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“The invaders?”
Biddy Hawthorne gives me an outraged look. “TheBrethren, you stupid girl. Now, come with me and we’ll see to your feet.”
With that, she turns and shuffles up the path in the direction of her cottage. I follow, and even in my wretched state, I have trouble keeping up with a bent-over old woman. If the Brethren or dragons show up now, I won’t be able to run.
Biddy’s cottage is just how I remember it a year ago, with its peeling front door, ragged thatched roof with weeds growing among the straw, and a garden fence that looks as though it will collapse if a single bird alights on one of the posts. I feel another twinge of remorse that no one in the village offered to replace her thatch, put in another fence, or weed her garden.
Inside the dark, smoky cottage, Biddy pushes me toward a three-legged stool and tells me to sit down and take off my boots. She walks laboriously around the room with her cane in one hand, filling a small cauldron with water, various herbs, and powders, then hanging it on a chain in the fireplace.
I try to help her, only to be pushed out of the way. “I’m not dead yet, girl.”
With my fingers knotted together in my lap, “Please, can you tell me where everyone’s gone?”
“Where? Oh, away somewhere,” Biddy says, in an offhand manner that doesn’t suit the situation. There are dragons in the skies and everyone in the village has disappeared. Isn’t she paying attention?
“I see more than you know,” Biddy snaps, answering the question that I didn’t ask out loud.
I know she’s just good at reading people and faces.
At least, I think that’s all it is. I’ve seen women burned alive for the crime of being witches, but if they were truly witches, they could have saved themselves from the flames. I just think the Brethren like to tell lies to keep us scared and obedient.
But they also said there were no such things as dragons.
“Is it true that the dragons came out of the northern mountains?”
“You’ve heard the stories, girl.”
“Yes, I’ve heardstories.”
“Well, then,” Biddy says as she crumbles a dried herb into the cauldron, as if that explains everything.
There are few things as frustrating as pointing out how bizarre everything suddenly is, only to have someone shrug it off as if today is any other winter’s day. I stew in silence along with whatever concoction Biddy is brewing. It doesn’t matter where the dragons came from or whether the stories are true. Between the invaders and the Brethren, what remains of this country will descend into fire and ash.
Wherever the refugees have fled, I will follow.
“I can probably catch up with my family if I can find some proper shoes,” I say, thinking aloud. There may still be some of my belongings in our cottage. I can crawl in through a window if they haven’t all been boarded up.
Biddy Hawthorne stirs the steaming cauldron. “You think they’re worth going after when they left you behind?”
“Of course they are! I belong with Ma and Dad.” My parents were inconsolable with grief when I was taken away. They offered up everything they had to keep me even if it would mean they would starve, but the Brethren wouldn’t listen. Even so, I feel a pang of sadness that they left without trying to discover if I was alive or dead.
Biddy uses a metal hook to take the cauldron off the flames, and she tips the hot water, herbs and all, into a basin. “Put your feet in there.”
I unlace my boots and carefully ease them off my blistered and bleeding feet. “Did anyone say where they were all going? A destination, a road they planned to take?”
“No one said anything to me except,We’re leaving, Mistress Hawthorne. You’ll have your throat slit or be eaten by dragons if you stay here.” Biddy puts a clean folded cloth into my hand. “Load of nonsense. Take that, girl.”
Biddy sits down and puffs her pipe as she watches me place my feet into the steaming basin and use the cloth to gently draw the water up my bruised calves. I groan in relief as the heat and whatever she’s put into the water eases the pain.
“Did you see which way they went at least?”
The old woman blows a cloud of smoke. “I wasn’t looking.”
I glower at her. It’s like she’s trying to be unhelpful. Unlike her, I think our chances of being killed or eaten are alarmingly high.
For a few minutes, there’s only the crackle of the flames and the hiss of burning tobacco every time Biddy sucks on her pipe.
If only there was some way to see where my family is right now.
