Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 358

Chapter 358: Seeking safety
Mia was close enough to Ford to feel the heat rolling off of him. The air was cold, and he was soaked from his trips through the pool.

The last one of their horses, left behind on the far side, had bolted when the lightning struck. Mia was kicking herself, wondering if they had just stayed put on the other side until now, they might have had a path clear of the monster’s threat.

Although, being in water during a lightning storm wasn’t exactly safe.

But where were they to go? Ford had asked about shelter, but Mia daren’t ask her family to follow so closely after that enormous white reptile.

There was no other safe direction that she could find.

Invisible, the group huddled close together, both to try to make it easier for Ford, and to minimize the space they took up so that the monsters would be less likely to trample or notice them.

Mia closed her eyes, feeling the changing directions of the pulls as she looked for each of the monsters she could remember from the day before. Youngest, oldest, largest, smallest, they were all on the move.

In front of her, Mia sensed Ford waver. A slight movement in the air.

She hadn’t been touching him up to this point, but she leaned forward now and wrapped her arms around his waist. He tensed for a split second, but it seemed he was too focused on keeping the magic in place to maintain that posture.

Slowly, he began to slump against her, and she opened her eyes to see several of the monsters moving past with great speed, up to the top of the cliff. Would the group have to pass all of them as the next phase in their journey?

Evading one had been enough of a challenge! There was no possible way they could sneak past what amounted to dozens or more of these enormous, sharp-toothed beasts!

Ford began to sag further, and Mia saw a brief glimpse of her aunt’s face. Ford’s magic was beginning to run out!

She searched for the last monster, and felt its pull move. It was almost past.

“Just a little longer, Ford,” She urged, but only a syllable and a half were heard, the rest cloaked by his power.

Mia felt him shudder as he tried to stand fully back up, but it was in vain. He collapsed fully, his weight dragging Mia down with him in a controlled fall to the ground.

Her aunt’s arms were there to help cushion them both.

“Ford, Ford are you all right?” Anaisa whispered frantically. “He didn’t get hurt, did he?”

“His magic has run out,” Mia explained quietly, “It’s exhaustion.”

Her eyes were focused on the tail of the last of the monsters. It was crawling up to the next level, but twitched its head slightly toward them.

One of the horses snorted and shied as lightning struck again, somewhere near the cliff’s summit.

The monster’s jaws opened, though it made no move toward them, until another monster, far larger and fouler, rose from the pool and up the ramp. The smaller one turned and drove forward, seeking the heights, while Mia contained her terror at the newest arrival.

The smaller one had been the last, according to her power! Was she broken? Panic rose in her throat.

Until the new monster dissipated and Daniel beamed.

“Aren’t you glad I’m here, Mama?” He asked with a smile so wide it might split his face.

“Yes, Daniel,” Anaisa answered, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “I am glad.”

“You’re a brave lad,” Grandpa nodded at the boy, “and clever.”

“Thanks, Grandpa,” Daniel stood up straighter.

Mia was observing this only passingly now that she was assured they were in no immediate mortal danger. Her attention was focused on Ford’s unconscious face. She’d laid him down, gently, onto the chalky ground with his head in her lap, and now fretted over him quietly.

“Ford, wake up, please,” She whispered, pushing his hair back from his forehead.

“He slept a long time, before, when he did this,” Seth observed without compliment or judgment in his tone. “If we’re going to move, we should do it now, before the rain hits.”

Mia blinked. She hadn’t thought about it, but yes, for all the lightning and thunder and darkening sky, the rain of the storm had yet to deluge the earth. They should move before that happened.

“Help me carry him,” She requested, and Grandpa and Seth lifted the man while Daniel and Anaisa took the reins of the horses. Once Ford was balanced on Storm, his gelding, the group moved forward, following Mia on foot.

She wasn’t sure where she was going. She looked for safe shelter, and indeed, she found a pull, but how could there be such a place in the midst of all this?

After the ‘safe’ place to sleep was next to a monster-infested pool, how could any shelter from a storm make any claim as to security from danger?

Mia began to doubt her gift, her magic, but there was no other recourse but to follow it in the very path of the white-scaled monsters.

No one questioned her leadership, which made it seem all the more harrowing of a decision to blindly follow where the pull brought her.

She picked up speed after the first two shelves; her hair was nearly standing on end at the amount of electricity in the air, and it unsettled her greatly to be out in it. To be climbing higher.

On the next shelf, she spotted it–a place in the chalky cliffs that looked like a deep overhang, almost fully a cave. And dry underneath, too!

Tall enough for the horses and deep enough to fit all of them, it seemed too good to be true. Mia paused, and looked for danger. Was there danger in the dim confines of the safe haven?

The pull this time came from upward, so Mia stopped looking. The monsters had apparently moved on.

“Not even a fly up here,” Grandpa complained. “How are there no bugs up here at all?”

“We’re not smelly enough,” Daniel joked. “All the baths in those waters.”

The old man chuckled warmly and ruffled Daniel’s hair. “Let’s get inside before the rain hits.”