Healing the Broken

The boy walked closer towards me. I realized the mask covering the right side of his face was not metal but was glass. My own appearance reflected back at me as I stare at his mask.
“Who are you?” I asked, removing the chains from my ankles.
He didn’t answer, but walk closer towards me with a rope in his hand.
Two horses shot through the forest. The boy swiftly turned around and shot one of the bandits through the neck. I ran off as he turned to shoot the other bandit. I hid behind the tree and scope my surroundings. I felt someone grab me from behind and put a knife against my throat.
“Don’t move,” said a woman’s voice, I realized she was one of the bandits.
I elbowed her in the gut. He grunted. I wasn’t much of a fighter but Kye showed me a couple of defense moves. I took off through the forest. Heavily hyperventilating, I was trying to catch my breath. I had been running for nearly twenty minutes, when I recognized it. It was the enchanted forest. I heard the whinny of a horse. It was the boy with the mirror mask. I sprinted as fast as I could to the forest.
I was two meters away from him when I entered the barrier of the forest. I was hoping I could lose him and the barrier would be close behind me, keeping him out, but he was too close. I ran through the forest and I found myself at a dead end on a small cliff of a river. He was seconds away from me. I jumped. I could feel the cold water slapping against my face and body. I look to see he had stalled at the end of the cliff. I tried to swim to the shore but current was too strong and dragging me toward the waterfall. I struggled to keep myself a float but rushing water was forcing me to go under. Fear pounded within me as realize I was about to go over a waterfall. I heard the faint galloping near me as the water fall began to roar louder.
I turn to see the half mask boy behind me, he was swinging a rope above his head and then swung it my way. It landed close enough in water that I could grab it. I hesitated. If I grabbed it, he would capture me for sure, and if I didn’t grab it, I would probably die. I grabbed it. He hauled me toward the shore. Once I reached the ground, I crawled away from the water and begin coughing up water. The boy instantly bonded my hands. My efforts were useless as he tightly held me down. Being weary from swimming didn’t help.
“Why are you taking me prisoner?” I asked.
He didn’t answer instead he tied a rope, binding my hands to his horse.
We didn’t leave immediately. He relaxed on his horse eating a mango.
He held out some to me. “You should eat, we have long way to go.”
It shock me that he had spoken. I had thought he was mute. I didn’t respond to him, I was more than distress.
After a few minutes, he mounted his horse, and we left. I hadn’t realized at first, but our surrounding was completely different from the enchanted forest’s surrounding. The trees were much more vibrant and larger. I didn’t know if I could even call them trees; they were like none I had ever seen. Every so feet, there would be a bulging outer edge like a plate emerging from the trunks of the trees. Thin colorful vines floated from theses plates of tree. They reminded of waterfalls. The grass was strange as well; it was yellow, red, and round, almost perfectly circled unlike the narrow leaf grass in my land or the enchanted forest. Though, the water of the river seemed to be similar to the enchanted forest’s water which was a transparent rainbow of green, purple, red, blue, and yellow. The warm air smelled of pineapples, and I couldn’t help but think that we would pass by a pineapple patch any second. Even the ground seem odd like the soil was moving or wavering beneath my feet. Quivering of the ground continued and I began to worry that this place had earthquakes. The ground trembled so vigorously that I fell on my knees. The boy turn to check on me. Confusion was struck on his face.
A gush of dirt and the red, yellow, and circle grass sprung into the air. The debris rained spewing and blinding me. I squeezed my eyes closed to protect them from the flying dust. As soon as I opened my eyes, I wished I had kept them close. An enormous creature stood on its hind legs as yellow liquid drip from its body. It reminded me of two centipedes with a shell latching them together. Each centipede body had a green eye. They moved around side to side like snail eyes. The creature’s body seemed to be made out of metal scales.
I had completely froze. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do, I was still tied to the horse. The creature abruptly stop moving and locked its eyes on me. I didn’t see its jaw but I assumed it was going to gobble me down. It began rapidly crawling toward me. I stood there in horror, awaiting my horrible fate. The creature screech so loud, a pain pierce through my ears causing a sharp ringing. An arrow jutted from the creature’s green eye.
The boy cut the rope that was fastening me to the horse. He rode his horse next to me and offer his hand to me. I took it; it was a better option than being eaten. I grabbed on to him as the horse sped off. The creature plunge into the ground, and I could feel the rumbling closing in on us.
“What is this place? What is that thing?” the half masked boy ask, trying to yell over the hoof of his horse beating the ground.
“I don’t know,” I frantically replied, this could be another side of the forest I never discovered or another world.
“If you want to live, do exactly what I tell you,” he advised as we rode toward a rushing river.
He abruptly stopped the horse of the river and jumped off. He wrapped a rope around his arm and neck. I could barely stop trembling as the creature accelerated toward us. I watched the rise of the ground approach us and felt intensity of the rumbling through my bones.
“I’m going to distract it,” he said in a serene voice, firmly standing as he took out a bow and arrow from the quiver on his back and directed his aim. “Don’t run, unless you want it to follow you.”
He focused his unmasked eye as the double bodied centipede emerge from the ground. Dirt spurted up as it turn toward us yet he didn’t blink. He pulled the arrow back and released it. The arrow penetrated the creature’s eye and splattered yellow slim. It screech again, this time louder that I had cover both my ears, and I almost fell off the horse cringing in pain. Even the half masked boy crumbled to his knees. The creature rose on it hind legs and where its belly was supposed to be was a circular mouth full of tiny teeth.
The half masked boy force himself to rise. “Don’t make a sound or it will follow you,” he warned.
“Here,” he shouted at the monster. “I know you want to eat.”
He sprinted off in the opposite direction of me, still shouting at the monster. It fail to notice me as it chased him. Of course, it was blind; it was going by sound. The half masked boy continued to run down the bank along the river. The monster was at his heels, when he jumped into the river. The monster jumped in after him, diving into the fast current water, and smashing the boy. The monster thrashed and fought against current. There was no sign of the boy. I climbed off the horse, trying to gain a closer look.
I heard a faint cough, it was coming from behind the monster. It was hard to see but the boy had grabbed a hold on the monster, and the monster ignore him as it tried to stay afloat. I could leave this horrid place and escape so why did I feel oblige to save his life. Was it because he had save my life? He had taken me prisoner and who knew what he was going to do with me, but maybe that was a reason to keep him alive.
He let go of the monster and pulled out his bow and arrow from his quiver. He somehow tied the rope on the arrow and shot it towards land. The arrow embedded between two rocks. He began pulling himself to the surface. If I wanted to, I could release the arrow from its hold and let him drown, but I didn’t want to.
The water continued to drag him down the river. That’s when I saw them. Up head was several boulders emerging from the river. At the rate the water was carrying him, he would smash into them and maybe die. I rushed toward the embedded arrow. I was able to grab the rope before the current swept him away and the arrow was ripped from its hold. As the boy tried to pull himself up the rope, the monster rammed into the boulder. It screamed in pain. The second time, it slammed in a massive rock, it stop struggling and submerged under the river. I knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to pull him to shore, not by myself. I tied the rope to a rock and went to get the horse. The boy still struggled to pull himself but the current was to strong, and he was feet away from the boulders. He hands slid and his head was the first to ram into a boulder. His body went limp and there was no more struggle from him.
I arrived with the horse and I tied the rope to horse’s rein, hauling him up as quickly as possible. His body dragged across the ground. Someone how through all the turmoil, his half mask was still on. There was no sign of life in his body. I knew my protection came first so I hastily bonded his hands together. When I thought it was secured enough, I began pressing down on his chest, trying to remember the method that the nurses had use who had been around much of my life. He didn’t move. I pressed harder, but he still wasn’t breathing.
I knew what I had to do, I just didn’t want to do it. I pressed my mouth against his and tried to suck up the water. It was strange to do something like this for a complete stranger, but I told myself maybe he could tell me where those bandits were taking Taun and exactly who were they. Exhausted, I tried to catch my breath, when he began to jerk and spit up water. I cowered back at first but gain my wits and directed the arrow towards him. He stopped coughing up water and focused on me.
“If you try to escape or hurt me,” I warned him with a stern voice. “I will stabbed you with this. Now, who are you and who were those bandits?”
“Ask me what you want,” he said. “but get me out of this hellhole, first.”
This was a hellhole. The queron stone had never brought me to a place like this before. The boy was right, though. It was best I found a way out of here first and then interrogate him. I reached for the queron stone around my neck, but it was gone.