Although it took the boy a long time to drift off, eventually exhaustion won. He found himself troubled by dreams of dead white hands reaching for him, and pale, puffy lips trying to kiss him on the forehead or the cheeks, like a mother’s kiss or an old aunt’s. The dreams turned into a confused, frantic chase; he was trying to get away from the white faces; running; running; they had him cornered and he couldn’t see any way to escape. His heartbeat rose. He winced in his sleep.
And he awoke with a start, gasping for breath.
A few moments of sleep-drenched thought crawled past his mind before he could accept that it had only been a dream.
Blinking, he looked about. It was daylight, just barely. Grey and cautious, the dawn crept down the hillsides and the mountainsides. It was still gloomy and black under the pine trees, and cold where the small group of travellers were camped. Coldness especially seemed to emanate from the stream.
Caewen was nowhere to be seen, but Dapplegrim sat nearby, swishing his tail and looking, if anything, a little bored. He had noticed the boy wake.
“Bad night?”
“Dreams,” he said. “Strange, nasty nightmares.”
“Hopefully nothing too prophetic then. Hurm.”
“Where’s–?”
“Washing. She took herself downstream a little, oh, I don’t know… about half an hour ago I guess. Should be back soon.”
The boy decided he should wash too, but waited for Caewen to return. He then picked his way over cold, wet stones, and found a place where cool water made a little swirling pool. The water was icy to touch. The boy’s skin and flesh numbed as it sluiced over him. But it helped too. It felt good to wash grime off and it woke him up.
He sat starting at his reflection in the dark waters for a moment, while drying himself down as best he could. A large bird passed overhead, visible as a silhouette in the water, though when he turned to look at the sky, it was gone.
Once mostly dry, he returned to camp and helped prepare a hasty breakfast. They ate quickly, mostly in silence. As he sat, chewing on a bit of toasted bread, he felt himself ache in muscles he’d never paid any attention to before. The previous day’s riding had been harder on his body than he’d realised. For not the first time, he wondered if he’d made a good choice in going along with this strange woman and her horse.
However, once he had the hot food in him, and some hot tea–he’d never been allowed tea before, it was far too expensive–he felt remarkably better, buoyant and almost… well… delighted. His mood was lifting. Half-way through the breakfast, it occurred to him that he had stumbled into a sort of adventure. He’d have a story to tell, years from now. Assuming he survived. The realisation made everything somehow seem more real, here in the cool grey dawn, a day after escaping his squat little village and awful father. And he–the skinny child that he was–he was here in a story-tale sort of journey, like what heroes and knights and great, grand people had. He wondered if anyone in the village would believe it.
Then he wondered if he would ever go back there. If he would ever again see anyone from that life.
That brought back an edge of coolness to his mood.
After all, this was already a lot scarier than adventures seem when they’re told as tales. He guessed that everyone must find such things pretty frightening when the adventure was actually happening to them. He thought back on tales he knew, about the Red Ettin or the story of Curlgilden and the Witch-House. He decided that such things probably would be quite terrifying up close, and so, perhaps, in that case he’d just have to pull his guts together and be brave about it. He looked around again, at the bleak pines, at the shadows and thought to himself: well… easier said than done. But he could try.
All this, he thought while chewing fried toast.
The toast was pretty good too.