Ferryman by Claire McFall

other hand, she would never be able to find it alone and she was terrified of being deserted in the wilderness. He seemed to sense her uncertainty. He walked back towards her, coming uncomfortably close, bending his knees so that they were at eye-level. She wanted to step backwards, but she was frozen like a rabbit in headlights. Echoes stirred in Dylan’s memory, but then he was looking right at her, far too near, and she lost her train of thought.
    “We need to go this way,” he whispered, hypnotically. “You have to come with me.”
    He looked intently at her, watched as her pupils dilated to almost obscure the green, then smiled a satisfied smile.
    “Come on,” he ordered.
    Without thinking about it, Dylan’s feet obeyed.
    Trudge, trudge, trudge. They continued over boggy marshland that seemed, somehow, to be always uphill. Dylan’s legs were screaming and her trainers had long since given up staying dry. Every step she took was accompanied by a cold squelch in her shoes. Her flared jeans had soaked up the water almost to her knees and they were dragging with every pace.
    Tristan, however, was unfazed by her dark looks and grumbling. He kept up the pace ruthlessly, always staying a metre or so ahead of her, silent and determined. Occasionally, if she stumbled, he would whip his head round, but as soon as he ascertained that she was fine, he would continue to march resolutely onward.
    Dylan began to feel more and more uncomfortable. The silence between them was like a brick wall, totally impenetrable. It almost felt like he resented being stuck with her, like she was an inconvenient little sister he’d reluctantly promised to babysit. There was nothing to do but take on the role and traipse along after him; the sulky little girl who wasn’t getting her way. Dylan was far too intimidated to try and confront him about his unfriendly, almost hostile, behaviour. She tucked her chin into her jumper and sighed. Looking down at the long grass, trying in vain to pick out the holes and oddly shaped clumps that longed to trip her, she muttered miserably under her breath and continued to plod in Tristan’s wake.
    At the peak of yet another hill he finally paused. “Do you need to rest for a bit?”
    Dylan looked up, a little disorientated from lumbering with her head down for so long.
    “Yeah, that’d be good.” She felt the need to whisper after the prolonged silence, but the wind that whipped around them snatched her words from the air as soon as they left her mouth. He seemed to understand though, because he ambled over to a large rock that protruded from the grass and heather, and arranged himself nonchalantly against it. He stared out across the landscape, as if on sentry duty.
    Dylan didn’t have the energy to look for a suitable dry spot. She sank to the ground where she stood. Almost instantly the wet grass seeped through her jacket and then her seat, but her shoes and jeans were already so cold and soggy that she barely registered the change. She was too tired to think, too tired to argue. Robbed of spirit, she was ready to blindly follow wherever Tristan chose to lead her. Perhaps that had been his plan all along, she thought blackly.
    It was odd; somewhere at the back of her mind she knew that there were several things wrong. There was the fact that they had walked for the best part of two days and not met anybody, the fact that she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since the crash yet she didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, and finally – most frightening of all – the fact that she hadn’t spoken to her mum or dad for forty-eight hours and they had no idea where she was or that she was all right. Somehow these thoughts stayed at the back of her head, nagging her, but only vaguely; gentle tugs on the tail of a charging stallion. She couldn’t focus on them.
    Suddenly Tristan looked in her direction, and she was too absorbed in her thoughts to look away in time.
    “What?” he asked.
    Dylan bit her lip,