Chapter Three #2
They lurched forward again. Idris said nothing, only drove, and the sway of the cart lulled her to sleep. They were moving slower, the wheels sluggish through the settling snow, the horse less sure-footed when met with patches of ice.
The man stared at the gunpowder cartridge and the musket at his feet. He’d dropped them without meaning to. The logical thing to do was to bend down and pick them up, but something was stopping him, a force outside of himself.
“Huber, what’s wrong with you? Snap out of it.”
His partner was right next to him, yet his voice sounded as if they were separated by a glass wall. Huber wanted to tell him that he was trying. He couldn’t utter a sound.
Instead, he was compelled to look up, into the face of the woman with the scarf.
Huber wanted to tell his partner to run.
Seraphina woke up with a start. Her heart hammered as she scrambled to get herself upright. She pulled the hood off her head and sank her fingers into her hair, tugging at the roots until the sting chased away the last remnants of the dream.
Huber. The name sounded familiar. She’d seen herself through his eyes.
No. Impossible. The woman with the scarf didn’t look like her.
Tangled hair that had come out of the braid, so dirty that its color was questionable.
Sallow cheeks, a frame too thin and sickly hidden under a heavy cloak, a silk scarf sitting askew between a sharp nose and a wide forehead.
That wasn’t what Seraphina looked like, so it couldn’t have been her.
“Dreams make no sense,” she whispered.
“What was that?” asked Idris.
“Nothing. Just… dreams make no sense.”
“That depends. There are three types of dreams, so if you tell me yours, I’ll tell you what sense it makes.”
“Three types?”
She pulled herself closer to the plank he was sitting on, and he leaned back until their arms touched.
“There is the true dream that comes from Allah, the troubled or false dream that comes from Shaytan and is meant to mislead, and then there is the ordinary dream that comes from the self.”
There was a hint of amusement in his voice, and Seraphina bumped his shoulder.
“You don’t believe in any of it, do you?”
“Oh, I do. My mother taught me when I was a child. She also taught me the prayers to recite before sleep to guard against bad dreams.”
“This was a bad dream,” she murmured.
“Have those often?”
She shrugged.
“All right, if this approach doesn’t work for you, let’s try another. You don’t seem feverish, but how is your digestion? When was the last time you ate?”
“What?”
“A fever will cause a certain kind of dream, hunger will cause another. Some dreams are of the body, not of providence.”
Seraphina shook her head. “I missed you.”
He smiled broadly. “I’m glad. But, seriously, when did you eat last?”
“This morning? Now that you mention it, I am hungry. Thank you for that. It’s not like I can do anything about it.”
“I think I spotted some wooden boxes in the back. Go see if you can find us some bread and cheese.”
She didn’t wait to be told twice. She eagerly crawled to the back of the cart, avoiding the medicine chest and making sure her bucket of snow was in decent condition.
She felt around and discovered two crates.
Smiling to herself, she lifted the lid on the first one and rummaged through it, uncovering hard bread stored in coarse linen sacks, and mountain cheese wrapped in muslin.
She sniffed the food, scrunched up her nose, and moved to the second box.
She gasped when she was assaulted by the smell of smoked meat.
It was nothing special, these were just standard army issue provisions, and the hardtack especially was detested among the soldiers.
It was hard enough to break teeth and frequently infested with weevils.
But the slabs of cured pork she found wrapped in oiled paper were promising.
Sitting near the crates, she also identified a small cask of what was probably beer.
“We’re set,” she announced.
“Good, because I think we need to find a place to stop.”
The wind had shifted, coming hard from the north. It had snowed relentlessly since they’d left Schloss Ewigheim, and the way the gale howled between the trees on both sides of the road warned of an impending storm.
“It’s getting worse,” Idris said.
Seraphina closed the lids on the boxes of provisions and made her way to the front, huddling next to him.
The relic in her eye socket showed her the white shadow of an endless road ahead, no break in the trees as the horse strained against the weather.
It went like this for another half hour before Idris spotted an opening and pulled at the reins, clicking his tongue to guide the horse down a narrow path.
At the end of it, they were disappointed to discover the ruins of what had been a farm.
The main house didn’t have a roof anymore. All its windows were shattered, and vegetation sprouted behind its walls. The only standing building was a barn near the tree line, so they headed there, neither of them voicing their hope that it might be unscathed enough to serve as a temporary shelter.
At first glance, it didn’t look better off than the house.
“The roof is saggy on one side,” Idris described. “But the timber frame stands square, and the double doors at the front are still on their hinges. We can make this work.”
He climbed down and went to open the doors. The left one scraped along the ground and stuck halfway, and he had to put his shoulder into it until it gave another foot, just enough so he could drive the cart inside the barn. Seraphina joined him.
The air smelled of old straw turned to dust and the faint sourness of mildew, but there was no stench of rot or standing water. It was dry. They breathed out in relief.
Idris led the horse and the cart through the doors, the wheels rumbling over the threshing floor.
Seraphina closed the doors before too much snow could get in.
Once that was done, she moved to the center of the space and took it in through Saint Vivia’s relic.
To her right, there were stall partitions standing along the wall, and to her left, there once had been the hay bay.
“There’s a corner of stone floor at the back,” Idris said. “They must have done their boiling there or kept a stove. It should be safe enough to make a fire.”
“Anything else?”
“There’s a ladder that leads up to the loft. It looks sound enough. I see a few wooden planks, though I think their only use will be as firewood. There’s also a workbench along the left-hand wall, toward the back.”
Seraphina headed there, stopping in front of the low piece of furniture. She brushed her hand over it, assessing that it was solid, built from thick wood, maybe oak. A vice was mounted on one end, a heavy iron screw-clamp for holding wood or metal. A grim image that made her shudder.
“We’ll do it here,” she said.
“Do what?”
“I mean you, you’ll do it here. Tonight.” She bent over and ran both her hands from one end to the other to better judge the dimensions of the workbench. “It’s big enough that I can lie on it.”
She heard him let out a deep, tired sigh.
“I want nothing more than to say no. The conditions are unhygienic, and light will be a problem. But you’re right. It has to be done.”
Seraphina nodded and went to retrieve the snow bucket.