Tristan stood immobilised for a moment, but then wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly to him. He rubbed her back with one hand as she continued to cry into his chest.

"Hi," she whispered. His back was to the flames, his face hidden in shadow.

"Tristan!" Dylan gasped. She jumped off the bed, almost falling in her haste to cross the room. He stood as she approached and, forgetting herself, she threw her arms around him in relief. Quiet sobs escaped her, making her chest shake. She nestled her head into his shoulder and let herself drown in the ocean of safety and pleasure that engulfed her.

Eventually Dylan felt the rush of emotions subside into calm, and she drew herself away from him, as the awkwardness returned. She had little experience of being held by boys, and her head was a whirlwind of confused emotions. A blush warmed her cheeks slightly, but she forced herself to look up into his eyes.

"I thought… I thought you were gone." Dylan's voice caught with emotion, but she ploughed on, desperate to know. "What happened, you were just behind me?"

"Hi," he replied, the smile evident in his voice.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Tristan's face was barely recognisable. One eye was puffy and almost closed; the other bloodshot. His jaw was bruised and swollen, and one cheek had a deep gash running the length of it. He struggled to smile, but the attempt clearly hurt. Even in the dark, his eyes conveyed the suffering he had endured. Dylan reached a hand up to stroke his face, but hesitated, afraid to cause him any more pain.

There was a pause. Dylan's eyes searched in the darkness, but she couldn't see enough to read his expression.

He took her hand and led her back over to the bed, sitting beside her. The light from the fire now flickered across his face, illuminating it for the first time and causing Dylan a sharp intake of breath.

"Oh my God, Tristan, what happened to you?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter," he replied. "It's nothing."

"Shh," he soothed. "I told you, it's nothing. You're still sleeping," he commented, an obvious attempt to change the subject.

Dylan shook her head slowly. It wasn't nothing. Tristan's face had been ravaged, mutilated. Was that because of her?

"Tristan…"

Dylan stared at him with pleading eyes. She knew he was trying to avoid discussion of where he'd been, but it felt as though he didn't want to talk to her about anything. She felt rejected. She'd thrown herself at him and made her joy at his return very obvious. Now she just felt foolish. Her eyes smarting, she folded her arms across her chest. He seemed to sense her emotions. He reached and caught one of her hands, pulling it gently away from her side.

"Do you think you could sleep more?" She shook her head before his sentence was finished. "Well, at the very least you should lie down and rest, tomorrow we have far to go."

She nodded. "It was just to pass the time."

He shuffled backwards till he was leaning against the wall and pulled her over beside his chest. She nestled into his side, feeling self-conscious but safe. He didn't seem to want to speak, but was content to lie there beside her. Dylan smiled to herself and allowed herself to relax for the first time in two days.

"I…" she was hesitant, uncertain.

His voice was a low murmur in the dark. "Lie down with me," he coaxed. "Please."

"Come on, lie down. I'll stay with you."

"We should get going," Tristan whispered in her ear. His voice was soft and low, his breath tickled her neck and sent a shiver down her spine. Embarrassed, she jumped off the bed and away from him, coming to a standstill in the middle of the room, opposite a window. She glanced out of it and saw that the wasteland, her wasteland was back.

In the mornin light Tristan's injuries looked even more horrific. His left eye was a blur of blue and black shadows, and his jaw was covered in shades of purple, brown and yellow. The gash down his cheek was beginning to close, but the dried blood stood out starkly against his white skin. He also had several long scratches down his arms. As the morning chased the gloom from the cottage, Dylan traced her fingers down one particularly vicious-looking wound that ran the length of Tristan's forearm. She still lay in his arms, and though she felt incredibly comfortable and secure there, she was afraid to speak and break the silence.

"What do you mean?" Tristan looked up sharply.

"It's changed," she gasped.

"Yesterday, before you came, I looked out of the door and… and…"

Dylan didn't know quite how to describe the world she had seen. "Everything was red -- the sun, the sky, the ground. And I could see souls, thousands of them, travelling with their guides. I saw the demons, they were everywhere." Caught in this memory, Dylan's voice tailed off into a whisper.

"So it's fake? Everything I see is fake? It's just in my head?" Tristan had told her that, told her the wasteland was her projection, but Dylan had never really appreciated just what that meant. Until now. She didn't like it. Although the wasteland of yesterday had been horrifying, she couldn't stand the thought of being tricked by Tristan.

Tristan frowned at her. He could not remember a time when a soul had seen and guessed so much about this world. No soul had ever been separated from their ferryman and survived a demon attack before. Dylan should be lost to him, and yet here she was. He was astounded, and palpably grateful, that she stood before him. How could this seemingly ordinary soul be so extraordinary?

"You only see the true wasteland when you lose your guide," he said to her. "I am the vessel that creates your projection."

Dylan looked at him, and her eyes were pools of helplessness. He held out his hand to her, aware that she was fragile, but knowing it was dangerous to delay.

"Dylan," he said tenderly. There was no way to sugarcoat his words so he tried to lessen their bite with his tone of voice. "You're dead. What you see in your mind is all you have. This place, here, this is the only way you can make the journey. This is what's real."

"Come on," he said. "Let's go." He gave her a warm, reassuring smile that she returned with slightly trembling lips. She stepped forward to take his hand, thrilling a little at the contact, and faced the door. This cottage had been both jail and shelter to her, and she had mixed feelings about leaving it. Keen to be off, Tristan strode confidently to the door and pulled her after him, out once more into the wasteland.

There was no sun today, but the layer of cloud that covered the sky was light and fluffy. Dylan wondered what it revealed about her mood. If she had to identify it herself, she would say pensive and curious. She was confused by what Tristan had said about the wasteland and her mind, but although she did not want to be deceived by this artificial place, she felt a lot safer in the now familiar landscape of hills. Of course, the presence of Tristan played a vital role in that. She looked at him again, at the back of his head and his strong shoulders as he led her forward. What had happened to him? When she had spoken to him last night, he hadn't wanted to talk about it, but Dylan felt responsible for every bruise, every scratch. After all, he was here protecting her.

"Tristan," she began.

Under his gaze, she chickened out and asked something else instead, something she was very curious about. "All those souls… I could see them walking, but they weren't coming for me. For the safe house, I mean."

"No,"

He looked back at her and slowed so that they were walking side by side. "What is it?"

"So, where did they stay? How does that work?"

"Oh." Dylan was quiet for a minute, but she continued to sneak looks at Tristan, wondering if it was alright to pose the question that she really wanted to ask.

Tristan shrugged nonchalantly. "Each ferryman has his own points of safety, of protection here. The way they look, that's you. But that spot, that will always be my safe house."

He caught one of her sidelong looks. "You want to know what happened to me," he guessed. She nodded.

"Why does it matter?" It wasn't so much a question as a stalling tactic whilst he tried to decide what to do: what was right or what he wanted.

He sighed, the desire to be honest and share with her fighting the knowledge that she should not know more about this world than was necessary for her to travel through it.

It worked. Dylan was silent whilst she thought about it.

"Because, well… because it's really my fault. You're here because of me, and if I had been faster, or kept the sun out longer, shining more brightly, then… well, then it would never have happened."

"Yes," he replied. "They can't actually kill me, but they can touch me."

Tristan looked surprised, and he was. This was not the answer he had expected. He'd thought it was simply curiosity about this world, he'd thought it was the human need to know everything. But it was because she cared. A glow began in his chest, and he knew his decision was made.

"You didn't tell me they could hurt you," she said softly, her green eyes wide with empathetic pain.

"They were everywhere, and you were frozen. I could see that you couldn't move, and you needed to run."

Dylan nodded, she remembered this part. Her cheeks burned with disgrace at the memory. If she had just run when he'd told her, if she'd been braver and hadn't been immobilised by fear, they would have both made it.

"Tell me what happened to you." This time she wasn't asking. It was a demand wrapped in velvet, and he couldn't resist her a third time.

Dylan chewed on her lip, guilt rising like nausea inside of her. He felt bad, was blaming himself, when it had been all her fault.

"Tristan --" she tried to interrupt, but he shushed her with his hand.

"I pushed you, and you seemed to come out of a trance. Then, when we ran, I thought we would be okay." He grimaced, shame furrowing his brow. "I didn't mean to let go of you," he whispered.

I'm sorry, Dylan. I'm sorry about that. As soon as they saw that I'd let you go, they surrounded me, got between us. I couldn't get through them to catch up. Then you were running, but the cottage was too far. You weren't going to make it." His eyes had a faraway look at this point, as if he was reliving it. The set of his mouth told Dylan that it was a painful process. Her guilt increased tenfold as she realised that she was hurting him again by dredging this back up, and she began to question her motives. Was it simply nosiness? She hoped not.

"The demons were everywhere. You can't touch them, but I can. Did you know that?"

He broke off at this point and seemed to be struggling internally. Dylan wasn't sure if he was debating about whether to say something or simply trying to work out how to say it. She waited patiently. Tristan looked up at the sky -- quite a feat as they were traversing a fairly steep hill and it was taking all of Dylan's powers of concentration to keep her feet steady and listen at the same time. However the sky seemed to hold his answer as he nodded curtly and sighed.

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak, but not wanting to break his rhythm.

"There are some things that I can do in the wasteland… things that aren't normal, things you might call magical."

"I ran after you and pulled as many of them back as I could. I couldn't get them all; I've never seen them swarm in such a number. It wasn't working. Although I can touch them, I can't damage them. Every time I yanked them away they would simply circle off and attack from another angle."

Dylan held her breath; this was the sort of confession she had been waiting for, something that would make sense of the madness.

Tristan grimaced. "It's difficult, but I can."

Dylan nodded numbly at this. Of course he wasn't just putting himself in danger specially for her. It was his job.

"You should have stopped," Dylan blurted out. "You should have stopped the wind and… and fought them, or --"

"You conjured a wind?" she asked, astonished. "You can do that?"

"What do you mean it's difficult?"

"I conjured up a wind." He paused as Dylan's eyebrows furrowed together, confused. She hadn't noticed that. "You wouldn't have felt it; it was only for the demons."

"It takes a lot of energy, drains me, but it was working. They couldn't hold on to their flight path, and were being buffeted all over the place. They couldn't get a grip on you." He sighed. "But it didn't take them long to figure out what was causing it. The majority of the swarm turned and began to attack me."

Tristan shook his head, stopping her words. "I had to make sure you were safe. You are my number one priority in the wasteland." He smiled at the horrified expression on her face. "I can't die, and I am duty-bound to protect the soul first, myself second."

Dylan pictured it in her head as he spoke. The demons plummeting downwards, curling viciously around him, pulling and scratching at his face. She imagined him trying to fight them off, thrashing his arms at them and trying to run. The demons swarming all over him, grabbing tighter and pulling him down, down into the ground. Although, even in her imagination, he should have been too far away for her to see, every feature of his expression was crystal clear: his face a mask of terror and panic, eyes wide and mouth gaping open in horror. Blood trickled down his face, running into his left eye, where one of the demons had mauled him. In her mind's eye, Tristan slowly disappeared. How much had they hurt him? How much pain had there been in each blow, each clawing talon? All of it for her.

"They tried attacking me, slashing at me with their claws and flying straight at me, kind of like a full body punch. They can't go through me like they can you. There were still some around you, but you were so close to the cottage. I managed to keep it going until I saw you cross the threshold, but then the entire swarm focused on me and there were too many for me to fight. They managed to drag me under."

"The last thing I heard was you calling for me. I tried to fight them off to get to you, but there were too many of them. At least I knew you were safe." He looked at her, blue eyes piercing straight to her core. Dylan could do nothing but gaze back, lost in awe, lost in the depth of his stare.

"Oh!" she gasped, as she felt herself falling forward towards the ground. She closed her eyes and waited for the thump that would force the breath from her lungs and coat her clothes in moisture and muck. Her hands came out in front of her to protect her body from the worst of the impact, but it never came. Tristan's hand darted out and grabbed the back of her jumper, bringing her to an abrupt stop just above the ground. She opened her eyes and peeked at the path. As she'd thought -- wet and mucky. She hadn't even sighed with relief before she was yanked backwards as Tristan pulled her upright. He tried very hard to keep a straight face, but a laugh escaped his clenched jaw.

So of course she fell. Her foot, without being guided by her eyes, caught on a clump of grass sticking out from the ground.

Dylan huffed, and marched away with the little dignity she had left. She heard the laughing intensify behind her.

"Well, no wonder. Look at this place. Couldn't the wasteland be paved?" she hissed, trying to hold on to her anger. Tristan shrugged.

Dylan made a face.

"You are so clumsy," he joked, catching up with her easily. She put her nose up in the air and continued to walk, praying she wouldn't trip again.

"It's your fault," he reminded her, "You make it like this."

"Ah, I see," he said, grinning. "Well, you'll be relieved to know we're past halfway. You'll be out of here soon." He meant it to cheer her up, but Dylan's face fell a little at this news. Then what? What was beyond this wasteland? And did that mean she would never see Tristan again after this? This news was more upsetting than her fear of the unknown. He had become the only person in her world, and she couldn't bear to lose this final thing.

"I hate hiking," she muttered. "And I hate hills."

"Aren't Scottish people meant to be proud of their hills?" He looked at her quizzically. Now it was her turn to shrug.

"Our PE teacher would put us into a minibus every year, drive us out to the countryside and force us up mountains in the freezing cold. It was torture. I am not a big fan of uphill."

Her musings took her to the top of the hill, over a few lumps and bumps and into a natural hollow. The perfect spot for a little rest. She looked hopefully at Tristan and he smiled, understanding. With the smile came a shake of his head, however.

"I'm sorry," he said. "We don't have time Dylan. I don't want us to get caught again."

"Not today," he told her.

Dylan pouted, staring up at Tristan petulantly.

Besides, though she was desperate to hear what happened next, she was afraid of discovering what other tortures he had endured. For her.

He held out a hand, an invitation. Dylan gazed at it morosely, but he was right. They had to try and stay ahead of the night, and the wraiths that came with it. She didn't want Tristan to suffer any more because of her. Reaching out, she took the hand he offered. It was covered with scratches and bruises, mirroring the faded marks on Dylan's own arms, but his grip was strong. He pulled her up out of the hollow and at once she was assaulted by the strength of the wind. It had definitely picked up, and the stinging in her ears deafened her slightly. It made conversation difficult as they descended. Dylan had hoped to get Tristan back to his story, of what had gone on beneath the earth, but it seemed she would have to wait for a more peaceful moment. It wasn't the sort of tale that could be shouted over the wind.