Page 27

The temperature in the forest dropped quickly, and Ena desperately wanted to start a fire, but she didn’t dare risk it.

There was a chance that one or more of the daemons was still on her trail, and she didn’t want to attract their attention.

She curled up tighter under her cloak and drifted off to sleep immediately.

***

She awoke shivering just before dawn as light drops of water began to pitter-patter on her cloak. Emerging from her cocoon, she looked up to see that the clouds had rolled in while she’d been sleeping, and it was starting to rain. She groaned in miserable frustration.

Her muscles were tight from the cold and overuse, and she was really, really starting to hate this dress. What she wouldn’t give for a full meal, a hot bath, and a fucking change of clothes that fully covered her chest.

She was able to find a few more uneaten blackberries on the bush which served as her breakfast, then took a swig of her waterskin before she once again climbed the tallest tree she could find to check her positioning.

The sun was invisible behind the dense layer of rainclouds, but she could still make out the Chasm Mountains.

She’d made less progress yesterday than she’d hoped.

Her search for food in the afternoon had taken up more time than she would have liked.

By her estimation, she still had a day or two of travel before she was anywhere close to the Sacred Pool.

She scrambled down the tree and continued walking.

For the first time since she’d escaped, she started to feel apprehensive.

Would she be able to find the Sacred Pool?

Would the spell to send a message work? Maybe she should have come up with a different plan of escape.

Maybe she should have gone to the village and gotten a horse.

Maybe she should have stuck with the daemons until they got to a different village. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

All her doubts and misgivings hit her like a load of bricks and dread filled her.

She was alone out here. Yes, she had water, for now, but food was going to be a constant struggle until she made it home.

She’d camped in the backwoods many times in her life, but she’d always had a horse, ample supplies, and the company of other witches.

Not to mention most of her travel had been done in the summertime, not in the late fall.

Her solitude was already starting to wear on her, and she desperately hoped this had not been a poor decision.

Just then, the clouds burst open and it started to rain in earnest. Heavy droplets thudded on her shoulders and the hood of her cloak.

Within minutes, her cloak was drenched through and she knew it was only a matter of time before her dress was too.

She looked around, but there was no type of shelter in sight—no caves, no overhangs, no hollowed-out stumps big enough for her.

This part of the landscape was distressingly flat.

She had no choice but to keep moving to keep warm, and hope that she happened upon a spot to hunker down for a while.

She trudged on and on, focusing only on the squishing of her boots into the muddy forest floor.

One step. Another step. Another step. Another.

Soon enough, the rain soaked through all her clothes, her socks, her boots.

She started to shiver, and her fingers and toes started to hurt.

She knew she’d need to risk a fire tonight.

Later in the day, she happened upon some myelle mushrooms clustered around the base of an ash tree.

She picked as many as she could and gathered her dress in front of her to form a makeshift container for them.

She’d have to cook them later over the fire lest she risk a stomachache, but that would be doable.

The thought of that fire was the only thing that kept her going.

Her waterskin was empty now, but she wasn’t thirsty.

The rain ran down her face, in her eyes, and dripped into her mouth.

She’d never been this wet, and her worries only increased as the sun began to set and the temperature dropped yet again.

Try as she might, she couldn’t bring any warmth back into her hands.

Moving them was getting tough, especially since she needed one to hold on to the mushrooms cradled in the fabric of her dress.

Gaia be blessed, just as the sun went down, she came upon an unused hollow beneath the base of a fallen tree. She nearly ran to it and kissed it she was so relieved, but she didn’t have the energy.

The tree that formed it had been huge, its gigantic roots splayed in all directions where they had been ripped from the earth.

Shivering and stumbling, she climbed down into the massive hole that remained and dug it out a bit more, but the angle of the tree and its roots only offered so much coverage from the rain, so she gathered some large, downed branches that she found and laid them across the hollow to form a crude lean-to.

Then she layered the branches with moss to shield her from the elements even more.

It was hardly waterproof, but better than nothing.

Once she had most of the branches in place, she slipped inside the crude shelter, placing the last branch to cover the gap she’d used to get in.

Her hands moved incredibly slowly as she gathered up the soggy sticks and leaves she’d tossed inside to make her fire.

Her body shook like a leaf, but she ignored it as she reached into her Knowing and used her spellword to light the soggy pile on fire.

She had to restart it several times, because everything was so wet, the small flame she created kept blinking out.

After several tries, the materials dried out enough that she was able to get a decent fire going.

The warmth and light buoyed her spirits immensely, and her makeshift shelter warmed enough that she slowly regained the movement in her hands.

She took off her cloak and laid it on the ground underneath her to dry.

Since there was no room to hang it up, it was the best she could do, and she also removed her boots in an effort to dry her socks by sticking her feet near the fire.

She was cramped and dirty in her little hovel, but she was starting to feel slightly more hopeful.

One by one, she cooked her mushrooms using a forked branch to hold them over the fire. A few of them got badly singed, but she was pretty sure they were the most delicious things she’d ever eaten regardless.

Once she’d eaten them all, she stared into the fire for a while.

The rain still pounded into her shelter and several leaks had formed, causing drips of water to drop into the fire and sizzle.

She was afraid if she went to sleep, her fire would burn out, and then she’d have to start it all over again.

But she was so, so tired. The stress of her escape, the elements, her loneliness, all weighed on her.

She didn’t want to admit it, but at least when she had been with the daemons, she hadn’t felt so…

alone. Yes, she had been there against her will, and yes, they’d forced her to help them find the amulet, which was bad.

But by the end, she had at least felt physically safe with them.

They hadn’t hurt her. They’d given her food.

In her quiet moments of fear since escaping, she sometimes wondered if staying with them would have been better than this.

But she was close. So close. With a blessing from Gaia and a quick pace, she could make it to the Sacred Pool tomorrow.

She was more confident than ever that she really had gotten away from the daemons.

There was no way they’d be able to track her in these conditions.

She was filled with conviction once more as she laid down and wrapped herself in her cloak. She fell asleep almost instantly.

***

Sometime in the night, she was jerked awake when a pile of frozen moss and tree branches fell on her, bruising her cheek with an ice-cold slap. Startled out of her deep sleep, she frantically looked around her.

Her makeshift lean-to had collapsed.

Reaching to move the branches and moss off of herself and the coals of her fire, she felt that they were covered in a slick layer of ice.

Outside of her hollow, she could hear the sound of ice tinkling through the trees and onto the ground.

The drippy, sadness-inducing rain had turned into the ice-cold menace known as freezing rain.

Fucking perfect.

As the freezing rain broke through her collapsed shelter, it drenched Ena’s fire in seconds, putting it all the way out.

She knew it would be futile to try to start it again, as all the sticks and branches in the area would be encrusted with ice.

She’d experienced freezing rain before in her village and knew how destructive it could be.

It always led to significant damage to roofs when tree branches inevitably broke under the weight of the ice and fell, and often led to broken bones, too, when people slipped and fell trying to walk around on the slick ground.

She had no choice but to huddle as close as she could to the tree’s roots and wait it out until dawn.

The rain would hopefully let up at some point, or at the very least, when the sun rose, the temperature would rise above freezing and it would switch back to regular rain.

But she soon found that waiting it out might not be possible.

Her head and torso were protected from the worst of it by the tree’s base and roots, but her boots stuck out into the rain despite her best efforts and soon they were covered in a thick layer of ice.

Her toes began to go numb inside her socks, and without the fire, she could feel her still-wet clothing starting to freeze too.

She tucked her hands close to her body, but they too were beginning to hurt again. Fuck .

Fear started to grip her. Frostbite and hypothermia were a real concern here.

Crack!

She was pulled from her spiraling thoughts by the deafening sound of a breaking branch. She peeked her head out of her pitiful shelter, looking up at the canopy of trees overhead, only to hear the cracking sound again.

Her Knowing screamed at her to move. She scrambled out of her hollow on all fours just as a huge tree limb, covered in a thick layer of heavy ice, came crashing down into the hollow where she’d just been.

She knelt on the ground just next to the branch as she stared at it in horror. The branch covered the hollow entirely, and there was no way she’d be able to remove it by herself. The only shelter she’d found was now gone.

She had no fire. She had no shelter. And the freezing rain continued to fall, crusting her cloak in minutes.

Ena was alone, afraid, and she knew in that instant that she had made a very, very poor decision.