Omereth, 13-on-Rye, 568

Omereth, 13-on-Rye, 568

In that first week, we did little but maintain our route north and supplement the food we had brought with us. Making sure we didn’t stray from the forest hedge was relatively easy, despite the occasional gaps in its growth. In this part of the world, the only part I have ever really experienced, the land is low and rolling, full of verdant hills and shallow valleys, with only sparse patches of difficult terrain. This made our movement on foot straightforward enough, so long as we didn’t lose track of the hedge.

One afternoon we came upon a series of boulders, their layered and jagged rock an imposing eruption upon the earth. The hedge ran up to them, then stopped, but after we had scrambled our way to the top, the view made it obvious where we should continue. Upon that low summit, even though we were only a few heads above ground level, I marvelled at the world. Toӧr was lost to sight by then. I could no longer see the sprawling stone-and-wood buildings and smoking chimneys nestled against the protective rock face so distinctive of my home. But there were occasional signs of life, to be sure. To the west, I could see a small farm, corralled animals of some sort mere moving dots amongst a distant, static field. To the northeast there stood an ordered array of buildings. Some small village. Dowen, Brae confirmed after seeing me squinting.

Early the next morning when the soft orange glow of daybreak reached out to us, we came upon a deep stream, its water gushing and burbling eagerly. It wasn’t so deep as to make the crossing impossible, but Brae decided it was an unnecessary risk and that we should cross elsewhere and loop back to this spot once on the other side. Was the stream even on the map? I wondered. There was no point in asking; Brae wouldn’t remove her map just to satisfy my curiosity.

As I stopped and stared at this little obstacle, I noticed the abrupt end to the low shrubs several feet before the water’s edge. It was uncanny, as though the plants had taken offence at the stream’s passing, deciding to ignore it and just continue on the other side. Perhaps they had jumped across. I had laughed at myself then, Brae eyeing me with a look that was half bemusement, half irritation.

I pondered a moment longer on this question of the stream, eventually deciding that it was entirely that: an interruption. The stream had come second, languidly driving its way through the hedge at some stage long after the row of shrubs and bushes had established themselves. It must be very satisfied with its work, I thought, questioning just what task it had since set itself. To find an ocean, I figured. After all, that is surely the greatest desire of any stream. I watched its flow, the way the water ran swiftly down and between rocks and off into the distance to the east. I hoped for the sake of this stream that there was an ocean that way, but I couldn’t know for sure.

“Left or right,” I asked, looking to Brae. She chewed her lip, a gesture I favoured second only to the creasing of her eyes. Below, I could see tiny black fish in the clear water, endlessly battling the current.

“I think either, but the left draws me.” Brae had unlooped the metal pendant she kept wrapped tightly around her wrist, letting it swing freely from her right index finger. It was a habit I disliked. The idea that fate could be teased out from the world and sensed through some piece of string. She called it her guidance. I called it her folly. But only to myself. Folly would find me fast enough were I to speak those words aloud.

In the end, after refilling our flasks, we chose the left and soon found a shallower section that seemed safe enough. Our boots removed, leggings pulled up as high as possible, we waded through the current. I would have just left everything on, but Brae had insisted we make the crossing barefooted.

“You don’t want your clothes wet. Especially your boots.” she said. “Wet feet in wet boots. Not pleasant.”

I nodded, wincing as the icy water lapped across my skin. Brae laughed. Actually laughed. The sound of her laugh, the fact that it had been me to elicit that response, both of these things combined to a compact ball of warmth in my stomach.

“That was your first time, wasn’t it?” I said, buoyed on by that warmth and unable to help myself.

On the other side of the bank, Brae stopped and looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“My first time?”

“Laughing. Not so painful, is it?” I hopped across the last section of the stream and jumped up into the thick grass. Wiping the balls of my feet in an attempt to dry them, I sat down and began to unroll my trousers. All the while, I kept my eyes on Brae.

Brae said nothing. Responses other than insults or curt remarks were not her specialty. Brae the Laconic; a fitting title perhaps. She just shook her head. But there, hidden in that movement, one eye twinkled. I was sure of it.

As for food, we each carried our own bundles for the journey to Kareth—dried fruit, hard-bread, slices of salted meats; not exactly luxury, but it had been deemed enough when we set off, provided that we ration ourselves. To supplement this meagre diet, we relied upon Brae’s proficiency as a ranger. As we walked, she would be tracking, noting the way that some animal may have disturbed the brush, left its droppings, marked its path with tiny footprints, or even deposited strands of hair on a thorny shrub. At times, Brae would wander off into an encroaching forest or skulk ahead around a particularly thick patch of the hedge, telling me to stay put. I would wait, patiently, watching for that moment when she would re-emerge, something in her hands.

It was all invisible to me, of course, these signs and disturbances that animals will leave as they move—their spoor, as Brae informed me. I listened with fascination true enough, and I think Brae actually enjoyed it, warmed to it, even. The hint of condescension in her voice dissolved into something verging upon respect at my attitude to listen. Finally, it seemed, I had found something she was eager and willing to talk of.

On the afternoon of the third day, hours before that fateful sighting in the sky, Brae treated me to a demonstration of her hunting skills. Ahead, darting between several bushes, there was a large rabbit. Brae motioned for us to stop, gliding the bow from her back in one smooth action, nocking an arrow silently in another. She knelt, pulling the bowstring taut, pausing, watching, waiting for the rabbit to stop. When it did, she didn’t hesitate. Her fingers released and the arrow thwished through the air, tracing a minute arc in the fraction of a second it took to strike its target. It all happened before I had chance to take breath. The rabbit fell limp, twitching. I raised my eyebrows, impressed.

“We’ll rest here for a while,” Brae decided, indifferent to her own marksmanship, walking to the base of the nearest tree. “I’ll start a fire. You can fetch us dinner.”

I may have protested at that, but it was a rare moment of Brae smiling. With her lips, and at me, with no-one else around for that smile to have been for—no chance of mistakenly thinking it was for me, only to find out it was not. I did not want to come across as some pet, following her every command, but it was impossible to resist that smile. And so doing my utmost to feign indifference, and making sure I most certainly did not skip, I set off towards the fallen rabbit.

I hadn’t really dealt with anything dead before, not with my own hands. I had eaten my share of meat, of course, though in Toör the produce of the land takes precedence despite the grazing sheep and cattle we keep in the fields. But having witnessed something transition from life to then death, that sudden creation of an absence of being gave me pause as I knelt down next to the once-rabbit. It looked almost peaceful, asleep.

The arrow ran through its neck and reemerged halfway down its flank. Its eyes were still open, a dark, glistening red that seemed all too alive. Beneath it, between the thinning blades of grass where the rabbit had taken its fateful pause, I could see the soil was wet. Urine, I realised with dismay. Its parting gesture. But unlike the spreading urine, the idea that the rabbit was now just an inert sack of organs and flesh refused to dissipate from my mind.

“Renn? What are you doing?” I heard Brae shout out.

“Coming,” I responded, not wanting to tell Brae I didn’t want to touch the rabbit, that I was fearful it might still be alive, that when I tried to grab it it would somehow move and I would hear the arrow shaft scraping against its spine. I shook my head. Then I placed my hand at the rabbit’s neck, tentatively at first, then with more confidence, scruffing the fur. The flesh underneath was still warm. “I’m sorry,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Know that you will feed us well. Your final act was in helping others.” Then I took a deep breath, stood and made my way back to Brae, all the while holding the rabbit at arm’s length, some part of me still worried it may move.

After I had been sent on another short errand to gather some herbs Brae had spotted a little way back along the path, Brae cooked the rabbit on a small fire. The rabbit tasted good, tinged only by my mind’s insistent recollection of its death. We had robbed it of life, for our own necessity. Such thoughts didn’t seem to affect Brae—she ate eagerly, though she maintained a characteristic poise I couldn’t help but admire.

“It’s good,” I said, picking some meat from between my teeth.

Brae flicked a bone into the embers of the fire and shrugged. “Not bad.”

I nodded. Once more, apparently it was up to me to try to spur on the conversation. “Who taught you to shoot an arrow so straight?” I asked.

The day’s light was beginning to fade and a slight breeze was taking the edge off of the season’s heat, blowing several strands of Brae’s hair into her eyes. Fingering them away and back behind her ear, she smiled. It was a wan, lost smile.

“An old friend,” she said. “He taught me when I was young. I’ve had long enough to practice since then.”

It felt unwise to press this, though I almost caught a glimmer of desire from Brae as she looked at me, as though she did want me to ask further. I hesitated, considered for one moment actually pressing the matter, but instead I said, “Will you teach me?” And then I found myself adding, “I could fetch your dinner each day. Our dinner, I mean.”

Brae shook her head, laughing slightly to herself. “Maybe someday.” She paused, dropping her gaze and frowning. “If there is time.” The fire cracked, as though in protest. Brae poked it with a stick, spreading the burning wood. “Get some sleep, we’ll start walking again after dark.”

Aside from interruptions from streams and boulders, and the occasional loss of trust in exactly where the path was meant to be—peppered, of course, with my unceasing ability to fumble my words—the going was easy. Brae’s decision had been to walk in regular shifts, regardless of daylight. Two, maybe three hours sleep, then we’d be back on our way. I didn’t mind so much. Sleep had never been something I was overly fond of. Wasted time, that’s how I felt about sleep, an attitude my father seemed to share. A few hours seemed to suit me just fine, and to my delight this had earned significant respect from my travelling companion.

And so Brae’s internal clock governed our movements: when we walked, when we rested and when we woke. Each time the last ended, I would spring eagerly to my feet, packing up my thin bedroll and making sure I was ready first. It was another silent game I played. One that I usually won.