The Grey Dawn

by Stacey DeMichael

  “I really wish,” Daniella began before Ellalee tucked up her braid up into the cap and slammed the cottage door behind her, shutting off further argument. She couldn’t stay in that cabin one more moment without bursting, and she knew how her temper cost Christopher. She set out into the day’s draining light watching the darkness race to meet her.

  She walked more or less towards town in powerful strides, releasing her frustration. As darkness swept in, she could well-nigh feel the cold light of the moon rise on her shoulders, dispassionate, uncaring, and cruelly without warmth, a mere charade of the sun. The difference between the sun and the moon was the difference between what she believed life should be and what it was. A deep part of her thought that she should just embrace the cold. Why continue to fight?

  With the quickly lowering temperatures outside, Ellalee could also feel her temper cooling. She rolled her shoulders and then rolled her head around in a circle. She had never held onto anger like she did these days. It seemed a constant companion. If she was deeply honest with herself, she would admit that she was even angry at her father for leaving her alone with no plans for the contingency that he might never come back. Didn’t it ever occur to him that all this might all happen? Why had they never talked about it, especially after Mother died giving birth to Christopher? She was angry that she had lost everything. But what lay beneath the anger frightened her more. Some days it took everything she had to just hold onto hope, and somehow her anger helped her do that.

  And so a spark of anger remained even as she soothed herself with the cool logic that belongings were just things. Things with memories attached, she thought sadly, which may be why she clung so tightly to those memories. Memories were delicate, beautiful things, like butterfly wings, and yet didn’t every valuable part of the past only exist in memory?

  The moon was bright this evening, casting frightening shadows through the trees which creaked and groaned in the breeze. She looked up from the path into the Wyndale Woods around her and realized just how far she had wandered. Tendrils of unease began coiling themselves in her mind, and she regretted her rapid departure. The landscape took on a more foreboding appearance after dark. Perhaps it was the slight crunching of leaves and the creak of the trees as though some specter traveled along beside her, hiding just outside her sight in the deeper shadows of the Wyndale Woods, just beyond the path in the darkness, lurking. Though the path was the same one she’d trod to town and back again, Ellalee felt suddenly nervous as she squinted into the Wyndale Wood for the sources of the creaking. Her vivid imagination conjured unearthly earls stalking new victims to be drawn from tomorrow’s well as her mind tried to rally more rational reasons such as the wind and the dancing feet of deer scouting for the still tender leaf.

  Despite her cool logic, Ellalee could feel the hackles rise on the back of her neck. It was as though she could feel the weight of malevolent eyes watching her from the tree line. She stopped and peered once more into the gloom as she hesitated in taking even one more step towards the village. It seemed like she may have seen a flicker of something in the woods, some piece of metal that caught the moon’s glow, but she couldn’t be sure. She stood for a moment indecisively, regretting, all the more, her impulsive exit.

  Somewhere off in the woods to her right, a twig cracked. Her head snapped up, and her breath tightened into quick bouts. She could feel her heart racing even before her feet kept pace. Turning, she ran back towards the cottage until she came up short. Just before her, the path was blocked by the fat baker on his roan horse.

  “Not this time,” he said triumphantly. “I knew it was you. I don’t know how you faked the leg injury, but you’ll not escape this time. Oh no. This time, you’re mine.”

  Ellalee’s hearing seemed clouded by the thudding of her own heart. She would never beat him back to the cottage. She could run faster than most, but there was no way she could outrun a horse. The charade was up, unless she could somehow lead him away from her cottage, lose him, and double back once more. She darted to her left in hopes of a quick break. However, the baker was taking no chances of an escaped thief. This time, he had brought back up, and Ellalee ran straight into the arms of another man who clasped her like iron.

  “Stop your thrashing, you rascal, I’ve got you now. Been robbing us all, thinkin’ you were so clever. Enjoy your hands while you have them. I bet they’ll take them both,” he sneered. She recognized the fishmonger that she’d robbed months back. His rotten breath nearly overpowered her.

  “Hold him tight,” yelled the baker. “I’ll not lose another loaf to that thief.”

  Ellalee, who had been pulling back trying to yank herself free with no luck, decided to reverse tactics and plowed into the fishmonger with her knee as the leading edge. The fishmonger gasped and bent over as she all but leaped over him, running into the woods.

  “Cut off his escape,” the baker yelled as he kicked his horse into motion.

  Ellalee could feel the earth thud as the hoof beats came closer behind her. She zigged and zagged through the trees. Recognizing that merely cutting corners too tight for the horse was hardly a long-term plan for success, Ellalee raced on, imagining that she could feel the horse’s breath on her shoulders and realizing that she was losing track of where she was in the wood. Bushes slapped her face, and branches lashed her cheeks as she ran heedless through both brush and briar.

  Suddenly, she heard the baker scream, “Whoa!”

  She could hear the horse crashing to a stop in the underbrush behind her as the ground below her feet gave way to nothing. It took a moment to realize that her feet, still pumping, were no longer making contact with the ground as she sailed into nothing but the brisk night air. Falling, her stomach rose into her throat. Despite her wildly grasping hands, her grip found no purchase. She had, in the darkness of the Wyndale Wood, inadvertently, run off a cliff.

  “Aye! I hope you drown,” were the last words that echoed down to her before she hit the surface of the Wasenwater. The icy chill swept into her body taking her breath with it. Hazy black dots swam before her eyes as fear bloomed with the burning cold.

  Chapter Four: Deep into Darkness

  Ellalee choked, not just on icy lake water, but on rising panic. If she passed out now, there would be no more tomorrows to hope for. The moonlight mocked her, bright enough to see each small swell in the Wasenwater near her, which would surely be her death, but nowhere near bright enough to see the shore, her salvation. Gasping for breath, she was grateful for the lighter boy’s clothes that enabled her to kick her legs enough to keep her head above water. In ladies’ skirts, surely she would drown after the plunge. The weight of women’s skirts would have dragged her to the icy depths of the Wasenwater. Then she reassessed darkly. Perhaps women’s skirts would just have staved off longer suffering.

  Her family had lived on the brink of starvation for years trickling ever onwards towards despair, but this evening, the trickling turned torrent. There was no way now to circle back to the cottage, and no matter how thick the baker was, he could, most certainly, count to three once he reached her home. It would take no surpassing intellect to discern which of the three was missing. Ellalee was undone and her family with her. All she had striven to protect was laid low, and she would either perish now or perish later. Dark cold choices. Like the Wasenwater. Death had her, and she knew it.

  “Dear Lord, there is no way out of the mess I have made. There is no solace left, no road to salvation for my siblings and me. If You can find a way to save my family, I would be happy to stand aside and let You do it and follow You from here forward. If You are there, won’t You show me the way to shore and will You please provide for me and Daniella and Christopher?” Ellalee prayed out loud.

  After her prayer, only her gasping breath broke the silence. She held her breath for a moment, yearning for some sign, some sound, some hope yet to cling to. Yet nothing came. Ellalee squinted into the night, but it was impossible to determine which way to swim. Swimming the wron
g direction was certain death. Why, oh why, in large things and in small, did she only pray her most fervent prayers after she had created her own disasters and not before.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated all her heart on her prayer once more. She poured her earnest will into her seeking ears, listening for even the whisper of prayers answered. Still nothing. She tried to breath as quietly as possible, which was difficult with the cold water stealing the breath from her body, willing herself to hear the voice of God, but all she could hear was the lapping of water.

  The lapping of water.

  The cold was freezing her thoughts, confusing her. She shook her head to clear it and couldn’t. Desperately, she shoved her face back into the icy water and gasped. Still she heard the lapping of water. Water would only make that sound as it encountered something solid!

  She began to swim which was slow and painful because she could not control the shivering in her limbs. Her muscles ached. Her teeth chattered, and her fingers and toes lost the pins-and-needles feeling, going purely numb. Still she made progress towards the sound, but without warning, the bottom came up beneath her cold-deadened feet. She twisted her right ankle on a mossy rock on the lake bottom and could feel wrenching pain even beyond the cold and numbness as she fell awkwardly, striking her cold-deadened hands and knees on the sharp rocks beneath her.

  She dragged herself out of the water pulling herself along on bleeding elbows and knees onto land, refusing to give in to the desire to lay on the shore and pant. She crawled, leaving the water behind, trying not to touch her pained ankle on the ground or jutting rocks as she pulled herself toward the woods in hopes of figuring out exactly where she was. Shards of rocks bit into her knees, and she could only slightly feel the bruising of her palms as her shoulders shook with the effort. Her ankle pulsated anguish with every movement. Lord, please help me. I’m beyond despair and nearly beyond my ability to move further. Please give me hope that you have heard me, Ellalee prayed.

  Silence.

  She wanted to stop and weep, but instead, she continued her shaking, shambling crawl. The pain in her ankle added some clarity to her quickly fogging, cold-confused mind, but the numbness in her feet and hands continued to hamper her ability to move. She might as well have tied logs to her knees and elbows and tried to crawl on those for all that her hands and feet felt a part of her own body. She resorted to pulling herself along on her elbows and used her knees to scrabble after her. She knew that the sharp rocks were tearing her skin, but if she stopped, death would quickly follow. Death would almost be a relief, but a deep-dwelling dread for her siblings kept her moving.

  She made for the tree line and found a strong branch washed ashore. She grappled with the stick, fumbling it twice with her deadened, cold hands before she managed to lock her elbows around it tight enough to use it for leverage to pull herself to a standing position.

  She couldn’t figure out how to manage using the stick as a crutch since she couldn’t feel her hands, and she was having trouble just thinking clearly. Finally, she shoved the branch down the waist of her pants and clutched the top in her elbow. It only minimized the weight on her ankle. Every other step sent a shock of mind-clearing pain that made her grit her teeth and groan. Somehow the pain helped keep her focused, but not enough to entirely throw the disorientation. She lived here. Why was she feeling so confused? Wooziness brought up a new bought of welling panic as she realized that nothing looked familiar in this gloom. Or was it that everything looked familiar? One tree looked just the same as the next in the dark.

  Suddenly she could smell the acrid scent of smoke from a campfire. She turned towards the scent hobbling and collapsing against one tree before blundering forward and collapsing against the next, gasping and reorienting herself with each quick stop. A small incline that would hardly have been daunting to a toddler almost overwhelmed her as she came down hard on her injured ankle. She moaned at the shock of the pain and flopped awkwardly on her back. She tried scooting up the hill a bit at a time but the stick she’d stuck through her britches kept jabbing into the earth behind her, thwarting her progress. She wanted to howl with frustration. Removing the stick proved as onerous as grappling with it to being with. In desperation, she changed course, and managed to shove the stick down through the leg of her britches rather than pulling it up. By the time the top of the stick was at the top of her britches, she was able to scooch backwards up the hill in flailing stutters.

  The acrid scent of a fire grew stronger when she reached the top of the slope, and there in the distance, she could make out the flickering flames of a campfire. The thought of warmth gave her renewed vigor which she focused on with single-minded intensity. She hobbled furiously, indifferent to the pain and to whom may currently be occupying the space beside that fire. Potential death verses sure death seemed a low bar to leap.

  As she drew closer, she heard the whinny of a horse and turned to see a great black destrier. Only then did she see the fire’s reflection on the sword at her throat. Her body, already brutally shaking from the cold, had nothing left to give to this new terror. Ellalee’s eyes followed the blade up to its unembellished hilt to the arm carrying it, cloaked in black. From the sword arm, her widened eyes traveled to the black cowl of the cloak which was drawn over the owner’s face so that she could see but part of the man’s chin. Perhaps he was a ghoul.

  With her wildly shaking body, Ellalee could only hope that she didn’t impale herself on the sword without the man’s help. Her eyes travelled down the man’s arm to the bottom of his cloak. Below the black cloak the man wore black riding trousers, and in the dimness of her mind, she noted that his boots were made of fine leather.

  The man circled around her, his head turned towards her and then turned to search the surrounding woods behind her, perhaps for other wet urchins. Finding none but her, he sheathed his sword and stood back crossing his arms across his chest. The hood of his cloak still hid his face.

  “I only came for the fire,” Ellalee attempted to say; however, what came out was slurred and unrecognizable even to her own ears. With that, she collapsed, falling backwards. The branch kept her right knee from buckling which made her fall harder than she might have otherwise. For a moment she had trouble tracking the fleeting image of trees and stars as she vaguely felt the top of the branch bruising her arm as she fell. The man’s cowl then hovered, ghost-like, above her. She blinked hard to try to refocus her vision. The black cowl grew, expanding, and she fleetingly realized she was passing into unconsciousness. She felt a hard slap against her cheeks rousing her once more. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  Perhaps, she thought, I should have yielded to the Wasenwater.

  The man drew the stick out of the top of her pant leg, and then drew his dagger as her eyes widened. She could do little more than shake and babble. He cut off her breeches to the tops of her thighs and cut the sleeves off her shirt as well as the midriff. She sobbed, shaking beyond fear, beyond hope.

  Suddenly, the man lunged up away from her. He strode to his horse and pulled off the saddle pack and a blanket from his horse’s saddle and returned to her side. He used the blanket to dry her limbs and sop some of the water off what remained of her boy’s clothes. Then he pulled out britches from his saddle bags and pulled them onto her numb legs. She could barely feel her legs, but when he touched her ankle she screamed body and soul. He rolled his eyes and shook his head as he pulled off her wet shoe. She screamed again, this time lashing out with her other foot as she tried to roll over away from this brigand. He whistled as the sight of her ankle and squeezed his hands up and down her foot and leg. She was panting with the pain, groaning each time the man groped her ankle. He sighed, rose, and ripped the hem of his own cloak. Then he stooped and set to wrapping her foot with the torn fabric. Last, he pulled a woolen tunic from his saddle bag over her head, wrapped her in a second cloak he had also pulled from his now deflated saddle bag and wrapped her once more in the blanket that he had initially dried her with.


  Her body ached from the shaking, and she felt like the world dimmed a bit before she lost her bearing altogether. She realized in the slow slog that was her mind that the man was carrying her closer to the fire. It was as if her eyes were registering information just a little after things happened which made her feel dizzy and ill. The man groaned a bit as he slid to a sitting position behind her to block the wind. Her body was still shaking but not quite as violently.

  “You’re in for a hard time. You ankle is badly sprained, but it isn’t broken. When the feeling comes back into your hands and feet, it is bound to hurt. I think you’ll keep them though.”

  “For now,” Ellalee said, but it came out garbled which caused her a near hysterical burble of laughter, and then she began to sob.

  “Hmm,” the man replied. “Probably not a bad idea to cry it out. It will use your stomach muscles which will help to warm you, but I will grow weary of hearing you blubber so do your best to pull yourself together. I never was able to manage the hysterical female.”

  There was a long pause before the black cloaked man began again. “You are quite the mysterious guest. Questions leap into my mind, begging to be answered. What is a lass doing alone at night, swimming in ice cold water, dressed in boy’s clothes with an injured leg?” His voice was low and resonant with a fine accent. Ellalee revised her initial thought that the man was a brigand. Perhaps he was a wealthy merchant, someone born to education, maybe a knight, given his horse.

  “Uh fehl,” she slurred, her teeth chattering madly. Despite her numb lips and quivering chin, he seemed to understand.

  “And the clothes?”

  “Day-jer-us tah-bee girl. Hat.” She tried to pat her head with her numb hand. She wished he would stop asking her questions until she could effectively form words and the fog in her brain left.