The Antelope's Journey

23. Kali, you’re impressive

23. Kali, you’re impressive

The light of the supposed moon was too bright for their eyes. They squinted and shaded themselves with their palms to reduce the intensity. They had to get moving still. The rod, shooting out of the light, headed for Francina’s thigh. The pain was intense and sudden as the rod speared into her flesh. They were both shocked and each knew that now they had to be careful. Francina reached to her thigh and yanked out the small rod. The blood was now pouring. Instantly, she was beginning to regret her actions, she should not have pulled that rod as it was plugging the blood from flowing. Now here she was, haemorrhaging.

She tore up her sleeves in a strap and tied it around her hurting thigh. “Let’s move, and be careful,” she said to him. She could see the terror in his eyes. She, too, was terrified. The wands shot from different directions. If these sharp tipped wands poked into a vulnerable spot, it might be game-over for them.

There, they started chasing and swaying side to side, and dunking down and jumping up to avoid the attack. Francina could now feel the burn in her eyes—the moon dust was too strong. They both received scratches from the wands passing too close to their skin. By now they were out of breath from all the ducking and running. Still, they continued. It was much wiser to try and get away from there as fast as possible before grave damage could be done to either of them.. Slowing down meant more torment.

“Aah!” came a cry from Kali.

Francina was obviously concerned, “Kali! Are you okay?” she had her eyes shut by now. She was listening in for two sounds. The sound of a wand whooshing by and the voice of Kali as he was hopefully about to assure her that he was alright.

“I… Mmh!” his breath was unbalanced. “I got hit, Francina!” He sounded terrified and shaken. This was worrying Francina. She started listening out for his pent, she was headed to him. Finally, she saw what he was crying about.

“Ow, no,” Francina was shocked. It was a large rod. It went through his back and out of the side of his stomach. “Can you walk?”

“No, Francina.” His thoughts and mistrust of the girl resurfaced, “No! You can’t be thinking of leaving me here. Help me out!”

“I’m not leaving you, but we must move or we’re going to die! Come on,” she held him to herself to try and support him.

“Pull it!” Kali was adamant. He was unsure of his decision but he kept re-iterating anyway. “You have to pull it out, I can’t walk like this.”

“I will but we have no time. We must get moving,” she pulled him along.

While they staggered along, the white fog disappeared into a black atmosphere. It was like all that was there had vanished, replaced by some blackness. Slowly, ripples started glistening on the surface—it was a large body of water. It was expanding to become a big lake. It was very wide. Water lilies started to educe from below the water body and would land graciouslyjust above the water surface. Francina set a foot forward and tried the lily—it was stable enough to support her weight.

“Let’s go.”

He was still unsure, he pulled her wrist and looked into her eyes pitifully. “Pull it out of me,” he said.

Oh, I nearly forgot about his pain. As he looked at me, I could see sadness and pity. But is it wise to just pull it out? He is going to bleed to death if I do. At the same time, this rod is huge. I can’t expect him to carry on with it sticking out of his abdomen like that. Say, I should trim it.

“I’ll try to cut it—”

“No,” Kali cried, “I want it out of me!”

“It’s too big a hole, you might bleed to death, Kali.” She tried breaking the rod, but then she was not strong enough. She tried her force again and soon realised that she was only hurting the boy. She was bending it in an attempt to try and break it to make it shorter and much more portable and flexible. The thick rod would not even bend to her strength. She saw Kali's grimace from the pain and instantly, she was discouraged. She decided to try out his idea.

“Okay, fine. I’ll just pull it out and we’ll try to plug you up to keep from bleeding.”

As she was grabbing onto the rod ready to pull all of it out, their standing slowly dissolved in to water. They had to quickly jump on a lily. Standing too long on a water lily made it weak and it would submerge back into the water. It was obvious that they had to move. Now, Francina had no time to start pulling the rod. One, they would have to stand long on the lily, causing it to weaken and this would lead them to submerging into the water. Two, this would only hurt Kali, he would have to face a lot of pain. They knew that they had to get moving. Maybe if they go on, they might find a much more stable ground ahead and only then would they be able to help Kali out. Francina had to hope that Kali should not lose strength and fall in. They were now hopping from one lily to the next. None of them knew how deep those waters ran. Kali was very brave to handle all that weight and the pain—and still keep moving. Francina was very impressed with the boy’s tolerance for pain and his bravery to keep fighting through it.

He’s very impressive. I should probably tell him that. Very impressive…

Above, they saw what may have looked like the Hollywood version of ghosts. These were lifeless souls hanging in the empty space above their heads. It was a scary surprise to have to see that. Their hearts almost jumped from that sight. Out of curiosity, Francina and Kali looked intensely at the ghosts that were hovering above their heads to see who those ghosts were. The ghosts were too bright and blinding.