Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 294

Chapter 294: Just you wait
Mia hated waiting. It was horrible. She kept looking for somewhere safer. Somewhere to camp for the night that would be better for them.

A lot of nothing. She began looking for other things, carefully wording them in her mind.

It was unsettling. Terrifying.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. That creature loose, running wild. How dangerous was it? Why wasn’t Grandpa back yet?

She looked for him, and felt a pull. Did that mean he was alive, or simply that his body still existed?

No answer came to her mind.

When she looked again for somewhere safer, the pull almost bowled her over.

“We have to move. Now. Grab everything you can and get across the river.” She whispered.

She wasn’t even positively certain there was time to grab anything, but there were many important items amongst their possessions. Without them, they would starve, or freeze, or otherwise find themselves lacking on the journey ahead.

Her father rapidly unstaked a tent and pulled it together like a large bag, everything inside it bundled together. Mia and Anaisa followed his example with the second, and Ford and Daniel grabbed the last one.

The campfire was abandoned. A sound was rising over the grasslands. A subtle roar growing steadily louder. The horses shied and bucked as the people hastily threw the tent-bags or saddles onto the animals and began to lead them across the shallow portion of the river.

Mia looked back over her shoulder for Grandpa, and seeing nothing, hesitated. The water rushed around her legs, trying to draw her downstream. She didn’t want to leave without him, but a combination of magic and instinct was driving her with urgency across the water.

So she obeyed.

The roar was growing, and the sky was getting dark. The sun hadn’t yet set; the blackness was coming from the grasslands.

Smoke!

Mia tied her horse’s reins to a tree as she reached the place her gift said would be safer, then turned all her concentration across the water.

“We can wait here,” She told everyone. Her father looked seriously into her eyes.

“Do I have time to get anything else? The rest of the saddles?” He pointed back across the water to where some hastily-left-behind items were lying.

“I’m not sure,” Mia told him honestly. He nodded.

“I’m going to try.”

He ran off, slogging through the knee-to-hip-deep water to retrieve what he could while the others watched.

Their almost idyllic afternoon had turned into a nightmarish evening.

In the distance, she could see flames.

Daniel scrambled up one of the trees, climbing above their heads to look into the distance. Into the grasslands.

“Something’s coming!” He called down to the people on the ground.

Ford stepped closer to the women. The horses pawed at the ground, unsettled, but they were all across, led by the humans. The tents, likewise, were no longer in the fire’s path.

Seth redoubled his efforts to make it back across the water quickly with two of the saddles.

Mia clasped her hands together in worry.

“Through the grass, there!” Daniel pointed towards the far end of the area they’d cleared to make camp.

Grandpa burst through at a dead run.

He seemed only mildly surprised that the camp was already gone, pausing only long enough to swing the last saddle up onto one shoulder as he made his way towards the river.

The fire crackled and roared closer, sweeping through the dry grass as if competing in a race. Mia swallowed her fear as Grandpa’s feet hit the water.

The smoke was thick in the air, but the wind was on their side, keeping them from choking on the acrid fumes.

The chimera pounced out from the wall of flames, its four large paws like dinner plates on the scorching earth. The lion’s mouth breathed out smoke and sparks.

Ford stepped in front of Mia, tensing, and suddenly, everyone disappeared. Mia couldn’t see Grandpa any longer, nor her father. She looked up, and Daniel was nowhere to be seen in the tree, nor Anaisa beside her.

She felt horribly off balance. Reaching out one delicate hand, or at least trying to, since she couldn’t see whether her efforts were successful, she pressed her invisible fingers against an invisible solid surface where Ford had been a moment earlier.

It moved, and she flinched back slightly.

Something gentle brushed at her still-outstretched fingers, and she grabbed hold.

A hand.

It wrapped around hers and squeezed as she turned her eyes back to the chimera. It stalked along the river’s edge, the goat’s head letting out a frustrated bleat.

The heat from the fire grew as it consumed the grass. Overhead, there was a new sound. Was Daniel doing something?

An angry sort of buzz resounded, and Mia looked up in time to see a wasp nest empty of its inhabitants. The swarm gathered and charged at the chimera full speed.

The creature roared, and spat sparks again from its mouth. Just behind the swarm, an enormous wasp a thousand times the size of the others appeared, stretching its wings in an angry display.

Stingers brandished, the swarm surrounded the chimera and began pelting the animal with their bodies.

The enormous, translucent wasp swayed in the air, as if preparing to attack and looking for just the right angle to do so. The swarm began to fall from the air insect by insect as the smoke closed in around them, but they kept up their relentless assault.

The chimera finally shied, roaring again before darting back into the flames from which it had appeared.

The large wasp dissipated. The smaller wasps scattered. Mia’s hand was released, and everyone became visible once more.

Grandpa was on the riverbank, staring across at the fire. Seth was near him, panting with exertion. Anaisa stood behind Mia, and Daniel was already climbing down from his perch, quietly.

“I… I don’t feel very well,” Ford admitted. Mia looked up into his face. It was as pale as the day she’d first found him.

“Ford?” She reached out to feel his forehead with the back of her hand. It was clammy. “What’s wrong?”

But instead of answering, he fainted dead away.