Rollalong hill {part 5 of 6}-EDITED

ROLLALONG HILL part 5--> Edited



Without a saddle, Jinx’s sister had been very difficult to hold on to. She fell off twice before the massive hairy creature stopped, and the largest (whom Nattalie found out was the eldest alpha of the clan) told her she would have to hang on much tighter or she would be carried by mouth the rest of the journey.
Nattalie had been terrible frightened when the Gnats threw Jax against a tree and carried her away, but the elder told her that Jax was lucky not to be a light snack, and Jinx would be along shortly. It was difficult to understand that the great beasts wouldn’t hurt her when they growled and snorted so much at her as they rode, but hearing Jinx would be coming along made things much more adventurous and a lot less like a strange childhood nightmare.
There was a lot of time to think for the first hours after she learned she could brace her feet and arms tightly into the thick coarse fur. Prior to that all she could do was try pathetically to hang on and try not to get eaten for holding too tightly. Now she locked her grip and found the ride near tolerable. She began wondering what had happened to the life she had before Jax showed up at their farm.
Nattalie had seen her father heal many townspeople while she was watching from the knothole in her bedroom wall. She was incapable of doubting that her father would heal Jax when he was found.
The moons’ light was starting to dim, and one had already set. Dark turned to dawn. She was exhausted but afraid to close her eyes and fall off the gnat again. She was hoping Jinx would have caught up to them by daylight. He was smaller and much easier to ride, even bareback. He too though, had secrets. She couldn’t trust him or her Father, and so far the only one that hadn’t lied to her since their lives got turned upside down was Jax.
She couldn’t stop thinking about all the unanswered questions. Why were they running? Why had Jinx pretended he couldn’t speak efficiently? Why had her father never mentioned that he was a hero at Unitary? What were those soldiers doing at her great Uncles house? She felt hunted, and now she wondered if she had been in peril for much longer then when this all started. Jinx had lots to tell her. And she hoped he would tell her before they reached the mysterious destination.
She longed for the days where she only worried about how to slip off the farm and see what magic the kids were learning up at the school house.
As the light began to come over the huge thundercloud shaped mountains in the horizon Nattalie thought she could see a person skimming the treetops in the orchard full of glowing fruit blossoms to the east. She smiled as the great beast below her slowed panting and growling. Her father had fixed Jax! She started formulating a plan to talk Jinx into sneaking away so that she could talk to him. The Gnats had to rest soon, Jinx should have caught up by now. The elder nudged Nattalie off the back of the resting mount, and motioned to another sister, now laying ready for her to ride. “Aren’t you going to rest?”
Nattalie wanted to be brave and tell them she would go no farther without Jinx, but choked on the words when those huge black pools stared down at her from their spirally barricade. The elder spoke harshly, but it still came out with a beautiful tone. “We can not. You must be into the deadlands by sunrise in two days.”
Nattalie climbed up onto the gnat laying impatiently chewing on a large limb that had somehow emerged, bloody and torn. The elder would say no more, ran into the wood and came back out swallowing something that resembled a giant legless lizard. The elder placed her forehead onto her exhausted sister, their horns linking just slightly. The elder began singing. It started low and then became a loud and trembled hum. The gnat she pressed against fell over, silent and peaceful.
“Whats going on!” Nattalie felt like crying, but she couldn’t be sure why. “Is she dead?” The gnat below her stood, bowed her head and howled sadly into the dirt. The elder only looked out to the mountains glowing copper and bright from the approaching day.
Nattalie felt her bravery grow, and her fear of the great beasts shrink. She couldn’t let Jinx’s sisters just die… No matter how mad she was at Jinx. She ran over to the beast trying to find the magic in the air. She had seen him do it, he placed one hand… Nattalie tried to reach her tiny hand under it’s great heavy head, but could only get her fingers squashed by it’s twisted antlers. She had seen her father place his hands on the head sometimes instead of under. The gnats never interfered. They watched, all of them humming sadly.
Nattalie could feel tiny bits of energy welling up inside, but nothing would build enough for her to make even a small impulse go into the gnat. It was a giant black hole, and her heart was feeling heavier as she tried to fill it. She felt tears crawling down her face, but she could not stop, she had to keep trying. She had heard him say, “Make my energy yours and heal.” When a child was dying at the school grounds. A bad magic had gone horrible wrong and exploded the child into unconsciousness. Her father had healed him. She had to be able to do the same. The dark emptiness she could feel got colder. She pushed every little trickle she had and sobbed, “make my energy yours… please don’t die.”
The humming from the sisters was the only thing she could hear, and all she could see was the dark empty space when she closed her eyes. If she could only pull more. She knew, without any of the gnats telling her that this one had died because of carrying her. Jinx had found them and was laying next to Nattalie humming. His big wet nose finally pushed her hand from his sisters face. Nattalie jumped into his big furry embrace and pounded his chest with her useless fists. “Why Jinx!” Jinx let her pound on him until she had nothing left, and when she fell to her knees the elder called Jinx to her. He lay in front of her as she gave him a strange whimpering growl.
Jinx ran into the orchard and came back with the saddle. He lay it in front of the elder and she snorted and then nodded in acceptance as she looked to her sister laying dead. Nattalie was too tierd to fight, and too tierd to care why it was all happening. She just wanted to climb onto Jinx fall asleep and wake up back at home in her bed. She wanted to wake up and find out none of it was real. Jinx had fastened and buckeled most of the straps but Nattalie had to do the last two because the clasps were too small for Jinx to manage.
Nattalie stopped stepping defiantly in front of Jinx. “You tell me the truth Jinx.”
Jinx nodded.
“Are you going to die if I ride you? I’ve already ridden for so long.” Nattalie once again felt despair at how much Jinx had given to be by her side. She wouldn’t let him die. They would have to drag her dead body before she would let Jinx die beneath her.
Jinx craned his big thick neck toward the saddle. “Only a female gnat will die carrying you.” Nattalie felt relieved, but terrible that she had really killed Jinx’s sister.
“You promise you will tell me what all this is about?” Nattalie grabbed his horn gently and stared into his Deep blue sparkling pools. His orange day lid blinked over it adjusting to the daylight. “Promise.”
Jinx nodded and nudged her to the saddle. “I promise, but we have to hurry.”
The next leg of the trip Nattalie slept waking on a few occasions to hear the Gnats swiping through a heard of miniature elk lopping them up into the air and then down into their giant gaping mouths. Jinx would spit the antlers off to the side as they ran. Nattalie woke a few hours after the group had gone through some damp smelly swampland. When she looked back at the vast terrain filled with grass taller then the gnats and trees weeping branches cascading into wet squishy ground, she regretted not being able to see it from the inside. She was traveling the world, seeing it for the first time and she was too scared or too tired to look at it. Jinxs’ sisters were not in sight, and it seemed that they were alone on the soggy path almost through the edge of the mountains. Jinx stopped at a clean puddle of water built up from condensation from the mountains side.
Nattalie took the chance to ask, knowing it would be harder when they took off again. Her stomach growled as she asked, “Where are the deadlands?”
Jinx finished lapping up the bit of water that was left. “Another day north. Then a few hours west.”
Nattalie shifted in her seat and remembered the cookies in her pocket. She pulled one out and then hugged Jinx as she chomped. “You haven’t had any rest in four days Jinx, can’t we just stop for a while?”
She was more concerned for his safety after watching his sister die. Jinx was not incapable of lieing to her. She also needed to get her legs stretched before they petrified into the mounted position.
Jinx only shook a little and rested down on all fours to let Nattalie get off easier. “We can rest until my sisters catch up. Elder said we can not stop.”
Nattalie remembered seeing Jax early that morning. “Oh!” Nattalie’s legs gave out and she found herself flat on her back grinning up at the cloudy sky. “Jinx, what if Jax could carry me in the sky?”
Jinx seemed perplexed for a moment and laying his great head sideways against his paws to look at her sniffed at the air. “Jax is very far away, even if a sky-glider could carry two, I am faster.”
Nattalie knew that Jinx might be correct about the flight speed, but if it could give the Gnats some time to rest and catch up to them later it seemed worth a try.
“He was at the orchards this morning, I’m sure he’s not far behind.”
Jinx answered her again, sure that she was mistaken. “Jax is with Allen and that tastey old man very far West.”
Nattalie knew what she had seen. Maybe Jinx was lieing again. “I’m telling you I saw him sky-gliding over the Lonelyfruit Trees.”
Jinx sniffed at the air again. He stood completely still and turned his head like a snap, smelling the back of the breeze. “I am grabbing some food, and then we have to go.”
Jax wasn’t the only sky-glider. He was just rare. Nattalie got the sense that they weren’t just being hunted, Nattalie was being tracked like prey.
Jinx only took long enough for Natt to brush off and pull her bag inside out into a rain jacket. She could shove most of the things into the saddle. The sky was growing darker and thunder rolled ominously in the distance. Jinx hopped over and down a steep rock face from above and hunched for her to get on. “We can’t wait for my sisters, Unitary is not far.”
Nattalie did not know why unitary was threatening, why her father and the gnats wanted to get away from them, but despite his deception, Jinx only protected her. She would not doubt him now. Nattalie left the things she was going to put on the saddle laying in the dirt. It was really one of her favorite dresses. She had hoped to wear it one night for Jax. Nattalie had just grabbed hold of the hand braces when Jinx shot off into a leaping run.
Jinx’s muscles started to tremble not long after they had reached the end of the rock-strewn path. Rain drizzled from the sky. Soft specs of water started to saturate his fur. Lightning started to flash out in the fields below them. The rocks gave way to green meadows full of exotic ground cover. There were tall weeds full of small interlaced red blossoms, and there were short enormous blooms of every color. The grass grew thin, and it grew thick. The smell felt overwhelming, like pleasant toxic gases. The colors radiated through the dry green grass even under the dark raging sky.
Jinx passed a herd of striders who whinnied and galloped away as he panted. Nattalie wanted to know so badly what was happening, but could only feel concerned about Jinx as his speed grew faster under the lightning and thunder above.



Allen, Stewart and Jax woke to thunder echoing inside the caverns and loosening stone from it’s walls onto the makeshift beds. They gathered up their things after munching on some dryed nuts and berrys that Stewart kept packed in a large sack hanging over the graying stallion’s back.
Jax was first to be ready. He went to the caverns mouth to fly around and seek their trail to Nattalie. He had gathered just enough air on the rim of the barrier when two swooping skin winged raptors swept down to pluck him from the mountains edge.
Allen was not as quick as his uncle. One fell, loudly tumbling into the pine grove below, a black dagger wedged through it’s throte. The other screeched barely grazing Jax’s shoulder as it watched its companion fall dead.
It flew away quickly looking back on them with dark slits for eyes. Allen watched it fly west. Stewart checked Jax’s wound. “It could have killed you.” Stewart was talking to Allen more then he was to the young sky-glider.
“Was that a relic beast?” Allen watched it’s tail, long and thin slice through the air as it perched striking distance away on another part of the mountain face.
Stewart seemed lost for words. Jax prepared his wall of air again.
“You can’t fly against that thing Jax.” Allen put a firm hand on the boys other shoulder.
Jax was not pleased. “Your daughter is out there with a litter of gnats, running to heavens knows what, and you want me to be cautious!?” Jax was finally realizing that his whole career with Unitary had been a lie. They used devices to torture old men. They used poisonous magic on their enemys, and they brought war to peaceful nations for no other reason then to gain power. He was on the right side now, and he knew it, Nattalies side. His yearning to know Nattalie was safe was more powerful then his disgust with Unitary.
Allen could feel Jax’s magic vibrating the air around them. It was growing. High emotions had a way of drawing in more then a person was intending, or usually capable. “Jax,” He let go of his shoulder, and Stewart looked upon him with pity. “We will see Nattalie safe again, I will move this entire Earth to make sure that happens.”
Jax started to nod and release the air about him. “What am I doing Admiral…”
Unitary had deceived him, and Allen could remember that same feeling when he realized how much destruction had been unnecessarily cast about in the wake of their wars. “Exactly what you wanted to do when you joined them.” Allen pulled from his cloak the dagger he had been awarded by the Emperor of Unitary Capitol. Soldiers only received it when they had achieved the rank of Admiral, or the title of high magician. Allen had gotten both titles from the same ceremony after his grand victory in the deadland borders. He had barricaded thousands of Relic Beasts into an earthen Coral and allowed his men to rain upon them horrendous fires until they all burnt.
Allen showed the dagger to a downcast Jax. “This means nothing if I don’t try to make things right by the people I hurt.” Allen walked the dagger into the pool of anti-magic gathered at the end of the tunnel. Jax and Stewart had fallowed. He dropped it in. The rare jewels glittered even from far beneath the waters calm surface. Lighting cracked open the sky and rent a tree into splintering ashes beneath the cavern.