Edited 1/29/22 - Please let me know your thoughts throughout the story, I'd love to hear for you :)
I do not own the Inheritance Cycle.
So you know: the Platnak- is a dark, shadowy and very lovely mythical creature who takes misbehaving children and puts them in a sack in the middle of the night, and carries them away to the high mountaintop of Marna, there the Platnak keeps them for a year then boils them and eats them. I've half of a sidestory about it and am too lazy to finish it.
Enjoy,
In the Byre
Rose sat beside Cai on the side of the straw filled mattress and watched the sun rise over the downs. Gradually the world filled with color, and a chorus of birdsong rose around them, and the horror ebbed away. Still she could not sleep. Her mind was too agitated for it; she still felt dizzy with the successive shocks. She sat in silence, reflecting on what had happened in the past twelve hours; first Thorn finding her, then the meaningless deaths handed down by the Empire, then the ambush. Her thoughts couldn't rest on anything for long, but leaped ahead of her, flashing a kaleidoscope of images into her mind; the young mother lunging at the captain as the body of her child falling to the floor, the look of complete terror and grief on Cai's face, the shadowing glow of Thorn…
Despite the warmth the shrouded sun brought she shivered, doubting that the damp would ever leave her. Her fingers were numb and her clothes were sticking uncomfortably to her body but it was her hair that made her miserable; dripping beads water down her back, clinging her neck and face, and continuously veiling her eyes with its tingled heaviness. She never before wished more a brush for her hair, but when she searched for one all she could find was a brush for a horse's slick coat.
They were under the sheltering of a half attached roof in old rutted byre. Underneath the ground was slightly, and there was even a little protection from the dripping rain. Thorn was huddled close by, his head rest atop of his paws, his back hunched miserably against the rain and shifting wind.
What are we to do? asked Rose. Her gaze swept, smoldering with irritation, over the bare, lonely hills.
Do? he said. What do you mean?
We have to find out that happened. Those, those people… There has to be something we can do. Rose bit her lip. No one deserves death for simply being associated with somebody, and we cannot keep the boy. He has a family.
We're not going back. I will not heedlessly return you to that perilous place. Thorn pounded his tail against the ground. We can't afford any more trouble.
Perhaps not, said Rose. There is no harm in flying over the area and checking. We cannot continue our journey without knowing whether or not those soldiers are going to report us to a higher order. They saw you, Thorn, don't you understand that? As much peril as you believe there is in returning to that house, there is the same amount in continuing back to Teirm.
All the more reason not to check, said Thorn. The risk is too great.
Rose was silent, for a time, turning over their options. At last she sighed, pulling at a loose grimy thread from one of many holes in the mattress. So be it, she said. What shall we do with Cai, then? We cannot take him with us nor can we leave him.
With an unhappy grumble Thorn stood up. I will look, said he flourishing his wings, if you stay here, and promise not get into anymore trouble. When I return we leave and find your companions if I do not see his two-leggeds, perchance I do I will return him and then we will leave this place. With that said Thorn jumped into the air and flew away.
Until they had found the byre, their flight had been difficult and miserable. The rain had shot down from the sky like tiny, frozen needles, and the shifting wind had forced Thorn to fly close to the ground but it was the lack of the sheepskin that caused the most trouble. The thin stockings provided a very little protection from the sharp points of scales on Thorn but the dampness made it a challenge to stay on his back, and each turn or shallow dive sent both Rose and Cai this way and that. It was made shoddier by the fact that the boy would not wake, not that Rose could blame him as the blackness of unconscious was far better than reality, and she had the trouble of keeping both herself and him securely on Thorn's back. Eventually Thorn flew far enough away from that lone dwelling that he agreed to find a shelter for the remainder of the night, and not soon after his agreement the half standing byre and a small, high roofed house was found.
The inside of the chalet was the grimiest place Rose had ever seen; it lacked even the rough coziness of the previous havens. It smelled of stale air and mold and damp, as if house had been empty for some time. A dish of beans, half-eaten and layered with grey dotted fuzz, lay on a table nearby, and a chair was pushed back as if someone had suddenly stood up. Another chair had fallen over. A mug was broken and split on the floor, the beer dried in a dark stain, and several other cups, half-drunk, had been left where they stood, scattered on the small table in the room. There seemed to be several layers of dust on everything. Rose wandered through the three bedchambers, and all of them looked at if the people had left hurriedly.
Having decided that she did not wish to stay in that abandoned home, she pulled one of the sack-like mattresses out from its framing and dragged it over her shoulder into the byre, and then returned into the house to get two blankets. The blankets were comfortless; smelling of mildew and filled with holes but it was better than nothing, and Rose wrapped both herself and Cai in them before she tried to go to sleep. The moment she laid down, she felt a burning nausea that seeped throughout her body and deathly images passed before her vision, and she sat up and instantly became ill.
Rose did not try to sleep after that, but instead choose to look over the hills thinking over what had happened, that perhaps had she done something different things mightn't not ended the way they had. In her mind she kept thinking over the things that could have been done. Perhaps if she had something different; perhaps she would have been able to change things; perhaps had she heeded the warnings she wouldn't be there seated on a molding mattress with some crippled boy. It was not just the recent events that troubled her, it was everything that had effected in the past year, of all the events that led to her self-enforced isolation and later to this journey, or whatever one might call it, to the Varden.
A familiar dull fear rose up inside her but it was just that dull, like an overly used knife. Rose did not wish to go those rebels. Rider or not, they would not welcome her with open arms, she was sure. They would recognize her, someone would somehow, and then what? Her parents had made many enemies in their lifetime and here she was in the same standing as her dreaded father, with an alliance to the King or not there was sure to be blood shied. That was the blessing that her father bestowed on her; no matter where she might go someone would be hunting her, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the moment she took a misstep and then they would pounce. There was no place that was safe.
She stared balefully into the endless hills of the forsaken farmland, remembering Tornac's words, on how thinking of the thinking of ifs were a fruitless use of time. It felt so very long ago that they had sat in that cabin together. Immediately she missed his calm, understandable presence and wished she had not thought to travel to Teirm.
She didn't even know why she had done it, her reasoning was so flawed and not truly the reason she had wished to see the city. Had she been truthful with herself, she would have realized that that she the cause of her discomfit was how it reminded her of her life in Urû'baen, and how that had troubled her. She had left as a fool under a false principle, and felt it all the more now.
Rose shook her head. Her thoughts were not making sense, she was simply too tired to think properly. She couldn't sort through them properly, as it confused her already jumbled feelings. It reminded her when she was a child, lost in the maze of halls and at every corner was the Platnek waiting to catch her, when in fact there was nothing there except for her own imagination.
She laughed to herself, feeling all the more of a fool.
It was some time later that Rose had her head leaning in her hands, listening to the rhythmic splashing of the rain. She was on the brink of sleep when suddenly it seemed that a darkness grew over the lands and there was raging booming of thunder. Rose started awake, grabbing the axe beside her -which had a broken handle and its blade was chipped- that she had found in the cowshed, and cradled it to her chest.
Thunder sounded again, and the boy awoke with a struggled gasp, and slowly he sat up looking around them. It seemed to take him a moment to remember what had transpired the night before and, Rose watched unsure as to what she should do, as his face gradually paled and crumbled, he covered it with his hands began to weep with a violent cry. She felt suddenly as if she were a trespasser, intruding on the privacy of grief; this was a sorrow too intimate to witness.
She turned away from Cai, and stood up to study the new coming storm and allowing the child a moment of solitude. Rose looked down the valley, the ground swept away before her, a constant, steady decline of peaty hills with pockets of flooded water. After a time the rain fell to the earth like a blankets, and she began to search the sky for Thorn with her eyes and mind. As she had the days before, she felt the emptiness of his presence and she regretted sending him away.
A long time after Cai awoke his sobbed subsided, as did the storm, and he insisted on finding something to eat whether it be wild berries or the remains of a forgotten crop as he was quite hungry, though Rose certain that he only wanted do something to keep his hands and mind busy so not to appear weak. When she agreed, Cai stood up and hobbled outside to the small woodland behind the byre. They found nothing expect for springy, green mint which they picked and returned to the byre with.
"It puts off hunger," he told her happily.
Rose bit her lip and stared at his smiling face in disbelief. "Cai," she said warily.
He shoved a handful of leaves into his mouth and chewed on them. "Whah ish shet?" he said with a full mouth of greens.
"Do you have a place you can go to?" she asked. "Relatives who live nearby?"
Cai nodded and moved the goo of mint into his cheeks. "Yeh," he said. "I gots Dune, and Thelma, and Abagail, and Namma, and Mathon. How far is home from here? Did you walk the whole way?"
She shifted in the ruined doorway of the byre and looked down for a moment, before squaring her shoulders. "Do you not remember what had happened this previous night?"
"It was a trick!" said Cai harshly, spitting the mint onto the ground. His face was strained and pale, his anger ebbing into confusion. "Ah real mean trick, too! Take me home, I wanna go home!" For a second his face creased up, as if he was going to cry again, and he put his fists to his eyes like a little boy. Rose wanted to hug him or comfort him somehow as she had done the night before, but was overcome by a self-consciousness and instead turned away. He would to come to terms with had happened on his own.
Three hours after the sun reached the middle of the sky, the darkness of the storm cleared leaving behind a heavy, dripping fog. Over everything was an empty silence, save for the dripping of the rain and wind as it stirred the grass stems. Rose sat with her head resting in her hands, unsure if she awake or asleep, sending out her mind experimentally. She didn't feel Thorn only tiny, fragile glows of life, like many touches of light in the darkness, but she wasn't all too certain if this was something her mind invented out of its exhaustion or not.
When he returned it without warning, and the only reason she knew he was there was because of a scream that tore through the thick air like a knife. She startled awake and glanced around in confusion, her mind hazy with the state of half sleep. Beside her was Cai, trembling with fear, poking at something with a shaking finger. Rose looked at him then glanced in the direction he was pointing. "The-the Boogey Beast," he said so softly Rose could hardly hear him.
She glanced at Thorn, who stood relaxed at the opening of the byre, and mindtouched with him. Was there anyone there?
Yes, he said. I saw many men with pieces of fire attached to their beast.
Was there anyone else?
His tail flickered across the mud. No. I did as you asked now we leave.
I thank you for checking. Rose turned to Cai and said, "He goes by the name Thorn."
"You named the Boogey Beast?" he said frightfully.
She nodded tiredly. "If you don't behave he'll eat you," said Rose standing up.
Thorn sent her a tendril of exasperation. I will not, he said. The hatchling is too boney, there's hardly any meat at all.
Rose pointedly ignored him. "Up you get," she said to Cai, as if Thorn said nothing. "We have a long way to go."
Cai looked up at her in panic, his eyes widened and his bottom lip trembling, his fists clutched at his sides. "No," he said defiantly. "Take me home."
"There is no home for you to return to." Rose blinked her eyes slowly in impatience. "Please, do get up."
"Nothin' happened, it was awl ah trick!" he said loudly. "I wanna go home."
Her anger grew in its own accord and she felt something inside her snap, as if she had been held up by an ever tensioning cord and someone cut it. Cai sat silently, his head bent, and she saw his cheeks burned with anger. Rose looked at him and then turned away. "Get up," she said harshly. "There was no trick. What you saw happen was truth, your eyes did not lie. Now, get up!"
Slowly he stood, and Rose saw that his shoulders shook. "It's not fair," he said.
"Life often isn't."
Rose stepped away, to collect herself, and picked up the scraps of rope she had tied to the mattress, in a fashion very much like what she had done with the sheepskins. She pulled at the ropes and slowly dragged them over the Thorn. It wasn't very heavy but she glanced at Cai with pity and sighed. "I need your help, Cai," she said. "Are you willing to help me?"
The boy nodded and assisted her pull the flimsy mattress onto Thorn's back. Whenever Thorn move even the slightest, the child flinched and nearly fell over but eventually they got the mattress on Thorn and Rose tightened it. Not long after that, Rose pushed a resistant Cai onto Thorn's back and she fought her way up behind him. She tested herself, and found that it would not take much to unbalance her, before telling Thorn that she was ready to return to Teirm.
