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dizziness was lessening.
    Scooting back on the stump to sit with my back resting against a slender birch behind it, I nodded. “Yeah. I think I’m okay now. Just got a little dizzy. I think I might still be adjusting to life as a non-frozen human being again, and then with what happened back there in the clearing....” Recalling the desperation I’d felt throwing rocks at AntiCormack while he slowly advanced, I suddenly buried my face in my hands, shuddering. “Oh my gosh. I thought I was going to die. I really thought I was going to die.”
    My full-body trembling, which had mostly stopped, now started right back up again, and I felt sick to my stomach.
    Moving my hands from my face to wrap my arms around my middle, I tried to focus on keeping my breathing slow. “Oh my gosh. I thought I was living my last moments.”
    Out of nowhere, my eyes welled with tears, and I quickly raked the back of my hand across them. “Sorry again. It’s all just kind of hitting me or something.”
    My eyes welled once more, and I raked a hand across them once more, irritated with myself. I was determined not to cry in front of a man who was still pretty much a stranger, and a stern one at that. A man who I wasn’t quite sure about yet.
    “I should have known I’d have some kind of a spell on the way back to the village. I’ve always been such a delayed reaction sort of person.”
    It was true. Sometimes my subconscious seemed to need some time to process things, whether that be minutes or months.
    While I began taking deep, steadying breaths with my nausea and shakiness easing, Cormack looked like he might have some kind of a “spell” himself. Raking a hand through his thick, dark hair, his expression was a near-comical mix of concern and something that resembled anger or impatience. Though actually, it wasn’t so much a mix of these expressions; it was more as if his face was cycling between these expressions every second or so, as if Cormack was torn between emotions. Apparently, he feared that the sight of me would make things worse for him, because he seemed unable to look at me, like he had during most of our hike. He simply scanned the nearby trees, as if they held the answer to some question he was struggling with.
    On maybe his fourth hair-raking, he finally spoke, turning his gaze to me with what appeared to be a little difficulty. “Would you like me to carry you back to the village on my back while I’m in bear form? It might make all this... quicker.”
    With my dizziness now gone, I just looked at him for a long moment, contemplating his words. After a final deep breath, I then stood and began stepping through a patch of tall grass, heading south. “No, thank you. If having to hike through the woods with me is such nightmarish hell, then I actually want it to go on as long as possible.”
    I knew he probably hadn’t meant his words the way I’d instantly taken them, but his obvious discomfort and impatience with my “spell,” my brimming eyes, and the things I’d said, had made me want to lash out. Ordinarily, I might have inwardly chastised myself for not having the self-control to bite my tongue, but on this particular day, I almost thought I deserved a pass. I’d awoken after being frozen for hundreds of years; I’d escaped from a hospital in a panic; I’d faced an otherworldly-looking shadowy bear; and I’d thought I was going to be killed. Besides, it wasn’t like Cormack had exactly been all sweetness and light to me, either.
    We walked the rest of the way back to the village without either of us saying another word.
    I wasn’t quite sure what I’d been expecting, maybe gray cinder-block structures as cold and stoic as Cormack’s personality, but the village was lovely. Beautiful, even. I hadn’t been able to see much of it at all from the hospital, even once I’d gotten outside.
    Viewing it from the top of a gentle yet tall hill we’d crested once out of the forest, it immediately reminded