Fool’s Quest

We froze as we were. I felt only a little ashamed. Shun straightened up. “I won’t be in your debt. You were in league with those who stole us. So we owe you nothing for your righting the wrong done to us.”

“I know that.” He walked to the fire and dropped the wood. He crouched and carefully added a stick. He appeared not to notice that we’d eaten the bird he’d been cooking. “I’m here for one reason. To take you back to your people.”

“And you expect no favors from me for your ‘kindness’?” Shun asked sarcastically.

“None.” He looked at her guilelessly. “I won’t deny that I find you beautiful. I think you must already know that from how I look at you. But I understand you owe me nothing. I won’t try to take advantage of you.”

It was as if he had stolen all our weapons from us. Slowly we walked back to his fire. I held my dirty hands out to the flames and felt the warmth on my face. He was well supplied. He unrolled a piece of canvas so that Shun and I might sleep on it near the fire. We had to crowd to fit, but it was warmer that way. He had another piece for himself, and bedded down on the other side of the fire.

“I still don’t trust him,” I breathed to Shun as I hovered at the edge of sleep. She said nothing.

He knew how to get food. The next morning when we woke, he had already built up the fire and had a lean winter hare cooking over it. I lay still, curled in the weight of my too-large coat, and watched him as he did things to his bow and to the arrow that had slain the hare. I wondered if he was the one who had shot at Perseverance and me as we fled. The one who had shot my friend. It was still hard for me to recall parts of that day. The moments when the fog man had focused on me were all gone. But I knew they had not gone back to look for the boy they had shot. I had only that one passing glimpse of him. I hoped he had returned to Withywoods and not been too badly hurt. I suddenly recalled Steward Revel, dead in the corridor, and a deep sob ambushed me. It woke Shun.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, and sat up quickly, staring at Kerf.

“They killed Steward Revel,” I choked out.

Her eyes flicked to me and then back to Kerf. “Did they?” she asked flatly, but it wasn’t really a question. Shun and I had spoken very little of what we had experienced and witnessed that day. We had been too drugged with the brown soup and too focused on getting from one moment to the next. There had been no privacy for comparing what we’d seen. Neither of us had wanted to bare our wounds in front of our captors. “Stop crying,” she said to me, and by that sharp rebuke, I knew she still considered Kerf our enemy. Show no weakness before him.

She’s right.

I rolled my face, rubbing my tears off on my hood, and sat up slowly. It wasn’t pleasant to move. My muscles ached, and moving opened gaps that let in cold air. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw myself down and wail and weep and scream.

“I only have one cup,” Kerf apologized. “We will have to take turns with it.”

“You have something to drink from it?” Shun asked.

“Warm broth. Snow-water and the bird bones you dropped yesterday. But we can only make one cup at a time.”

Shun said nothing to that, did not offer thanks or rebuke. Instead we stood, shook our coats back into place. Together we shook and then rolled up the piece of canvas. She handed it to me to carry, a reminder to him that it was ours now. If he was aware of that subtle declaration, he ignored it.

There was little more talk. Shun and I had little to do to prepare to travel, other than eat the hare and drink what he offered us. He melted snow in a tin cup and added the bird bones and warmed it over the fire. Shun drank first, then he made more for me. It tasted wonderful and warmed my belly. I savored the last of it as he saddled the horses and packed his gear. I watched him load it onto the horses and a vague discomfort stirred in me, but I could not place why it seemed wrong.

“You take the white. I’ll put the girl behind me on the brown. He’s sturdier and better trained.”

I felt sick. I did not want to be on any horse with that man.

“That’s why Bee and I will be taking the brown,” Shun said firmly. She did not wait for a response from him, but went to the horse and mounted it with an ease I envied. She leaned down and reached out her hand to me. I took it, determined that somehow I would get up onto the animal’s back if I had to shinny up his leg. But before I could try, the man seized me from behind and lifted me up onto the horse. I had to sit behind the saddle with nothing to hold on to but two handfuls of Shun’s coat. I settled myself silently, seething that he had touched me.

“You’re welcome,” he said tartly, and turned away to mount the white. He tugged at her reins and rode away following the stream. After a moment Shun stirred the brown and we followed him. “Why are we going this way?” I asked Shun.