They couldn't sleep, not right away. The forest was still buzzing with energy from the crash landing, and Whistlecork was torn between trying to find a safer refuge, and not sleeping.
After some dithering, she gave up and settled back into the treeline, moving her camp and working on getting the fire relit. She was running low on matches, another thing to add to her shopping list.
She was a little worried that the bird might spook at that first match strike, but it only flinched once, setting down against her side. She noted that it seemed used to fire, and seemed calm as she worked, although still shivering a little.
It devoured the last of her cake, down to the crumb, and she smiled as it took each piece of fruit from her hand with surprising gentility.
As she stared into the fire, she wondered where it had run away from. It was tame enough that she wondered if it was the victim of a theft, rather than a runaway. It was always possible it was an abuse victim, seeking a better life. When she was younger, she'd had a friend, whose father was known to take his anger out on both his family and their dog. One morning they had woken up and the animal was gone, no trace. Her friend had blamed it on the father, he had claimed nothing of the sort, and it had created a rift between them which never healed.
Then, almost a year later, it had turned up, living with a family two villages away.
They claimed it had turned up one night, dirty and tired, and that it had moved in with them, always coming back when they tried to shoo it away.
Her friend's father had tried to take them to the local magistrate, to get the dog back. It was a valuable breed and from good stock, but it hadn't worked out in his favour. The judge hadn't liked what his daughter had to say about his treatment of either her or the animal.
Whistlecork wondered how she was doing nowadays, as she tended the fire. She had managed to get out from under his heel, but it hadn't been a good trade, merely swapping one domineering household for another.
Still, that was how it went sometimes.
With a sigh, she nudged the fire again, wondering if the bird leaning against her was going to give her fleas. That would be just her luck.
-
Dawn broke slowly at first, and then all of a sudden, as the sun broke over the trees. She watched as it lit up the bottom of the dried lake, causing whatever made up the bed to shimmer like diamonds in the light.
She was surprised it hadn't filled in with vegetation yet, but she wasn't a horticulturalist. It was possible there was something in the soil which was making it hard for plants to take root, but she had no idea.
She strung up her shortbow, nudged the bird awake, and together they walked around the lake, Whistlecork keeping an eye out for game, and the animal limping along beside her, chain dragging through the grass.
The trip took them a while, the lake was larger than she had thought, and the sun was high and bright by the time they came to the ruined village. She had known it was there, they had been following the remains of an old road around the lake, pebbles and gravel dredged from the lakebed set into the soil, now overgrown with grass and weeds.
The village was in much the same state of disrepair. Crumbled mud-brick structures all gone to root, with roofs caved in, leaving little more than mounds in the landscape.
That was one of the dangers of mudbrick. They were solid whilst protected from the elements, but would crumble to damp, causing any seeds inside the bricks to sprout and ruining any remaining integrity.
She had heard that some people embedded seeds into the bricks, that their homes might grow beautiful when they returned to earth, but she wasn't sure if that was pure romanticism.
She had been to a village once where each house had been seeded with different plants and then watered until the walls themselves were roots. That was another way to do it, and she had enjoyed that one.
The bird settled down to rest as she explored the ruin, still keeping an eye out for dinner. Domesticated animals generally didn't do well in the wild, but sometimes they did adapt. She wouldn't have been surprised to see the odd chicken or rabbit, even now, years after this place had gone to seed.
-
She didn't find much in the houses. By her reckoning, it had been at least a decade since anyone had lived here, and it had been abandoned by choice, rather than disaster, leaving dwellings stripped bare. She spotted sawn ends on a few of the rotting beams, indicating that the residents here had collapsed those buildings themselves.
What they had left behind though, were the gardens, and despite the earliness of the season, there was plenty of food scattered across the village. Giant carrots gone to seed over the winter, and now maybe better used as blunt weapons rather than food. Various herbs and greens, gnawed down by tiny teeth but still hanging on.
One house boasted a cover of tangled beans, and she harvested as many as she could carry. Maybe there was some truth to the rumours of people purposefully embedding seeds into the structures of their homes.
She set up camp in what had once been the centre of the village, an overgrown area of pitted river stones and weeds, and wished she was more prepared to cook for guests. Her biggest cookpot was still only enough for herself, and her only other drinking vessel was a battered enamel mug, chipped and blackened from one too many evenings tucked into the edge of the fire.
The bird had slept most of the day, head under their wing, hooting quietly in their sleep, occasionally opening one eye as if to check she was still around.
"I guess we won't make it to Hollow Ridge today," she sighed to the bird, which had awoken and staggered over to see what she was cooking. She had managed to shoot a rabbit earlier and had given the upper end of it to them, keeping the lower half for the stew.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
She had expected them to attack it like the starving animal they were, but it had taken it only with coaxing, deciding to eat it alone, behind one of the mounds. It seemed more interested in the stew she was making, and she wondered if it had been raised on cooked food, for some strange reason.
Then again, fancy animals often had delicate metabolisms, who was she to judge? A friend had owned a horse which had only been able to eat its oats boiled into a mash, anything else gave it terrible colic. They had shelled out the money for a Changer who specialised in animals, but she had spent an hour with the beast and then shrugged, declared it happy, and left. She had only charged them half her fee, a least.
Something like that would explain why the bird was in such a state, though. Maybe it was a hunting bird and had been trained not to eat its own kills?
She nudged the pot of stew with her spoon and smiled over her shoulder at her waiting guest, "Dinner is ready to be served, if you would please take a seat…"
She gestured at the ground ahead of her, and the bird obediently shuffled over. There were some logistics involved with getting food into the animal, and with a sigh, she sacrificed her old leather hat for the cause.
Maybe it would wash out...
When she reached Hollow Ridge, she was buying a large saucepan. It would have to go on the outside of her pack and it would catch on every tree branch and thorn, but those were the breaks.
Ooh, she could wear it as a hat! Get one with two handles, which would hook over her ears...
The thought made her grin, as she watched her guest eat the stew with gusto. This was gonna be a long day.
-
It took a lot of stew and a fair number of fresh vegetables before the animal was sated. She managed to take out another rabbit, but the bird declined it, and it became her supper instead, roasted over the fire in a way which was wasteful, but delicious.
She wasn't fantastic with the bow, if she was being honest, and she only had three arrows. She had taken lessons at one point, but even after years of practice she still missed half her shots.
Instead, most of the time she relied on trading to feed herself. Herbs and pressed flowers collected from the side of the road. Mushrooms, if she knew she was going to be in town later that day, small bits of woven jewellery bought from sailors, or pretty shells she found on the shoreline.
Old ruins like this sometimes had interesting things in them too. She had found a smooth piece of polished malachite sitting forgotten on an old window ledge. A piece of dried and twisted driftwood lying in the dry corner of a half-collapsed room. Small things, which wouldn't get her cash, but might get her a meal when she needed it.
Halfway towards evening, as she was rummaging through one of the collapsed houses, pushing aside rotten beams and large saplings, she found the cellar hatch.
She almost broke her leg doing so, mind. It had been hidden under a layer of dust and dirt, gone rotten with rain. Only a sort of subconscious reaction to the softness of the floor had saved her, throwing her backwards as the wood crumbled away beneath her foot.
Lying panting on the ground, she glanced at the sun, which was starting to ride low in the sky. There was another twenty minutes or so before it would be too dark for this, and she was torn between dropping down and seeing if there was anything interesting, and heading back to her bird and setting up camp for the night.
After a minute of indecision, with a sigh, she turned, heading back to the camp. She wouldn't be able to see much down there without a torch anyway, and she had no idea how deep it was. Maybe it wasn't a cellar at all, but some sort of well-shaft, wouldn't that have been a wonderful surprise?
She suppressed a shudder at the thought of it, dying out here alone at the bottom of some pit, it wasn't a nice thought, and she kept it thought in mind as she bedded down that night.
Terrifying. It would be much safer in the morning. She didn't need to find out right now.
It would wait.
-
The first thing she did was send a rope of lit cloth down into the pit, to the curiosity of the bird by her side.
It trailed in the air like the death spiral of a shot pigeon, before landing on solid ground not too far below. Just far enough that she might have some trouble getting out, but not well-pit deep.
She bit her lip in thought for a while, and then decided to risk it.
She normally kept a length of rope wrapped around the outside of her pack, and she tied that to a beam now, throwing the loose end down before she jumped.
She didn't think she would actually be able to use it to get out, having nothing to brace against, but the precaution made her feel better.
-
The cellar smelt like earth and rot. It was also bigger and much more ornate than she had expected. She had expected it to be a root cellar, covering the same footprint as the house above, which was little more than a shed, but that wasn't the case at all.
As she raised her rudimentary torch above her head, she breathed in surprise. The whole construction was of real, clay bricks, lightly plastered in a grey daub. The walls on either side were lined with empty wooden shelves, and the ceiling was high enough for her to not knock her head. Ahead of her, the hallway stretched further than her rudimentary torch could light.
The light shining in from above her was blocked for a moment, as the bird stuck its head through the hatch. It watched her with golden eyes, and then, giving a sad hoot, pulled back.
She could hear it settling down to wait, and she smiled to herself, looking around with interest.
Whoever had built this place, they had done a good job, better than she ever would have expected for somewhere so absolutely nowhere.
It even had arches, and pillars! As she took a step forward, her torchlight revealed a doorway ahead of her in the gloom. Swinging around, behind her was an area for storage, and a dead end.
She wondered how they had stopped the groundwater from seeping in and rotting the whole structure away. Her casual inspection of the ceiling didn't reveal any crumbling bricks or drips, so she supposed they must have done something.
The plaster had started to crumble a little, but for an untreated cellar, abandoned for a decade, it didn't look bad at all.
The area she had landed in was mostly empty, although, to her infinite relief, she spotted a ladder lying under the shelves, against the right wall. Thank the gods. Assuming it hadn't succumbed to rot, which was unlikely considering the state of everything else, she wouldn't have to work out how to climb a rope today.
There was one side door near her entrance, which she did peek into. It was true storage, as far as she could see. A few floor planks were stacked against one wall, and a full cord of firewood lined another.
Shrugging, she headed towards the other doorway. Somebody had put so much work into building this, the workmanship was beyond anything the locals could have put together.
Reaching the wall, she put one hand on the grey plaster, feeling it crumble a little under her touch. There was no door, merely a dark portal, and, taking a breath, she stuck out her torch and walked through.
It was much the same as the first room, continuing on, and somewhere in the gloomy distance, she could see another doorway. There were only shelves along one wall this time, the other was left bare. It was possible the building above had been some kind of tavern? She didn't know how these things worked.
Some of the shelves had fallen from their places on the wall, leaning at jaunty angles, but all of them were empty.
She swept her torch around as she walked, checking the edges and corners for forgotten items, but apart from one copper coin, she found nothing else of interest.
She didn't recognise the insignia on the coin, but she pocketed it anyway. She could always ask around in Hollow Ridge, see if anyone recognised it.
The third room was the end. She must have gone a good hundred paces from her entranceway to get here, which was insanity, who built this? Why!
At first glance, it was much the same as the previous room, with shelves on two walls, and now another set on the third. They were layered close together, and she decided that they would be perfect for storing preserves and jams, but there were so many more efficient ways of doing that, why build so high and wide if that was your business?
It was only as she was leaving, that she spotted the hatch above her head, almost lost in the gloom. It had been painted grey, to blend in with the ceiling, and only luck had made her see it at all.