Hidden
Chapter 2
Discovery
She wasn't allowed to come out this far... but the words of some old man would never stop her.
Her footprints followed her, a telltale sign that she had broken the rules. They threatened to show her every move – and she didn't want that. She carefully brushed the footprints into the sand, as if they had never been there.
After that, her bare feet scarcely touched the ground as she walked along the leaf-strewn forest path. A distant roar warned her that she wasn't the only thing out here, and the rustle of leaves and crunching of twigs kept her alert. She stepped carefully off the path, down a route she knew led to the beach. Her beach. The one that, she was sure, only she knew about. It was small yet perfect. Its pale-but-not-quite-white sand brushed the edges of the forest and reflected the blue skies that were so frequent here; colourful shells decorated the line of sand where the waves rushed in and out.
And as she stepped out onto her own small slice of paradise, she realised that today, it was different.
Today, there was someone there.
He was lying on his side. The half of his face that was visible was covered by a damp, windswept curtain of raven hair, so she couldn't make out his features. A quick scan of his still frame told her that his right arm, twisted at an unnatural angle, was broken. The rest of his body appeared free of serious injury, although it was peppered with various cuts and bruises, all of which looked fresh. There were also, she noted with surprise, quite a few burns on his exposed skin.
She stepped forward.
"Hello?" she called tentatively.
A pause. No answer.
"Can you hear me?" she asked, slightly louder this time.
Still no answer.
That would be a no, then, she thought.
Stepping towards him, she brushed his hair from where it was covering his face. She caught a glimpse of closed eyes, a straight nose, chiselled jaw and soft-looking lips, before his hair slipped back to its original position.
She pressed her ear to his chest, listening for a heartbeat. There it was – the steady thudding that signalled life was still flooding through him.
"I'll have to help you, I suppose," she sighed to herself. If she told everyone where she had found him, it would mean admitting that she had gone past the fence. She would have to face the wave of words that followed this. But what could she do? She couldn't leave this stranger here to die; it would be as good as murder. And she knew that she was anything but a murderer. So it looked as if helping him was the only option. She tried to get her arms around him and lift him – but he was too heavy. He was a dead weight in her arms, which, although toned and quite muscular, were not able to carry him for more than a few seconds before shaking and letting him drop back onto the sand.
"Come on, then," she said softly, wrapping her fingers around the hand of his uninjured arm.
She tugged at it. His heavy body shifted a few centimetres forward. It dragged on the sand.
Sighing, she pushed some hair back from her face. This, she could tell, was going to take a while.
Black spots turned to grey, then to green as his vision gradually improved.
His eyes were half open, bleary as they took in their surroundings. He was moving, slowly, along the ground, and he thought he could see trees and bushes inching past him.
But it wasn't long – two seconds, maybe – before pain rushed through his body like a fast-flowing river. His head pounded, his bones ached and his eyes seared as the sunlight entered them. His eyelids quickly snapped shut, too quickly for him to get any clearer picture of where he was or what was happening to him. A throbbing in his right arm told him something was certainly wrong. It was a clear, definite pain that went from his shoulder to halfway up his forearm. Although he tried to lift it, it immediately dropped back to the ground with a soft thud that sent more shockwaves of pain shooting up and down it.
He heard a sharp intake of breath and felt himself abruptly stop moving.
The black spots appeared once more, dancing and swirling behind his eyelids. He heard a soft voice speak urgently, although he couldn't make out the words... and then he sank once more into a deep, vast chasm of unconsciousness.
After almost half an hour of stop-and-start pushing and pulling, she had managed to drag him about ten metres down the forest path. It had been hard work. She was leaning against a tree, trying to catch her breath and to wipe the thin sheen of sweat that covered her out of her eyes, when she heard a moan escape his lips.
She jumped.
"Hello? Can you hear me?" she asked frantically, looking down into his now exposed face, which, although she knew it was probably not the right time to be thinking so, was very handsome.
His eyes fluttered open. She saw for the first time that they were a bright, shiny green. Seeing his eyes made her remember that she hadn't checked them earlier, as her survival skills had taught her, but had simply begun to drag him through the forest like a madwoman. She silently cursed herself for being so frantic.
The man spat out sand with a groan. "Ngfkahafnje," he mumbled. She hesitated.
"Can... you... speak... English?" she asked slowly.
Another incoherent groan.
"My... name" – she pointed to herself – "is... Mina. Mi-na."
He gazed blearily at her. "Mi-na," he repeated slowly, in a gravelly voice. Then suddenly, without warning, his eyes rolled backwards in his head and his body was still, save for the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He didn't wake again.
What a lot of help he was going to be.
It was only when they reached the old wooden fence on the very edge of the settlement that he woke again. She gazed down into his face to find that his eyes were staring back up at her.
"Mi-na," he said again. This was getting irritating. Didn't the man know any English? Was he a bit lacking in the brains department?
"Yes," she sighed. "I'm Mina. But who are you?"
"It hurts," he groaned, ignoring her question. She looked down at his arm to see that it looked much worse than it had on the beach. He tried to sit up. A gasp of pain shot from him like air from a tire with a hole in it, and he immediately collapsed back on the ground. She studied him for a moment.
"I think your rib might be broken," she said after a while. "Your arm is too. You'd better stay lying down."
He winced. "So... tired," he breathed. For what seemed the hundredth time, he closed his eyes again. After a moment of silence, in which the sounds of the forest seemed amplified, she spoke.
"Um... hello?" she said. She couldn't help letting a drop of annoyance creep into her voice.
No sound came from him. It looked like she was alone... again.
She found the usual hole in the fence, through which she often crawled. The problem was, this guy obviously couldn't crawl.
Eventually, half of his body has been, for lack of a better word, shoved through the hole in the fence. But the fence and his body were trying hard to resist her efforts. She groaned.
"Would you just cooperate?" she muttered, giving him a soft kick on the leg for good measure and instantly regretting it when he made a small, comatose moan. When this had no more effect, she began to push him again.
A voice made her stop in her tracks.
"Mina?" it said curiously. "What on Earth are you doing?"
He was being rocked in a hammock made of leaves... someone handed him a brightly coloured drink with an interesting stirrer, which he soon realised was his wand. A monkey appeared and started capering in front of him... he sipped his drink, which tasted of something he couldn't place, and closed his eyes, enjoying the swinging sensation of the hammock... but then suddenly it wasn't made of leaves, it was made entirely of thin parchment, which ripped under his weight and sent him tumbling to the floor... his drink crashed next to him and his wand-stirrer began shooting off sparks in all directions... one of them hit the remains of the parchment hammock which immediately turned to ashes before him... and then Ginny was there, only she'd dyed her hair blonde and cut it short... and suddenly it wasn't Ginny, it was the driver of the boat, and all Harry could do was watch as he burst into flames and fell to the floor, screaming in agony...
"NO!" Harry yelled.
His eyes fluttered open.
He was lying on his back. His neck was stiff and he couldn't move it. In fact, he couldn't move any part of himself, not even his toes or his fingers. Pain ebbed through his body.
"He-Hello?" he called, glancing around. His voice was rough and scratchy, like a new school jumper. It grated his throat.
He tried to take in what little of his surroundings he could see with his stiff neck. He was in a small room. The walls appeared to be made of a mixture of wood, grass and mud. The ceiling was conical, and the floor was made up of tightly packed earth. There was a door in the opposite corner to him, but it was only a hole in the wall, covered with a blanket. To his right there was a wall; to his left there was nothing but the rest of the room. There was nothing in here except him – him and whatever was keeping him aloft. Then he suddenly realised – it was a hammock, made of woven leaves.
This was all getting a bit strange.
"Hello?" he tried again. There was no answer. Only the chattering acoustics of the jungle were perfectly clear to his ears. Harry thought he could hear voices through the walls, but they were very feint and he couldn't understand what they were saying.
Suddenly, a head appeared from behind the door/curtain. The person took one glance at Harry's open eyes, and quickly disappeared from view.
"He's awake!" a voice cried from outside. "Maybe I should – "
"No." A deep voice cut the first off. "I want to speak to him first. Alone."
A/N: I know that that wasn't the most gripping of endings, but I didn't want to start a whole new conversation when I was really eager to end the chapter.
So how did you like it?
What did you think of it? What was wrong, or right, with it?
Tell-eth me in the review-eth section!
In other news, less than a week until I go back to school (and I still haven't got enough GCSE folders). Also, because I go to boarding school (and NO, that does not mean I am a poshnob, I am a normal person living on a vaguely chavvy estate in Milton Keynes) I have to pack loads of stuff to take to school with me. Woo.
I'll try and update soon!
-Ellie