Never

Rescued Captive

For all my years of running, I had never felt so tired. My breath was ragged, my lungs lurching in their effort to supply my heart with oxygen, and even the fire of adrenaline pumping through my veins couldn't make my legs perform what I desperately needed them to.

I needed to keep running; my life depended on it. After having abandoned my last disguise as a merchant's daughter, my head shawl seemed useless, so I threw it behind me angrily, frustrated at the way it tore at my neck and added sweat to my brow. I did it without thinking, stupidly in my haze of exhaustion. I didn't turn to look back at it, but I imagined it briefly: dirty, crumpled on the ground, the perfect clue for those who sought for me.

I didn't look around, save to focus on my feet and where to place them. Occasionally my dim periphery caught sight of my caked hands as I pumped them back and forth, my fingers a spider's web of cuts and scratches.

Though I was blocking out all else, choosing the bliss of the unknowing terror like a chased animal, rather than the present alertness of a fleeing captive, a sound forced itself into my consciousness. My blood chilled, slowed, and seemed to stop altogether as my brain interpreted what I refused to consider.

The horn. The blood hounds had caught my scent, and it was over.

Something akin to relief, but which I identified as resignation, fell over me, cocooning me with its comforting voice that encouraged me to give up, that the fight was too hard, and I might as well rest while I can-

The horn sounded again, closer, and jolted my body with a bolt of fear. With the clarity of life and death, I remembered the promise I made to my father: "I'll never stop running. Never."

So I ran, slowly so as to accommodate my screaming legs, but nevertheless I ran, and like magic, the path of bramble underneath my feet changed to green, smooth grass and I took a split second to look up and there was beauty. A wide green meadow, surrounded on all sides by forest, save one, where there was a fortress; large, imposing, and gray, with turrets and towers blooming like flowers out of every corner. I gasped, audibly, and turned to back pedal, so quickly that I tore up the turf beneath me, revealing the ugly lifeblood of the grass, and caking dirt even higher on my feet and calves.

But before I could even take one step, the horn sounded again, so close that I shivered. I tried to ignore them but my ears whispered to me the baying of bloodhounds behind me, and the trembling that ensued threw me off balance and I fell. I scrabbled in the dirt, trying to make my world stay upright and force my body to do the same. You're exchanging one prison for another, I thought, but forced it away because surely anything was better than being eaten alive by dogs.

My wobbly legs finally righted themselves, and I almost passed out immediately as a black wave crashed over my field of vision, temporarily blinding me, but I fought back the crushing desire to just sleep as I hadn't in days and couldn't pinpoint when I had last eaten but none of this mattered except to run.

As I neared closer, running in a kind of diagonal because it took too much to go straight, I saw more details in the pockmarked stones that signaled siege or the doorway that no doubt led to some kind of courtyard and then the guards, who turned and revealed the same colors as those who chased me.

My heart nearly gave out right there, but in a snap decision I arced my diagonal even more extremely to avoid them spotting me, to turn in to the forest right behind the fortress, but a shout went up, at the same time as the horn sounded its death toll and I couldn't outrun the guards who were on top of me in the span of a breath, grabbing my arms and dragging me toward the doorway I had seen before. I was fighting and writhing and twisting and screaming like a madwoman, enraged that I could no longer run, that I had failed in my promise, that now all my time running was for nothing when I caught sight of him breaking through the forest's edge.