Book II Chapter 08

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TREE OF LIFE BOOK II

CHAPTER 08

Five minutes later and about a mile downstream from where they were before, Julian and Nicole were now standing on the edge of a forest, beyond which was a grassy clearing, with only a few trees on it and only at the far end. Here, the stream that they had been resting by the side of earlier had fattened and grown to form a rushing river, that cut the clearing in half and then dropped over the far end of it into a chasm, about thirty yards away from where the two were standing now. The width of the chasm was another twenty yards to another clearing on the far side. A single rope joined the two sides, both ends tied off to a tree.

Leading up to the edge of the chasm were a series of boulders, easily ten tons each and about the size of small cars, that were all scattered about in a strange formation, like partitions to a haphazard maze. If you had a good sense of puzzles, you might decide to pick your way over, zigzagging between the rocks, and then edge up to the very lip of the chasm itself. You might even try to peer down into the maw and get all dizzy, first of all, and then realize you could squint and just make out the bottom of the waterfall and the pool that it formed, a good half a mile straight down the narrow chasm and into the shadows. Jagged stones lined the edge of the pool down at the bottom and more jutted out from the surface of it here and there as well. Falling down the chasm and into the pool, you would definitely break more than a few ribs.

~~~

Back at the tree line, Nicole bent her ear to the wind. She nodded. “They’re still coming. They’ll be here any minute.” She reached up and touched the locket.

Julian noticed. “Hey, maybe you should take that off and put it in a safe place.”

“And maybe you should mind your own business.” She grinned at him.

He grinned back.

She brushed her hair off her face. “How do you think he followed us?”

Julian shook his head. “I don’t know. But I knew he’d figure it out, somehow. In fact, I expected no less.” He chuckled. “Do you remember how we used to play chess?” As he talked, he unslung the pack from his shoulder and set it on the ground. He opened it.

She smiled and scoffed. “Yeah, your life and death matches. The two of you would go at it for days on end.”

“Yeah…” He removed a folded up piece of equipment from his pack.

“And that, of course, got boring real fast, so the two of you decided that you were going to play two games at the same time.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. Unfolding it here, tightening a screw there, Julian put his contraption together. It was a bow.

“And then it was three, then five, then ten…”

Julian was smiling still but he stopped her. “Come on. We gotta go.” Picking up his bow in one hand and then his pack in the other, he began leading her away. “Now this is what we’re going to do…”

~~~

Brian and his men were close. At the moment, they were still wading through the thicker part of the forest with trees all around them. Just a distance away, however, not fifty feet ahead of them, was the spot where the line of trees ended and the clearing would start. The same spot that Julian and Nicole had been standing in and talking with each other just moments before.

One of Brian’s men was at the head of the column, leading it. He gave a hand signal. All the men, all twenty of them, stopped and crouched down.

Brian strode up to the leader. He bent and spoke into his ear. “Sergeant?”

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