My Voice for My Heart

Chapter 16: Starting

Keela

I walked through the woods, but they were no longer familiar. They were ravaged and strange. The trees stood as smoldering reminders of my fear and that I had let my boys be stolen away from me.

I coughed and choked, the smoke irritating my nose and throat. At a gurgling stream I stopped and gulped down handfuls of water. I knew this stream. I could follow it up a hill and into a meadow. I remembered having seen thistle there, and if the fire hadn't destroyed it, I could collect what I needed.

As I walked along the stream, my thoughts went to the boys. I wondered if they thought like men still, or if they were more animal. I wondered if they remembered me, or if their brains were only concerned with safety, food, shelter. The morning was cold and I wrapped my arms around my body, my teeth chattering in the silent woods. The fire seemed to have silenced the bird.

Another thing that was my fault.

My breath came in quick pants and I hadn't even realized I'd made it to the meadow until I tripped out of the woods and into the early morning sunshine. The fire had stopped before it reached here. I turned around, the destruction was behind me. The meadow untouched. The grass was covered in dew, spider webs lacing between the thick blades. Here and there a boulder was strewn, and around those ancient rocks I saw the yellow tops of distaff thistle.

I wanted to pluck it right away, but there was so much to do first. I would have to mash it, separate the fibers, and find a way to make a hand spindle. I had a spinning wheel at my father's house, but I had seen hand spindles before. They were short round pieces of wood with a weighted wheel at one end, and a tiny metal hook that would clutch the fibers while it spun.

There was the weaving, and then there was my survival.

Maeve would find me, unless I could stay hidden. I wasn't sure the undine wouldn't tell her where I was, and what I'd seen as I'd made my way through the forest showed me she had ever right to be livid.

I put my face in my hands, overwhelmed with the tasks before letting out my breath and straightening my shoulders. I could do this. I could forage for food. I had the stream for water. I would find an uprooted tree, or if I was lucky, a cave, and I would make my family the shirts that would turn them back into men.

I walked around the meadow, making note of the places that the thistle grew, knowing I'd eventually strip this meadow of the plant and need to venture farther into the land to find it. I walked into the woods, collecting boughs and sticks that I could use to fashion a blind. I didn't want to be too far from the meadow, but I wanted to be hidden. I looked back into the field and sighed when my path was so clearly carved through the tall grass.

I would need to learn to move stealthily, to leave no sign of my presence for either Maeve, or, I realized, my father, if he should come looking for me.

I built my shelter near a small stand of tiny pine trees. They were straggly, but the blind looked like it belonged there. It would keep out the rain, and protect me from the wind, as long as neither of those things happened together or in abundance. I found the sticks that were old enough and solid enough to work as the dowel and then spent the rest of the afternoon searching for rocks sharp enough to etch holes in stones to be the weight on the dowel. By the time I had made my first hand-spindle, the light was waning, my back was aching and I was hungry.

I took long sips from the river and explored the forest, finding a small growth of mushrooms that were safe to eat. I picked a few and sat in my shelter, staring waving grass and the yellow heads I could see among the green.

Tomorrow I would start. I would pluck and mash, and when my fingers were too pained to do more, I would venture out into the woods and find a cave. I would search for signs of animals and I would make traps. I'd settle in. I had nine months to make nine shirts and a winter to survive.

I laid back on the ground, and closed my eyes. I could do this. I would do this.