Page 45 of Adam, Mine

“Get out of our house!” Felix roared. “Give that back.”

“He can have it. I don’t even like that one,” Agatha griped.

Elias ducked Felix’s wild punch and yanked open the door. His heart squeezed hard: by God did Agatha remind him of Gida.

“Thank you. Keep at your reading,” Elias said, running into the night.

“Stop talking to her!” Felix screamed. He shut the door hard.

Elias scampered across the yard. His horse was still there, looking fat from sweet grass and in need of exercise. He leaped onto her back, clothes still in hand, and rode until the light from the hospital was far behind him.

Freeze

When his horse’s sides were lathered with foam and he could smell water, finally Elias stopped.

It was pitch-black outside and he didn’t have a lantern. He climbed from his horse’s back and walked her slowly to the stream.

After a ride like that, she deserved more than winter-crisp water and no blanket. But he could not offer her more than the heat of a fire.

Elias put his clothes back on, in this distant safe place, then he gathered as much dry wood as he could find and set it alight.

De Lacey had come in before dinner and his stomach had become used to comfort of the hearth. Elias shoved down his hunger and checked his jacket thoroughly. He was missing only the largest knife, tossed back to the floor in panic. But the blue book, money, and list of alchemists were as he left them, and Franz’s bounty was still tied to his saddle as it had been when he arrived.

Elias sat on the cold ground and leaned his back against a tree.

He put his head in his hands. He was better now, stronger than he’d ever been. His head didn’t hurt, his cuts only a little. The feeling of being watched had followed him, and it made the woods feel strange and unwelcome though he’d been among trees for all his life. But even that was small in exchange for his health.

He knew where he was roughly, and he had enough money to get him wherever he needed to go. His horse was young and friendly; she could canter for ages. He didn’t have to wear bandages and Franz’s Christmas clothes nearly let him pass for a gentleman, even stiff and reeking as they were. His coat, though it was small, was warm.

But Elias had never been alone this long before. He was always surrounded by people who loved him.

In the dark, he felt for Agatha’s doll.

It was a soft thing, with mohair curls and a face of bright yarn.

“Crying is for babies.”

Elias laughed and turned over on his side.

When he woke the next morning, the horse whickering and nibbling at his hair, his tears had turned to frost on his cheeks.

Grief

There weren’t many people from Elias’s town that traveled far from home. The only reason Elias had was when he was taken to see physicians for sugar sickness as a child. He’d been to Ingelstad several times with his father in search of aid, but it was a doctor from Gaimersheim that found the combination of foods Elias could eat that gave him strength.

So Elias understood tall buildings and crowds. He understood the smell of smoke and the salt of bodies, the reek of waste and unwashed desperation of the poor without family. People bumping into each other, yelling at each other, selling to each other, all in the road.

When he was last in Ingelstad, he’d roamed the streets like a ghost, an automaton propelled by pain and rage. The people he passed avoided looking at him, like they avoided looking at beggars, and he did not care about it.

Now that he was washed and healing, his patchwork face on display, people’s gazes followed him. He was not allowed to enter the fine store to purchase good new clothes until he doled out payment for them on the doorstep. The cobbler demanded a story for Elias’s condition, and it was clear he assumed Elias’s riches were stolen. The barber who trimmed the whiskers growing on his face and sold him a shaving kit asked after Samoa, and it took uncomfortably long for Elias to realize the man thought that he was a soldier home from that ordeal.*

Elias moved the greater share of his fortune into the lining of his coat and put a more reasonable amount in a purse. He put his shoulders back and stood taller than he liked, held his hands behind his back at rest—the way the only soldiers he had ever known back home did.

And with each small change in his behavior, the eyes roved over him less.

His pine tea wasn’t common here so Elias was forced to go out to the woods and gather needles to dry them for grinding. It wasn’t the best use of his time, but it was important. He had tried eating only fresh meat before and shuddered to remember the ache of his teeth and the illness that swept over him after a few weeks of this.

Elias sold his horse in Munich, cut down his supplies from Franz to the essentials, powdered his dry needles and bottled them. Then he purchased a new set of knives and commissioned a holster for them. Something new that the tanner did not particularly look happy about making for him.