Chapter 6 #2
She was surprised by his vehemence, but instead of anger, there was sympathy in his eyes. She passed Caelin to him, more relieved by the loss of his weight in her arms than she would ever admit.
“Elisedd says you are much nicer than his real father was,” Caelin said. “And you are much nicer to his mother.”
“He says that, does he? Elisedd is a good foster son. He does what he is told as soon as he is told to do it. And he pays attention when he is training to fight. Can you do both of those things?”
Caelin leaned back in Arne’s arms and nodded. “I can.”
Arne strode forward with the boy held tightly against him and wrapped in his cloak. “Follow me.”
“He is too young to learn to fight,” said Gemma as she set off after them, hurrying to keep up with the length of Arne’s strides. When they reached the edge of the trees, she blinked. Ahead of them, the empty moorlands were already covered in snow.
“We can discuss this later,” Arne said. “Once we have found shelter.”
“Where are we going?” Gemma asked as she followed him out onto the moorland. “Is it not more sheltered in the woods?”
“There is a shieling close to here.”
“How do you know?”
“Ulf and I have used it before in the winter when we were hunting. There will be no shepherds there now, of course.”
She glanced around them, but aside from the steadily growing snow, there was no sign of anything else.
“How do you know we are close? The moors all look the same.”
“I can hear the waterfall. The shieling is close to it. Just a little higher upstream once we are out on the open moors.”
They continued on, Gemma still hurrying to keep up with Arne.
Her boots were soaked after so many hours of walking and she could barely feel her feet.
Soon she would be much colder as they were no longer sheltered by the trees and the wind was piercing her clothing.
She put her head down against the snow and focused on following in Arne’s footsteps as much as possible.
It wasn’t easy—she was tired and he walked so fast.
After a few minutes, the snow started to fall faster.
She couldn’t see him in front of her anymore and her mouth went dry.
He had warned her the last time when she called out, so she decided to keep quiet.
At least his footprints were still visible.
The snow was not so heavy that it was filling them faster than she walked.
Ahead of her she thought she heard a squealing noise, like a door being pulled open on rusting hinges.
She kept putting one foot in front of the other and soon there was a dark shape in front of her.
Arne put his arm around her and half-carried her the last of the distance to the shieling.
“Mama!” Caelin shouted, and hugged her. If Arne hadn’t still had his arm around her, she would have collapsed onto the floor.
As it was, he steadied her, then simply picked her up and placed her on a wooden seat next to the fireplace in the centre of a small stone building.
The door thudded shut behind them, leaving them in total darkness.
Arne moved back towards the door and soon there was a sliver of moonlight as he held open the door and she heard him rooting around for something, a flint probably.
“Light the fire while I get some wood,” he said, pressing a flint into her hand.
Even though her eyes were fixed on him, she barely saw him as he crossed the room and went outside.
She was so cold that it seemed like nothing in the surrounding room was real and it seemed that it might be easier to simply let the darkness consume her.
She put her hands over her face and leaned forward.
Why had she done this? Her hands were frozen and her gloves soaked, but when she tried to take them off, they clung to her painful fingers and she gave up.
“Mama, are you all right?” Caelin asked, coming to stand beside her.
“Yes, Caelin.”
“Then you must light the fire,” he said.
The fire. He wanted her to light the fire.
She could do that. She would do that. Slowly, she began to unfold herself from the chair.
She shivered as she knelt on the cold floor.
She kept her gloves on and was pleased to find that the last residents of the shieling had left a fire set.
She struck the flint a few times but ended up staring stupidly at it when she couldn’t get it to spark.
Caelin took it back from her and quickly used it himself.
As the dried gorse smouldered, she tousled his hair and kissed him on the head. It was the blast of cold air as Arne came back inside that finally helped the flame to catch. “Well done, Caelin. I didn’t know you were able to do that.”
“Elisedd and Einar showed me how. They like having a fire on the beach.”
“Oh, they do, do they?” said Arne. “I will have a word with them about that once we are home.”
“We will not be going back,” said Gemma, refusing to look at Arne.
“We’ll see,” was all he said.
She ignored him and focused her attention on the fire.