Day Seven - Hedged In Part Seven

Hey guys! Grace Nask here with Day Seven of the April Challenge. Today, we have Chapter 6 of Hedged In, a novelette for teens and above. If you're just coming in, Olivia, our main character, and her friend Jacob have faced numerous perilous traps in The Maze. What will they encounter next? So let's get to it!

Chapter Six: Trinomial

True to his word, Jacob woke me up at the crack of dawn, and we left the cabin long before the other contestants got out of their beds. Soon we began The Maze once more, navigating it like the--kind of--adults we were. Jacob continued to leave gauze on the trail, and when he ran out I offered my own. He still hesitated a fraction of a second, but his previous resentment faded away. And...it relieved me.

We remained wary of traps for most of the morning, considering how two tried to kill us yesterday. But by noon we relaxed a bit. Rookie mistake.

The two of us plotted along, until Jacob spoke. “You know, even if that dog had attacked me, I could’ve fought him off.”

I snorted loud enough for him to hear.

“What? You don’t think I could do it?”

With a malicious grin, I shook my head.

“Oh, really?” He punched me in a playful way, and I punched him right back. “You know what I think? You couldn’t have done it yourself, and that’s why you think I couldn’t have.”

Now he’d done it. Baring my teeth, I shoved Jacob in the shoulder. He shoved me back harder, and it (literally) knocked me off my feet. My back smacked into the sand, and my survival pack spilled. Yesterday’s dirty clothes, some of the food, and the first aid kit all fell into the sand, but the first aid kit fell the farthest.

Jacob rubbed the back of his neck. “Dang it! I’m sorry; this isn’t really the place to show off.” I waved him off, but he insisted, “I’ll help you clean it up.” Together, we began picking up the loose items and stuffing them back into my survival pack.

What do you know, I guess being voluntarily mute does improve the other senses. My ears picked up on a faint grinding sound coming from the opposite hedge, and I grew wary. On instinct, I grabbed Jacob’s arm, forcing him to a halt. Not again….

Some sort of gunshot fired. Knee deep in sand, we watched an arrow come out a notch within the hedge and hit the first aid kit. Its tip glistened a purple hue.

Jacob and I exchanged a glance, then slowly backed away. I pointed at the hedge and mimed a hunter’s bow. He nodded, then reached into his own survival pack and pulled out a shiny red apple. Tight lipped, he lobbed it off into the distance.

Arrows flew across the expanse of sand, chasing after the apple with hungry eagerness. After ten feet or so, one managed to hit the tiny target straight through. The apple shattered in half, its white meat now tinged purple. Once the apple stopped moving, all arrow movement stopped. Arrows littered the sand, some struck in the opposite hedge, some embedded in the ground.

Another piece of fruit. Another throw. The same result. Arrows everywhere, blocking the path. I backed up and hit an invisible barrier. It pulsed red, then turned invisible again.

“There’s gotta be a pattern,” Jacob muttered to himself. “It’s no fun to have a trap contestants can’t get across.” I thought the same thing, but my wheels turned a tiny bit faster than his. Just not enough to form a complete plan.

The last piece of fruit. Another throw. The same result. But...a pattern. Why was it that the right side had so many more arrows than the left?

Beside me, Jacob choked back a sob. I watched his face fall. We exchanged a glance, and with a hard sigh, he pulled the flare out of his pocket. “Sorry, Olivia, but if we’re dead, we can’t learn our questions anyway,” he reasoned. Jacob raised his living death sentence.

Desperate times. It wasn’t a complete plan, but it was the best I had. I grabbed his hand and lowered it. Jacob stared at me in disbelief as I moved to the far right and crouched, sizing the field. From what we’d gathered, this field was at least fifty feet across. I should be able to sprint it. As long as I didn’t get hit with an arrow.

Jacob realized what I was doing too late. “Are you crazy?!” he shouted. “You’re going to get yourself killed! You see the purple in the arrows? That’s poison tipped, Olivia! Poison!”

Since when had a crazy idea stopped me? I had to know what happened to my parents.

In the same manner that he had approached the dog, Jacob started towards me. But I was past stopping. Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I took a deep breath and streaked across.

Sand kicked up against my knees as I flew over the field, hugging the leftmost hedge. Arrows fired all around me, but my hunch proved true; none touched the left hand side toward the bottom. Near the end, an arrow grazed my shirt; purple dotted the fabric, but it didn’t cut the skin.

“You’re good you’re good STOP!” Jacob shouted. At that, I slowed to a stop on the other side. The sand skidded underneath my feet, fleeing my touch.

Puffing breath, I sized up the field I’d run across. I’d never raced this fast this far. The target area spanned at least seventy-five feet, and more arrows studded the sand until half of it glowed an ominous purple. All except one of two remained closer to the right side, and none hit near the hedges. My gamble had been right; the notches were located higher up on the hedge, leaving a small gap for us to cross underneath.

Jacob’s form stood smaller than my hand on the other side. Feeling adrenaline rushed through me, I waved wildly. I’d made it! Which left one thing left to do. Hand shaking the tiniest bit, I beckoned Jacob to come over.

He waved and nodded. I watched him heave a breath large enough for me to see. Squaring his shoulders, he nodded to himself. Then, like me, Jacob raced across the sand.

I watched, eyes half shut, as purple tipped arrows streaked out of nowhere and struck the sand, their poison leaching into the ground. The hedges snapped and whipped around, urging Jacob to stop, but he didn’t slow for anything. Instead, he ran as though five hundred of Evan’s dogs turned traitor against his heels and didn’t stop until about five feet away from me, a terrified grin splashed on his face. “Never...doing that...again,” he panted. I smiled despite myself as he raised his arm for a high-five.

That’s when I heard it. One last, ominous click. And a forgotten hole within the hedge released a purple tipped arrow, right in the path of Jacob. I opened my mouth to scream, to warn him to move out of the way, to get down--but I couldn’t. My mouth had gone too long without the spoken word to obey my commands now.

All I could do was watch while the arrow arced across the sky. Watch while Jacob whipped his head around at the noise, too slow, too slow. Watch as its purple tip embedded itself within Jacob’s shoulder, and he collapsed in the sand. Watch, alone and without help. Just like that day.

Danger or no danger, like heck I was going to leave my partner in the sand in The Maze. With a silent sigh at my softness, I edged back over to Jacob, keeping the leftmost hedges close. I dragged him over to the side, ears pricked at the sound of new arrows. But none came; Jacob got hit by a stray one.

I began the haul to the other side of the field, leaving the sand stained with purple blood, when Jacob’s eyes opened. They focused on me but also through me, there but not quite. “O...li...via?” he rasped, his words soft. “What’s...happening...to me?”

I stopped our trek to hold up a peace sign to him, but Jacob’s eyes closed once more. Feeling tears leak through my eyelids, I bit my tongue to quell them; not helping. But it was hard not to feel useless. I didn’t know a thing about poison; in fact, if Jacob hadn’t pointed out the poisoned tip, I might’ve thought a new craze in arrowhead colors occurred. Jacob could die in a minute or three days from now. But based on the paleness of his skin, I guessed three days from now wasn’t an option. At that point, I prayed for a safehouse.

Looks like miracles do occur. A safehouse loomed around the next corner, its doors open in a beckon. Sweat dripping off my face, I dragged Jacob through the door and next to the closest bed. As I debated leaving him there or hauling him onto the mattress, a new thought entered my head: would he need more medical attention than I could give him? Then I banished the thought from whence it came; I was not sending up a flare tonight, for we would solve this ourselves.

“Oh that does not look good. Though I can’t say my man Evan didn’t try to warn you. Like he says, ‘Kids these days always think the world won’t come back to bite ‘em ‘til it does.’” The familiar voice startled me out of my argument with myself. I whipped around and came face to face with none other than Logan.

Logan, oblivious to the fact that I very well could have spoken another language, held out a hand. “It’s Logan. You want some help with your living corpse?” His easy grin and light banter at all of this made me want to punch him square in the jaw. Instead, however, I nodded and offered a cloyingly sweet smile.

I removed Jacob’s survival pack off his shoulders, and together we raised him onto the mattress. Logan left me after that, telling me with a hardened edge to “light up that flare, kid, if you know what’s good for him.” I ignored him and sat on the edge of Jacob’s bed, running a thumb over the back of his hand.

I didn’t dare remove the arrow, so it remained in his shoulder. Jacob hadn’t woken up since the first time he opened his eyes after the incident, and his face remained ashen. With each labored breath, I watched my dreams of The Maze slide away along with his life. Like this, Jacob wouldn’t last the night.

The tears came in full force as an organized unit, and once they came, they wouldn’t stop. I let them come, my shoulders shaking as silent sobs cascaded to Jacob’s feet. Either way, I’d be letting down more people than I could withstand. What was I going to do?