Usual standard declarations about age, etc. apply here.
As an author, I set the characters up, tell them precisely what I want them to do, and then send them off to do it. And of course they bugger off and do exactly what they want. Honestly, it's like trying to herd cats! So if you read chapter 1, you'll know some of the characters already, and guessed they may have a few secrets yet to reveal. (And if you haven't read chapter 1 you'll be completely in the dark – enjoy the guessing game!) But, I like them already, and I hope you do too.
*****
He could hear the children, the song they chanted as they played together, and the appalling, familiar dread swept through him. He tried to stand, to shout, to scream a warning, to scare them away, but could do nothing. He could feel the wounds in his arm and back burn hotter and hotter, his torn and twisted ankle shattered from the last RPG strike. He wasn't worried about the grenades or rockets though – it was the children.
He wanted to push away the swirling, smoky clouds - grey and brown and loaded with dust and propellant, acrid to his nose and palate. But his arms wouldn't move. He was stuck fast as if cemented somehow to the rubble strewn floor as the children drew nearer. Soon they would appear around the corner. He would see them. They would see him. They would skip and dance...
The wound in his knee was migrating upward, travelling ever higher and slipping around to the back of his thigh. He was bleeding out. He knew it. There was nothing he could do. But the children would stop it. They would...
He screamed and at last his arms moved. He flailed and felt his fingers strike something soft, something that cried out. The cry slowed his frantic efforts to escape. A weight, not heavy, but nevertheless firm, settled across his chest. Hands held his wrists - small hands.
Children's hands? He tensed and felt the weight across him do the same in response.
No. Not children. The children weren't here. They were gone. All gone.
Reid opened his eyes. At first he could only see a yellow haze – a haze that gradually sharpened until he realized he was looking at the top of a head - a blond head. It was a pretty colour, he concluded slowly, and finally relaxed his body.
"I'm awake," he muttered, his tongue thick and heavy in his parched mouth.
The head shifted upward and Wren's face came into view, staring into his eyes with concern and worry evident in every aspect of her expression. Fear had left her face to leave it appearing older than it really was. She looked very pale and drained, smudges of dirt and a couple of drops of blood on one cheek leaving her looking even more like a homeless waif than she normally did.
"Please don't kill me!" she whispered.
Those four words, hardly discernible over the sound of water slapping against something (a dock? a pier? a boat?) outside, shocked him back to reality and he tried to sit bolt upright. Initially her weight held him down, although he knew she was a very slight little thing, and then pain from his thigh suddenly kicked in.
"Ah! Shit!" he yelled.
"You mustn't move!" she urged him. "You mustn't! It will start bleeding again!"
Again? It had stopped? If she had managed to make a two inch cut right through his thigh stop bleeding, she had to be a miracle worker.
"Okay," he sighed. "I won't move. Can you let go of my wrists now?"
Wren looked into his eyes for a moment and then gave a small nod. He felt his right wrist released and he flexed his fingers: she had squeezed hard enough to cut off the blood supply. Which was quite impressive, he thought. She couldn't be more than what ...five-two maybe, and weigh no more than fifty kilos? She had one hell of a grip for someone that size.
She shifted, lifting herself off him and drawing back onto her knees. He drew his left arm up; unable to help noticing that it had been held under her body, against her groin. His hand felt warm. He tried not to think about that.
"You were having a nightmare," she commented quietly. "You were thrashing about and I didn't want you to reopen your cuts. I tried to hold you down. I thought you might kill me in your sleep."
"You did a pretty good job," Reid noted. "I get nightmares quite often and it apparently takes quite some effort to keep me contained. You did well."
She flushed at the praise, the colour coming back to a chalky, pale face.
"I should check the dressing," she said.
"Wait a moment!" His words checked her movement, but he was pleased to see no fear in her eyes now. "What happened? Where are we? What's going on?"
She pursed her lips, and then smiled very sweetly at him.
"You saved my life. You were fighting the Fiddlers and ... and ... it was amazing. It looked like something from one of those chop suey movie things. I could hardly see you move and then ... and then two of them were down and you told me to get on the boat. I didn't see what happened next until I managed to jump aboard and the next thing I knew you were sort of hopping towards me with that huge knife, and I could see more of Cole's men running towards us and I was so frightened. The boat started drifting away and then you sort of stepped forward and fell flat on your face. You went unconscious, so I dragged you in here."
She wound down and took a gasp of breath. Then she leaned forward and kissed him very lightly on the lips.
"You saved my life," she repeated in a whisper, after a few very long seconds during which he discovered how incredibly soft her lips felt.
"That's what friends do, I guess."
She smiled at his reply.
Wren sat back again and then drew her shawl down from where it was tucked around his shoulders. Reid realised for the first time that he was shirtless, and – when the shawl was drawn all the way down – pantless as well. He shivered in the cool air, realising consciously for the first time that wherever they were, they had made it through the night. He could see very clearly in reflected sunlight.
His thigh was wrapped in bloodstained cloth, and as she leaned forward to very carefully unwind it, he realised that she had torn the sleeves from her dress to bandage him. He also realised that the resultant holes in the sides of her midnight blue dress not only bared her arms, but also allowed him to see her small, but very pretty breasts in a somewhat grubby white bra.
She noticed his glance and smiled again. "You were bleeding very heavily, so I made a tourniquet with one sleeve and used the other to bandage you up and keep the pressure on the wound."
"So, I know we're still on the boat of course," he said. "I can feel us bobbing about. But how did we get away?"
She pursed her lips again in thought. "I don't really know. I was trying to drag you into the cabin and didn't really want to put my head up. But when I did take a peek, we seemed to be a long way away from the shore."
"But the boat was drifting in, how come it drifted straight out again?" Reid mused.
