Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
“How did you get away?” Lena breathes.
“I ran it into a boulder.”
Ronl is squeezing his infant so tightly to his heart, the little one lets out a squawk. “I do not understand? You did what…?”
“I threw the knife.” When I go to mimic the motion, my forearm contracts with pain and I wince as I bring the limb back down. “It wanted my knife. I galloped the horse toward a boulder grouping and I … when we got in range, I threw my blade into the rocks. It went for the flash of light.” And fates, I wish I still had the weapon, if only for nostalgia’s sake. “Anyway, yes, I ran it headfirst into a rock. And my injury happened just before that. One of its talons scored my arm as it came down at me.”
Lena glances at her husband. Then she rubs her face as if she’s collecting herself. “I have never met anyone who has lived through one of those attacks.”
“Nor I,” Ronl echoes. “And there are many who come here from the Lake of Lost Souls route. In fact, I know many who have lost members of their traveling parties out in that territory to those birds of prey.”
The awe they show me is nothing I’m used to, but at least Lena moves on fast. “Such a wound is very dangerous. They carry disease because they are necro-eaters, and they use those feet to gather the dead that are their meals.”
With that, Lena falls silent, but she’s not looking at me, her husband, or her newborn. She is staring into the air before her, her mind clearly working.
It’s a while before she speaks, and when she does, it’s in that language I cannot understand. And “speaking” is the wrong word. She’s barking orders at Ronl, and he’s nodding. Then she holds up her arms and he puts the baby into her outstretched hands.
Ronl has proven to be a gentle soul, but there’s none of that as he turns away for the door. He’s going to battle, under the instructions of his wife … for me.
“I don’t want to be a bother,” I say in a small voice.
“You helped me keep my life and made sure my baby survived. I pray that I am not returning that mortal favor unto you, but I worry that I am.” She shakes her head. “This is very serious, this wound—and you know it. I will do all that I can.”
Abruptly, Lena sits farther forward, even though she grimaces as she does so. Taking my hand in her own, she says, “Do you always cry when people are kind to you?”
“I’m sorry?”
She reaches up and brushes my cheek, turning her fingertips around so that I can regard the tears she collected.
“Do you cry when people are kind to you?”
I wipe my eyes and try to hide how I tremble. “I wouldn’t know.”
She squeezes my palm with her own. “You are family to me now. What is the word in your voice? ‘Sister,’ I believe it is.”
Lowering my head, I watch as my tears fall on our entwined hands.
“Sister,” I repeat roughly. “Yes, that’s the word.”
Fifty
Doors that Open … and Close.
It’s quite some time before I return to the lodging house, and Ronl sees me back through the rain. I have been well and truly treated, my forearm cleansed, packed, and rebandaged properly, and I have been strictly informed to return the following day for a reexamination. Things are quite sore after all the debridement, and whatever Lena put in the wound’s deep, angry core is stinging, but the care I was given warms my lonely heart to such an extent I barely notice the discomfort.
As we arrive at the first of the lodging house’s three entries, Ronl holds things open and then steps inside with me.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Pushing my hooding back so he can see my face, I smile at him as I focus on his chin. “I’m quite safe here.”
He buys the lie with a bow. “You must return on the morrow, or she will send me to gather you again.”
Putting my hand on his arm, I give him a squeeze. “I promise not to make you come get me.”
Ronl bows again and then glances around. He nods at a few people, then says his goodbye to me and ducks back out into the storm.
It’s as the door closes that I hear the singing. My first thought is of the maid, but that’s not who is vocalizing. It’s two of the working women. They’re over at one of the round tables by the bar, their legs extended and crossed on empty chairs such that their stockinged ankles show beneath the hems of their skirts, their corsets loosened so that their décolleté is not quite so obvious. The pair of them are harmonizing with such purity and ease, I’m a bit in awe, their voices so high and lilting, like birds in the spring. I’m sad that such gifts are squandered for the life they have been forced to live.