Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Halfway home to your little house, your little plot of land, you meet a woman following a trail of ashes. “My bridegroom told me to follow the ashes to his home,” she says, “but I had a bad feeling, so I’m leaving a trail of peas to follow back to my father’s house.”
The trail of peas is already scattered and squashed, picked over by birds and dashed by your horses’ hooves. “I don’t think that trail will help you much,” you say. “I’ve found pebbles work better.”
“May I ask you something? Were you frightened, when you married?”
The ring is still on your finger. You haven’t taken it off. You don’t suspect you ever will.
“No,” you say.
“My father arranged this, and I love my father dearly, but I think my bridegroom is a very bad person. I don’t know what to do.”
You think of Cyrus wanting to do something for the sleeping princess. And the maiden in the tower. And the girl with the donkey’s skin.
You shrug one shoulder.
“You could always run,” you say. “I’ve a horse you can ride.”
The woman thanks you profusely. She mounts Cyrus’s horse and rides with you to the next town.
There, you part ways. You never see her again, or find out what happened to her.
You never know what story you saved her from.
You never know what story she found herself in, once the first one was circumvented.
But you think, maybe, Cyrus would be proud of you for doing something instead of nothing.