Faithful Pebble
Part Ninety-Eight
"They kissed and I watched them, the armored man and the well-dressed woman. For three nights, I stared hidden by the trees and the leaves and the dusk and the night. I watched them! I watched them until one night I tripped. Accidentally, I stepped on a branch and the tiny twig snapped. I shuttered.
Pebble sighed. Her hood billowed softly. "The sound was muffled but loud and obvious. It would have startled any deer, any rabbit or fox or hen. I was caught. I knew it!
"I knew it as surely as I knew the sun and the sky, the bow resting heavily on my shoulder. For a moment, feared gripped me. It twisted my throat and shattered my lungs. But when I turned to gage their reaction, I was taken back. The couple hadn't moved nor seemed to have heard.
"They didn't halt their actions and I just watched them." Pebble shook her head. "They continued their caresses and I… I just stared on. Weary and cautious and foolish, I didn't move, even though the man's gaze slanted in my direction, even though his eyes seemed to capture my own. Even now I remember them. They're haunting to look at, smoldering almost; green the color of the forest, the color of the sun through its high hung leaves. He was very handsome, like a knight in a fairy story, or a prince unknown and foreign, or a hero destined and lonely and tragic."
The wanderer nodded, an image danced in his mind, a person, a voice, a face. He sat back calmly. He rested his head in his hands.
"After that night," Pebble continued, "they didn't return. I figured they left to find a more secluded spot. I didn't know who they were and I was naïve. That's what the knight had said, the night he appeared cloaked in the moon light leaning against the well. He said, I was stupid. He said, I was naïve. It was a crime to spy on lovers, he said, a heavy crime punished severely in other villages, in other towns and cities I never heard of.
"I didn't know how to answer him, so I did the only thing I could think of."
"And what is that?" the wanderer asked.
Pebble answered.
He looked at her.
"I drew my bow."
- Calla