Cured (14 page)

I nodded. “No battling lions then?”

“
No battling
lions,” h
e affirmed.

Damn. That
meant we still had to kill one more. There was no way we could slay
one of those beasts without powers. The last one had nearly killed
Theo, and he was the strongest Newbie out of all of us. Them. All
of them. Felix must have read my mind because he stroked my
back.

“
Don’t worry
about me, Ave. I was wrong. We can’t do this. We have no powers. I
can't put your life in danger anymore than I already have. Let's
just turn ourselves in.”

I barely had
time to absorb Felix’s words before I felt my blood begin to boil
in rage. He couldn’t be serious. Not after everything I'd been
through in the past few hours. I spun around to face him angrily.
Breaking his embrace and knocking his hands away when he went to
stroke my cheek in concern.

“
What?” I
hissed in his face. “You've gotta be kidding me Felix. I fought a
bloody lion and chopped off my own skin. I fell into a freezing
stream and have blisters the size of coins, and you are suggesting
that we LEAVE?! I can’t believe you think-“

“Shut up!” Felix interrupted my rant and
slapped his palm over my mouth. I twisted my head to shake his hand
away and looked at him, angry and bewildered. I nearly slapped him
again when I noticed his grim expression. I lowered my twitching
palm and tried to meet his eye.

“Fe?” I whispered.

“
SH!”
H
e was looking over my shoulder,
squinting into the darkness of the trees. I pushed away from him so
that I could look in the same direction. Then I heard it too. A
muffled rustling of leaves. Felix and I looked at each other. Our
expressions mirror images of one another's fear.

Felix leapt
to his feet with surprising agility. He dragged me up from the
ground to join him and I stumbled on my injured feet. He tugged on
my arm to follow him so I quickly scooped up my saturated clothes
and the bundled lion’s mane. I tucked all of the items into my
soggy backpack.

“
What
direction was your last lion in?” he asked under his breath. I
pointed in the general direction that I had come from, confused as
to why it mattered. I barely had time to question his motives,
though, before he started to drag me back into the dense trees
towards my last lion battle.

Felix was light on his feet, his swift
running steps barely making a whisper on the leafy floor. I, on the
other hand, was about as subtle as the lion that was roaring behind
us. I limped along with Felix, trying to keep pace and wondering
where he was taking us. After a long dash through the forest I
spied my sedated lion splayed on the ground where I had left it.
Felix sped up as we neared the body.

“
Impressive,
Ave,
” he whispered when he saw the beast
on the ground. I managed a smile but winced. My foot was getting
more and more painful with every movement.

Felix noticed my pained expression. He
frowned, concerned, and knelt to the ground to examine my injury.
As he knelt I noticed that the forest was in silence once more.

“Fe…” I said.

Hearing his
name in such silence must have alerted Felix to the same
realisation. The lion was no longer chasing us. But as I smiled in
excitement, thinking that the lion must have fled, Felix's eyes met
mine with a look of pure fear. The look lasted a millisecond,
before I saw his brain click into overdrive. Felix stood and
started mumbling to himself before walking over to the lion’s body
and touching its torso lightly.

“Predators fall silent when in the crouch and
pounce position…. Must be… what was it…. Ten to twenty… bigger
lion… could be thirty…”

“
Felix, what
the hell?” I whispered.

Felix didn’t answer but put a finger to his
lips, shushing me. He then beckoned me over and pointed to a large
tree, suggesting I hide behind it. He grabbed a stick from the
ground began to rub the tip of it against a nearby tree, sharpening
it to a point. I watched, bemused, was he going crazy, or had he
forgotten that the lion was impenetrable like I had earlier? A
stick wouldn’t even make the creature flinch.

I opened my mouth to tell him that the branch
would not make an effective weapon when my words turned into a
squeal. He had sliced the back of his hand with the point.

Felix looked
up at me when I squealed and then cursed under his breath. Quickly
wiping his bloody hand on the already unconscious lion’s body, he
then sprinted towards me and clasped his hand over my
mouth.

At that exact moment an enormous creature
leapt from behind a nearby tree. He pounced toward the slain lion
and stopped in front of the still body. Felix clamped his hand down
harder over my mouth and shielded my body with his, so that I was
entirely hidden from the lion’s view.

The lion sniffed its brother’s body, smelling
Felix’s blood. It contemplated the sleeping figure for a moment and
titled its head to the side in confusion. After a while it let out
a small snort and sunk its teeth into its brother’s body. The lion
chewed and swallowed, before apparently deciding that lion was not
to its taste. It began to stalk away.

I finally understood what Felix had done and
shook my head at him in amazement. He managed a grin, but then
shoved his injured hand into his mouth to stop the bleeding. Felix
kept his grip on me, holding me tight in place for another thirty
seconds. Then we heard a loud thud. Something big had hit the floor
mere meters from our hiding place. Felix finally released me and
began to move in the same direction as the lion.

“
Fe what the
heck are you doing? The lion will hear you!” I
whispered.

“Ave, come here.”

I limped
after him and saw the second lion laying flat on the ground. “What
the..?” I looked between the first sleeping lion and the
second.

“The pills must have stayed in the first
lion’s bloodstream. When the second lion bit into the first one, he
went down too.” Felix explained.

“
Have I ever
told you, you’re a genius?” I kissed Felix on the cheek with
excitement and felt his face heat up. He grinned at me and
pretended to wipe his check as though he was grossed out by my
affection.

“Aw nah, it was your idea that made me think
of it!”

I shuffled
awkwardly, instantly regretting the kiss. I became acutely aware of
my lack of clothing and wished that I were wearing more than just
Felix’s pullover. “Um.. anyway..” I mumbled as I tugged on the
jersey’s hem to cover myself, “Let’s get that lion coat for
you.”

I told Felix
how to tear off the lion claw and use it to detach the mane, and
then looked away as he worked on severing the claw. Finally Felix
had a large chunk of the lion's mane, which I secured into the same
bundle as my own. Then I returned the bundle to my pack, zipping it
up.

We looked at each other, confused. Now what?
We had never been told where to find the next task, or what to do
once we completed the first one. I looked around the forest, which
was now basked in morning light with streams of sun pouring through
gaps in the leafy canopy.

I sighed heavily, my exhaustion, hunger and
thirst all hitting me at once. I hadn’t eaten or slept in over
twenty-four hours and my injury was making me weak. I removed the
wet clothing from my backpack and wrung them out again. They were
nearly dry. I motioned for Felix to turn around and quickly changed
into my damp outfit. Then I gave Felix’s jersey back to him, and he
mimicked my “turn around” finger gesture. I giggled at how silly we
were being in the scheme of things. We had just fought mutant lions
and we were worried about nudity? But it was nice to have a little
normalcy, so I obeyed by turning my back whilst he took off his
bloody thermal and put his jersey on instead.

“
Are you
finished ye-“ I started before I was interrupted by muscular arms
around my waist, lifting me up and crushing me. I squealed and
giggled. 
“Fe stop!” He began to tickle my sides as he placed my
feet back on the ground. “FE!” I collapsed onto the forest floor in
fits of laughter, with Felix tickling my stomach as I writhed and
wriggled in my tortured state. “ENOUGH FELIX!”

He chuckled as he finally withdrew his hands,
and moved them down to my injured ankle. His tickly fingers became
soft and gentle as he touched my wound. He took his bloody thermal
and began to wind it around my foot, tightly, creating a DIY
tourniquet.

“How’s it feeling?” He asked.

“Better now.” I replied, lying back on the
floor as he kept caressing the cut. I listened as the birds began
to chirp in the trees, and the morning light seeped through the
foliage. I closed my eyes.

Chapter 20

I blinked awake and looked around, confused.
There was a smoky scent in the air and Felix was no longer holding
me. I finally spotted him a little way from me, hidden by a cloud
of smoke. How on earth had he managed to start a fire? I stood up
and wandered over to him.

“What is all this?”

Felix looked up at me from the smoke and my
breath caught.

“
Well hey
there, sleeping beauty,” he smiled his lopsided grin. “You’ve been
out for about five hours!”

I laughed. “Weird. Who would’ve though that
I’d be tired after fighting two mutant lions and nearly drowning?”
Felix joined in my laughter, but sobered up when he saw me wince as
I put weight on my injured foot. He held out his hand and lowered
me to the ground until I was sitting next to him.

“
I am making
root vegetables,
” Felix explained. “Hope
they're alright.”

I shook my head in bewilderment. “Of course
Fe, but how did you do it? We didn’t exactly have camping lessons
at school..”

“Pretty easy,” he said. “They told us how to
find root vegetables and start fires in training. Not that you’d
know, ‘coz you were busy being a spoiled brat.” He grinned.

“
Shut it,
you,
” I bit back. “ How long til they're
finished?”

Felix prodded
a round, brown vegetable with a stick that he was using as a
cooking utensil and smiled. “About now. You hungry?”

My stomach
growled in response and we both laughed. Minutes later, Felix had
plated up two massive flax leaves with piles of earthy coloured
vegetables, most of which I had never seen before. I was amazed and
it must have showed, because Felix wore a smug smile.

“
You gonna
want to marry me now you’ve seen my crazy good cooking skills?” He
bumped his elbow into my side jokingly. “I could bring you
breakfast in bed every morning.”

I blushed a deep red and laughed
uncomfortably, praying that Felix didn’t know how often I had
thought about waking up next to him. Then I turned to focus on the
food in front of me to hide my face from him. I picked at a pile of
orange-coloured mush and moaned upon tasting its smoky, rich
flavour.

“This is freaking awesome!” I told Felix, who
had already devoured half of his plate. His only reply was a slight
eyebrow raise as he continued to shovel food down his throat. I
smiled at his hunger, and decided to copy him, by scooping up
handfuls of veggies, and scoffing them like I would never see food
again. Once Felix finished eating, I examined him. There were dark
shadows under his eyes and his face was more pale than usual.

“You must be tired, you haven’t even had a
nap yet!”

He nodded and yawned, “But I don’t want to go
to sleep in case something happens. What if they spring the next
task on us, or another lion finds us whilst we are sleeping? It’s
not safe.”

I grabbed
Felix’s hand to calm him before he worked himself into a state.
“Sleep, Fe, I will keep watch.”

“When are they going to give us the next
task?” he asked, yawning and lying flat on his back, hands clasped
behind his head as a pillow. I lay down too, resting my head on his
broad chest.

“
We will know
when it comes.” I said, mainly to put Felix’s mind to rest, “Maybe
they are going to wait for all the Newbies to finish the first task
before they start the next one.”

Felix nodded, and his breathing slowed. A
while later he began to snore quietly. I sat up, deciding that I
might as well be useful whilst I kept watch. I opened my backpack
and retrieved the bundle of golden hair. I needed to make it into a
coat somehow. Remembering the way that Louisa used to braid my hair
before bed, I began to weave the lion mane into a plait, copying
Louisa’s over-under-over pattern and humming the lullaby that she
used to sing.

Felix slept
for a solid four hours before I noticed him stirring. I smiled as I
watched him open his eyes and experience a moment of disconcertion.
He sat up and stroked my arm, giving me instant shivers.

“
How long was
I out?” h
e asked, scanning our darkening
surroundings.

“About four hours.”

He nodded. “What do we do until the next task
comes?” Felix wondered aloud, voicing the question I had been
pondering while he slept.

“I guess we relax, and try to get our
strength up. It will give my foot time to recover, and we can learn
a bit more about the forest.”

Felix nodded
again and his gaze found my woven creation. His mouth dropped open
and his eyebrows shot up. “You plaited the mane?”

“Why so surprised? I am a woman of many
talents.”

He grinned at me. “I know you are. Looks
good.”