How Adrian worried when Anne did not return! As the sun sank below the horizon, he squinted up into it, hoping to see her frame still perched on the edge of the roof of the crumbling castle. His eyebrows crinkled further: she was not there. Four, almost five hours had passed since they had been dismissed from class. Where was she? His parents forbade him from going anywhere, and for once in his life he was tempted to disobey. Normally, he could weasel his way out of the few orders they gave him, when he was so inclined, but it was hard to find ambiguity in, "No, you may not go outside."
Then, he tried to convince himself that she was home, somehow. Yes, that was it. She had returned while he was doing laundry, and had not heard the pebbles at her window...
Adrian sighed. His arguments sounded flimsy even in his head. As he ate dinner, practiced chess with his father, and then went to sleep, he begged her forgiveness in his head. He really did fear the ruins by night, and his parents' wrath if he left, and whatever kept Anne from returning home. As he drifted to sleep, half-real, half-dream images swirled before his mind's eye. Dreams of danger, and beauty, and evil, and death.
He awoke with a scream, but the sunlight streaming in through the curtains eased his frantic half-conscious mind. The nightmares fled as his parents came in. As his father asked what was the matter and his mother stroked his hair, he lied. He lied that he was sick, he lied that he felt dizzy, and, in what he thought was a stroke of genius, lied specifically that his neck hurt, so that his parents would not recognize his tendency to use ambiguous lies.
The parents looked at each other with a secretive, worried expression, and then at their son. "Why don't you rest then. I'll make you some soup," said the mother after the long moment. "I'll send for the pries...doctor," added the father. Adrian briefly wondered why his father had changed what he was going to say. Priest? What for?
But he didn't have time to wonder. As soon as they were gone, Adrian snuck out the window, leaving a pillow under his blanket so that it would seem he slept, and closing the curtains after himself. He climbed down the wall, ran through the village, darted up the rocks with abandon he had not had the day before, and raced up to the castle, only worried about Anne. He opened the blood-red doors, and skidded to a halt in the foyer. There was Anne, standing by the side table, singing softly to herself a gypsy tune. She did not notice him until he was behind her and said her name, quietly so as not to startle her, remembering how she had startled him the day before. She turned and smiled quietly, wearily, and then fell into a faint towards the dark marble floor. Adrian caught her in a surprisingly graceful movement. He blinked, surprised that he had not blanked out when he was needed, as usually happened. As he carried Anne back to the village, his mind drifted to the various times when he had not acted when action was necessary. When wolves attacked the village, he could not light the fire for the torches, his hands shook too much. Three children died by their claws and teeth. And when Anne's grandmother had died, he could not call the doctor, voice frozen in fear. He still didn't know if his own inaction was the cause or not. And when one of the villagers had received a long gash from his scythe during the harvest, he had completely forgotten how to bandage it. The man lived, but barely, and had no grain of his own to eat that winter. So much pain. So much death. It would not happen to Anne, he thought with determination.