It felt good, though, and perhaps that’s all that mattered.
“So, you can laugh.”
Athan had come up beside her as she stood at the river’s edge, cackling like a madwoman. Startled, she spun to face him and her bare feet slipped back into the water. The cold made her gasp.
“Sorry.” He took a step away, hands raised. “Guess you’re not used to casual conversation?”
Standing ankle deep in the pebbled riverbed, she shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Athan looked away from her, back off into the distance as his hand idly rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I’ll just have to remember to keep my distance, is all, until you get used to me.” His hand stopped moving. “Uhm, not that you have to hang around me once we get to town. I can help you get settled, then you’re free to go...wherever.”
The thought of a town set her heart racing, the cold water surrounding her feet forgotten. “Town?”
“Lee’s Mill,” he replied, then tiled his head at her expression. “You’ve not heard of it?”
She shook her head. His eyebrows raised, but he shrugged it off. “Oh, well, it’s on the other side of the river, two day’s walk south.”
Two days. She’d never walked that far before, much less been that far away from the tower and its forest. Her fear of the unknown betrayed her, and her eyes glanced northward to the tree line.
“Unless,” Athan said, drawing the word out in uncertainty. “There’s someplace else you’d rather go? Do you have family, maybe?”
“No.” At least that she could answer with some certainty. There had been a time, long ago, when there had been a family. A mother. A father. A sister, perhaps? The memories had long faded into nothing more than dreams. The glimpse of a warm smile. The sweet smell of flowers. A man’s joyful laugh. Another laugh, newly born, with chubby fingers reaching out.
Yes, she thought, there had been a sister, though she couldn’t remember the name.
“Dnara?”
Blinking away the phantoms of a past forgotten, she looked back to the man who waited for her to make a decision in the present. He seemed willing to take her wherever she wanted to go, though the reasons for his kindness remained a mystery. The doubt continued to linger, along with the fear, that he may want to take her to a town so he could collect a bounty from the local blackrope.
“The town is your home?” she asked, seeking to put her fears to rest.
“No, not really,” he replied, his answer not settling her unease. “I don’t have a home, per say. I tend to think of the world as my home. Lee’s Mill is just where I currently hang my hat. Well, occasionally at the inn at least. And, I don’t actually have a hat. Fond of hoods, myself. More practical. Every time I’ve had a hat, I’ve lost it.”
He paused to scratch his stubble and she glanced to the half-cloak he wore, its dark brown waxed leather well used and soft, and its hood flopped back behind his neck next to a quiver of arrows and a short yew bow. Practical for hunting through a thick forest and keeping somewhat dry in the rain. It suited him, she thought, not that she had much to go on.
“I’m heading to Lee’s Mill to barter my goods,” he continued, snapping her out of the evaluation of his attire.
“Your goods?” she asked, her curiosity of him growing.
“Well, that briarbear you ate last night had a pelt,” he replied with a grin. “And so did about twelve of his cousins. I’ve also got some dried meat, some medicinal herbs, and a couple good yew branches that whittlers like to carve into canes and bows, like the one on my back. But, the real prize is what I went into the Thorngrove for in the first place.”
Dnara leaned in, her curiosity at its peak. “What’s that?”
Athan opened his mouth then stopped, his grin shifting into a smirk as he held out his hand to her. “Come from the water, Lady Thorngrove, and I will tell you.”
The water? She glanced down, her feet still in the cold water. “Oh!”
With a clumsy splash, she stepped out of the rock pool. Her feet landed on the earthen bank, quickly going from wet to muddy. He sighed at her and withdrew his ignored hand, but his smirk didn’t diminish.
“We should get you some shoes, or folks in town will think you’re a wolfchild.”
“Better a wolfchild than a runaway slave,” she said.
“True, which reminds me. We’ll have to think of something to tell folks, because common folk are a nosy lot, and the guards around Lee’s Mill are even nosier. What if we said you are my younger sister?”
She gave him another glance over. “But, we look nothing alike.”
That made him laugh. “True. Betrothed, then?”
Dnara almost stepped back into the water.
“Joking, joking,” Athan said on a deeper laugh. “Apprentice it is, then. Hmmm... You...were sent by my uncle’s friend in Lambshire to learn the foresters’ trade, because times are tough, your father is ill and you have a large family of brothers and sisters to support.”
Dnara’s eyebrows raised at his colorful description. “Did you just come up with that?”
He shook his head and walked back to where his backpack and supplies rested nearby. “Last night, while you slept. I had a feeling you wouldn’t want to be my future wife.”
“I never thought to be anyone’s wife,” she said.
His footsteps stopped but he didn’t look back. “Right. Sorry.”
Confused, she trailed after him, the bottoms of her muddy feet picking up grass and leaves along the way. “For what?”
Crouching
