I had so much more to ask her—who she was, to begin with—but a warm, full belly was too much for her and she was asleep in a heap almost before setting the bowl down with the clean-gnawed bone. I covered her with my blanket and took the bowls to the rill to wash. I returned and banked the fire. I covered the stew, of which there was enough to break our fast.
I was still very unsettled and it was already deep in the night. So I decided I would ask her dreams a few questions. I curled up behind her on the floor mat and pressed my forehead into her hair. Her body grew warm against mine and I stilled myself long enough to sleep.
In the morning, she was sitting up, rubbing her face, before I woke. She looked askance at me, then shrugged. “I suppose I would have done the same,” was all she said as she unfolded her tiny frame and went outside. I also needed to go outside, but gave her a few moments to herself out there. I poked some life into the embers and put the stew near the fire. Suddenly I wondered if she had left and I grabbed the blanket and went outside.
She was just standing in the first beams of the morning sun among the dead barley straw. Her hair, I noticed, was gold at the back where I had pressed my face into it; or was that the morning light? I shook out the blanket and began rolling it tightly.
I realized what she was doing. Just standing still in one spot on the earth. Savoring that. I left her to it.
Some time later she returned to the hut. She glanced at my things, which I had tidied into a bundle for traveling. There wasn’t a lot. She herself spooned out the warm stew into the bowls.
I told her, “We can’t stay here. Eradis will come looking by tomorrow, if not today. I’ve been away for a few days. He knows about this place. It was my uncle’s. He died a few weeks ago and I told Eradis I wanted to make sure the place was in order for selling. But I really just needed to get away for a few days.”
“I know all of that, you realize. Luken.” She looked at me significantly. My dreams had been hers as much as hers had been mine.
“Sidoney,” I said. Saying it, I realized how much I liked the name.
“I don’t know where you want to go, but I’m heading up the river, to Gloswin. I have a couple of relatives who might want to buy this farm from me. At least, it’s a place for me to go.” I looked up from my bowl. “What about you?”
“If some time has passed, I think I can go back to Bend-In-the-River. He won’t come looking for me.” I must have been staring at her, because she stared questioningly back.
“Do you mean Bend Town? You don’t want to go there. The Redhands would grab you and make you one of their thralls in a heartbeat.” She frowned, and I explained. “The whole city burned in the year the mountain smoked. That was seventy years and more ago. The land was ruined. It’s only outlaws there, and the Redhands dominate the local trade in slaves, brew, gambling, and murder.”
Sidoney drank the last of her stew and sighed. “I have been gone a very, very long time, it seems. All my people would be long gone.” She looked at me suddenly. “How old is Eradis?”
We both realized that Eradis was unnaturally well-preserved, and we didn’t have to guess how he accomplished his continued vigor. He sapped it from his young followers like a spider drinking the blood from its prey. Whatever misdoubts I had about Eradis became firm disillusion. And resolve.
Sidoney took my empty bowl with hers and stood to take them to the rill to wash. “Go down stream a hundred yards, and there’s a pool for bathing. Use one of the bowls. I found some clothes. You can’t show up is Gloswin in those rags.” I handed her a bundle containing a tunic and trousers, with a small pot of the rosemary-scented grease that my uncle had used oh his skin. My uncle hadn’t been a big man, and had been fastidious about his linen. I myself had changed into his old clothes just so Eradis wouldn’t spot my familiar red tunic. I had left that hanging from a peg in the hut.