The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3) (2 page)

“What did you think I was doing?” she asked, staring at him with her crystal blue eyes.

“I, I,” Grange stuttered, “I didn’t know.”

“Let me handle things here.  You just lie still and heal,” the girl told him in a no-nonsense tone.  She moved over to the packs and opened one, then pulled out several pieces of dried meat and handed some to him.

“There’s only the two of us now, so we’ve got plenty to eat.  We’ll be back on the road in two days if you can heal quickly. 

“Can you heal?  You haven’t been healthy since we found you,” Jenniline said.  She seemed annoyed more than concerned by his lack of health.

“Yes, your highness, I can heal,” he answered crossly.

“Go get in the spring,” the girl told him.

“What?” he asked.

“Go soak in the spring, the hot water.  It’ll relax you.  Maybe you won’t be so crabby then,” she was short with him.  “And take care not to break that wound open when you go to the spring.”

“Crabby?  You’re ordering me around and acting like I should be able to heal when I’ve been in constant motion since I don’t know when.  The only times I’ve stopped in the past month were for battles,” he didn’t know why he said it, but he knew it was true.  “You’re the one who’s crabby.”

“I’ve just seen three of my lifelong family guards murdered by each other, or you, or by my own hand!” Jenniline shouted at him, catching him by surprise.  He hadn’t thought about the relationship aspect she had known with the men; they had simply been traveling companions to him.

“Why don’t we both get in the spring waters?” Grange suggested, trying to extend a peace offering. 

“You will not be presumptuous,” the girl said haughtily.  “I will bathe privately.”

Grange was taken aback.  He vaguely recollected some unknown place, a warm tropical place with habits of casual undress that were common and a part of everyday life – he had ordinary visions of naked people walking without concern; he almost said something, then bit his lip and held the words, for his memories had been wiped too clean by the waters of Yellow Spring.  He carefully stood and limped away from the princess.  When he reached the spring he sat down, then slid into the water, fully clothed and unconcerned about his state for the moment.

He immediately jumped out; the water was hot –  too hot for comfort.  He wandered along the bank of the pool, testing the temperature in various locations.  It was cooler in one spot, and cool enough in the next, so that he slid into the pool again, ducked his head beneath the surface as he closed his eyes, and held his breath.  He felt warm – warmer than he’d felt in weeks, and it was good.

With his eyes closed there came a sudden vision to him, a long forgotten memory from a city in his lost past.  He remembered taking a purse, back in an impossibly different life when he’d been a pickpocket.  And in the purse had been a locket.  And in the locket had been a picture of a girl – a Southgar girl –the girl had been Jenniline.

The purse had belonged to an old woman.  He lifted his head and broke out of the water, the astounding memory suddenly, vividly, in the forefront of his mind.  The woman had told him that Jenniline was the one.  The woman had said that Jenniline would chew him up and spit him out – she had told him to toughen up.

The memory had disappeared for months.  Even after he’d met the princess, he’d not recollected the encounter or the picture in the locket, until now, while he was immersed in the spring.  What had it meant?  What had the old lady meant when she’d called Jenniline ‘The One’ he wondered.

“You fought well,” Jenniline’s voice was nearby, and he whirled in the water, which came up to the middle of his chest, to see that she was sitting on the bank, watching him.

“I thought you said we should have privacy,” he immediately sputtered.

“I said that I should have privacy, not you,” she answered.  “You are not in need of it; you’re a male, and a commoner.”

The expression on her face was one of amusement, and Jenniline laughed at Grange's indignation.  "I'll leave you to your modesty," she said, then disappeared into the foliage, leaving Grange alone in the warm spring.  He waited until he was sure she was not going to return, and he climbed out of the water so that he could slowly shed his clothes, peeling the layers off painfully, breaking crusted blood around his old and new wounds.

He slipped into the water again, and moaned with pleasure.  The water was hot, wonderfully, comfortably warm.  His muscles were reacting with disbelief, feeling more relaxed than at any time in recent memory.  Grange lowered himself completely into the water, then, after a moment's reflection on Jenniline's demand that he clean up, he pulled his clothing into the water too.  He sat on a stone that was submerged and half-heartedly scrubbed the apparel before he threw it back on the bank, then closed his eyes.

"How much longer will you need your privacy?" Jenniline's voice asked from some location not far behind him.

"What are you doing back here?" Grange asked indignantly.

"You've had plenty of time," Jenniline answered.  "I'm ready for my turn."

Grange opened his eyes and saw that the sun had risen high above the horizon; he must have dozed while he sat in the spring.

"Get out and let me take a look at that slice on your leg," she instructed him.

"Turn around and let me put my pants on," he replied.

"How can I check your leg if you cover it with your pants?" Jenniline snorted.

"Alright, hold your pants in front of you, if you must.  I'll wait over here for you," her voice conceded his point, and the sound of rustling bushes indicated the girl's movement away from the hot spring pool.  “There’s nothing to worry about between us,” she muttered just loud enough to be heard.

Grange waited several seconds, then climbed up onto land.   He grabbed his clothes and held them in his hand, tightly pressed between his hips, and then he awkwardly sat on the turf.

"I'm ready," he called aloud.

Jenniline immediately crunched through the surrounding growth and emerged within seconds.  She gave him a cool glance, then knelt beside him and bent low to look at the collection of untreated wounds, along with his already-bound slice that he has sustained in the battle against the demons that had ambushed the small party of Southgar travelers.

“I cannot believe that you are blushing so much,” she murmured in a low voice, as her eyes remained focused downward on the wound she was gently probing.  “Would you please control yourself?”

“I can’t help it.  You’re here and I’m unclothed.  I don’t know how to control blushing,” he hesitantly replied.

Her head and eyes shifted upward to look at his face. “You don’t know how to control your blushing?

"That cloth strip isn’t enough; I'm going to stitch it closed," she announced after matching a brief stare with him.  She immediately rose to her feet.

"Stitch?" Grange asked skeptically.  "Surely it will heal without that.   How could you do it anyway?" he said dismissively.

"I'll be back," she tossed the answer over her shoulder as she departed.

Grange sat on the ground, flummoxed.  He rearranged his wad of cloth to maximize the skin he covered, then closed his eyes and waited.  Despite the confusion and the embarrassment, he felt himself drifting into sleep, exhausted by the long night, and the long journey before.

He only awoke when he felt Jenniline’s hands pressing the sides of his sliced flesh together, and he awoke with a start, his head jerking up and his eyes popping open in confusion.  He’d started to dream about jewels, beautiful, sparkling gems that had floated through the air over a pool of dark water, then dropped one by one into the still surface of the pool and disappeared.

“Put your hands on either side of the wound and hold the edges against each other while I stitch your flesh together,” she immediately instructed him.

He looked down, and saw that she held a needle in one hand while the other hand helped demonstrate how she wanted his leg wound to be pressed.  He obediently placed his hands next to hers, and she lifted her fingers away.  “Now, don’t be a child,” she instructed him, then she plunged the needle into his leg, and started painfully stitching his injury.

Grange bit his lip silently as Jenniline placed stitch after stitch in his flesh along the length of the terrible gash.  The agony of the procedure lasted for several minutes before Jenniline stopped stitching, bent low, and bit the threat off, then efficiently tied a knot in the end.

“There, now don’t move for a bit,” she told Grange.  “I’ll bring you something to eat and drink in a little while, after I soak in the spring.”

Grange silently nodded his head in agreement, and Jenniline disappeared.

He grunted in pain once he was sure she was gone from earshot.  The stitching had been extremely painful, and he breathed heavily for a minute, then braced himself and slowly lowered his torso to the turf without moving his leg, so that he could lay on his back, and once again fall asleep.

“Time to get up, or you’ll be awake all night,” Jenniline woke him two hours later, with a nudge of her toe against his ear.   He opened his eyes and looked up.  She stood directly over him, a towering figure with a face that was lost in the glare of the sun that shone straight down into his eyes.  Her legs, which were close to his face, were clearly bare – she seemed to have shed most of her clothes for her time to soak in the pool, but Grange was too dazed to do more than squint against the sun’s glare into his eyes.

“Don’t fall asleep again.  Here’s some food,” she bent low and laid the dried meat and fruit on his chest, then departed again, leaving him alone once more.  Grange carefully sat up and ate his food slowly.  Shortly after he finished, Jenniline came and sat down beside him.  She wore more clothing than before, but her arms and legs were bare in the warm air of the thermal spring oasis.

“Trensen, was a good man,” she told him.  “I owe it to his spirit to remember his good deeds and strong spirit.

“He rescued me from bullies when I was a five year old girl – that’s the first time I remember him,” she began, and she proceeded to ramble through memories of the man, the first signs of softness than Grange could remember the princess exhibiting.

“He made the other girls of the palace family stop picking on me; my mother was out of favor before she passed away, and so I was lower in rank, and easy to target,” she said.  “But Trensen told the other girls that the family of a monarch had to learn to show kindness and mercy when it was called for.

”I don’t know if he really believed that,” she started to add, then stopped.  “I think he did believe it,” she said softly.  “No one else in the whole palace would agree though,” a large tear welled in the corner of her eye, and she brushed it away.

“So I realized I had to be strong to protect myself, because the bullying didn’t stop, of course.  It only moved into the shadows where Trensen didn’t see it.”

“There are other princesses?” Grange asked.  “And other mothers?” he asked the second question in a lower voice, the answer hinted at by Jenniline’s comments.

The girl was silent.  She stood up.  “I’ll go put these back by the campsite,” she announced, and then strode away.

Grange knew that he had offended her.  He shouldn’t have asked the question; it was touchy and personal, and he didn’t know this princess person at all, despite having hiked through the wilderness for a week with her.

Minutes later he heard Jenniline’s return, and she arrived with her arms heaped with all the belongings they both had.

“Since you can’t move about, I’ve brought the campsite to you,” she explained.  “Here’s everything.  Get something if you need it, but don’t strain that leg or tear those stitches trying to get something.  Just wait; I’ll be back,” she told him as she stood up.  “I’m going to look around the grounds; you’ll be safe here while I’m gone.”

She left him again before he could say anything.  She walked out of sight, and Grange was alone again.

He looked at the pile of belongings that she had dropped just out of his reach.  He rolled carefully onto his side and inched his way towards the pile, then reached over and pulled his pack away from the other items.  He pulled in into his control and sat up, then opened the pack, feeling compelled to look for something within it, though he didn’t know what.

When his fingers touched the smooth, hard contours of the small flute he carried, he knew it was what he was looking for, and he pulled it out of the bag.

He recognized the flute.  For the first time since he had been discovered at the Yellow Spring, he knew what the flute was, and he knew he knew how to play it.  Another fragment of his memory had returned.

He lifted the instrument to his mouth and began to softly play a tune, the first one that came to his mind.  It was a gentle song, possibly a lullaby, the way it flowed so smoothly and placidly.

“What are you doing?” Jenniline appeared suddenly.  She had apparently been back in the spring waters, for her hair was unbraided and dripping wet upon her shoulders and her back.  She stood looking at him, holding her blouse in front of her.  She’d clearly hurried to check on him upon hearing his music.

It was obvious what he was doing, he knew.  And then he remembered, or re-remembered, the locket with the picture of the princess.

She had looked so pleasant in that miniature portrait.  The artist had made her smile, and put a spark in her eyes.  The reality of the girl that he had been exposed to was nothing like the pleasant girl in the locket, and he wondered which was the true Jenniline.  Or perhaps life had changed since then, and changed her outlook.

“I saw a picture of you once, a long time ago.  It was inside a locket, and I was in a city,” he blurted the revelation out.

Her eyes widened slightly, and she stared at him in silence.

“I don’t remember anything else.  I don’t know when it was, or where,” he felt unnerved by her scrutiny.  The flute, which he had held in front of his mouth, slowly dropped away from his face.

“There was an old woman, who was my nurse, who left the palace a couple of years ago.  She was one of the last servants from the old king left in the palace, but she took good care of me.  She had a locket picture of me,” Jenniline almost smiled as she recollected her former nurse.  “I never knew where she went after she left the palace.  It’s hard to believe she could have gone far; where do you think you’re from?” she asked Grange.