Page 38 of Silverbow
The silence that was not quite silence suddenly pressed in from all sides. The crickets chirped and the frogs croaked. Owls hooted overhead and every rustle of leaf and wing made her draw her bowstring, swiveling in her saddle. But where she searched for her pursuers, she found only Greenridge. She’d lost them, but the relief was swallowed up by the realization she’d also lost herself.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Fear is as deadly as an arrow.
She had no room for fear, so Enya seized hold of it the way Mistress Alys might seize a bedsheet blowing and twisting on the clothesline. She folded it with a sharp snap and envisioned packing it away into a box; a box she pushed into a corner of her mind, willing it to stay there. Quietly.
The trees were still the same towering oaks and firs that grew behind Ryerson House, but she did not have the old oak split by lightning or the fallen ash she and Liam sauntered across as children to mark her way. She fingered the horse head carving inside her pocket.
The darkness felt like a blindfold, like the walls of a room pressing too close. As her eyes stained, the panic tried to spill out of its box, but Enya wrestled with it, forcing the lid to snap closed as white knuckles gripped the carving. It may not be the land she knew, but it was still Greenridge.
Taking deep, slow breaths, she willed her heart to stop thundering, and when it did, her ear caught the soft babble of water. With a sigh, she nudged Arawelo toward it. Head slung low from the desperate flight, the mare moved off, carefully picking her way over the forest floor.
The stream was narrow, but it ran quick and cold. Enya reluctantly stowed her bow and dismounted. Her head swam with the motion, and a terrible ache was spreading up her neck. She knelt and cupped icy water between her palms, splashing it over her brow as Arawelo took a long, deep drink.
The mare had carried her deep into the heart of the forest. She would have to wait until daybreak to tell east from west here, and even then, she might have to scale a tree to find the sun. But the direction didn’t matter. The stream was a marker she could use. It led away from the mountains, and she would find the road again.
Doubt tried to creep in once more and she lifted a hand to rub at the ache in her head. She flinched when her fingers brushed the tender knot that rose there, slick with blood from the branch that had nearly sent her to her doom. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled.
Really, Sakaala? Is the gift not curse enough?
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to clear her mind. She would need to find shelter. Perhaps she could find some dense branches or…acave.There were caves throughout the mountains behind Ryerson House. Perhaps, if she’d gone far enough to reach them, they could shelter in one. It would be better than standing beneath the pines. With a sigh, she urged Arawelo into the water where her hooves would not leave a trail in the rocky creek bed.
The rain came gently, but it’s cold caress quickly soaked through her cloak. By the time the land sloped upward more sharply, it was seeping into her bones. She dismounted, her legs buckling in protest as she landed, and filled her waterskin at the stream. Arawelo seemed to understand and lowered her head again to take great gulps of the mountain water. With a pat, Enya led her away from the stream in search of a cave.
It seemed in this at least hope was enough, or perhaps if the gods still lingered, Simdeni took pity on her, for she found one deep and wide enough to shelter in just as the fine droplets started to thicken and fall in heavyplunks. Arawelo whickered softly as thunder boomed overhead. Enya rested a hand on the mare’s neck.
“It’s alright, girl. The storm will turn them back.”
Arawelo eyed her skeptically.Light, don’t let it be a lie.
Shivering, Enya stripped out of her wet clothes and cast them aside. Her cold, clumsy hands fumbled through her saddle bags, reciting her list.
A lantern with a spare cask of oil, flint and steel, her belt knife, a spare bowstring, a waterskin, a tin cup and bowl, a small kettle, a blanket roll, towel, three changes of clothes, bandages, a salve, a needle and thread, sewing scissors. A brush, hoof pick, feed bag, a sack of oats. A hair comb and a bit of soap. Bread, hard cheese, dried meat, honey, and tea. Silver and gold, a few coppers. The horse head carving. Arawelo. My bow and quiver. My wits.
To her dismay, her clothes and blanket roll were damp, but it was better than sodden.
She tipped oats into the feed bag and hung it around Arawelo’s nose. For a long time, her chewing and the sounds of the storm were all that filled the cave.Enya parceled out bread and cheese for herself, but she found it settled poorly in the pit of her stomach. She sat, shivering, watching the mouth of the cave, dark except for the occasional flash of lightning. Behind her eyelids, she saw the shapes of the brigands in those flashes, and she shuddered harder than from the cold.
But it was only a flight of fancy. There was nothing but the rain and the wind and the lightning in the storm. After a few dreadful nights in the open, fitful sleep finally came for Enya on the hard floor of the cave. Men in ragged coats chased her through her dreams. She fled again and again through Greenridge, but in the dream, Arawelo slipped, and Enya was launched over the mare’s neck to smash her own head on the rocks. She jerked awake before dawn, her hands instinctively coming up to feel her face. Her fingers traced the raw scab and swollen goose egg. A dull, thudding headache reverberated through her skull, but she loosed a sigh of relief . It was only a dream.
Dim morning light, diluted by the gray gloom and rain that still fell in sheets illuminated the cave mouth. Arawelo still dozed on her feet. Enya chewed on a strip of dried meat as she watched the rain. With no sign of it relenting, she would have to stay put.
The stillness left her with little to do but retreat into her mind. She didn’t dare touch that little box of fear she so neatly packed away. She didn’t dare think too long about what waited in Windcross Wells. She couldn’t think too long about her family, so she was left to turn over words in her mind; words that kept nagging for her attention.
Not that the records show. Five generations.
Enya hadn’t gotten a chance to corner her father on the discrepancy, but as she rolled the words around her skull, she realized what he hadn’t said. Five generations for a wielding gift. But her gift was not a wielding gift. She did not possess the pure song of spirit, earth, air, fire, or water. It wasn’t elven blood that gave rise to the godsung gifts. It was men’s, wholly different and unique.Where had it come from?Surely if the Ryersons or the Oakharts were passing the godsung gifts along their family lines, someone would have known.
She never had reason to question her father’s word, but now....What else was he hiding?She tried to push it away, but that doubt firmly took root as she led Arawelo out into the rain to drink from the stream. She tried to remember any shred she’d ever heard of Rhiannon Ryerson, but came up with only her father’s muttered devotions.
***
The rain cleared sometime before dawn on the second day and Enya stood taking stock of the forest around her. She scrambled up the branches of an oak, bark biting into the new skin on her half healed palm, but she kept climbing until she could see sky. She blinked in the bright light that assailed her above the canopy. There was not a cloud left in the brilliant blue.
There was nothing but that empty space, the treetops, and the peaks of Greenridge at her back. Instinct drew her eye to the southwest, to where she thought Ryerson House might lay beyond the green spires. Somewhere in the distance, a hound bayed. Her skin pebbled at the sound and she scrambled down the trunk to the forest floor.
The fastest way to Windcross Wells was the Queen’s Road, but somewhere between her and it stood a band of brigands. And even if she did return to the road, she had learned a hard lesson about traversing it.The road is no place for a girl.The forest though…
