Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [41]
The angle of the slope increased and the density of the trees gave way to rounded boulders, covered with slick, wet moss. Peter slipped on one of them and fell hard on his rear, pulling Bo down with him. They began sliding downwards, going faster and faster. He dared not release Bo’s arm or he’d surely lose her in the darkness, so he held on tight, even though he could hear her smashing into rocks and other things as they fell. In little time they came up against a pocket of larger rocks that stopped their descent hard and fast.
Peter was in terrible pain. He’d banged his knee against something, and he thought there might be a cut above his already-injured eye. He was pretty sure blood was leaking down to pool in the folds of swollen flesh. He’d finally had to release Bo, as the last smashing stop jolted her out of his grip. But he could hear her right beside him. She’d obviously been hurt too.
Then in a panic he remembered Frost! He patted frantically on the ground around him with both hands, and soon enough came across the leather carrying case. Painfully he pushed himself off the ground, into a sitting position. The first thing he did was loop Frost’s strap over his neck and under one arm, so that he couldn’t lose it again. Then he felt around for Bo, but she was somewhere out of arm’s reach.
“Bo?” he said. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I lost my shoe.”
“What?” Relief flooded through him. If that was what had her most upset, she couldn’t be too badly injured, could she?
“You told me to hold onto my shoes, but I lost one of them. I think it was maybe when we fell down the hill. And they’re not shoes, they’re boots, and you shouldn’t call something one thing when it’s another. You don’t know everything, Peter Piper, so don’t think you can tell me what to do.”
Peter felt a flush of happiness. At least Bo was still Bo, he thought. If she could still scold him, then she was all right. And if she was all right then soon enough they both would be.
“Don’t worry, Bo. Your missing boot will have landed somewhere down here with us. We’ll feel around until we find it. But first try to pull your other boot on, so we don’t lose that one while looking for the first.”
“I’m already doing that. You don’t need to tell me obvious things.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “I can’t see you yet. I can only hear you, and I know I should’ve heard you pulling your one boot on, but I’m not very smart and I don’t know what that sounds like.”
Peter sat quiet for a moment, listening to Bo beside him and listening to the greater darkness, trying to hear if there were any sounds of pursuit. He didn’t hear any — at least none that he could identify — but he did hear something he knew well, the constant sound of water trickling and flowing over stones.
“There’s a stream down here in this gully,” he said.
“I know,” Bo said. “I landed in it and now my bum’s wet.”
It was slightly lighter here where the stream cut its way through the woods, because there wasn’t as much tree coverage directly overhead. Now Peter’s eyes had adjusted so that he could make out the rough boundaries of the stream — he was almost in it — and he could see the outlines of a moving shape that he recognized as Bo-like enough to presume it was her.
“Can you stand up?” Peter asked.
“Can you?”
That was as good a question as anyone might ask in these circumstances, so Peter tested it. First he pulled his feet slowly under him, noting that the one with his banged knee seemed a little more numb and more wobbly than the other. Then he pushed himself up, with one hand on a big rock, but mostly by the strength of his legs. There was some newborn-faun shakiness at first, and he was uncertain that he could maintain his balance, but eventually he realized his legs —