“What was that?” asked Idris.
“Nothing. Just… dreams make no sense.”
“That depends. There are three types of dreams, so if you tell me yours, I’ll tell you what sense it makes.”
“Three types?”
She pulled herself closer to the plank he was sitting on, and he leaned back until their arms touched.
“There is the true dream that comes from Allah, the troubled or false dream that comes from Shaytan and is meant to mislead, and then there is the ordinary dream that comes from the self.”
There was a hint of amusement in his voice, and Seraphina bumped his shoulder.
“You don’t believe in any of it, do you?”
“Oh, I do. My mother taught me when I was a child. She also taught me the prayers to recite before sleep to guard against bad dreams.”
“This was a bad dream,” she murmured.
“Have those often?”
She shrugged.
“All right, if this approach doesn’t work for you, let’s try another. You don’t seem feverish, but how is your digestion? When was the last time you ate?”
“What?”
“A fever will cause a certain kind of dream, hunger will cause another. Some dreams are of the body, not of providence.”
Seraphina shook her head. “I missed you.”
He smiled broadly. “I’m glad. But, seriously, when did you eat last?”
“This morning? Now that you mention it, I am hungry. Thank you for that. It’s not like I can do anything about it.”
“I think I spotted some wooden boxes in the back. Go see if you can find us some bread and cheese.”
She didn’t wait to be told twice. She eagerly crawled to the back of the cart, avoiding the medicine chest and making sure her bucket of snow was in decent condition. She felt around and discovered two crates. Smiling to herself, she lifted the lid on the first one and rummaged through it, uncovering hard bread stored in coarse linen sacks, and mountain cheese wrapped in muslin. She sniffed the food, scrunched up her nose, and moved to the second box. She gasped when she was assaulted by the smell of smoked meat.
It was nothing special, these were just standard army issue provisions, and the hardtack especially was detested among the soldiers. It was hard enough to break teeth and frequently infested with weevils. But the slabs of cured pork she found wrapped in oiled paper were promising. Sitting near the crates, she also identified a small cask of what was probably beer.
“We’re set,” she announced.
“Good, because I think we need to find a place to stop.”
The wind had shifted, coming hard from the north. It had snowed relentlessly since they’d left Schloss Ewigheim, and theway the gale howled between the trees on both sides of the road warned of an impending storm.
“It’s getting worse,” Idris said.
Seraphina closed the lids on the boxes of provisions and made her way to the front, huddling next to him. The relic in her eye socket showed her the white shadow of an endless road ahead, no break in the trees as the horse strained against the weather. It went like this for another half hour before Idris spotted an opening and pulled at the reins, clicking his tongue to guide the horse down a narrow path. At the end of it, they were disappointed to discover the ruins of what had been a farm.
The main house didn’t have a roof anymore. All its windows were shattered, and vegetation sprouted behind its walls. The only standing building was a barn near the tree line, so they headed there, neither of them voicing their hope that it might be unscathed enough to serve as a temporary shelter.
At first glance, it didn’t look better off than the house.
“The roof is saggy on one side,” Idris described. “But the timber frame stands square, and the double doors at the front are still on their hinges. We can make this work.”
He climbed down and went to open the doors. The left one scraped along the ground and stuck halfway, and he had to put his shoulder into it until it gave another foot, just enough so he could drive the cart inside the barn. Seraphina joined him.
