Home by Shayna Krishnasamy

undergrowth, coming at her, louder and louder and louder.
    She snapped awake. She pulled her dagger loose of its scabbard and clutched it in her hand. They’d found her at last. They would come from all sides, snarling in a frenzy. A twig snapped somewhere to her left, then the leaves of a bush rustled to her right. Shallah held her weapon tightly, the handle against her shoulder, the blade extended outwards. She tensed for the first blow. All was silence.
    It came at her.
    She cried out, a yell that was as much a battle cry as a scream of terror. A body crashed through the foliage and flew headlong into her. She tensed her arm to stab, but hesitated when she felt a knee in her side and hands pushing her back.
    This was no animal.
    “Who are you?” Shallah gasped as she scrambled away. “What do you want from me?” She held her knife out defensively, slashing the air so the person couldn’t draw nearer.
    “Only a traveller searching for a way out of the wood,” a man’s voice replied. “Please sheathe your weapon. I mean you no harm.”
    The voice sounded slightly familiar but she pushed recognition aside. She got to her knees and edged still farther away.
    “Why did you rush at me, then?” she asked. The man hesitated. “Answer me!” she cried, brandishing her dagger. “Tell me or I’ll wound you, I swear it!”
    “I-I thought you were a tree readying itself to attack,” the man said, his words falling over themselves as he hurried them. “I heard moaning and I thought you were … I thought you were a monster.”
    “What do you know of these trees?” Shallah demanded.
    “Put down your dagger and I’ll tell you.”
    “Not a chance,” she said, squaring herself against the man as he took his arm away from his face and looked at her for the first time.
    He gasped.
    Shallah faltered, the blade wavering in the air. What did he see?
    “It’s you,” the man said.
    Again she felt his voice was familiar. It wasn’t a voice she knew well, but one she’d heard before – a voice from home.
    “The blind girl,” the man said.
    “The Fleete boy,” Shallah said.
    For a brief moment they considered one another. Then they rushed into each other’s arms and embraced. It wasn’t an embrace of love, nor one of need, nor one of loneliness. It was a hard embrace, a strong embrace – an embrace of hope.
    Quite soon thereafter, Shallah found herself alone again. The Fleete boy went off in search of Liam almost as soon as she told him what had happened. He left her his blanket as well as the food in his satchel.
    “There’s plenty, so you needn’t worry,” he said as he tightened the laces on his boots. When she hesitated, he touched her hand. “We’re in this together now,” he said. “You have to keep your strength up.” He handed her a piece of bread.
    “You must find him,” Shallah said.
    She sat facing into the woods, her hair falling over the edges of the blanket he’d put around her shoulders. She held the crust of bread between her bloodied fingers. It would stay there all night, untouched.
    “I ought to see to this,” he said, touching her hand again. “Your foot needs to be bound of course, and you seem to be bleeding from the hairline as well, it’s difficult to see without any light.” He frowned at her forehead.
    Shallah turned her face in his direction and said again, “You must find him.”
    The man pried his attention away from Shallah’s wounds and looked at her. He was close enough now that he could make out her features. She had the desperate look of a wild animal. Her delicate face was marred with blood and streaked with dirt, weakened by pain and fatigue. Her clothes were a shambles, the soles of her shoes nearly worn through. Her curling hair was knotted and hung about her in a blanket of tangles. But beneath all this disorder, behind the vacant look in her eyes, he could spy a core of strength that had brought her thus far. It shone through, brilliant as the sun he’d