Ash & Bramble (10 page)

But the pocket is empty. Frowning, I check my other pocket, and then the purse in the wardrobe where I keep a few coins. The thimble isn't there, either. I know it isn't in my desk with the disastrous jumble of embroidery, but I check it just in case.

I couldn't have lost it, could I?

Now I really am getting watery. The thimble is real, solid—I know it. It's the only thing that I am really certain of. Everything else is slipping away from me. I can't remember anything about my father, not even what he looked like, and the only thing I remember about my mother is that the thimble was a special present from her. It is silver, engraved along the bottom with the roses among thorns that are the symbol of my mother's family, and it has been passed down, mother to daughter, for many generations. Just having it in my pocket gives me strength. And now to lose it!

If I can find the thimble, I will have something to hold on to. Something that will make this strange place feel solid and real to me; something that will make me feel real to myself.

The thimble is surely somewhere in the house. It
must
be. Where else could it be?

H
IS LIPS ARE STILL BURNING FROM THEIR KISS, AND YET
Shoe is furiously angry with Pin.

“You have a chance to get away, you stubborn idiot,” she shouts, and points up the stream toward the mountain. “Go, curse you!”

Glaring at her, he scrambles to his feet.
She
is the one being the stubborn, stupid idiot. Neither one of them is going to escape—hasn't she realized that yet?—and they might as well be together when it comes. “Not without you, Pin.”

She holds up her hand. The bandage on her wrist is soaked with blood; drops spatter on the ground and are absorbed by the ash. Her face is thin and determined, and seeing it, maybe for the last time, makes Shoe's heart, which he'd thought was a frozen, shriveled thing about the size of
a burned crust, pound in his chest. “Shoe,” she says. “If you care about me at all, you won't follow me.” Then she turns her back and heads down the ash-covered stream bank.

Shoe stares after her.
If you care about me at all . . .

His legs quiver with weariness, and the rest of him is shivering because he knows what the Godmother will do to them—she will break them to her will, each of them in different, slow, special ways, and she'll take pleasure in doing it, too.

Pin starts to run, leaping over rocks, stepping lightly over the ash, and she's running right into the arms of capture. Her boots, Shoe notices, are making her steps surer than they would be without them. There might be irony in that. Pin would know if there was or not.

She disappears from view, and the shock of it is enough to get him moving, scrambling like a scared rabbit up the bank past the waterfall, then around another bend, his feet leaving easy-to-follow prints in the ash.
Pin
, he thinks with every step, but he can't help but fear for his own skin, too.

The backpack is heavy, and it rubs against his old friends, the still-healing welts from his time at the post, but that just reminds him to go faster. As he told Pin, there's worse things than the post. When he sees a sort of notch in the side of the ravine, he runs for it, knowing that the Godmother will follow his trail easily, but knowing, too, that to stay in the ravine is an even surer way to be captured. He climbs the slope, ash as fine and soft as sable sliding down around him and filling
his boots, until he makes it to the notch that takes him up and out of the ravine, scrambling along a rocky shoulder of the mountain. What he really needs is to get down into the trees again; out here he's too exposed.

The first jolt of energy has worn off, and he can feel how tired his body is; it's a candle burned almost down to the socket, a flickering flame about to go out. The backpack weighs more with every step. The ash-covered slopes have turned to wiry brown grass, and below him he can see the tree line, which is dark and welcoming, as if he'll be safe there, which he knows he won't.

Carrying the backpack is stupid. He pauses and slips it off, dumping it behind a rock, but taking out the cheese and gingerbread first, just in case he lives long enough to want to eat again. The relief from the pain of carrying it takes him the rest of the way down the slope to the edge of the forest, but then the weariness catches up to him again. About to plunge into the trees, he pauses to catch his breath and looks back over his shoulder.

A jolt of fright flashes through him. A man on a big brown horse is at the top of the spur of the mountain where Shoe left the backpack. Two creatures that look something like dogs and something like men crouch at the horse's knees; they have their heads to the ground as if they're sniffing. As Shoe stares at them, the man sweeps a look over the tree line; his gaze stops, fastens on Shoe. Slowly, deliberately, he nudges the horse into a walk, and they start down the slope.

The Godmother's Huntsman and two trackers.

Shoe stumbles into the forest and jerks himself into a run. The Huntsman has his trail. “I'm not getting out of this, am I?” he mutters to himself. But he isn't going to hand himself over to them, either.

The trees are spaced widely here, this high up the flank of the mountain, so he has room to run, ferns brushing his knees, slipping and sliding now and then down a steeper, pine-needle-covered slope, always finding a path, as if the forest is clearing a way for him. Clouds have moved in to cover the sun; it must be after midday, he guesses. The Huntsman can't be very far behind. His stomach growls, and he puts his hand into his coat pocket to find the packet of cheese. Something else is in there; he pulls it out.

Staggering to a stop, he stares down at Pin's thimble. She must have slipped it into his pocket. Why? It's magic—he's figured that much out at least, he's not completely an idiot—and maybe Pin thought it would help him. “That was stupid,” he mutters. Because the thimble would have helped her more.

The Huntsman and his trackers are coming, he reminds himself. Taking a quick bite of cheese and then wrapping it back up again, Shoe stumbles on, holding Pin's thimble tightly in his fist.

The sky overhead has turned darker gray, the sun going down behind the clouds. Shadows gather among the trees. Shoe's run isn't a run anymore, it's just a dull shuffle, his
muscles one big weary ache. Now and then he trips over a gnarled root and has to find the will to pick himself off the ground so he can shuffle on. In his fist, the thimble feels warm, and it seems to pull in one direction. Maybe Pin created some kind of magic with the thimble so it will lead him to safety.

He hears the
shuff-shuff
of hooves on soft ground. He's got his head down, watching for tree roots to trip over. At the corner of his vision, he sees the Huntsman pull even with him, the horse at a plodding walk. The horse's head is hanging, Shoe notices, as if it's just as exhausted as he is. The trackers that hover at the horse's heels are tired too, their tongues lolling.

Clutching the thimble, Shoe stumbles on. He's good and caught, he realizes through the haze of weariness, but he's too tired to be afraid. The twilight advances. He bumps into a tree, then stops, staring at it for a moment.

Tree.

Tree?

What to do with a tree? Oh. Yes. Go around it. Slowly he shuffles around the tree and keeps going. Another root trips him and he goes down hard, but keeps his hold on the thimble, then slowly peels himself off the soft, welcoming ground.

He hears the Huntsman beside him, the snorts of his tired horse, the creaking of his saddle, the occasional low whine from one of the trackers.

“Aren't you—” Shoe starts, and stops, alarmed at how
rough and weary his voice sounds. He catches his breath. “Aren't you going to capture me?” he asks the Huntsman.

The man clears his throat. “Aye, we're getting to it,” he answers, his voice deep and gravelly.

Oh. Shoe trudges on. His feet aren't sore, he realizes. Well, of course. He's wearing boots he made himself.

“Just waiting for you to run yourself out,” the Huntsman adds.

“This isn't exactly running,” Shoe mutters.

To his surprise, he hears a huff of a laugh. “No, that it's not,” the Huntsman says. “Not to worry, lad. It won't be long now.”

“It'll be longer than you think,” Shoe whispers, not sure if the Huntsman hears him. His shuffle is a walk, now, and he has to think about every step. Pick up his extremely well-shod foot. Drag it forward, set it down again. Lean forward—but not too far. He's hunched over like an old man. Pretty soon he'll be crawling.

But Pin is right. He is stubborn; he'll crawl if he has to.

After a long time, it comes to that. He stumbles again, and falls, and this time he can't make his legs work. Try as he might, they won't let him stand. Crawling, he goes on. The pine needles are prickly against the palm of his hand and the fist that is clutching Pin's thimble. There is just darkness, the ache in his muscles, the dragging weights of sleep and hunger, and the pull from the thimble. If he can keep going until morning, he promises himself, something will happen.

“Had enough yet?” the Huntsman asks, just a deep voice in the darkness.

No.
He can't muster up enough strength to say the word out loud.

He crawls on through the night. Until he finds himself with his face pressed against the rough bark of a pine tree and can't figure out what he's supposed to be doing.

One of the trackers whines, a pitiful sound.

“Shhh,” the Huntsman tells it. “We're almost done.” His voice is closer; he's not on the horse anymore, but has been walking patiently alongside Shoe, waiting for him to stop.

No. Not stopping. Slowly, his arms and legs dragging, Shoe shifts away from the tree. As he crawls past it, his shoulder bumps the trunk and he goes down, face-first in the pine needles.

This time, he can't get up. The candle flame flickers out; he's used up. A heavy weight of despair presses down on him. The Huntsman will take him to the Godmother now, and he, and probably Pin, too, will be turned into lessons for the rest of the slaves at the fortress.
See?
the Jacks and the Seamstresses and the new Shoemaker will be told, as the guards point to his body and Pin's hanging from thorns on the wall.
This is what happens to those who try to escape.
It'll hurt a lot, Shoe thinks fuzzily, but then it'll be over.

As if he's a long way from his body, he feels, distantly, the Huntsman's big hands on his shoulders, turning him onto his still-healing back, and even the pain of that isn't enough to
return him to himself. From far away he hears the whining of the trackers and the Huntsman's deep voice calming them. Then sleep comes like a black bag over his head, and he's out.

S
HOE WAKES UP
in the morning wrapped in a blanket with his own backpack for a pillow. He's curled on his side next to a crackling fire. The air smells of pine smoke and browning sausages. An early dawn light filters through the tree branches.

He's still got the thimble clenched in his fist.

As he lifts his arm to look at it, his whole body is seized with a muscle cramp; he grits his teeth until it passes.

“Awake, are you?” asks a deep voice.

The Huntsman. The weight of despair crashes back into Shoe. Suffering, death, the whole lot of it. That's what today has in store for him. Slowly, so as not to trigger the cramps again, he opens his hand to examine the thimble. It gleams silver against his dirty palm. At its base are etched brambles—thorny vines like the ones that covered the wall around the Godmother's fortress. Amid the brambles, though, are dainty roses. Pin's thimble. It reminds him of her—prickly, with occasional glimpses of sweetness. In his mind he can see her face so clearly, her dark hair tangled, her gray eyes weary, but still sharp. When he'd first seen her, he'd thought she wasn't pretty—and no, she's not.
Pretty
is too small and light a word for what she is. Missing her is an ache in his chest. He turns the thimble, letting the light burnish its dimpled surface,
then puts it into his coat pocket. His eyes drop closed. He's been captured, just as she has. The one consolation is that it means he'll see her again before they die.

“Sausages?” the Huntsman asks.

He cracks his eyes open again.

“Expect you need a bit of help there,” the Huntsman says from the other side of the fire. He gets up from the log he's been sitting on and comes around the fire. He's a big man, and he looms; Shoe tries to scramble away, and his muscles cramp again.

“Now then, now then,” the Huntsman says in a soothing voice, and with strange gentleness helps Shoe sit up, leaning him against a tree, then tucking the blanket around his shoulders. He turns to the fire, and turns back with a steaming mug of something that smells like coffee. “Start with this,” he says, helping Shoe close his hand around the tin cup.

The cup is hot under Shoe's fingers. For a moment, all he can do is sit and hold it; then he manages to lift the cup to his mouth and take a sip. The coffee burns a warm and bitter path to his stomach, which responds by demanding something to eat.

Shoe eyes the Huntsman warily. He has an enormous, drooping mustache, brown skin, and a shiny, bald head. He is busy at the fire; he skewers a fat sausage with a fork and holds it out to Shoe. “Careful, there. It's hot.”

For a moment Shoe hesitates; then, slowly, he reaches out and takes it. He doesn't remember having sausage before, so
it's the best one he's ever eaten, and he savors every scrap of it, trying to ignore the two drooling trackers that are keenly watching him eat it. The Huntsman's big brown horse is tethered to a low branch, he notices, and there's an open saddlebag on the ground near the fire, and another bedroll.

“I'm your prisoner, aren't I?” Shoe asks through a bite of sausage.

“So it would seem,” the Huntsman answers.

Finishing the sausage, Shoe wipes a bit of grease from his chin with the corner of the blanket. “Why didn't you stop me walking last night?” he asks, and takes a sip of coffee.

“Well now, that's the strange thing, isn't it?” the Huntsman says. He is busy dabbing a thick, greenish salve on the trackers' backs where they've been whipped. “You're leading us straight as arrow-shot to where we're supposed to be going.”

The words are like a blow. All that struggle to get away, and he was going
toward
his own suffering and death? “Oh, that's definitely irony,” he mutters, his voice shaking. “Trying to escape the fortress by running directly toward the fortress.”

“The Godmother's fortress, you mean?” the Huntsman asks, setting aside his pot of salve. At Shoe's nod, he goes on. “No, you're not going there. You're heading for the city, and that's where I'm ordered to bring you.”

Shoe stares. “The city?” he repeats, as if saying the word again will make his brain understand it.

“Aye.” The Huntsman sets a large tin bowl filled with porridge on the ground. “The Godmother's city.” The two
trackers, both moving stiffly, come to the bowl and, dipping their heads, begin to lap up the porridge. “She's got plans for you there, most likely.”