Chpt 1 2/22/10

Tally hit the corner of a tree, turning too sharply. Her momentum propelled her backwards, landing in a dense bush. She swore as she tried to drag herself out of it, the roars of the hunt growing louder every moment. At last she was out, wrenching her foot from a tangle as her hiking pants tore to her knee. She heard the screams clearer than before, catching the words, "Outsier! Outsier! " Mingled with more unintelligible and broken- sounding language.

"Goddammit", She whispered furiously, the free seams catching on twigs and undergrowth as she ran, a limp forming from her collision with the tree. But through the thick autumn foliage she saw bright orange light, catching the faces of pale hunters and lethal hunting weapons, determined and sure as they weaved through the forest, hardly brushing the vegetation as they passed. Their battle cries carried through the chill air, almost stinging Tally's ears, her senses heightened by the intense adrenaline rush.

She weaved and jumped and ducked as fast as her legs would carry her, but the villagers seemed to be constantly gaining, like an inescapable phantom in a nightmare. She felt arrows whiz by her head and back, zig-zagging quickly to avoid the deadly onslaught. Ahead of her, barely perceptible in the darkness, was a patch that seemed to be darker than the rest. It could be anything, but she ran toward in a burst of speed, getting ready to land and crawl into the darkness of whatever lie there.

But as she left the earth behind her, she felt the definite and sickening feeling of her stomach lurching against gravity. She couldn't see the bottom, but it was much farther than expected. She dropped off of an overhanging rock, the sound of rushing and roaring water closer. Her abdomen hit a sapling growing horizontally out of the outcrop, her left foot catching another, and her body twisted unnaturally underneath. She crashed onto the spinning foliage with a crack, her left shoulder blade suddenly searing with pain. She let out a gasp of pain as she rolled onto it again. She heaved, grasping for air, the sapling having knocked the wind out of her.

She thought she might lie there, shuddering and grasping her shoulder. Her breathing slowly steadied and, moving onto her stomach and cradling it carefully, she thought "They might go the other way around the rock, not see me at all…"

But the cries were rising in volume, and she turned her head slowly, seeing the deep green foliage flickering to a bright yellow-green. They'd seen her obvious marks in the forest growth…

She saw a torch thrust over the outcrop, voices yelling and arguing. The sight of the fire made her adrenaline kick up again, coursing through her veins and numbing her shoulder. She struggled to a stand with only her right arm. She sprinted through the forest once again, the sound of the rushing water growing louder. At the exact moment, she heard a bellow above her of the outcrop. Suddenly, leather-clad feet were scrabbling down the rocky outcrop, crashing down into the thick leaves. The light was upon her now, casting her shadow on the trees, which were quickly thinning around her. Panting, she registered that the air was suddenly wet. The ground she was running on was giving into the force of her weight, the squelching noise mixing with a crashing roar that suddenly overtook the hunters' war cries. She saw the dull white glimmer, smelled the wet air, heard the roar, and all at once it clicked. She stopped dead in her tracks over a cliff. White water. The water in the river to the Rusty ruins Shay had taken her to. She was standing on a 50-foot cliff, looking at white water that far exceeded Shay's terms of "bubbly".

Having only stopped for a moment, it was too late to turn back. She suddenly heard the yells again, only about ten meters away, but the light was still faint. Someone must have run ahead. In the darkness, she turned to the warrior, her foot slipping on the edge. She threw out her arm for balance as the nearest was only a foot away. Her arm flung past him, and he raised his wooden club sideways, readying a blow to her side. She recognized in the sudden clarity of this near-death moment that he was dressed elaborately in dyed cloths, the rest only in animal skin. He was tall, but his face was still smooth with youth. Only a faint fuzz was collected at his jaw, the other villagers all seemed to have scrubby beards or mustaches.

But in a thoroughly un-dream-like way, the slow-motion ended, and the club spent its momentum, hitting her deftly in the ribcage. Feeling it cracking and splintering, Tally screamed as she fell backward, falling to the left off the cliff. Her adrenaline-soaked mind was sharp, and she managed to grasp a crumbling stone on the edge, the pain of her broken ribs surging up and down her left side. She gasped, her lungs not working right. She looked up and saw the warrior raising the club again. "No! I'm not an outsider! Please!" She yelled, her handhold slowly disintegrating under her grasp.

But as he was about to strike, another member of the party caught up, casting the torch's light brightly on her face. For a second, nothing moved but the water.

"No." The warrior froze, staring. "No!" He stared, his eyes wild with fear, at her city-Pretty face. For a second he couldn't speak, then "Outsier nha su God! God!" He screamed something else frantically to the others in another language, scrambling to reach for her hand. But as he grasped in the humid air, the porous rock suddenly broke free, crumbling and falling above her as she yelled, falling fast toward the roaring water. Without a second to think, the villager jumped off, flailing toward the water, and one by one they were leaping off, still holding their torches. She hit the crashing water flat on her back, and blacked out… seeing sheep, jumping off one by one…