Chapter Six #3
Bram studied her for another moment. She was changed, but how?
The excess of energy that had propelled her down the slope had burned off, leaving her subdued but upright, back rigid with resolve, jaw held tight as if she had bitten into a sour fruit and decided to like the taste anyway.
She no longer looked through him, past him, or around for gaps in her predicament; instead, she looked at him, straight on, though her gaze bounced quickly away, to her hands.
He noted that her breathing was even again, the panic forced down, and that she seemed to have retreated into herself, organizing her next move in silence.
He waited. Even a small animal, when pressed, might bare its teeth or bolt.
Why hadn’t she gone? he wondered.
Bram set both hands on his knees, clearing his throat softly to draw her attention. “What is it that you’re after, lass?” he said, more gently than he’d intended. She blinked, the words knocking her off the perch she had just managed to regain. He tried again. “Where is it ye need to be, lass?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ye’ve somewhere ye mean to go—somewhere ye were intent on reaching when I... encountered ye today.” He dared not say aloud anything relating to what he thought he’d witnessed, her unholy arrival in a place where, an instant before, no one had stood.
“Oh. That’s a great question,” she said with a rueful laugh.
“I wish I had an answer, but because I don’t know where we are or how I got here, I’m not sure where I should be.
” She hesitated, then looked at him almost hopefully.
“Don’t worry about me, but... if you don’t mind too much, maybe I’ll just...
hang around with you until we find a town or something. ”
She’d posed it as a suggestion, a statement, but he understood a question lived in there as well.
“Aye, a town or village will serve us well eventually,” he said at length.
“I mean to be moving again ere the sun rises,” he said then, answering her original question.
“We’ll want to put distance between ourselves and those English.
” He inclined his head out beyond the rock, toward those tiny gold specks that were fires.
“Right,” she said with a nod. “That makes sense. That’s a good idea.”
Silence settled between them for a time, broken only by the soft sigh of the wind outside the shelter.
Anastasia remained sitting with her knees drawn toward her chest, staring out into the gathering darkness, but before long a tremendous yawn overtook her.
She covered it politely with the back of her hand, though it did little to disguise it.
“Well,” she said wearily, “I think my body has officially decided it’s had enough for one day.”
She gave him an apologetic little smile before easing herself down onto her side, using her odd satchel beneath her head as a makeshift pillow. She shifted once, then again, trying unsuccessfully to find comfort upon the uneven stone.
“Wake me if... well, if we have to run again,” she murmured. “Oh, and apologies in advance if I snore, although I don’t think I do.”
Bram answered only with a slight inclination of his head.
After another moment she settled at last, her back toward him, her long, still-damp hair spread out behind her, between them, strewn about the rock.
The night grew quiet once more, and just as he convinced himself she had fallen asleep, her voice drifted softly through the darkness.
“Are you going to sleep, Bram?”
He glanced toward her, beckoned by the sweetness of her sleepy voice. “Aye, I will.”
“I hope you do,” she said and then paused to yawn again. “I think sleep would be really good for you.”
It was such an ordinary thing to say, so casually offered, that for a brief moment he scarcely understood why he frowned over it, until it dawned on him that her words and the sentiment behind them sounded an awful lot like concern.
The concept was so unfamiliar it felt foreign. Three months had passed since anyone had spoken to him with simple kindness, asking nothing in return. He’d met none of that in his cell, of course. The other prisoners had possessed too little strength to concern themselves with another man’s welfare.
Yet this peculiar young woman, who claimed impossible things and knew nothing of the world around her, concerned herself enough to suggest that sleep would benefit him.
Bram looked at her for another long moment before turning his attention once more to the darkness beyond the shelter.
The English fires still glimmered below like fallen stars, their distant crackling too faint to reach him.
Somewhere farther off, an owl called through the pines, answered a moment later by the call of another nocturnal bird.
The hillside had settled into the quiet of night, but for Bram came the familiar instinct to remain watchful.
Beside him, Anastasia shifted once upon her pillow, sighed softly, and then grew still. Before long, the steady cadence of her breathing reached him, slow and even, carrying the unmistakable rhythm of genuine sleep.
Strange, that such an ordinary sound could bring him unexpected peace.
For months, his sleep had been filled with the groans of dying men and the clank of chains.
Tonight, there was only the wind in the pines and the quiet breathing of a woman who, for some reason he could not fathom, trusted him enough to sleep at his side.
His eyes remained upon the darkness a while longer, more from habit than necessity, until at last even vigilance yielded to exhaustion. He rested his head against the stone, drew one slow breath, and surrendered to the first untroubled sleep he had known in many months.