The gray-haired woman shuffled toward the bed, rousing the body with smells of food. Her stubby fingers wrapped around the spoon, gracelessly offering a bite of eggs and mushrooms.
A mouth could open, so it did, accepting the proffered food.
The kind, old woman sat and spoon-fed the body in the bed as the light seeping through the cracks in the darkness slowly warmed to daylight.
The room held no color; the wind rattled at the edges. This was newness in a life that had only experienced the same faces, the same fingers. The body could not respond to such early light in a season when light should be lessening. The eggs and mushrooms were warm. Their heat spread down the length of cold arms and fingers. Strange spices mingled on the tongue. Tomorrow would be a new day, and every one thereafter, but the body was too exhausted to feel the fear newness should rouse.
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She stayed in the wagon through the morning. Gigi fed her breakfast and had me run in with some tea later in the morning.
The woman barely moved. It was eerie how her eyes would follow a person through the motions of entering and giving food. She never acknowledged my call or smile. Barely seemed to even notice I was there—aside from following me with her eyes—it felt more like someone tracing the loop of a river in the distance or the twirl of a leaf as it slowly winds its way to the ground. Inanimate.
I felt like a ghost with those eyes upon me.
Half sitting in bed, every position she took seemed so precisely alive—so effortlessly perfect. I had seen a lot of people in my life on the road, but no one had ever seemed so aware of each gesture, especially when recovering from trauma. Blinking her eyes took three times as long as any of us, and our having to adjust to the darkness each time only heightened the feeling of entering a holy cave and finding a goddess waiting.
I placed a stone cup in her hand. Her alabaster skin glowed against the clay—reminding me that it was really just hardened mud. The weight of the cup seemed to make her hands shake, so I helped guide it to her mouth. My own skin so dark against hers, grime and soot and mud I thought I had cleaned well off, fading into the darkness as I detected small red and blue veins pulsing in the underside of her wrist and fingers.
As we brought the cup to her lips—chapped as though threatening me to notice some imperfection, her cold skin warmed through connection with my own. I felt I was marring a snow queen with my heat, as though I might melt her. I worried we had not cooled the water enough after boiling the tea. She could be burned by anything warmer than the temperature of the air. Her appearance belied her sturdiness, and she drank to the point where she would need to tip her head, but no more. She pushed the cup back into my hands and slowly closed her eyes.
There would be no more interaction for the day. I was disappointed that I did not receive a thanks and realized I had yet to hear her voice.
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I have never played the servant and didn't find it to my liking. Additionally, we had an obligation to reach the next town within a few days and had a contract with some of the nearby ranchers. None of this new routine suited our plans, and—even with her divine prettiness—I was ready for us to deposit her with some farm wife.
Our supplies did not seem adequate for another person and an extended rest, but any complaint was met with a gruff nod from either of my grandparents. As we sat with our pipes, examining the clay pots for signs of damage or leaking that would damage the valuable cargo sealed in wax, reviewing our manifest, and arguing over which goods could be marked down or up in future stops, they both seemed to ignore the presence that had taken over our second wagon—taken over my bed without a simple “please.”
Having her there changed the dynamics of our small camp in so many little ways. We spent the day attempting to be quiet so she could rest, neither talking nor banging pots inadvertently; we cooked the best of our rations in an attempt to get her to eat, and Gigi collected flowers to “brighten the space.”
The oxen lazed around the clearing, content with another day of rest. It occurred to me that they had not been disturbed by the commotion the night before. They were easily spooked by beasties on our trail; once, they had refused to move for a house cat blocking our way in a village. That should have been an easily deduced clue that there were no dragons to fear here.
The roar had not come again, and though I longed to learn more about the immortals, Poppa refused to talk, blaming his reticence on the girl. “She’s not ready to hear no such thing, Jhani. I’m not sure how much she’s taking in jus’ yet, but I don’t want her hearing nothing ‘bout no dragons right now.” He lifted the ax back upon his shoulder, a sign the conversation was over I’d known since I was able to speak. “Go see if you can’t find some of them golden berries. I think they’d flavor that fish you caught right nice.”
I might not know from dragons’ roars, but I could hear the dismissal in my pop's voice. Traveling around in close quarters taught you to respect a person’s need for peace and solitude. We each had our own ways of calming the spiders that crawled between our shoulder blades when money got tight or the storms raged too long. Poppa liked chopping wood or knitting up long scarfs no one would ever wear, then ripping them up again to start anew. Gigi built towers with the playing cards and fed the local birds, which I would then try to paint. She let me sit near so long as I didn’t make noise or try to ask any questions. I had a small collection of cards featuring fauna from all over; we’d been able to sell some to the university at the seaside. I hated to let them go, but we almost had enough for a third wagon and set of oxen. We could devote half of a third wagon to supplies for my painting projects and figuring out what cultural and fancy objects might make a journey overland worth hauling.
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I grabbed my papers and brushes. One of the sages I’d spoken with at the university had asked for some floral images and information, especially edible plants, and getting away from the wagons for a few hours seemed a good idea. If I were honest, I’d have to admit I hoped to see signs of the non-existent dragons.
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The basket was laden with berries as I added color to the drawing of the bush and played with the sunlight hitting the berries. I had overused the powder for yellow since we last found someone selling paints and had ground up the berries themselves to see what would happen. I wasn’t sure if the color would fade faster.
The gruff sigh of the bear should not have been the first indication that I had company, and I realized the sun had followed its path to the treeline further than I had expected.
Fully living up to my Pokey moniker, I had zoned out again while focusing on the shades and colors dappled in the woods.
“Hey bear,” I said, loud enough to carry, looking down at its shadow. I could not recall whether it was bad magic to look straight into a black bear’s eyes, or if doing so would simply enrage a wild animal. Either way, I was shaking far too much to have any power looking into its eyes.
Though a few yards away, I could hear the gravel beneath its paws shifting as it lifted its head to take me in. I was glad to see it wasn’t startled but cursed my inattentiveness as I realized my legs were asleep and I wouldn’t be able to raise myself to my full height with any speed. Luckily, the bear turned away from me and lumbered towards the bushes full of berries.
While there was no way I was going to rescue our basket while the bear feasted, I did remember hearing that black bears were mostly solitary, so I was unlikely to have to escape a party of bears. A berry bush with a bear seemed like a far more engaging image to sell the sage than just a berry bush. so I started adding the shiny fur to my drawing, wondering if this constituted a severe lack of intelligence on my part, or an overabundance of curiosity.
It sniffed at the basket before turning to the bush—long claws rather delicately grabbing berries from the bush, obviously preferring the fresh to those coated in human scent. I kept up a lively patter as it ate, hoping my entertaining stories might keep it from killing me—or, at the very least, keep it from being startled when reminded of my presence in its dining area.
I told it about the drawings I had sold and the drawings I was looking forward to making as we traveled through forgotten ruins few people saw these days. I told the bear about our wagons and the list we kept of what could be fixed when and where. I divulged the existence of the jar hidden under the upper step of the first wagon that held the savings we kept for the third wagon. And I shared my hopes and dreams of hiring on another member to our traveling group, someone closer to my own age.
Despite my understanding of a bear’s capabilities, I still expected it to laugh at my fancies.
For some reason, I didn’t tell the bear about our visitor, about her glowing skin and bewitching eyes. The woods did not seem a place to discuss such illusions with a half-magic beast like a black bear. It didn’t eat for long.
It snuffled in my direction one more time, as if threatening me with what it could do if I decided to come closer once it turned its back. Then it lumbered its hulking form back into the dense trees, leaving only an earthy musk behind.
I finished my drawing and was very pleased with the result. While I had been expecting to see a menacing creature towering over the berry bush, preventing all from collecting their own sweet jewels, I instead had captured some playful animal that possessed a power we had long forgotten.
I adjusted my legs to get the blood flowing again, refusing to scream as the pains made me remember the time I let Gigi adjust a coat she needed to take in. Once I could stand again, I collected the basket and started walking back to our mysterious guest and the all too familiar wagons I’d called home since I first learned the meaning of the word.
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For the first time since the woman had arrived, there was a hubbub about something else in our wagons that night. While Gigi and Poppa were very impressed with my drawing, they were not so happy about how it came to be.
We had rules about being out past the edges of the firelight as the sun began certain parts of its descent. Crepuscular animals being—mostly—things to avoid. It had been a long time since those rules had needed to be restated to me. Knowing a pair of perfect ears were listening in on the tongue lashing for an eight-year-old being leveled on me, an adult in every known territory we’d ever visited did not help matters.
Gigi insisted on skipping dinner, as her dyspepsia would keep her from sleeping after such a fright.
I had come back safe, with nary a scratch! She hadn’t been there!
I was old enough to know these arguments would hold no water with my Gram. Poppa let her go and then demanded to know everything. His excitement was like the little children in every town we visited—both afraid of the event and wishing they could be involved and travel with us when we left.
He wanted to know what the bear smelled like, whether it had given me any attention while it ate, and how tall it was. We whispered late into the night, both hoping Gigi would not be able to hear us on the far side of the wagons. No good would come of her knowing that Poppa was not interested in scolding me.
We told tall tales of the monsters that lived in the various places we had visited, just like we used to when I was young and couldn't sleep. Poppa was an amazing storyteller; he often used his skill to entertain the villagers and their children while they saw what we had to offer. Often, adding a short tale to the description of a wooden box or roll of fabric would increase the interest in that item. Many odd skills were helpful when you made your living traveling far and wide.
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Voices drifted in and out throughout the day. People with food, tea and bread, every few hours. The three faces becoming familiar with each instance.Waking and sleep intermingled. Tales of bears and dragons. The dragons weren’t real. So many times that statement had been uttered. The fire hadn’t been a dragon; the dragons weren’t in the valley. But the dragons had always been in the valley. The dragons had created life in the world.Without the dragons and their immortality, everything unraveled. Purposes untethered. The world was turned upside down. The sun rose too early and set too late. What could be done with these extra hours in the daylight?Now that she had crested the rim of the valley, how far would she be able to go? Shara closed her eyes, and fell asleep listening to the new voices telling their old stories, an introduction to this brand new world she had seen laid out before her in the most terrifying moment of her life.