TREE OF LIFE BOOK III – PART I
CHAPTER 05
Just before morning, when the sun was inches from the top of the trees, Nicole felt wind in her face and she woke up.
"Oh!" Her hand flew to her chest and seized it, right there in the middle, right there where her heart was chugging away beneath her fingers like a steam engine.
The dread of it…that feeling…
All the while, the gale in her face was continuing, gusting, not so strong but enough to knock things over in the room so there was paper and other debris everywhere.
With her other hand, Nicole reached up to pin her hair back from her face. She blinked a few times. Feeling short of breath and clutching her heart still, she sat up in her bed and looked out.
Just seeping out of the room was a figure in a cape, riding on the wind, flying, like Wendy would do when alone and no one else was around to see it.
Wendy…
Her eyes blew wide. "Wendy!"
She threw a glance over at the baby's bed by the corner. It was empty.
She jumped out of bed. She scanned all around. She couldn't see Wendy anywhere. Ella had been asleep in the cot next to hers, but now she was rolling over into wakefulness too. Though none of the lights were on, Nicole could see well enough by the brightness of the morning slipping in through the window in a haze.
From behind her, another figure emerged, also riding on air, not touching the ground or anything else. It made for the door.
"Hey!" Nicole threw herself at the form. She landed a punch on the creature's back.
"Ungh!" The figure grunted.
From the grunt, Nicole could tell it was a woman.
The woman ignored the hit and raced out the door and was gone.
Nicole dashed to follow. She couldn't see her quarry, but by the fluttering sounds she could hear from ahead, she made her pursuit as far as the edge of the camp.
Bursting past the last pavilion, Nicole caught sight of the woman once more. She was hell bent for the tree line and seconds from the forest beyond. She was fifty yards away.
Nicole stopped. "Hey!"
The woman didn't slow.
"Nephilim!"
That did it.
The figure stopped. She froze. Right by the edge of the trees. Her cape, in the abruptness of her halting, rustled as it caught up to her and wrapped itself around her body like folding wings on a bat. She pivoted around.
Nicole stood her ground. She took a defensive stance.
The woman floated higher, until she was twenty feet from the ground, an apparition as light as air, a ghost. The first rays of the sun shot down from behind her in beams so you could not tell with certainty. Perhaps she was a god, a giver of light from heaven above.
"Where is my daughter?" Nicole was still short of breath and gasping. "Why have you taken her?"
The figure smiled. She threw back her cape and Nicole gazed upon her enemy fully for the first time.
A tall figure, taller than herself, measuring at least ten feet. With long, straight red hair that wavered like seaweed in the ocean, but now in a breeze, in a storm, in a whirlwind of her own making. She had chiselled, aquiline features, especially in the nose and chin. Her complexion was so desperately white that her mien seemed entirely transparent.
And she had red eyes.
Like Julian. Like Julian before the joining and not just the eyes, but in this creature, in all the features that she and Julian shared, in her they were far more enhanced, more pronounced by a mile.
Elf, Nicole thought to herself.
The she-elf…giant faerie…now displayed before Nicole was clad in full body armour. A leather jerkin for the torso and mail for the axillae and elbows, with forearm braces and spaulders too for the shoulders. Strapped to her side was a sword.
She threw her arm back, and then clasp her blade by the grip. Her cape rustled like a live thing.
She made to approach Nicole.
"Elladan!"
A shout.
From the forest.
The woman froze.
"Elladan!" came the shout again.
Elladan frowned. She bent her head but did not turn around. She grit her teeth and mumbled from between them. "Elrohir…!"
Sneering, she extended a bony finger toward Nicole. "Follow. If you dare."
Whipping about, she laughed and shot away.
Nicole bolted after her. Throwing herself into the trees, she pored it on to catch up to her prey.
~~~
By about twenty minutes into the chase, in the back of her mind and she didn't want to admit it, Nicole knew it had become useless because now she was lost. She had no idea where the woman had gone. She had no idea where she was herself. But she kept going.
Even though she was tired. Even though she was breathing hard and feeling dizzy. Covered in sweat also, she had to swipe it from her eyes every few seconds and her feet were hurting. She didn't have any shoes.
Ahead of her, everything appeared the same. Trees, trees and more trees. She tried clambering up the side of one of these nearby, and then swooping from one branch to the next the way Julian had taught her, but that only helped her to go faster. It didn't help her at all from getting un-lost.
All around her was the forest, from her vantage point at the top of the canopy, as far as the eye could see. The only thing standing out in the background was the Yerupaja mountain in the distance, the one thing that Wendy had pointed out when they had first landed in the base.
Dropping back down to ground level, she took a moment for a break. She rested with her hands on her knees, dragging breath in and out of her lungs like a spent bloodhound.
"Dr. B.!"
Nicole spun around.
It was Ella. "Dr. B.! Hold up!" She waved to Nicole from the distance, nearly a hundred yards away.
Nicole frowned. How did she manage to keep up…?
Ella jogged up to where she was. She was winded too. "Dr.…Dr. B…! Where do you think…you're going…?" She ran her hand through her hair. She wiped the sweat from her brow.
Nicole took in her surroundings. They were standing by the edge of a clearing, an oval break in the trees about a hundred yards in diameter. Ella had first waved to her from the far side of this field.
Nicole's breathing was slowing. She pulled her hair back and held it there so her neck could air out.
She certainly was thirsty. What she wouldn't give for a …
Ella handed her a bottle of water. "Here."
Nicole's' brows flicked up for a moment. "Thanks!" She took the bottle from Ella and chugged it all down. She wiped her mouth and let out a sigh. She wondered at the young woman standing in front of her.
Ella had her own bottle and now she was drinking as well. She was dressed in her gear and had on a back pack. She looked prepared.
In contrast, Nicole came to realize just now she had failed to bring a single thing with her. Like nothing—no water, food, sat phone. Nothing. Not even shoes! And she was still in her sleeping clothes…
Caught up in the moment when she had found her baby gone, Nicole had not thought things through properly.
Ella lowered her pack to the ground. She dropped to the floor of the forest and sat down on the grass behind it. "So, Dr. B. Do you know where you're going?" As she spoke, she reached into her pack and began fishing out odd items here and there. She handed them over to Nicole—a change of clothes, socks, shoes. Even her cell phone, but what good was that going to do all the way out here?
Nicole received them with gratitude. Even the phone. She began to change. "Um…I…I don't…" She took the scrunchie she was given after she was done changing and tied her hair back from her face.
Ella zipped up her back pack. She stood up. "Perhaps you should let me lead. I have more experience with the jungle. It'll go faster."
Nicole nodded. She agreed and they got going.