Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas Page B

being the stubborn, stupid idiot. Neither one of them is going to escape—hasn’t she realized that yet?—and they might as well be together when it comes. “Not without you, Pin.”
    She holds up her hand. The bandage on her wrist is soaked with blood; drops spatter on the ground and are absorbed by the ash. Her face is thin and determined, and seeing it, maybe for the last time, makes Shoe’s heart, which he’d thought was a frozen, shriveled thing about the size ofa burned crust, pound in his chest. “Shoe,” she says. “If you care about me at all, you won’t follow me.” Then she turns her back and heads down the ash-covered stream bank.
    Shoe stares after her. If you care about me at all . . .
    His legs quiver with weariness, and the rest of him is shivering because he knows what the Godmother will do to them—she will break them to her will, each of them in different, slow, special ways, and she’ll take pleasure in doing it, too.
    Pin starts to run, leaping over rocks, stepping lightly over the ash, and she’s running right into the arms of capture. Her boots, Shoe notices, are making her steps surer than they would be without them. There might be irony in that. Pin would know if there was or not.
    She disappears from view, and the shock of it is enough to get him moving, scrambling like a scared rabbit up the bank past the waterfall, then around another bend, his feet leaving easy-to-follow prints in the ash. Pin , he thinks with every step, but he can’t help but fear for his own skin, too.
    The backpack is heavy, and it rubs against his old friends, the still-healing welts from his time at the post, but that just reminds him to go faster. As he told Pin, there’s worse things than the post. When he sees a sort of notch in the side of the ravine, he runs for it, knowing that the Godmother will follow his trail easily, but knowing, too, that to stay in the ravine is an even surer way to be captured. He climbs the slope, ash as fine and soft as sable sliding down around him and fillinghis boots, until he makes it to the notch that takes him up and out of the ravine, scrambling along a rocky shoulder of the mountain. What he really needs is to get down into the trees again; out here he’s too exposed.
    The first jolt of energy has worn off, and he can feel how tired his body is; it’s a candle burned almost down to the socket, a flickering flame about to go out. The backpack weighs more with every step. The ash-covered slopes have turned to wiry brown grass, and below him he can see the tree line, which is dark and welcoming, as if he’ll be safe there, which he knows he won’t.
    Carrying the backpack is stupid. He pauses and slips it off, dumping it behind a rock, but taking out the cheese and gingerbread first, just in case he lives long enough to want to eat again. The relief from the pain of carrying it takes him the rest of the way down the slope to the edge of the forest, but then the weariness catches up to him again. About to plunge into the trees, he pauses to catch his breath and looks back over his shoulder.
    A jolt of fright flashes through him. A man on a big brown horse is at the top of the spur of the mountain where Shoe left the backpack. Two creatures that look something like dogs and something like men crouch at the horse’s knees; they have their heads to the ground as if they’re sniffing. As Shoe stares at them, the man sweeps a look over the tree line; his gaze stops, fastens on Shoe. Slowly, deliberately, he nudges the horse into a walk, and they start down the slope.
    The Godmother’s Huntsman and two trackers.
    Shoe stumbles into the forest and jerks himself into a run. The Huntsman has his trail. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?” he mutters to himself. But he isn’t going to hand himself over to them, either.
    The trees are spaced widely here, this high up the flank of the