comply and can’t help but wince when he touches the cut on my head; the sound of material ripping makes me turn around a bit too fast and makes me lose my balance. Daniel’s hand reaches out and catches my elbow before I fall into the pound. I can see he has ripped part of his trousers off, he sits me down on the floor smiling at me before he walks to the small pond by the side of us and dips the material in the water before coming back and, lightly putting it on my cut I wince as he does but the pain soon goes away.

“Keep that on your head it will help.” He says before beginning to move away.

“Where are you going?” I say a bit too quickly while trying to get up, the dizziness comes back and I fall back down. I see Daniel come towards me and kneel down to my level, he moves a strand of loose hair out of my eye and tucks it behind my ear.

“I will be back; I’m just going to find some stuff for us to camp out with.”

“We can’t camp out! We don’t have enough time we have to get to Russie in five days now!” I shout to him frantically, how could we sit around and sleep when we have so little time?

“We’re not going anywhere yet, we need to rest and eat also you’re not going to get anywhere with that head of yours, now lay down and don’t fall asleep till I get back we don’t know how bad it is out here.”  I sigh knowing he’s right and give up, all the shouting was giving me a headache. I lie down and lay the wet material under my head like a pillow and look up at the stars, when I hear Daniels footsteps clear away I sigh deeply and think about the kiss and what it meant to me. I thought he was good looking but I despised him, didn’t I? I think back to when the house exploded back in Kingston and how he had changed on this trip, but it didn’t mean he never threatened me and I don’t know if I could ever forget that. I close my eyes and wash it away, bigger things needed to be sorted with other than my love life, let’s say how we are going to get to Russie in five days, how we are going to kill all the turned protectors in that time and destroy the serum before the Government gets to them and somewhere in my mild thinking Jude comes up, and I see his face, his smile and how good he looked when he opened that door when I arrived at the Kine’s  and – I stop thinking about Jude and remember the horses I had been in while on the ride. Horses are going to be how we travel to Russie, but we had to find some first and I had never ridden a horse but Daniel might off.

He arrives later with some fish and mushrooms, we have to eat the fish raw but it didn’t bother me I was to hungry it was a wonder I hadn’t notice the rumbling before. I watch him in the moonlight and wonder why he kissed me; once again I push it out of my mind annoyed it kept popping in unannounced.

“Daniel do you know how to ride a horse?” He looks at me weirdly and smiles in question.

“I did once, but why?” I try to study him and wish we could have made a fire so I could see clearly, but we couldn’t, we didn’t want to be noticed, to be spotted.

“Good because that is how we are going to get to Russie.” I say looking back down and begin to eat my fish again, pretending I hadn’t seen the shocked face of Daniels.

“No, no, we can’t.” He says still looking at me in shock.

“Why not?” I say annoyed by his dismissal of the idea, he hadn’t come up with any ideas as of yet and already he’s turning down mine.

“Because they’re normally under lock and key, to keep away the hunters.” I go silent and think how I could be so dumb to forget that bit.

“But if I told you I could get into what would you say?” I smile at him in joy as I remember my dad showing me how to pick a lock.

“You can’t, it’s impossible.”

“Not for me it isn’t.” I say showing him my charming smile, he blows me off still thinking I couldn’t and I could feel myself getting wound up at him. I finish my supper and lay down with my back to him hoping I could just ignore him for the rest of this trip otherwise I’m going to end up killing his snobby ass. I fall asleep without a word from Daniel.

I wake up and see Daniel still asleep; grabbing a branch from the floor I dig a message into the ground that reads ‘be back soon’, before I take off the protector’s suit and throw it to the floor, why I take off into the woods that would lead to the main village. I stroll through the words in a much better mood than last night and just hope that my plan would work. The village as I gathered was being cleared up from the war and up on the hill was the Governors house. Walking through the deserted village makes my skin crawl, it was a ghost town. The houses hissed off black smoke from just calming down from the blaze, black marks rim the outline of the windows and doors, and ash lays on the floor. I ignore the images and the blood splatters and carry on up to the Governors house, I walk into the entrance of the front garden and walk around back to where the horses will be housed, but instead their galloping around the field eating the grass on the floor as if nothing was wrong with the world.

“Picking a lock my ass,” I say to myself as I smile at how easy this was.

“Why the heck did you go off like that?” I turn around face to face with Daniel and his angry face.

“Shhh, you will scare them away! And I left a message!” I hush shouting back to him. What was his problem? It’s not that much of a big deal and plus I have just got us our ride.

“I don’t care Georgia; just don’t run off like that.” He says before walking forward slowly reaching his hand out to the horses, they comply and he reaches for the leads hanging around their throats. I run over to the horse Daniel hands to me and jump on; when Daniel does the same he turns to me.

“Now just nudge your foot once into the side of the horse, just once.” I do it and we gallop forward, “Use the reins to lead the horse were you want to go.” I think about it and realise we have to go to Quince that is up north.  I guide the horse and ignore Daniel, I couldn’t stand his criticism and quite frankly he was annoying me more than ever and if it wasn’t for that kiss than I would have left his ass long ago. I follow up ahead and the kiss just keeps replaying in my mind and why he did it. Time goes by but the memory doesn’t.

“Why did you do it?” I ask him a couple miles ahead of him, I didn’t want him to see my face I was most probably blushing and if he said it was nothing I didn’t want him to see the tears.

“Do what?” He asks and I should have guessed that he would act dumb.

“You know what I’m on about, before we jumped over the fence; why did you do it?” I try and make my voice sound normal but it was an impossible mission to do. He’s quite for a long time and as I’m just about to give up on him saying anything, he speaks.

“Because I was scared you were going out cold, we didn’t need that hassle and it worked so I guess my theory was right.” I let it go I was pondering over things out of my reach and what difference would it make if he did say it was because he liked me? Nothing could be done about it.

I gallop on in silence wishing away the thoughts of that kiss, but it just kept nagging back, my subconscious saying it was more than what he told me but I ignore it, it was me feeling sorry for myself wistfully thinking and only when I feel a tear slide down my face I know how hard it has affected me, all my loved ones were now dead and all I wanted was to be loved even if it was from a monster like him.