by S D Smith
And she did not dream.
Chapter Ten
TO MAKE US BRAVE
Heather woke before anyone else got home. She dressed in new clothes made for her by Mother, sipped some soup, and drank more water. Then she walked slowly around their small home. She ran her hand over the elegant brickwork of their simple fireplace. Father’s work, she had no doubt. Over the fireplace, mounted on the wall, were imperfectly painted pictures of Heather and Picket. Mother plainly didn’t have access to the ingredients for the paints she once made in Nick Hollow, but the likenesses were striking, even with only a few drab colors.
She looked at the painting of Picket and tried to imagine where he was, what he might be doing. I cannot wish you here, brother, but I do wish we were all together.
“They are poor work,” Mother said, stepping in from the small kitchen to check on Heather again. “But we wanted you both to have a place with us. We never forgot about you, and you were always in our hearts. But we wanted your faces in our home, so I made these.”
“We never forgot you either, Mother,” Heather replied. “And the paintings are good, though Picket looks older now. We saw many lovely paintings at Cloud Mountain, from masters like Finbar Smalls and Jim Toiner, but the painting we always longed to see was the one you painted of our home in the Great Wood.”
“Ah, that one is lost in the ashes of our old home,” Mother said.
“But the dream of home cannot be so easily destroyed,” Heather said, accepting help to get into the comfortable chair set out for her in front of the fire. “It is there, in the Mended Wood.”
“That old home was in First Warren,” Mother said, sighing. “And we are far from there. Even if we could get there, it’s now enemy territory as well.”
“But it will not be so…” Heather began.
“In the Mended Wood,” Mother answered.
Heather accepted a warm mug of what passed for tea in Akolan and smiled gratefully at her mother. “When will he be home?” she asked for the tenth time.
“Soon,” Mother answered.
“Soon,” Heather repeated, nodding. Mother had explained that Jacks was at school, and this meant staying there for around ten days, day and night, before coming home on leave for three days and two nights. He would be home in a few days, though they couldn’t say for sure, exactly. Heather was impatient to see them all. She closed her eyes and felt herself rise on a wave of gratitude. That Mother and Father and Jacks were alive at all and that she would see them again—it seemed beyond belief. She smiled.
* * *
Heather must have slept again, for when she stirred and opened her eyes, she saw Father, standing by the fire, gazing at her with such deep affection that Heather came fully awake and sprang from her chair. She was in his arms in a moment, never worrying about how weak she was or if he could hold her. He could. And he did, spinning around slowly as he cried and squeezed her and said, “My Heather, my girl! My only daughter, dear. My lovely Heather,” and on and on with endless expressions of how tenderly he loved her and happy he was to hold her in his arms again.
“Oh, Father!” was all she could say. And she said it again and again, spinning there before the fire as night fell on Akolan.
When he set her down at last and she sat back in her chair, she smiled and wept some more, sobbing into a handkerchief her father produced. Mother brought her more to drink and fussed over her losing all she drank through crying, though Mother’s eyes were wet as well.
“The poet Herbare Fond mused that ‘We cry more intensely in our joys than ever we do in our sorrows,’” Father said, wiping at his own eyes.
“That doesn’t even rhyme,” Heather said, laughing and wiping her eyes.
“Well, it’s not all he mused,” Father wheezed. “Herbare had a way with words, to be sure. He could muse like lit blastpowder.”
“No doubt he was an excellent scribe,” she said, “but I’m certain he couldn’t keep up with the wordsmith behind such epics as ‘Goofhack the Blabber’ and ‘The Brittle Wits of Sharpe Dulls.’”
“Certainly not,” Father replied. He doubled over and gasped in his mirth. “Oh, Heather. I am so happy to see you. You’re grown! I am amazed.”
Heather smiled. Father had changed too. She noticed he had lost all the weight that had made him a little pudgy in the past. He was lean, too lean, and his face was creased with care. But otherwise he appeared the same. Mother was mostly unchanged, though she too was a little leaner and careworn. But their faces shone now. Mother retreated back to the small kitchen area, and Heather heard familiar noises.
“What are you doing over there, Mother?” Heather asked.
“I’m making a cake, for when you’re recovered.”
“I’m recovered enough for cake,” Heather replied.
“Perhaps she hasn’t changed much after all,” said Father, winking.
“No cake until you’re eating properly again,” Mother said in mock severity. “The doctor came a few times while you slept, and he’ll be back again tomorrow morning.”
“I am training to be a doctor myself.”
“We saw your poor ruined uniform and satchel, and we guessed as much,” Father said. “We are so—”
Heather cut him off. “My satchel!” she said. “Where is it?”
“It’s here, dear,” Father said, getting up and crossing back toward the room she had been sleeping in. “Sit down and settle your heart. It’s here, and we haven’t touched it.”
“The doctor wanted to see if there were any important medicines you might have,” Mother said, “but we insisted that it be left alone, as long as he had what he needed to treat you.”
“And he did,” Father added, reappearing with the satchel in hand.
“Thank you, Father,” Heather said, receiving it. She unfastened the straps and opened it. The satchel had been looked through, likely by the Longtreaders…the Akolan administration, not her family. Its contents had been upset, sure, but few things seemed to be missing. The old purse holding her flame necklace and old Aunt Jone’s tonic was still there, along with something especially precious inside. Hiding her valuables beneath Aunt Jone’s tonic in the battered purse had been wise. Relief flooded her heart, and she relaxed.
Heather smiled and set it all down beside her chair, taking another drink as she glanced toward the door. She thought she had heard something.
She had, and then there was a hard knock.
Father and Mother exchanged glances. “Back into bed,” Father whispered. “Don’t ask questions. You feel far worse than you think you do. Quickly now,” and Heather saw the fear in his eyes. She had so rarely seen her father afraid. It frightened her in a way few other dangers had. She glanced at the door and saw hanging beside it two scarves and two neckerchiefs, all dyed bright red. Mother donned a scarf, and Father tied a kerchief around his neck.
She grabbed her satchel and headed for her room. She glanced back at Mother, whose face shared the same terror, then stepped inside. She slid the satchel beneath the bed, lay down, pulled the covers up, and closed her eyes.
“Good evening, sirs,” she heard her father say. “Can we help you?”
She couldn’t make out exactly what the guests were saying, heard only a muted mumble, but her father’s words were clear, though quiet.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, “we agreed to take her in and care for her until she recovers. Then we’ll help find her a permanent home.”
More garbled talk.
“We understand, and we thank you for your concern. The doctor will report on her condition tomorrow. He says we should be able to bring her to the clinic tomorrow or the next day.”
Heather guessed these were more Longtreaders, more of the administration’s minders, checking up on her. They nearly killed her, and now they cared what she was doing?
“Yes, sir,” Father said. “We will follow every protocol, of course.”
She had never heard her father grovel like this, and it made her
sad and sick at heart. She didn’t blame him, and she was sure he was doing the best thing he could think to do to protect them, just as he always had. But she hated to see a rabbit of such learning and dignity having to bow and scrape to such creatures as these.
“We will, sirs. Of course.”
The door closed. Her heart was still warmed at this unlikely reunion, intensely so, but the exchange at the door had let in a chill that cut at her happiness.
After a tense few minutes, Mother spoke. “It’s okay, dear. Come on out, if you feel up to it.”
Heather retrieved her satchel, settled it over her shoulder, and walked slowly back into the main room. She fell back into the comfortable chair and gratefully took the food her mother offered, along with a fresh mug of tea. “Thank you, Mother.”
“My pleasure, dear Heather.”
“Father, is the Commandant also my uncle?” she asked. “Hadley said he is Garten’s own brother.”
“No, Heather,” he answered. “That’s a rumor here, but it is not so. No one knows his real name, so conjecture about his family flourishes.”
“He’s an evil rabbit,” she said.
“The very worst, for those who oppose his schemes,” Father replied, his head down.
“I think Captain Vitton is worse,” Mother said quietly. “He’s the keeper of the dungeon and enjoys hurting his prisoners. Vit Skinner, he’s called.”
“A grotesque monster, to be sure,” Father said, shaking his head. “But let us think of better things.”
They all ate around the fire. Between bites, Father bragged about making the chair Heather was sitting in. “It wouldn’t be called a masterly job,” he said, “but neither would it be called dastardly.”
Heather laughed at his subtle, playful way with words. It was as familiar to her as Mother’s songs. “It’s very comfortable, Father,” she said between slurps of soup. “I would never accuse this chair of being anything but friendly to a rabbit’s rear.”
“And that’s high praise for such a low chair,” he said, sniffing in mock self-importance.
“Oh my,” Mother said. “He has missed having his collaborators at home.”
“Yes,” Father said. “Sween only says that it’s a fine chair, yes, but it will break like all the others, and then what will we sit on?”
“And he says that we’ll sit on the ground and talk of chairs we once knew and treasured, like shipwrecked sailors marooned on a desperate coast. Because that’s the way poets talk, for some reason.”
Heather smiled, but the allusion to being marooned was a little too close to home, and their playful happiness dipped for a long moment. They ate on, the meal surprisingly good to Heather’s taste. “Is this potato soup?” she asked.
Her parents laughed. “I’m afraid so, Heather,” Mother said. “Everything here is potato something. That’s almost all we have.”
“So the cake will be…?”
“Potato cake,” they said together.
“And the tea?” she asked, sipping it with a wary scrunch of her nose.
“Potato tea,” they said together.
“That explains a lot,” she said, coughing through their laughter.
Settling down after dinner, they sat around the fire and talked of small details until Father stood up and took her hand. “Now, my beloved daughter,” he said, smiling bright like Flint’s first dawn on Blue Moss Hills, “tell us a story.”
“A story of bravery?” Heather asked.
“Yes,” Father said. “A story to make us brave.”
She fished in her satchel and brought out a battered old purse. She reached inside and pulled out the torch pendant that had been a gift from her beloved Smalls. She put it on and raised her chin.
“It begins with this,” she said, now drawing out the emerald gem on its thin strong chain. Fingering the elaborate pattern carved on the back of the gem, she held it out as Mother and Father gasped. “It begins with the Green Ember.”
Chapter Eleven
A NEW FRONT
Picket lunged for Helmer, desperately dragging him back inside the slight cover of the thicket while more arrows blazed by.
“Master!” he called, stealing anxious glances at Captain Helmer and the unseen archers beyond the open glade. He crouched over Helmer, shielding him as best he could.
“Get off me, Picket!” Helmer growled.
“Master, are you okay?” Picket checked Helmer over for wounds, then saw with relief that his pack had three arrows sticking out of it. The archers had missed him, and now they seemed to be either out of arrows or simply waiting for them to move from their cover.
Helmer shrugged off the pack with a scowl and glanced inside. “My waterskin’s been pierced, so I’ll be thirstier than usual, but otherwise I’m fine.”
“Why have they stopped shooting?” Picket asked.
“Because there’s nothing to shoot that they want to hit.”
“Good thing they missed you.”
“The Harbone archers are famous all over Natalia,” Helmer grunted. “They never missed. Your friend Jo Shanks, and Nate Flynn, of course, are the only archers Halfwind has to compare. Believe me, they hit just what they aimed for.”
“But…I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I,” Helmer said, rising up to glance around. “Or not entirely. But they don’t want us to cross this glade, that’s plain.”
“What do we do now?”
“Stay put awhile,” Helmer finished, shifting to get comfortable.
Picket reached in his pack for his waterskin, then offered it to Helmer.
“Very funny, Ladybug,” Helmer said.
“So, we just wait?” Picket asked. Helmer nodded but then shook his head quickly, eyes widening as a terrific howl filled the air, followed by a raucous, rushing footfall.
Picket swiveled and froze. A massive pack of wild wolves rampaged through the glade. The two rabbits hit the ground as the pack charged by, Picket’s heart thumping along with the pounding ground as the grey blur bounded past, howling with their charge. Picket saw in snatches as they passed that these wolves were barely clothed and unkempt. Spittle foamed at the edge of savage grins, and wide wild eyes darted every direction as they ran on. Picket was astonished at their number. On and on they came.
Arrows filled the air, cutting down the front line, but soon Picket and Helmer could see little of the battle up ahead. Hearing explosions, they covered their heads. Looking up, they saw that the wolves charged on. The two rabbits saw the desperate hunger of the last of the wolves, surging past their own comrades, slashing out as they did to cut ahead. They were a reckless, rash, and terrifying pack. This was no army, but a frenzied hunting party.
As the last stragglers moved past, Helmer nodded to Picket. They rose and crossed the glade, found the forest side, and slipped onto a better path than they had yet used on this journey.
“Straight now,” Helmer whispered, turning back for an instant to be sure Picket was following closely.
“Yes, sir,” Picket said, sword poised as he hurried along.
They dashed down the lane, Helmer straining with his aching leg. Picket had more energy, so he spun to scout their surroundings and stayed close. After they had run unseen for fifteen minutes, Picket began to believe they would make the gate of the secret citadel. But as soon as he thought it, a howling echoed along their path, and a stray section of the angry pack poured into the lane ahead of them.
The wolves stopped, tongues lolling, as surprise gave way to an ecstatic frenzy, and they dug into the ground, bounding toward the two rabbits. Picket wasn’t sure if Helmer would step forward to fight them, or if he would run. He could see that his master was torn between the madness of flight with his leg hurt and the impossibility of fighting. He hesitated two agonizing seconds while the pack came on.
“Run!” Helmer shouted, diving into the woods. Picket leapt in after him.
Picket believed he could hear the husky breath of the mad pack, and feel the foaming spi
ttle on his neck. He was terrified but kept running, sometimes beside and other times behind Helmer. His master was slower, yes, and Picket felt the desperate desire to fly ahead, but he would never leave his master behind. And besides, Helmer might have been slower than a young buck like Picket, but he was cunning and knew these woods like Picket couldn’t possibly know them. He trusted Helmer.
He loved Helmer.
Forward they sped, dodging vines and leaping over ditches, hearing always the jeers of the pressing pack. The wolves were just behind them. Picket saw, with terror, that they would soon be caught.
Helmer darted down a slippery hillside, and Picket leapt down after him. The hillside was long, and they lost their footing, sliding down. Helmer rode the slide better than Picket, and, sheathing his sword, he found his feet at the bottom and burst onto another path. This path crossed back away from where they had been running, and the wolves were, for the moment, slow to adjust. Picket imitated Helmer, sheathed his sword, and scrambled to his feet. He quickly made up the distance and came up behind his master. A gap formed once more between them and their wolf pursuers. They sped on down a narrow path overhung by long vines. Picket grinned, eager for the next trick in Helmer’s escape.
But Helmer turned and drew his sword.
He charged straight at the frenzied wolves.
Chapter Twelve
WE BRING THE WAR
There were six of the wild wolves, and Helmer had turned to take them on. Maybe his leg had finally given out on him. Maybe he had gone mad. Picket blew past Helmer, whose face was hard-set in concentrated fury. Glancing back at the pack, Picket reached for a sturdy vine and clung to it as his momentum took him out in a wide swing.
His mind churning a quick calculation, he rode the momentum out and arced into the forest, speeding him around again to swoop down on the path just as the first wolf leapt.
Picket’s crunching kick caught the blindsided wolf with such force that he flipped in the air and smashed against a tree. Helmer surged into the gap and drove his blade into the belly of the next leaping attacker.
