The days passed swiftly, each stuffed full with tasks and toil. Elsje hardly had time to think where Brenna might be taking her, even at night. She simply fell into bed, tired with the weariness of hard work. The planting was in full swing, and with it, the injuries increased a hundredfold.
There had been a bad injury a few days ago, when one of the husbands who was ploughing his field had had an accident with the plough blade. He had come in on the back of his neighbor, who had found him unconscious in the dirt, bleeding from his face like a fountain. He was still housed in Brenna's hut, but was ready to go home to his wife, where his brothers would take over his ploughing and planting for the season while he remained in bed, under strict orders from Brenna. He would not see out of one eye for the rest of his life, a thought which sobered Elsje and caused her to put her back into making medicines for the unfortunate. She would not be the cause of a shortage when someone needed help.
However, today was the rest-day. She woke feeling refreshed, and took her time walking to Brenna's hut. The clouds scuttled across the sky, making the fields that surrounded the village look like they were wetted with shadow. When she was nearly at the cottage, she heard the voice of the injured farmer's wife inside, complaining about her husband.
"I swear, he did it to get out of work. He's never been industrious, not one whit! There's a reason we're the poorest family around. Do you know, one year we had a bad harvest, and he had the temerity to blame it on the flood!" The woman came out of the house, followed by a grumpy-looking man with another man on his back.
"Get ye gone, woman! And if I hear of ye makin' the poor man get out of bed for even a minute before the scar on his face is healed, I'll not dose ye when ye come in askin' fer a potion. Nay, not if ye were dyin' in yon road!" Brenna's grumpy face poked out of the door, glaring at the woman, who sidestepped Elsje without a glance, still complaining that her husband had the audacity to be injured as she strutted up the road.
Elsje had to chuckle at the exchange. Brenna turned her glare on the girl, and snapped, "What find ye so funny, girl? Yon lady may hurt my patient!"
"But Brenna, she always tells him that he spends too much time in the fields! Why, last week she was grumbling that he didn't have time to take her out walking as much as before because he was working too hard!" Elsje let out another breath of air that was almost a laugh.
Brenna's face softened. "She has never been an easy one to get along with, not even as a wee babe. She loves him well, even if she has a difficult way of showing it." Brenna clucked her tongue, looking down the path where the woman had gone, then turned to Elsje, showing a small pack, seemingly full. "Be that as it be, we be not responsible for them. Be ye ready, girl?"
Elsje nodded, then wordlessly took the pack from her mentor's yielding hands. Brenna stepped from her cottage, closing the latch carefully, then started down the path, away from the village, with Elsje following.
They walked together, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, through the fields surrounding the village, separating the houses from the forest. Any farmers they passed, if not engrossed in their work, would yell a greeting, and a question of destination, which Brenna answered invariably with "Out!" Finally, their feet touched grass, then moss, as they entered the ancient forest that pressed the village on three sides. The trees shaded them, making the hot day merely warm, with flies and mosquitos buzzing through the brush.
They followed a trail that seemed invisible to Elsje, although Brenna never wavered. She led the way through stands of grass, clearings and thickets with the same unchanging gait. They had left when the sun was barely up, although the villagers had been up for much longer, but by midmorning, they had still not stopped, and Elsje found herself wishing that she had brought food she could eat while they walked. Suddenly, the sky opened up above them and Elsje stepped out onto a huge circle of stone. Brenna stopped, and Elsje looked, astonished, around her.
They were standing in a clearing, but a clearing made or stone. It was dark, a grey color that seemed to be eternally in shadow, but she could feel that it was unnaturally warm under her feet. It stretched around the whole clearing, but across from her was a hill, or something that might be called a hill were it not made entirely of stone. It was about the size of a cottage and Elsje could see vines trailing over the crest of the stone. As she walked further into the clearing, she could see that the mound overlooked a pool. The water in it was oddly still, even with the brisk spring breeze whisking over the surface. It was deep, so deep that Elsje could not see the bottom of it, even with the clear water. It seemed to drop eternally into an endless column of stone. Neither was it small, Elsje had no doubt she could drop her family's entire cottage into the pool and never have touched the sides. She dipped her hand in, and the pool was as comfortably warm as the stone surrounding it. Confused at the odd place she found herself in, Elsje looked to her mentor for an explanation. "What is this? Why is the stone warm? What is this pool? How did you find this place?" She bombarded Brenna with questions as the old woman was taking things out of the pack she had brought.
"This place be ancient, but the tale be that it has not always been here. Yon hillock is said to be a dragon whose heart was broken and turned to stone when its tears doused the fire in its belly. Yon deep water is a collection of its tears, and the stone is warmed by the last heart-ember of the dragon, trapped 'neath the rock. As for how I found it, well…" Brenna grinned a mischievous grin. "I was not always so old, and I was a terrible apprentice to my granny. I used to escape to the woods for days, living in yon trees. Thought I that my granny showed me this place so she would know where to find me if gone I had been for too long." As she spoke, Brenna brought out hard cheese, bread and apple preserves, placing them on a small cloth. "Tell, I will, about the other legends of this place, but I be hungered. Eat! Then shall I tell." And no further word could Elsje get from her while a morsel of food had been left uneaten.