With difficulty, Nastasia pushed herself to a tottering stand and unsteadily followed along the river.
She remembered reading once that a person can't go wrong following a river when trying to find civilization. When she had fallen from the cliff she had been at the border between Russia and China, chased quite a way from the excavation site. It was hard to say which side of the border she had fallen, but she prayed that if it was the Chinese they'd understand her plight and not detain her.
The thought of running into a Chinese border patrol, after it had come, left Nastasia uneasy. Especially since the words she knew were but a mere handful.
Her regrets at not choosing to learn Chinese during the year she obsessed over languages, soared. Within the confines of her mind, thinking of this and that and berating herself over this and that, she almost walked past a well-beaten path. Halting abruptly, she walked backward a few steps to peer down its depths and began to consider her options. She moved to cross her arms in deep thought as she usually did when mulling over things.
Sting!
Wincing at the painful reminder, her gaze shifted right, toward her dangling arm. Blood spidered down the length and dripped from her fingertips. A trail of blood marked her path in even splotching drips. The notice made her light-headed and almost brought with it a feeling of the ground rising up to meet her face.
No!
She rejected it.
Nastassia forced her body to remain upright and refused to give into the feeling of fainting. She took a deep breath and once she was collected enough; she turned down the well-beaten path. She felt that there would be a better chance at finding a person, town, or someone's home going down this way. The path looked so well traveled it surely saw enough traffic that it was bound to lead to somewhere bustling... or so she hoped, anyway.
With the sun beating at her back, her injury pulsating painfully, and her feet aching with every hard-fought step it felt an eternity of walking before Nastassia came across people. Her heart was jumping for joy and there was almost a spring in her step as she hurried forward. It was for this reason that she did not notice the oddities about the town ahead. The buildings were decidedly Asian and had the feeling of an ancient city. The people milling about were dressed up kinda like a wuxia film...
'A film... is this a large set for a movie?' Nastassia couldn't help but wonder.
As she walked through the threshold, many eyes found purchase upon her body, piling upon her many types of odd looks. Again, because of her excitement at having finally found another living person, she rushed towards them without really paying attention to her surroundings. She didn't notice the fear and suspicion displayed so clearly on their faces.
Lifting her uninjured arm, she waved down the nearest one, hoping that -even if he couldn't speak English- she'd be able to communicate with him efficiently. "Do you speak English? Can you understand me?" She asked. "Do you have a cellphone... or a smartphone I could borrow?"
In many of the languages she learned -for items like these- the English words, or a form of it, was used. She hoped that such words were in use by the Chinese as well. Though, even if that were the case, it would be difficult to prove that she wasn't a suspicious person being limited to such words.
The man backed up as if she were a leper. His eyes widened in fear and his mouth shouted out words in another language, words she didn't know. They were words in Chinese, which she stupidly put off learning. Again she felt her heart aching in regret. She was definitely going to take the time to learn Chinese once she made it out of this mess.
After his shouting, the rest of the passerby on the street -as if suddenly coming back to themselves- followed his example and moved well away from her. The women shuddered, the children began crying and the men looked ready to start getting rough. Left bewildered by such strong reactions, Nastassia spoke as slowly and calmly as possible as she looked about in hopes of one of them being able to understand her.
The moment she took a step forward she found herself sucking in a painful breath as someone from the crowd launched a rock at her right shoulder. The pain that had numbed during her long walk began to flare again. It was nearly unbearable. Beads of sweat formed upon her brow and trailed downward as her face twisted against the pain.
"迷路吧,恶魔!(Get lost, you demon!)"
More shouts rose from the crowd after that and many things – rocks mostly- came hurtling towards her. Her body was more robust than most and had been tempered by the martial arts her grandfather forced her to learn for protection, yet it didn't seem to amount to much under the restraints of her heavily injured body.
It took everything she had to sidestep the thrown objects, with more than one successfully hitting the mark.
Just as she was going to make a full turnabout and head out of the village, perhaps find her way back over the Russian/ China border, a heavy clanking came to interrupt the thought. Pressing through the riled up crowd was a group of heavily armored soldiers wielding long and jaggedly pointed spears. There was a middle-aged, pot-bellied townsperson leading the way, a finger thrust toward her direction as he cried out.
"她在那边! 红魔在哪边! (She's over there! The Red Demon is over there!)"
The soldiers poured in as the crowd opened up to allow them through. Nastassia felt her breath catch in her throat in fear as they filed in around her, spears pointed out, ready to pierce. She held her left hand up placatingly, the right refused to budge and dangled at her side uselessly.
"M-Might any of you know English?" She asked politely and even added in a gentle smile.
Only to be rewarded with a spear jabbed toward her face by the head soldier and roughly spat out words. She didn't need to know what was said to understand that he was wanting her to comply and turn herself in. She looked at the townspeople dressed in ancient-looking clothes and then toward the soldiers decked head to toe in armor, carrying both spear and sword.
There was only one decision she could reach while facing this situation.
Run!