Back on the road, their journey continues to Pantia, and a mysterious shape in the light of the campfire makes Edvard cautious.
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They left the widow and her son late that afternoon with supplies to see them through a week. The shoes Mina now wore were little more than thick pieces of leather wrapped with braided yarn ties. It was the best Eza had, Mina knew, and she was grateful for them, although hardly worth the work Edvard had done to earn them.
She had the feeling Eza had gotten the better end of the bargaining from their visit, not because she had so little to trade, but because she needed so much done around the homestead. Edvard had been generous in his hunting, and Mina was left with the feeling he would have provided for the widow even if she had nothing to give them.
As it was, they left for Pantia after an early supper of turtle stew and hard bread ends. They took with them a sack of peanuts, a large pouch of sesame seeds, what appeared to be a rope of pork sausage-jerky, several scarves of varying shades of wool, and a jug of elderberry wine, courtesy of Eza.
The one item of interest that Yuila had claimed was a yarn-woven cape dyed a deep shade of raspberry. Eza had initially thought of it for Mina, but decided it fit the Crone better. This pleased Yuila immensely, and Edvard gave his cloak she had been wearing to Mina. Yuila immediately donned the cape, but after an hour on the trail it proved too warm, and she had rolled it and tied it to the saddle behind her.
Edvard had decided not to stop until late that evening. The moons were bright, and he wanted to travel as long as possible. Yuila complained of being hungry, so they halted long enough for Mina to pull on the cloak and to part out some of the peanuts.
This worked well, with Yuila concentrating on her peanuts, letting the reins slacken so the pinto mare could follow the trail on her own, and Mina shelling the nuts for both her and Edvard. The moons allowed enough light so that he didn't drop too many when she reached them around to him. Mina thought the idea going fine until she felt the trailing mule's large, rubbery lips nosing into her lap at the falling shells.
She shrieked, grabbed Edvard in a startling embrace, and nearly knocked them both off the gelding as the mule's muzzle edged between them, trying to lip-up the shells caught there.
"Makka!" Edvard thumped the pack animal's nose with his hand. Makka only blinked and put more intent behind his efforts at retrieving the few hidden shells in Mina's cloak. "Makka!"
Mina fidgeted, squealing at the determined mule's attention as he burrowed his nose between her skirt and Edvard’s back.
Edvard's laughing only made the matter worse.
"No!" She pushed the mule's large head away, squirming.
Edvard finally dismounted and helped her off the gelding, deciding they would call it camp for the night.
She gave him a blushing, slighted look, but he still grinned.
Makka's quivering muzzle lipped up the fallen peanuts on the ground.
Yuila was allowed to go into the nearby thicket of hawthorn for her meditation, and Mina resorted to helping Edvard unload the animals. She got a closer look at the pinto the Crone had been riding as she rubbed beneath Sova's halter straps. The mare was a bit smaller in stature than the gelding called Neito she and Edvard rode, but what she lacked in size she made up for in temperament. She let Mina pet her ears and comb her forelock with her fingers, murmuring compliments of what a good horse she was.
"You don't care for peanut shells, do you?" she said to the mare. As if hearing this, Makka swung his gray head over to them and nibbled Mina's skirt. "No," she said sharply, pulling at the material caught between the mule's teeth. For a few moments the skirt was locked in the animal's mouth. Mina stopped tugging and instead stroked Makka's long nose.
He dropped her skirt and pricked his ears forward.
"Enough for you," she said, brushing out her skirt and leaving the animals. She joined Edvard as he built a fire nearby.
He chuckled at the wet teeth marks on her skirt. "I see the mule thought you were stashing peanuts."
"Is it always that way around peanuts?" She watched him as the fire caught.
"I don't know. I've never seen him around them before." He put the copper pot of water on the rocks near the fire.
"You know, Eza would have found you work to do for weeks."
"I know."
She knelt beside him and took the dark twisted bean pod from her pocket the widow had given her. "What is this?"
He frowned, looking closer at the twig-like item. "It's vanilla. A bean pod. From Eza?"
She nodded. "She said to scrape some of it into hot water to drink."
"Get a cup and I'll scrape it for you."
She got three metal cups from one of the packs and settled beside him. From far off a wolf howled. "I've never seen a vanilla bean before."
"I'm surprised Eza had one. She must have traded someone." With a knife he shaved off thin peels into the three cups. "If Yuila isn't back in a moment, I'm going to get her."
She looked at the curls of vanilla in the cups, then to him as an uneasiness crossed his face. "I can add the water when it's hot, if you want to go now, Edvard."
He nodded and left.
She looked to the woods again as another wolf howled from a different location. The horses and mule stomped their hooves restlessly at their tethers. She looked to a shatten that had landed on a bush nearby. "Beat it. No one's going to feed you anything."
The vanilla proved good, if unsweetened, and before long Mina and Yuila were slumped by the fire, sleeping in their bedrolls. Edvard sat against a tree across the fire from them for half an hour, thinking of lost travelers in general. He was debating checking on the horses for a final time when the dark silhouette of a man suddenly formed beyond the campfire's light.
Edvard froze, watching the shape seem to quiver in the rising smoke from the fire, as if a mirage. It was only the head and shoulders of a man, standing about half a head taller than him, looking directly at their camp. Edvard stood slowly, his hand reaching for the sword at his side.
But the man was gone by the time Edvard got to his feet, disappearing in the heat of the flames. It hadn't moved away, just dissolved.
Edward spent several long moments searching the perimeter of the campsite, studying the spot where the man appeared to have been.
There were no tracks, nothing.
He circled the area, never letting the sleeping girls out of his sight. Neither Yuila nor Mina stirred, and there was no trace of anyone else.
Edvard resumed his spot from across the fire and looked back into the trees.
There was no man, just the changing shapes of the bushes in the firelight.
He moved to the other side of Mina, between them and the place he'd seen the man.
His fingers closed tightly on the sword handle. It wasn't anyone, he told himself, just the flames in the night air. He looked to the horses. They hadn't reacted, instead dozing in the warm breeze. When he looked back to the place he'd seen the outline, there was nothing that would have formed a man's shadow. The bushes were too short, he reasoned, and no trees hung that low.
He put his hand on Mina's shoulder, but she only slept on.
No one had seen anything, and he probably hadn't, either. It was just the heat of the fire reaching up into the night.
That was all.
Nothing was amiss the next morning and they made their way back onto the trail that would meet up with the major trade road in another day. The horses and mule had been quiet all night, and there were no more wolves howling. The day stretched warm and sunny before them.
Mina couldn't pinpoint what was wrong. Everything is as it had always been, she thought. Yuila hummed lowly as the mare plodded along beside them, and the mule had lost interest in looking for stray peanut hulls.
Her fingers wriggled in Edvard's tight hold as she held onto his shirt, making her sit a little closer than she deemed necessary. His hand loosened on hers and she sat back a bit, then leaned forward again so Yuila couldn't hear her speak to him.
"Has something happened, Edvard?" she asked quietly.
He shook his head, but she saw his eyes scrutinize the trees around them.
"Would you tell me if something had?"
His eyes dropped to where she leaned over his shoulder. "Yes, Mina. Nothing's happened. We're close to the trade road. You should keep your hood up if anyone comes upon us."
"I will."
She attributed his uneasiness to engaging the more heavily-traveled trade road. He had explained there would be marketers and gypsies, and even caravans who would have no qualms about acquiring merchandise without the exchange of money, especially if a Crone was involved. And he didn't know what kind of reaction Mina's appearance would bring in town.
He hadn't exactly said it that way, she recalled as they made supper later that day, but what he left unsaid was clear enough. She and Yuila made a thin soup of the pork sausage and chunks of wild pumpkin they had found growing at the edge of the woods. It was a small variety, and the ground was littered with the prolific fruits. Yuila had set about cleaning the seeds of the stringy orange slime and put them on hot flat stones near the fire as they made camp early that afternoon.
Edvard decided on resting that day and starting on the trade road before light the next morning.
In another world, or maybe it was another time, Mina would have felt a twinge of discrimination, or singled out because of her appearance, but here, and now, the precautions Edvard took for her and Yuila were simply necessary safeguards.
She stirred the copper pot with a wooden spoon. He had been extra attentive that day, barely leaving her or Yuila alone long enough to tend to private concerns. Actually, even then he insisted the girls stay together, and Mina had the feeling that she and Yuila would grow weary of each other very soon.
They sat around the fire early that evening after supper and Edvard commenced a whittling project he had started the day before. Yuila was fringing the edges of the camp for wild peas that hung off the vines lacing the trees. Mina sat across the fire, reworking her yarn ties until her feet were better covered. She moved her toes testily inside the makeshift shoes. At least they were warmer than being without. She looked up as Edvard paused before her
"Try this."
She took the coarse-toothed comb he had made from a piece of sandalwood, turning it over slowly. "You did this?"
He nodded, and then went to see to the horses grazing nearby.
She studied the wooden comb, marveling at the workmanship the tines had demanded. Not a one was snapped off, despite their close tolerance. The light-grained hardwood was fragrant and smooth, long enough to be effective, but still able to fit in the pocket of her skirt. She pulled it through her hair, coming to a knot almost immediately. It had been a while since she'd done a decent brushing. She took a moment to untangle the knot, and the next one, and the next one.
It took some time to comb through her hair, partly because she kept stopping to admire the comb. The wood carried a smell she couldn't determine, but decided it a cross of pleasant earthy scents. It lingered on her hair, and she looked to where Edvard was checking the hooves on the mule in the growing dusk.
"This is very nice," she said when she reached him, holding the comb. "Thank you."
He stood up and looked her over better. "You look," he stopped. "Well. . ."
"Combed?"
He nodded, grinning. "Yeah, I guess that's it."
"Thanks." She looked to the mule. "The horses all okay?"
He nodded again. "Eza gave me the wood. She said it was some aromatic, but she didn't know the name. I think it's sandalwood."
"I like it." She felt suddenly warm and looked back to where Yuila was gorging herself on the green peas. "Would you mind if I combed out a certain Crone?"
He chuckled, patting the mule's neck. "Please do. If you can get those tangled braids out."
As much as Yuila wanted to get her hair brushed, she did not want to sit through the hour it took to tame her hair. When Mina was finally done, Yuila's stomach set in with an ache from too many unripe pea pods, and she spent another hour in a different kind of misery.
But after an hour of complaining, and a cup of elderberry wine for each, the night settled down for sleep.
PG13, saga; teen, fantasy, fantasy world travel, teen romance, clean romance, realm, magical realism, shadow world, school/new school, high school, fiction, serial. #ReadFree with free signup. ♫♪
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Thanks to P.G. Waters for the use of her story!