Prologue
She crashed once more to the muddy ground, bringing still more tears to her tired eyes. Her gaze remained fixed on the faint light coming through the trees ahead; the only source of light in the dark, rain soaked forest.
At last her tiny legs and aching feet could go no further, and the little girl dropped to the soaked leaf litter of the forest floor. A whimper of pain and fear escaped from her throat as the darkness seemed to close in on her. Every tree branch in the dark became a monster or a scary animal out to eat her as she curled up in a ball. A shiver ran down her spine, followed closely by another and another, until she could not even move from the cold, wet ground where she had fallen. Her gaze stayed fixed on the light, as everything around her began to disappear further into darkness.
Suddenly, strong warm arms lifted her up, rousing her slightly from her stupor.
"An' what's a wee lassie like you doin' out in this mess?" a deep voice grumbled from somewhere above her. It was the last thing she remembered for some time – the warmth of those arms, and the deep comforting voice of the man who had lifted her from the forest floor.
The next time the small girl came to; she was sitting in a warm room on a cushion next to a fire. A tall, broad shouldered man with dark auburn hair and a well-groomed beard and mustache was shaking her shoulder, looking down at her with concern in his brown eyes. Something within the little girl told her she could trust him as soon as she met his eyes.
"Well, lassie, yer soaked and muddied through an' through," the man began, "We'll be needin' to get a mite like ye clean and dry to keep ye from gettin' sick, won' we? An' maybe sommat warm in yer belly too." The girl's eyes met his again, and she nodded, her eyes wide and trusting. She knew no harm would come to her from this kind man. She lifted her arms to him, waiting for him to lift her up.
The man sighed and lifted her up, taking her to the bathroom where he'd filled the tub with warm water. Fine thing, at my age, to try an' start learnin' to care for a little, he thought to himself. But he couldn't begrudge the tiny child a thing. She was too young to be a runaway – she had to be no more than three. Besides, no child with any sense would be running away into the woods around here. He had no idea why she had been running through the woods as if demons chased her, in the cold rain, with nothing covering her feet and only a tattered robe of some sort to provide any kind of warmth for her tiny body. However she'd come to be out there in the woods, she was here now. Come now, Red, you watched out for yer younger siblings when you were younger. You can do the same now fer this mite.
Gently, his huge hands help the child to get out of her ragged, mud stained clothing. He set her in the warm water of the tub and the girl smiled at the warmth. She splashed about a little bit as he began to soap up a soft cloth. He scrubbed her back and her limbs, smiling as the young thing giggled when the cloth tickled her. He soaped her hair and poured a cup of water carefully over the suds to wash them from her hair. He very carefully washed the dirt and grime from her small face, making sure not to get soap in the child's startlingly emerald green eyes as he did so. At last he finished getting the dirt off of her delicate skin. The child lifted her arms once more to be lifted from the dirty water that was growing cold. Something caught Red's eyes as she did so. He moved her hair that was dark with water off of her chest and stared. There was a Celtic knot design on her chest – the three sided Triquetra with a small stylized bird inside it. He froze. He was an old mercenary and bodyguard, and he had seen enough that there wasn't much that could shake him. But he had held on to some old, odd superstitions throughout the years, things gleaned from his travels and from his homeland.
The child started to pout, not understanding why the kind man was leaving her in the cold, dirty water.
His eyes locked with her green, green orbs as he gently turned her head to catch the overhead light better. He gasped as he looked into those emerald eyes, for what he saw frightened him, awakening old fears of the fae, of shape-changers and witches and strange powers. The bird within the knot was a symbol of old power. It was a wren. He'd heard tales of lines of old that still had some of the druidic blood within them, but he'd thought such families had died out in modern times – being hunted down as witches and sorcerers, losing the power to disuse, or simply having all those with the powers die out with no one to train any new children that might show them.
But then the child began to cry. His kind eyes lost their fear as the once more focused on the hungry, lonely child. Just superstitions, he thought.
He lifted the waiting child and wrapped her in a soft and fluffy towel to dry her off.
He dressed the girl in one of his too-large shirts and sat her down at his kitchen table, ladling out some of the oatmeal he'd made and sprinkling it with cinnamon and sugar, adding butter and milk to it to cool it and make it more palatable for a picky young thing. He helped her eat, her tiny hands shaking too much from exhaustion to feed herself. After she'd finished he lifted her and went to the living room to place her in the nest of cushions and blankets he'd put together for her use.
But her tiny arms went around his neck then, and she yawned and laid her head on his shoulder trustingly. He stopped walking and checked. The little girl had already fallen asleep in his arms. Any fear left within his heart melted in the face of this trust.
He sat down on his couch, cradling the girl child in his arms, and wrapped them both with a blanket.
His eyes also began to drift shut in the warmth of the room and the warmth of this child's trust that was placed so willingly on his shoulders.
Their two lonely hearts – one old, world wise, and tired, one young and already burdened with an unknown grief – found solace in each other's company.