Ash & Bramble (8 page)

After the gray stones and cloudy skies of the Godmother's fortress, it is too much all at once, and he closes his eyes as he creaks to his feet, then looks again. Off to his right, he hears the rustling of a stream. Leaving Pin to sleep, he finds the stream and follows it, climbing over moss-covered rocks, winding between pine trees as big around as he is tall, until the stream widens into a pond fed by a waterfall that tumbles from a notch in a high gray cliff. For a moment Shoe stands mesmerized by the falling water.

Then his stomach growls. “Oh, sure,” he tells it. “Give you a bit of gingerbread and some half-moldy cheese for dinner, and you just want to eat again in the morning.”

A kingfisher darts past, a brilliant flash of blue. Where there are fish hunters, he reasons, there must be fish, and where there are fish, is breakfast. He finds a big rock that juts into the pond, and there he unravels a thread from the bottom of his ragged shirt and ties it to one of the pins he found in the knapsack. He bends the pin and sticks on a crumb of cheese, then settles himself in a sunny spot and drops the baited hook into the water. The lightest spray from the waterfall wafts over him as the breeze shifts.

He doesn't remember fishing from the Before, but when
the bait is taken, his body knows exactly what to do, jerking the flashing, silver fish from the water, holding it behind the gills while he takes out the hook, then stunning it against the rock. He baits the hook again and catches another fish. He and Pin will have a feast for breakfast.

As he makes his way downstream, he comes to a sun-warmed clearing not far from their tree-cave. To his alarm, he sees Pin's gray woolen dress spread on a rock to dry. And her apron, which is dripping wet from a washing. Pin's clothes, but no Pin.

She is right, he realizes. In the Godmother's fortress they'd only had the monotony of work; they never talked, never touched, never felt anything but fear. Now he feels something else, a longing for Pin that sweeps over him, leaving him feeling a little breathless.

After peeking into the cave, he goes to the stream. There he finds Pin, wearing only her shift, lying on a flat, moss-covered rock, eyes closed, basking in the sun. She's washed her short hair, and it is curling as it dries. He creeps closer, wanting suddenly to kiss her, to feel her skin under his hands. It is a strange, unremembered feeling, but his body knows what to do with it.

As his shadow falls across her, she opens her eyes. “You could use a wash too, Shoe,” she says, smiling. The sun reflecting off the water is dazzling, and she shades her eyes with her hand.

He is about to smile and answer, when he freezes. The
fizzing excitement of seeing her suddenly drains away. She has rebandaged her wrist with a clean strip torn from the bottom of her shift.

The bandage is already stained with blood.

One thing he's learned from his time at the post is how long a wound like that should bleed. Setting down the fish, he goes to his knees on the rock beside her. She sits up, still smiling. He takes her hand, turns it over, inspects her wrist.

“It's still bleeding,” he says.

She glances down at it, then back at him. “It's all right.”

“No, it isn't all right. Does it hurt?”

“No,” she answers, and tugs her hand out of his. “It just drips.”

“It drips,” he repeats. With a stab of terror, he realizes what that means. As he speaks, his lips feel stiff. “It left a trail.”

Her gray eyes widen. “The thorns.”

He nods, knowing what she means. The thorns are the Godmother's. They were meant to slash, to make a wound that will not heal, so that if anyone ever managed to get over the wall, they would be easy to track.

Pin has gone pale. She climbs quickly to her feet. “We have to go farther into the forest,” she says. “She won't be able to find us. Don't worry, Shoe. We'll be safe.” She hops from the rock to the shore, hurrying away to the clearing.

Shoe follows, the fish forgotten. There is no help for them in the forest, he feels certain.

But the Godmother is coming, and they have nowhere else to go.

M
Y DRESS IS
still clammy as I wrestle it on over my wet shift. As I pull on my boots and tie the laces, my hands shake.

The Godmother has guards in her fortress. Some of the guards have scaly skin, like the Overseer, and some have pig snouts, and some have naked rat tails that wave behind them as they walk. Still others have the keen noses of dogs and lean bodies made for running. Trackers.

I stand and jerk my apron around my waist, fumbling with the ties. They
will
be coming, of that I am certain. So much for my promise to get everyone out of the Godmother's fortress. I may be going back there myself, sooner than I would like, as a prisoner.

Shoe comes from the cave with the knapsack slung on his back. He carries himself a bit stiffly, so I know those wounds aren't fully healed either, but there is no time to argue about who should carry the pack. Without speaking, he hands me a bit of cheese and cracker, and I eat them as we hurry away, deeper into the forest.

We hike all that day, uphill and down, along a narrow valley cut by a rushing, icy-cold stream, then up another steep hillside that gives us a view, as we top it, of gray, snowcapped mountains in the distance.

We hear nothing of pursuit. During a brief rest, I try sealing the wound on my wrist with the thimble, but it continues
to bleed. We press on, stopping only to fill the water bottle and to eat more gingerbread, which tastes to me now like ashes.

“Maybe we've gotten away,” I say as we pause, panting, at the top of a hill. Ahead of us, a path overshadowed by trees leads toward the distant mountains; behind us, the path has disappeared, swallowed up by the forest. “I think the forest is helping us escape,” I realize.

Shoe glances back, but he doesn't say anything.

As the sun slopes toward setting and Shoe and I are both stumbling with weariness, we hear, in the distance, the baying of hounds.

We exchange a glance, but we don't speak. We both know what it is that hunts us, and we know that they are close. He holds out his hand and I take it for a moment, and then we go on as fast as we can manage.

With the sunset comes the cold. Our clothes are still damp. “My feet are warm, at least,” I tell Shoe, but it doesn't make him smile.

No, of course it doesn't. He's felt the Godmother's punishments before. I haven't, but I know that if she catches us, our punishment for escaping her fortress—her prison—will not be as simple or as easy as death.

We press on. Night falls, and we feel our way through the trees. First I lead, with Shoe's hand on my shoulder, and then he leads, guiding me over rocks and stumps. In the middle of the night a full moon rises. A hunter's moon.

As we cross a clearing, Shoe stops me and pulls up the sleeve of my dress. The moon stands directly overhead. In its light the bandage looks black with blood. He frowns, then bends down and rips another strip from my apron—which is growing short—and wraps it around my wrist.

“I think—” I start to say.

“No, Pin,” he interrupts. He knows what I am going to suggest, that he should go on while I lead the trackers away.

“Shoe, there's only one way this can end,” I tell him, and hold up my wrist as a reminder.

“No,” he says stubbornly, and I know there's no changing his mind.

He comes closer, opening his arms, and I step into his embrace. I put my face against his, feeling on my cheek the light stubble along the line of his jaw, leaning into his neck to breath him in. He smells of woodsmoke from our fire, and sweat, and of the caustic soap used to launder our clothes back in the fortress, and over it his own clean smell. This is what I wanted. I wish it could last, and last, until it became our After.

But there's going to be no After for us.

“I'm afraid,” I whisper, hating to admit it.

“So am I,” he whispers back. “But we'll face it together.”

Blinking back sudden tears, I nod. He tightens his arms around me. I feel his strength and determination, and in return I give him my warmth.

Then, holding hands, we stumble on through the night.

D
AWN STAINS THE
sky red. The wound on my wrist drips a steady trickle of blood. The howl of the trackers draws ever nearer.

My head is spinning; maybe I've bled too much, or maybe it's exhaustion.

Beside me, Shoe bends over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. His head jerks up as a hunting howl echoes through the pines. “We could find a stream, maybe,” he pants.

“To throw off the scent. Yes, that might work.” I look wildly around, trying to get my bearings. Black spots waver before my eyes.

“This way,” Shoe says, and he takes my hand.

We stumble-run down the side of a steep hill, dodging trees, until we reach the bottom of a valley where a stream runs swift and clear. As I plunge into it after Shoe, the cold water sloshes over my perfect boots. We splash upstream, hoping the water will wash away the smell of blood. My wrist throbs with every stumbling step. I hear Shoe's ragged breaths as he pulls me steadily on.

As we climb higher, the stream flows faster, tugging at the bottom of my dress. The frigid water has turned the color of milk; my feet are blocks of ice. The stones lose their blankets of moss and grow sharper. The pines on the stream bank thin, and I look up to see, ahead of Shoe, that the stream slices through a narrow ravine bare of trees. We're leaving the
protection of the forest. The stream is leading us higher and higher to a looming mountain, its broad peak capped with snow, its sides gray with ash—an old volcano. We struggle higher, and the ravine turns sharply and doubles back on itself. It feels as if the water is rushing past us and we are climbing in place.

We come around another bend and I see, just ahead, that the stream leaps toward us over a ledge, a waterfall just taller than I am. Shoe stops, staring at it, his breath coming in desperate gasps. I push blindly past him, stepping knee-deep into an eddy, and scrabble at the rocks. I hear Shoe shout something, but I find a ledge for my feet and start climbing up the waterfall. Icy water sprays over my head.

Then his hands are on my shoulders, and he jerks me from the stream, dragging me dripping and shivering out of the water until we are standing on ash-covered ground, surrounded by gray rocks, the gray flanks of the mountain looming at our backs.

I will go up the bank then, I think. We must hurry.

“Pin,” Shoe says urgently, and I realize that he's been repeating my name. With his hands he frames my face, and he feels so steady, so true that I close my eyes and lean into him.

I feel his breath on my cheek. “They're coming, Pin,” he says into my ear.

Blinking the black spots from my vision, I look back, but the stream disappears around a bend in the steep ravine.
A howl echoes from just around the corner. I grope for the thimble in my pocket, clench it in my fist. It can't help us now, but it warms my hand.

And then I am clinging to him, and he to me. “Pin,” he breathes, and our lips meet and linger, and like wildfire through dry grass our kiss sweeps through me until I am nothing but flame, and it is not just a kiss, but a promise.

I lean into him, and, without him seeing, I slip the thimble into his coat pocket. Another kind of promise.

A chorus of howls echoes. They will be here in a moment.

“Listen,” I start.

“No, I already told you,” Shoe says fiercely. He brushes shaking fingers over my lips, as if to silence me. “I'm staying with you.”

“You are
not
.” I grip the front of his coat; blood from my wrist stains the cloth. “Shoe, she will break you.”

“I don't care,” Shoe says. His mouth is a straight, uncompromising line.

Suddenly I feel a flare of fury. I push Shoe, and he stumbles back, slipping on the ash, falling to his knees. “You have a chance to get away, you stubborn idiot!” I shout, and point upstream. “Go, curse you!”

He glares back at me, scrambles to his feet. “Not without you, Pin.”

I hold up my hand. The bandage on my wrist is soaked with blood; drops spatter on the ashy ground. “Shoe,” I say. “If you care about me at all, you won't follow me.” Then I
turn my back on him and start downstream. I don't look over my shoulder to see if he's gone. My booted feet are sure on the ashy bank of the stream. I tumble downhill, picking up speed, and I still don't look back.

Ahead, the stream bends sharply around a fall of rocks.

A tracker appears. He is naked, gray-skinned, man-shaped, with lean flanks, running on all fours. His dog-snouted face snuffles along the ash-covered bank of the stream.

I stumble to a stop.

Hearing me, the tracker freezes. He sniffs the air. He sees me.

At the same moment, four more trackers appear from around the bend. With them is the Godmother, mounted sidesaddle on a tall, white horse. At her back are three grizzled Huntsmen dressed in leather, riding sturdy horses. One of the Huntsmen pulls an arrow from a quiver, nocks it, and holds his bow ready. At a curt word from the Godmother, all five trackers hurtle toward me. In a moment I am surrounded. The trackers' bodies are smudged with ash; their backs are ridged with bleeding whip marks; their tongues loll from their panting mouths. They smell rankly of sweat and of fear.

One of the trackers sniffs past me, as if he's following another scent—Shoe's.

I fling my arms open, and my blood spatters in a wide arc. Then I wipe my wrist down the front of what's left of my apron, leaving a smear of blood. When I edge sideways, away
from the stream, away from Shoe's trail, all the trackers follow, watching keenly, their noses a-twitch.

“That's right, you dogs,” I whisper. “It's me you want, not Shoe.” Who, at this very moment, had better be hurrying upstream as fast as his feet can take him.

Darkness edges my vision. I stay on my feet, swaying. The Godmother guides her horse around a rock, then jerks it to a halt. The horse snorts, breathing heavily, and hangs its head.