Half Lost by Sally Green

shot at. How do you think I feel?”
    â€œLet’s sit by the fire.” Gabriel virtually pulls me to the ground and sits with me, saying, “It’s OK. You’re just wound up.”
    I sit and stare at the fire and Gabriel is close to me, our arms touching. I say to him quietly, “I thought it was Annalise in the Hunter camp. But it wasn’t her. It was Donna.” I glance at the other trainees, who are in a huddle, a few of them still looking over at me.
    â€œYou’re shaking, Nathan.”
    â€œI’m hungry. Knackered.” And that’s part of it for sure.
    â€œShall I find you some food?”
    â€œIn a bit.” And we stay staring at the fire for a while before Gabriel goes to look for some food. When he comes back it’s more packet soup but it tastes OK and it’s warm. I’ve stopped shaking.
    Gabriel says, “Try to sleep. I’ll stay here.” And I lie down and stare at the fire some more.
    * * *
    The camp is being broken up around me. Trainees bustle about and I’m sitting on the ground eating porridge, or at least I think that’s what the almost-solid gray mass of lumps is that I’ve scraped out of a dented saucepan.
    â€œWe’re moving out soon,” Gabriel says, joining me. It’s barely past dawn but I know Greatorex will think we’re dilly-dallying.
    I hold the pan out to him and say, “Want some? It’s disgusting.”
    He shakes his head. “I had some earlier.”
    â€œWhere’ve you been?” I try to sound curious, not childish. But he said he’d stay with me, and yet when I woke he wasn’t there, though Greatorex was.
    â€œGreatorex asked me to talk to Donna.”
    â€œAnd you asked Greatorex to do what in return?” I have a sick feeling he asked her to sit with me, to watch over me like a child.
    He doesn’t reply at first, only keeps eye contact. “I told her you have bad dreams and to kick you if you started screaming and crying.”
    I swear at him but he leans closer to me and says, “I just asked her to get me if you woke up.”
    I throw the saucepan into the fire—all very mature. I did have a dream, not a really bad wake-up-blubbering one, but he wasn’t to know that.
    â€œAre you going to tell me what happened when you left our camp, after you drew your knife on me?”
    â€œI shouldn’t have done that.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI was . . . I’d found two Hunters a couple of days before. I killed them.” And I tell him everything about that and the trap and finding Donna. I don’t tell him much about the fight, no details; he’ll know it was bad.
    Gabriel says, “Greatorex wanted me to see if I can work Donna out.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œShe seems genuine enough. Do you think she’s a spy?”
    I shrug. “You were the one who told me they don’t go around with big signs over their heads.”
    â€œYes, I did say that, didn’t I? Very wise.”
    â€œSo what did Donna say, O wise one?”
    â€œThat she ran away from England a few weeks ago, when things got bad. Her mother was arrested. Her dad died years ago. She made her way to France and then here.”
    â€œThat’s it?”
    â€œThat’s the short version. She’s quite chatty. Didn’t hold back. She talked about you quite a bit too. She likes you.”
    â€œI saved her life . . . rescued her from the clutches of evil.”
    We sit in silence again and then Gabriel says, “She said there were eight of them. Some kind of elite Hunters, two with strong Gifts.”
    â€œNot that strong, evidently.”
    Gabriel sounds sad and worried when he says, “You could have been killed.”
    â€œI could have been killed walking back into camp last night.”
    But I know he’s right. The one with the Gift for projecting pain was a problem. I think her Gift was weak or