Memories

Of course there wasn’t much time to enjoy the touching moment, because almost a half second after that thought entered my head, there was a loud bang that sounded like a gun.

“Let’s go,” Nate said, basically in an automatic reaction.

“Uh, my neck?”

“Oh yeah.” He grabbed me by the arm. “I saw a small alcove right by the river. If you can get there, you should be hidden.”

“I can’t run!”

“You have to.”

I made a snap decision. An irrational snap decision.

“Not without you.”

Those three words were a big mistake. Nate glanced at me, then turned to run to the alcove with me. He couldn’t see it. But I did. I wasn’t fast enough. It was loud like a gunshot, but it wasn’t a gun. It was a crossbow.

It hit him in the back, probably close to where his heart was.

I don’t know why, but for some reason our pursuers stopped. I never saw them, but they must’ve left. Half of me wanted to run to Nate, to be at his side, to help him. The other part of me was afraid of what I would find.

I walked.

It’s exactly the way you would picture it. The blood. The arrow piercing his flesh, still stuck in him. His face pale and unresponsive.

But not lifeless.

I don’t know what it was, if the shooter’s hand slipped and hit him below the heart, if Nate moved just a little to the side, or if it was just whatever rules over my world. I don’t know how, but he was alive.

I had enough sense to not pull the arrow out, to avoid making it bleed more. I grabbed him an dragged him to that alcove, trying to ignore the excruciating pain in my neck.

I collapsed, with Nate’s head in my lap.

And then I wept.