She stumbled off the saddle, nearly falling in her cloud of fever and fatigue. Her clothes were tattered and in general disarray: a formerly violet travel-cloak was brown with wear, age, and dirt; blonde hair was nearly caked with grease and grime. Through her mental fog, somehow she managed to crawl the few feet between the woods' end and the edge of the stream. She bent down over the water and drank deeply. The girl coughed, hacked, and tried to no avail to push herself back on her gelding.
She was too weak, and collapsed. Later she would remember faintly thinking she should move, hide, or at least tether her horse, but all the cares in the world faded, with her consciousness, into blackness.
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The late afternoon sun barely shone through the thick canopy of the forest. Some birds sang, and every so often, a deer rustled through the bushes within earshot; yet for the city-bred Calandra, it might as well have been perfect silence. The usual uproar of the city was gone, which she still found hard to believe. Before, she had only been out of Dashar City with her mother—and, therefore, with entourages and wagons full of things. It was blissful to be alone.
Her mare paused to nibble on a patch of plants. She urged Kali back into a walk and breathed the damp air deeply. Holding her reins in one hand, she reached out with the other to touch in passing the rough bark of the trees and their soft leaves or sharp needles. The forest around her hardly seemed real.
This was the third day she had been riding northwest, pausing briefly to rest every so often and sleeping under the stars every night. She had grossly underestimated the amount of food she would need for a week and had already run out. Her stomach rumbled loudly to remind her of this, disturbing the peace of the woods, but she ignored it. She was hoping to run into a village by nightfall so she could buy loaves of bread and maybe some dried and salted meat.
She had attempted to hunt, with very undesirable results. It turned out hitting a stationary target with an arrow was much easier than taking down a running hare. After a few disastrous occurrences, with culminated with fishing through what she realized after was poison ivy to find a strayed arrow, she resigned herself to going hungry until she reached the next sign of civilization. Scratching absentmindedly at the rashes on her arms, she smiled. Why should she care about being itchy? She was free!
On the other hand, however—she woke every morning with a nagging sense of ennui. She was free, yes, but where was the adventure, the charm of being able to go wherever, whenever? She did not see any merit in waking on hard ground cold and hungry. Whenever she felt that way, she would smother it quickly with memories of petticoats, being followed everywhere by ladies-in-waiting, formal dinners, and the like.
Whatever the rest of her felt like, at least she could be clean. Finding her way toward the nearby creek she heard, she tied her acquiescing mare to a nearby tree. Undressing down to her underclothes, Calandra waded into the freezing-cold (and yet refreshing) water. Her legs instantly turned a loud shade of protesting red, but she splashed in the brook until she finally felt clean. She tried to guess whether the closest village would be the one she had circumvented purposefully the day before or the one whose upstream existence was really only a guess.
All of a sudden, Calandra heard her horse give a surprised—or fearful?—whinny. Treading water, she made her way quietly to the banks and pulled on her breeches and fitted tunic as she peered through the trees to locate what had startled Kali. A rustle in the green growth made her fumble for her sword, but when a second horse came forward, she lowered it. The gelding was riderless, though the saddlebags were packed, as if someone had merely left it. Stung with curiosity, Calandra gathered her things and led both animals into the brush the gelding had exited. She carefully followed the trail, which went in upstream's general direction.
I wonder what happened, for someone to lose this horse, Calandra thought bemusedly. Did they just turn him loose?
She was so intent on her thoughts and the path that she was startled when she stumbled out of the woods again, farther north, and saw by the brook a limp, unconscious woman.
"Oh, sweet Eru," Cal cried, distractedly dropping the reins of both horses in order to rush to the fallen girl's side. She turned the girl over and felt her forehead, which burned dangerously. Calandra didn't know herblore; she didn't know who this girl could be. She did know that she could never be able to take care of the girl properly and she needed help herself if she expected to. Praying silently that she would attract the attention of good people—perhaps villagers!—and not the bandits rumored to be in the area, she raised her fingers to her mouth and let out a series of shrill, ear-splitting whistles. p
The horses shied away, but she tied them loosely to the nearby tree and kept on giving short, whistled blasts of sound, crooning calming words to them in between. She paused to drag the girl to higher ground, lay her out more comfortably, and then continued to signal. Keeping on eye on the feverish girl, Calandra sat down by the stream to wait.
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Flynn sprawled at the base of a resplendent oak tree, chewing a piece of bread and glaring irritably up at his younger sister. His annoyance was just, he told himself. Though from his recently sprained ankle and Adrian's acrophobia, she remained the only one in their small party to be able to climb the tree, Kaie need not crow her delight at seeing sky down with such enthusiasm. It only reminded him of the dark, sylvan air around him; for though he enjoyed nature, he hated not being able to see the horizons.
"Flynn? Adrian? I figured out which way is north," Kaie called down.
"It took you a long time," Flynn muttered, as Adrian chuckled.
Kaie climbed down a few branches and jumped the rest of the way. "Actually," she said, smiling sweetly, "I discovered that in the first two seconds. The rest of the time I was enjoying the breeze."
"Kaie…" Flynn warned, as Adrian laughed harder. "Please. Stop."
"Stop what?" she asked, completely wide-eyed and innocent. At his glare, however, she relented. "I'm sorry, Flynn," she said, still smiling.
Adrian broke in. "We should set out," he said. He paused, and then turned quickly. "What's that?" he asked.
"What?" asked Kaie. "Do you hear something?"
"Whistling," he answered shortly. "We should follow it. It may be a help signal." Or a bandit's call to his fellows, was the unspoken addition that they all heard.
The siblings listened carefully, until they both nodded slowly. "I agree," said Kaie, suddenly serious. "Let's go."
They helped Flynn mount his horse—with his sprained ankle, it was difficult for him—and then climbed on their own as they headed toward the noise, hoping their attempt to assist a stranger wouldn't turn into a fight.