Page 3 of Chained Knight

What the hell?

For a moment Ari thought Mike had finally slipped up and hurt her so bad she had to be hospitalized, but there was no smell of disinfectant or bleached linen. Maybe she had justtaken to bed, as Wanda Lee would say with pursed lips, and the window was open? Her nose was full of fresh air, the scent of rain-washed earth, and a faint powdery goodness like mimosa trees in full bloom.

She didn’t want to move. For one thing, it might hurt—she was used to discovering new damage the morning after Those Incidents, as she’d taken to calling the eruptions of Mike’s rage. For another, it might alert someone she was awake, and they might start in on her again.

But the light spilling in through her clump-matted lashes was wrong—neither fluorescent nor incandescent nor LED, a lovely outdoor glow bearing a silvery tinge—and the flowery smell was wonderful. She heard a soft breeze through leaves, a phrase of sweet fluting birdsong. Slight crackles, like a small animal in underbrush. And there was no flat chill of air conditioning, either; a cool, entirely natural breeze moved over her from toes to tangled head.

Finally she had to twitch. The thing against her hip was a small round black pebble, and it shifted away without complaint. Ari found the crust on her face was dried mud instead of blood, which was a deep relief. But once she got her eyelids clear and her vision came into focus, nothing she saw made any kind of sense.

For one thing, the trees were absolutely wrong, straight grey smooth-barked columns, their interlaced arms freighted with heavy fanlike leaves instead of mimosas’ lacy flutters. No kudzu, no blackberry or raspberry, indeed very few bushes at all. The loam was soft and mossy, and her hand was numb because it had rested just over the margin of a small circular pond, the water’s surface shimmer-reflecting soft pale phosphorescence.

Ari rubbed at her eyes again and stared like a wondering child, mouth slightly open.

The pond rested in a clearing, and flowers spread from its banks to the forest’s wall. Or at least the cabbage things were vaguely flowerlike, except that they held pearly globes, ranging from fist- to head-sized, in their central rosettes. Those glowed, and they were the source of the silver light.

What. The fuck.It looked like one of Rembrandt’s disciples had taken up painting fantasy book covers. She might’ve thought she was dreaming, except for the coating of heavily plastered dried mud. Ari’s scalp crawled, her hair matted with guck and her face aching. At least the mud would cover the scabs on theback of her head—her hands were scraped, too, and she felt every place Mike had hit her for the past two weeks as a separate note in an orchestra of welling discomfort. Her throat throbbed; she considered the pond for a long moment.

Standing water. Probably full of bacteria or parasites, and the glowing cabbage-pearl things were maybe some kind of fungus? She’d no doubt die of dysentery if she drank here.

But there was nothing else on offer and she was—in defiance of all odds—still alive, so Ari tentatively wiggled her fingers and toes. No bones seemed broken; she went down the checklist like she did every post-Incident morning. Everything hurt, sure, but nothing felt sprained or strained. It took a couple tries to sit up, then she pushed tentative fingertips through the hood of stiffening mud at the back of her head. Poking the scabs made her wince, but there was no fresh blood. She patted herself down and discovered her backpack was gone, most likely ripped free in the landslide.

Great. But she was too thirsty to care at the moment, and once she got her hands free of dirt the first few swallows of water were amazing. Clear and cool, without the taste of chlorine or dirt, it soothed parched tissues and calmed her stomach wonderfully. She continued dipping up palmfuls, drinking until—between one moment and the next—she’d had enough. So she scrubbed at her face with wet hands, rinsed, and finally sat back on her heels, looking over the clearing.

The woods were alive with various sounds, but that was usual—a lot of people who never went camping talked about wilderness peace and quiet, when it was just a different kind of ambient noise.

Yet the trees weren’t dripping and there was no sign of the landslide. Which was utterly weird.

There was also zero indication of her backpack in the immediate environs. She was positively caked with dried mud,and the thought of wading into the pool for a rinse was only moderately attractive since she was already soaked clear through, everything from jeans to shirt to socks and panties sodden and full of grit. Washing her clothes would raise the prospect of sitting around naked in the woods while they dried.

She hadn’t struggled into a bra before fleeing. That was something small to be grateful for.

As a matter of fact, Ariadne realized, she was the very definition ofrode hard and put away wet, her mother’s favorite expression for utter dishevelment. A small, terrified giggle escaped before she clapped a damp hand over her mouth to trap it.

The cabbage-pearls brightened; the light was almost liquid, laying lovingly against every surface. A soft chiming joined birdsong and other tiny noises, dying away as her laughter did.

Dreaming, or something else?At least it wasn’t her old nightmare of a haggard stranger’s face staring into darkness. Ari decided against pinching herself; more physical misery wouldn’t help. Maybe she was hallucinating, hit on the head and wandering the forest near topped-off mountains.

If the cops caught her before she died of exposure, would they stick her in a mental facility instead of jail? She’d never considered that particular possibility. Ari sank back on her haunches, gazing at the ripples spreading through glassy water, then examined the trees.

Nobody was screaming at her. There were no floors to wax or curios to dust, none of Wanda Lee’s dissatisfied little verbal or physical jabs, no listening for the cordless landline’s shriek—Mike wouldn’t even let her have a smartphone, and God forbid she wasn’t there to answer when he took it in his head to call home—or for Earl to say,where’s my cigarette lighter?

Her father in law would stare at Ari while she clicked the ancient Zippo, and blow smoke in her direction when she wasdone. Never a singlethank you, just a burst of acrid burning nicotine and the slight narrowing of his pale blue eyes, so like his son’s.

No yelling, no slaps or pinches. No sudden searches of her dresser, no attempts to break her pencils or rip pages out of her barely used sketchbook. Nobody was expecting her, or watching her, waiting to seize a slight or imagined infraction to punish.

It was the happiest she’d been in a long time. Ari sat, tiny shudders passing through her in waves. Maybe her body just wasn’t used to peace anymore?

Cool when it went down her throat, the water had turned warm behind her breastbone. A strange soft feeling of well-being spread through her ribcage, and when she realized she was rubbing her hands together like Lady Macbeth she stopped, examining them closely.

No blood, hers or… or Mike’s. A few streaks of mud, but the bruises weren’t so bad as she feared. The scrapes looked better, too. Her throat was still a bit scratchy, but her face didn’t hurt so much now and the back of her skull wasn’t throbbing. No trace of dysentery yet—of course, there was precious little in her system for it to work with, but she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t even long for the energy bars in her backpack.

Which she should probably find. It couldn’t have been carried too far away, could it? Then again, she had no idea where on earth she could be; the vegetation was different than any hill or holler around the Hardisons’ precious town.

And I thought it was like a Hallmark special. Another laugh caught in Ari’s throat; her own naiveté was bleakly hilarious. Three years ago she’d been a starry-eyed young bride, ready for small-town life full of quirky characters and evenings on a porch sipping lemonade or sweet tea, maybe dabbing watercolorsen plein airwhile her husband napped in the shade or readied a picnic. Possibly even running a small gallery for tourists,comfortably selling kitsch, crafts, and antiques, with a small but definite place among the local gentry.

Instead, she’d ended up… here. Wherever this was.

A faint snuffling pushed her up to kneeling again, looking wildly in every direction. Her neck didn’t hurt as much as she expected, giving only a faint twinge as her head turned, and the light brightened a little more—probably from adrenaline roaring into her bloodstream, widening her pupils to grab every possible photon.

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