Night of Eden 72

 Chapter 72

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The monster that opened its mouth was a small swamp.

It was only waist-deep, but the muddy bottom sucked her in like a quagmire. Dana lost her balance completely and fell face first into the water.

Luckily, she found a tree root and grabbed onto it. After barely crawling out like a four-legged beast and feeling the dry soil against her body, she gasped for air and fell flat on her face.

Tears stung her eyes. Her limbs shook. She alternated between coughing and gagging.

After a while, her body calmed down a bit. She groped for the root of the tree and found a sheltered mound. She leaned her wet body against it, and sobs broke out.

The darkness was so terrifying.

All sorts of anxious thoughts began to swirl in herhead.

Would they find her?

What kind of place was the Corinthian Forest? As Lady Rosa had said, it would take more than three days to get from end to end.

Maybe there wouldn't be a massive search as Dana hoped. Belvida was full of guests who needed to be tended to, and there was a polo match tomorrow.

In a moment of despair, Dana decided that she had to let them know she was here somehow.

There must be quite a few people out, even for Rothesandra, and making a noise might help.

Dana forced her trembling lips to move.

"He... Help......!"

But the shout at the top of her lungs was quickly cut short by a fleeting thought.

What if she screamed too loudly and attracted wild animals or something else dangerous?

Dana remembered the feel of the water on her fingertips just before she fell into the swamp.

Her body began to shake again. It was a paroxysmal tremor, like someone with a disease. She realized it was her upper and lower teeth that had been making the clicking sound earlier.

Dana suddenly realized that the air against her body was not right.

"I'm cold."

This was a new and unexpected symptom.

***

Exactly five hours after the search began, Tilly had his second encounter with his Master.

Master Theodore stood at the fork that separated the Falls from the Shore. In the light of the fire, his face was as cold and expressionless as ever, almost as if he were in a trance.

They'd been together ever since they'd bumped into each other near the rocks early on. Tilly called Dana's name at the top of his lungs, and so did the Master.

At first, his eyes glowed with determination, and just looking at them made him feel like he could actually find her.

But as time went on, his shoulders grew heavier, and a darkness settled over his eyes. The Master's eyes became lifeless, and at some point he stopped breathing and just kept moving forward.

Was this the right way, Tilly wondered, as his doubts grew.

"Tilly."

The Master called out to him. He looked so pale that Tilly had to swallow dryly.

The Master moved his parched lips and instructed him to go to Belvida. He said that someone else might have found the girl and that he should go and check.

Tilly turned his horse around and galloped away, and after a while, he returned to face his Master.

"There......."

Theodore's head slowly turned toward Tilly, who had been looking straight ahead.

"...Did you find it?"

"Uh, not yet."

He answered, feeling strangely apologetic.

"Master Edwin seems to be looking for her, too. Butler Stan said he'd have his maids out as soon as the sun comes up, and he's sent someone to the police department.”

"..."

Tilly watched the faint glow on the Master's face fade completely.

"Now... What do you think we should do, go looking for her separately instead of together?"

Tilly pointed the lamp toward the wooden sign. Theodore nodded.

"I'll head toward the Shore, and you take another look around the waterfall."

The master’s voice that replied sounded no different than usual, but Tilly felt him slipping into a state of nervousness.

"It'll be much easier to find her once daybreak, so... Don't... Don't worry."

"...."

"I'll be off then, and I'll meet you at the hut in a couple hours."

Turning to go in the other direction, Tilly found himself frozen in place.

His arrogant master was now looking as bewildered as a lost child.

***

Edwin wiped the sweat from his brow.

He'd been riding his horse for hours, but he, too, had been in vain.

It was frustrating. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Looking around in the dark forest, he felt increasingly lethargic.

"Why don't you just go back? The Metropolitan Police say they're on the move. It's something to do with Belvida, so they'll probably have all the officers out in force."

The trainer behind him said cautiously.

Edwin stared into the darkness wordlessly.

"The guests are very uneasy, Master, and I don't think it's necessary for you to do this...."

Edwin pulled out his pocket watch and checked it.

"Just a little longer."

He pushed forward, leaving the sighing trainer behind him. The path was too narrow and the low trees too dense for him to ride.

He dismounted, handed the reins to the trainer, and started walking.

Rustling, rustling, rustling, a strange sound suddenly caught his ear.

Edwin's head snapped in the direction of the sound.

***

Theodore had never been afraid of the dark.

As a child, he'd roam the basement by candlelight, and as an adult, he'd enjoyed night hunts whenever he could.

But now he hated the dark. It was boring and uncomfortable.

In his head, he kept replaying memories of a bad injury.

When he was eight years old, he broke his arm while climbing a tree with his friends. When he was 10, he dislocated it while swinging a tennis racket and couldn't move.

Each time, Nordstrom would come running to him, carrying his groaning body and running frantically to the mansion. 

Theodore pretended to be fine until a doctor finally showed up, but it was a horrible hell.

Ever since he learned to ride, most of his accidents had been horse-related. Falling from a horse was a common occurrence, and he was once nearly killed by a horse's heel.

Even as an adult, his life was often dangerous: the sports he enjoyed always carried the risk of injury, not the least of which was playing polo. Not to mention hunting.

Whenever such memories came back to him, Theodore found it difficult to breathe.

The image of Dana crouched in a puddle, sobbing in a torrential downpour, her palms red from a few quick strokes, her face looking like she was about to collapse in front of Liana and him.......

No.

Theodore firmly cut off any uneasy thoughts that threatened to take over. Tightening his grip on the reins, he pushed forward again.

The midnight woods were not easy.

Thin brambles turned into whips and slashed at his face. The rustling in the undergrowth could be a hungry venomous snake, not a whimpering grasshopper.

It was ironically the animals that he had to be most careful of when hunting at night; they usually had better night vision than humans and seemed to instinctively know whether he had a gun or not.

The possibility of criminals or vagrants who liked to hide in the woods was not completely ruled out.

The bottom line was that these dark woods would be a battlefield for a defenseless woman.

If anything should go wrong...

The hand holding the lamp shook.

He was not used to this feeling. Never in his life had he been so anxiously searching for something.

If he never found her….

And if he did find her, if something went terribly wrong…

Theodore could barely contain the stirring emotions inside him.

Damn it.....

Damn it.....

He cursed but he wasn't sure if it was in his mind or out loud.

Something flashed in front of his eyes. Theodore flinched and turned the lamp back on. He yanked urgently on the reins, bringing his horse to a halt.

***

When the light flickered with black, fading consciousness, when she realized it was a real entity, not a ghost or a vision, Dana forced her eyelids open.

Through her dizzy vision, she could see a tall figure beyond the bushes.

It was definitely a person. A man...

The man she recognized stiffened in shock. Then he began to move closer.

Dana barely pushed herself upright.

"You... What the hell...."

The man's shocked eyes darted around her shaking body and blue lips. Dana sucked in a series of breaths, then forced herself to speak.

"Uh...."

Her tongue froze, and she struggled to form the words. Dana gasped for air again.

Meanwhile, Theodore leaped off his horse, a bit late. The sound of his feet pounding on the dirt echoed through the air.

"I'm losing...."

Her lips trembled and she made unclear sounds. Still, Dana didn't give up and tried to get the words out.

"...It's...late... I'm... I'm trying to... I'm trying to... ...."

Dana's body began to shake, almost to the point of seizure.

"...go, go......ah, no......."

Before she knew it, he was right in front of her. The heat radiating from the man's body washed over Dana from the crown of her head, chipping away at the chill.

"Oh, nothing...nothing... I... I see...."

Something shimmered closer, covering her upper body from the back. It was the coat Theodore had been wearing.

The thick fabric pressed against her body, and the cold wetness of it pressed against her skin, sending chills down her spine. But it was only for a moment, as the residual heat from the coat began to warm her frozen body.

Theodore remained still. When Dana glanced down, he was buttoning it up.

"Oh, thank...."

As she spoke, her eyes suddenly spun around and her arms went limp as her body felt like it was going to collapse. Dana had to hold on to the man's shoulders to keep from falling.

Picking her up, Theodore pulled her shaking body close, pressing her against his chest. His forearms dug into her shoulders and nape, steadying her so she wouldn't lose her balance.

She tried to tell him it was okay, that she could walk on her own. But the heat of the man's body against her side silenced her.

He was drenched in sweat. Not chilled like Dana herself, but hot and pulsing with life.

His shoulders were hard against her cheeks. The pulse pounding through her ears was strong and gave her an indescribable sense of security.

It was his body scent that thawed her frozen sense of smell. It was mixed with the uncharacteristically faint scent of sweat, but Dana wasn't offended at all.

On the contrary, she was urging herself to inhale more deeply, to breathe in the life force of that turbulent body.

"Can you stand on your own?"

Soon they were in front of his horse.

Dana nodded, and Theodore gently set her down. Her wrists were gripped before her feet touched the ground.

"Hold on."

Theodore guided her ice-cold hand to the saddle. When he was sure she was standing without staggering, he climbed onto his horse first. Then he stretched out his arm and yanked Dana up.

She didn't have to exert much effort, except to kick the ground slightly. Theodore placed her in front of him with unbelievable strength and power.

It was nothing like the torrential downpour.

Dana was busy digging in for warmth. She had no time to think about dignity or prestige.

From the moment she stepped out of the water, she was freezing. It was so cold that it felt like hundreds of ice picks were digging into her body.

The shivering grew louder and more violent as time passed. Crackling sounds echoed around her, and her pulse slowed to the pace of a dying man.

She rubbed her palms together and blew on them.

She clenched her fists, jammed them into her armpits.......

No matter what she did, it didn't work. The slightest irritation became a blade, slashing and stabbing ferociously through her body.

Her vision narrowed and my consciousness faded. So this was what it was like to die, she thought, her horror turning to despair.

Grandfather,

Grandfather.

She was just repeating his name over and over again when Theo appeared.

He looked at her with the same eyes she had seen on her grandfather's face when he'd fought off the scary dog and picked her up in his arms.

For that moment, it was okay to be the devil.

Dana just wanted to live, wanted to be warm.

"Hold on tight."

Theodore kicked the horse's flank, bracing Dana’s back. The taut muscles of the horse's back flexed beneath her thighs, and for a moment, Dana remembered something important she'd forgotten.

"Oh."

She grabbed his forearm urgently.

"Rothes... sandra."

Theodore paused and lifted the lamp. A few steps away, there was indeed a horse standing.

It had obviously lost the reins when it fell into the water. Dana had expected it to run away, of course, but the horse had stood meekly by her side the entire time she'd struggled out of the swamp and battled the cold.

“….”

Theodore watched Rothesandra wordlessly.

The creature was not at all to blame for what had happened, and yet he felt an irrational rage boil up from deep within his chest. Hot blood rushed to his fingertips, causing the lamp to flicker dizzily in the light.

As Theodore paced in front of the horse, its tail wagging nonchalantly, another light flickered across the place.

"Master!"

It was Tilly.

Startled eyes darted frantically around him and the others.

The woman shriveled up like a doll, and the man holding her tightly, as if he was afraid she might be taken away from him.

The cold, damp air was shattering against their bodies.

His eyes, momentarily transfixed, caught sight of Rothesandra a beat later. His mouth fell open again.

Dana Bordon had found the horse, and his master had found her. Tilly blinked hard, trying to process the unbelievable scene.

"We're going to the hut, but first, go and make a fire."

"...Okay, okay......."

Tilly looked up in mid-sentence, "Ah!" he said.

"The hut keeper will be there, you can go right now."

Dick, the assistant, was taking care of the hunting grounds and lodge as Tilly spent more time with the master.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, the hunting season is starting soon, isn't it? He's been staying there and making preparations."

Tilly answered and turned his horse toward Rothesandra.

"I'll take him to the Shore for now, I'm sure he'll be quite shaken up, and it would be nice to have a familiar home."

Theodore nodded and spurred his horse on. The horse carrying the two of them lurched forward, past Tilly.

Dana relaxed her upper body and leaned against him, his warm, firm chest supporting her. The man's breath tickled the top of her head as the horse's muscles flexed under the saddle.

"Where it hurts?”

The low voice traveled across her ear against her chest. Dana didn't answer right away, her body still warming. Theodore, not understanding the silence, leaned his head forward urgently.

"Where the hell are you hurt.......?"

"Oh, no."

Dana answered quickly.

"No. I'm not hurt or sick... At all...."

"Then what's wrong?"

Something churned inside her, pushing against the lids of her eyes and threatening to spill out, though her body's tremors were lessening.

"What if someone doesn't find me? I was so scared...."

Dana swallowed hard.

"It was so... cold... I was scared...."

She couldn't say more. Tears flooded her eyes, breaking the banks. Unable to control her overwhelming emotions, her hands crumpled into a mess on the man's shirt.

A stifled sob scratched at her throat.

“Ah......."

Dana couldn't hold it in any longer. Her shivering body burst into violent sobs, thrusting roughly into the man's arms.

***

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