Page 76 of Trapped: Between Sky And Wind

God, make him stop!

As if hearing my silent plea, Bren momentarily hesitates. He’s staring at Amarok not as a rival but as an opposing soldier. That expression scares me.

“Stop it, please!” I beg. “Let’s leave. Now! Nobody needs to get hurt any further.” I approach him hesitantly from the side, thinking it’s a bad idea, like he’s a horse that needs blinders. He sees me out of the corner of his eye. His head jerks toward me and he’s distracted. In that second, Amarok pushes him off.

Everything happens at lightning speed, individual images string together in a choppy film. Bren flies back, screaming in pain. Amarok jumps to his feet, putting some distance between them, but Bren is absent. Spaced out, in one of his states in which he no longer notices anything. I see it in his eyes—as if blind.

He gets up. The dark hair falls over his forehead, behind which his eyes glow. Blood and fire. His breathing is ragged. It seems to me that a viper has stuck its fangs in him, which are now paralyzing his logical thinking. He’s in pain, I can see that, probably his ribs, but that only makes him more aggressive. He lunges and all I can think about is protecting Amarok. He saved Bren’s life, he carried him and gave him water when I could no longer do it. It’s not his fault he fell in love with me and doesn’t know the rules of this world.

“Don’t, Bren!” I yell, barely noticing that a crowd has gathered around us. Without a plan, I rush between the two, and the next second, Bren’s punch strikes me in the head.

Excruciating pain explodes at my temple. Something cracks and shatters into a thousand pieces. I fly through the air, hit something, and float as if in a vacuum.

Like in a snow globe. All I can see is Bren’s wide, dark, shiny eyes, his horrified, silent exclamation—LOU—misery flickers across his narrow, fearful face.

Moments that become eternities, something unforgettable in the soul. The pain in my head isn’t the worst. It drifts away. But the shards fall to the ground, still and quiet like broken dreams.

I know what this means.

Chapter

Eighteen

Ilie in the teepee with my eyes wide open. Bren is gone. Darrow has told me a couple of times, but I didn’t understand. At first, I couldn’t comprehend anything in my dazed state, after that, I didn’t want to understand. I simply wanted to lie there and deny the truth. So, I told myself I was dreaming. When I wake up again, none of this will have happened. They don’t know who we are. Amarok and Bren never fought for me and I never intervened. Bren’s punch didn’t hit me mercilessly in the temple. I didn’t fly a few feet and lose consciousness.

I’m good at dreaming. I merely have to visualize everything, like Liam’s pink rhino, and then I can live in a completely different reality. Whether there’s sunlight or moonlight above me, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need anything to eat or drink.

I hear nothing, I see nothing. Only at night do I stare at the stars through the tent’s smoke vent.

Like now. I stare up at Bootes with Arcturus, the red gas giant, the star in its final stages of existence. Yes, that’s how I feel, too. Sore and red inside, full of scars as deep as volcanic craters, in the final stage of my existence. The cold inside me is like the cold of the universe. Nothing else exists.

Despite the denials, I know deep down that my snow globe burst. I knew it the moment I saw Bren, his wide, terrified eyes after his punch knocked me out. Maybe that’s why I didn’t come to for so long. Maybe I was stuck in the dark, waiting for him there. I knew he would be gone when I woke up.

They banned him from the village after the incident, but he snuck into the camp at night to check on me. I know that from Darrow, the only one who knew about Bren’s late-night visits.

Of course, Bren visited until he was certain I was going to be fine. That’s Bren. He would never have left me if I hadn’t woken up.

Maybe that was the reason for my persistent unconsciousness. This time, I wanted to hold him by force, but obviously that doesn’t work forever. And then when I finally woke up, truly woke up enough to understand, he was gone. Without saying goodbye, without a word. He told Darrow to tell me not to wait for him, that he wouldn’t be coming back. I haven’t seen him again, at least not in my right mind. And now, beneath all the denial, I feel my infinite sorrow, a vale swimming in tears. They are stuck in my throat and I suppress them with all my might. I must not cry because once I start, once I truly start, I’ll never stop.

In my head, Ethan is telling me not to be so theatrical because nothing lasts forever.

But Bren is gone. For good, forever, for eons. He no longer believes in our love, he doesn’t believe in himself, and doesn’t believe in me. He doesn’t believe I’ll forgive his mistakes, over and over again. He has given up. Nothing matters anymore. It could be night or it could be day. Summer or winter. Hot or cold. I don’t feel it. Darrow could sing and I wouldn’t hear it.

Bren is gone. He left me behind like all those summer months meant nothing. As if we hadn’t daringly jumped onto moving trains, as if we hadn’t loved each other with all our infinite love, our insatiable desire, and ultimately, our desperation. Like he never made the promise that nearly cost us both our lives. As if I had never laid my hands on his in the darkness of the tunnel, ready to die with him.

I don’t know how I’m going to survive a single day without him.

“Louisa, you need to drink.”

I pull the fur over my ears and sniff my hair, which still has Bren’s scent in it, trapped like a dream catcher.

“Come on!” I think it’s Darrow. I hate him. I hate the camp and Amarok. But the truth is, I hate reality. That cold, lonely thing called life. Nashashuk has said that reality is the dream and the dream is reality, but now both are unbearable.

“Louisa, drink now or I’ll drag you out to the creek and throw you into the freezing water. Believe me, it helps.”

Only Bren’s hug could help me now! My skills. I need them so badly.

“Is that what your damn spirits say?” I snap because he won’t leave me alone and I’m instantly sorry for how mean I am to him. He means well. Everyone means well. They didn’t send a party to call the police. Of course, it was not done out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they do not want the authorities to learn of their camp. Neither the Indian tribal sheriff nor the American police—at least that’s how Darrow explained it to me, I understood that in my daze. They don’t want to give up this place, which has been their home for seven years, because of us. Or maybe he lied and they’ll report Brendan as soon as one of them goes back into town. Maybe they let him go because they were afraid of him and his condition and didn’t want something like that to happen again. I think of Nashashuk’s words. Such shadows only disappear when you face them.

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