Rell and The Rose

Ch. 54, Of a Banana and a Beast

Rell

"Rell! Over here! I found it!"

I pushed through the tall trees, the thick branches seeming to grab at me as I tried to move towards Cat's voice. Thorny vines and branches grabbed my hair and ripped into my arms. But I didn't stop running. My breath came ragged when I finally stepped into the clearing.

"Cat?"

"Over here," she said, and I turned to her. My heart rose, and then fell again. We'd spent the last few hours tramping through the forest. And now, as I saw her across the small glade, I already knew there was no one here.

The bunker, if you could even call it that, was nothing more than a metal shed tucked beneath a grove of pines.

"Any sign of them?" I asked, making my way across to Cat.

"Not that I can see." She opened the shed's door, and the two of us looked in to find a cot on one side and some shelves of supplies on the other. She pressed her lips together, uncharacteristically quiet. "Do you think he and Lorcan met here?" she finally said. "And talked? Or do you think something else happened?"

"I don't know," I whispered, more frustrated than ever that Lorcan had gone off on his own. Why did Princes always have to be so damned stubborn? I cast a look over the trees, to where the sun sank ever closer.

"Let's look around," I said, trying to stay positive. "Maybe they left us some sort of clue as to where they went."

"Right," Cat said, just as skeptical as I felt. The two of us separated, walking in a slow circle around the clearing. Even as we walked, it felt as if the shadows of the forest grew longer, stretching towards us like dark, malicious fingers.

Suddenly Cat's voice cut across the clearing. "Rell! Look!" Across from me, Cat knelt beside a log on the ground, and lifted something yellow, spotted with brown.

I strood over to her, staring down at the strange yellow plant-looking leaf-like thing. "What is that thing?"

She smiled, "It's a banana peel."

"Do they grow here?"

"No. Which means someone was here recently and ate it." Her grin suddenly grew wider. "Guess your training is wearing off on me."

I'd spent the last few hours teaching her about tracking, and was surprised at how fast she picked it up, as well as what she taught me in turn of the Human Realm. It turned out that one of her mother's past boyfriends had been a hunter, and had taken her on a few trips before her mother dumped him.

I crouched beside her. "Can you tell how old it is by looking at it?"

Cat frowned, looking skeptically at the peel. "Well, it's still yellow, so I'd say probably today... but not specifically when."

I buried the sense of disappointment. "That's okay. I'm sure they can't be far away now. "

Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she crossed her arms, turning to look over the forest. Her voice softened. "What if he's already gone?"

I took her hands in mind, and forced her to look at me. "He's not Cat. He wouldn't leave without telling us." Then I turned to the forest, to that creeping, feeling of darkness crawling over the land. "... and he hasn't closed the Realms yet. I can still feel the magic growing." Which scared me in and of itself. If the Blood Moon rose, and the realms were fully open, I didn't know what creatures might cross over. I had only a single dagger for protection, and all Cat had was her magic mirror phone.

As I stared over her shoulder, I suddenly saw it. Not twenty feet from where I stood. A tree marked with a black scorch mark.

"Cat," I whispered.