Catch Your Death - Lauren Child

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immediately see how she was expected to cross the river. She felt exhausted; she hadn’t eaten in a good while and didn’t want to waste more time walking a mile upriver to find a better crossing place. Far too much time had been lost getting lost.

      No, she would cross here. If she could make it down to the precarious-looking stepping-stone rocks, she would be OK – she would figure it out. It was a dangerous plan by anyone’s reckoning: one slip and the rapids would grab her.

       Mistake seven: taking an unnecessary risk.

      Had she allowed her brain to hook up with her survival instincts, she would have decided it might be wise to stop for a while. It had been raining continuously for five solid hours and the ground was sodden and the rock slippery. Thirty seconds into her descent, Ruby lost her balance, her arms flailed and she caught air as her boots slipped and her feet lost contact with the rock – a nasty collision and then Ruby found herself clinging to the branch of a near-dead tree. It was inevitable that either the tree or Ruby would finally have to let go – Ruby had no intention of losing her grip and so it was the tree that gave up first. She had lost count of the mistakes she had made and all she could think as she felt herself falling was, What kind of duh brain are you Ruby Redfort?

      There was no time to answer this sad question before she plummeted down into the icy-cold water.

      

      FROM THAT POINT ON, Ruby’s mind was no longer thinking: everything was beyond her control. Her body was wrenched this way and that, sucked under, spat out, dragged round rocks until she was finally tumbled down a short but furious waterfall.

      The pressure was immense and exhausting, impossible to fight. She felt herself pushed to the very bottom of the stony river bed before several seconds later bobbing up into a pool of calm, clear water. She dragged herself onto the bank, spluttering water from her lungs and feeling both fortunate and unfortunate to be alive.

      Unfortunate because she had now lost her entire kit, one boot and her glasses and, without her glasses, well, she couldn’t really see a thing.

       Mistake who-knows-what: losing a vital part of one’s equipment.

      Also unfortunate because Ruby was utterly lost and completely alone. She thought of Hitch’s parting words:

       ‘Something goes wrong out there – you know I’ll find you.’ But would he, could he? She certainly wasn’t feeling optimistic. Would she ever see anyone again?

      What was in some ways worst of all was the thought that if she did survive she would have to explain herself to Spectrum, to admit she had failed. Ruby knew she could never do that. She would have to keep the truth from them and instead fake an injury, an excuse for her failure to get back to base on time. She was busy contemplating what kind of injury it should be when she realised that there would be no need to fake one: her left foot was pouring blood.

      It was the kind of wound that would be dealt with easily any place civilised, but in the wilds of nowhere was actually rather serious. A deep gash to her foot, painful and bothersome. How was she going to make it back now? She was just contemplating this troublesome predicament when she found herself losing consciousness.

      When a person experiences tremendous pain or alarming injury, it is not unusual for the body to go into shock and shut down, resulting in heavy sleep. This is the body’s survival mechanism, there to conserve energy and deal with fear, stress, blood loss etc. In the right situation, this can be a useful state, there to protect against mental trauma, but in some circumstances, the wilds of nowhere, hostile environments and so on, it can put the victim in great peril.

      These words, which she had learned in the comfort of her Twinford home, echoed in Ruby’s mind for a moment before she found herself drifting back in time to Wolf Paw Mountain. Very small and very alone, but for the creature with the pale blue, violet-circled eyes.

      Then nothing.

       Meanwhile, unlocking the large carved oak door of the apartment. . .

      . . .the elegant young woman stepped out of her heels and glanced down to see a pale blue envelope lying there on the black and white floor. It was addressed and stamped, but had been delivered by hand; there was no postmark and no name to indicate who it was for.

      But Lorelei von Leyden knew that it was definitely intended for her.

      Rather than pick it up, she fumbled in her purse and took from it a polythene bag containing a pair of white silk gloves; she shook them out and carefully pulled them on. Only then did she pluck the envelope from the cold marble. She reached for the paperknife that lay on the hall table and, piercing the paper, ran it along the top of the envelope.

      She withdrew a completely blank sheet of white paper, held it between her fingers and wafted it in front of her nose, breathing deeply.

      Then she staggered back as if she had had a terrible shock, as if she had just been given the most dreadful news.

      

      WHEN RUBY WOKE, the first thing she smelled was woodsmoke. Someone had lit a campfire. She slowly sat up and peered around; it was all rather fuzzy and hard to make out, but then she heard a voice she knew well.

      ‘You look in pretty bad shape Redfort.’ Sam Colt was silhouetted against the light sky, a sky now clear of rain.

      ‘How did you find me?’ Ruby croaked.

      ‘I’m a tracker, wasn’t difficult,’ he replied.

      ‘How much time do I have?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘Depends how you look at it,’ he said. ‘You might consider time to be up or you might say you got all the time in the world.’

      Ruby slumped back. ‘What happened?’

      ‘My guess?’ said Colt in a slow drawl. ‘You lost focus – set about trying to beat the elements. Sometimes you can be lucky with that approach.’ He peered at her from under the brim of his hat. ‘Sometimes not.’

      ‘What do I do now?’ said Ruby.

      ‘Now we got a stitch that wound on your foot, clean it up before it goes septic and then I’ll get you to base camp.’

      He made neat work of the stitching and although it wasn’t exactly pain-free Ruby was grateful that he was able to take care of it without drama. He found her a spare pair of boots from his kit, a little too big but certainly better than no boots.

      She drank a cup of something hot and sweet-tasting, but she was unable to eat – the pain had made her nauseous.

      ‘You’re gonna have to ride in back,’ Samuel Colt said, saddling up. He helped Ruby onto the back of his horse and together they galloped across the plains.

      When they reached the edge of a high bank on the edge of the woods, Sam pulled the horse up and helped Ruby down.

      ‘I’ll let you make your own way from here,’ he said. ‘That way it won’t show on your test score.’

      ‘I guess I flunked,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Depends how you define failure,’ said Sam.

      ‘Depends how Spectrum define failure,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Survival don’t sound like failure to me,’ he replied. He tipped his hat at her, turned and rode off, like he was the Lone Ranger himself.

      Just

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