At First Light

I.

It began to snow at twilight, when Hannah was still five miles out from Hawbridge. Already cold, already tired, her hems muddy, her feet blistered, at the first flake of snow upon her cheek, she sank to her knees on the road and let out an animal sob.

Nothing had gone as planned.

She had intended to sneak her horse from the stables and ride to Hawbridge. But the stable master had seen her, and refused to let her take the horse out in such cold weather. No matter. She could walk to the village and catch the mail-coach to Hawbridge. Perhaps she would even meet a carter on the way, who would give her a lift for a penny. But every stranger she passed had taken one glance at her sable-trimmed pelisse and, seeing she was a lady of class, refused to let her up, for fear of the consequences. She had thought she was saved when Mr Gordon, the local book-binder, had passed her in his gig and confessed he was on the way to Hawbridge himself, but his willingness to give her a ride had proved no more than a trick: as soon they reached the crossroads, he had turned the gig around and headed back for home.

"Your Father won't ever forgive me if I don't," he explained, when she protested. "Now don't you tell me he gave you permission to go to Hawbridge. He wouldn't have sent you off without a footman, or in this weather, a coach. You're doing a might silly thing, Miss Templeton, and I won't help you do it."

Indeed, Hannah could see that Mr Gordon was prepared to retrace the miles to her own home, even though it would put him out by an hour or more, in these muddy February roads. She begged and pleaded with him to let her back down and drive away, but he refused with Scottish stubbornness. In the end, she had jumped from his gig and run away, and as he could hardly bodily restrain her, he had merely chased her for half a mile before his horse, thankfully, threw a shoe.

She still felt guilty, for both him and the horse.

Then, at the village, where she had hoped to buy a seat on the mail-coach, she learned that it had left fifteen minutes ago. In her desperation, she had even tried to run after it, though she had known the moment the post-master's wife had told her it was gone that it was hopeless. She would have to walk the eight miles to Hawbridge and book a room in the inn overnight, and get the Bath coach the next evening.

Hannah had certainly money enough, but her experience with the carters and Mr Gordon gave her an anxious intuition that all the innkeepers in Hawbridge might find her gold not gilded enough to let her a room. Besides, Hannah was slightly afraid of the idea of staying in an inn, alone, overnight. Her imagination naively cast up images of drunken sailors, carousing highwaymen, and women of ambiguously ill repute. She had never before travelled except in her own carriage, and never before been hosted anywhere less comfortable than a private cottage, owned by family or friends.

Now, as the snow powdered the mud around her, she was beginning to realize that neither would she even make it to Hawbridge. She could not walk five miles through the snow. She felt as though she could barely walk five hundred yards.

For quite five minutes, Hannah sat in a slump on the ground, and indulged herself in an orgy of self-pity. Horrifying situations came to her: she would be eaten by wolves. She would be kidnapped by highwaymen. She would found by her father. She was helpless, hungry, and very much in trouble.

When, after five minutes, she was just as in trouble and just as helpless, and, moreover, a stray snowflake managed to float its way under the collar of her cloak to land on her neck, she sat up, and hastily considered the rather more real danger that she would freeze to death.

She was on a country road. Not the main highway to Hawbridge, but a lesser used one, down through scantily populated farmland. She hadn't dared go by the highway, which would be busy. Now she realized her mistake. There were few enough travellers who took this road, even on a sunny July day. On a snowy January evening, there was only Hannah. And she was miles from anywhere like civilization.

She clambered to her feet, and pulled her collar tightly around her. The leaden skies above held no promise that the snow would be a light one; no, it increased by the moment, and with it, a growing wind. Hannah shivered.

"I wish – I wish I'd never left the house," she said, in a voice that throbbed with tears.

For a moment, she thought of turning back, and trying to reach the village. There, surely, she would find someone to take her home. But even if she was capable of making that distance, her stubbornness - and her fear of her father's wrath - spurred her onwards. She trudged through the falling snow, occasionally wiping a tear from her eyes. In minutes, it became clear that she could not walk indefinitely. The snow was becoming quite a storm, and her boots were beginning to soak through. She began to search the fields dimly through the mists of snow for the sign of an occupied farmhouse or cottage. When she saw a dark, square shape, looming up at the top of a small hill, she pressed eagerly towards it, clambering awkwardly over a fence, and stumbling through a furrowed field, more shifting sleet than solid earth under her feet.

It was not a farmhouse, but a shed of some sort, a hut, barely more than sixteen feet across. The light was failing now, and she felt her way around the rough walls to the door. It did not open at her first push, and she cried out, thinking it must be locked. Her second, desperate shove was so strong that the door burst inwards under her, and she fell into the room.

Inside, it was almost pitch-black. Hannah stood still, shivering. She had always been a little scared of the dark. And the shed was not a friendly sort of place. The faint light allowed her some idea of vague dark things piled against the walls, and she rather thought one of the things had moved when she came in. Too large for a stray dog, surely?

She took a cautious step backwards. Behind her, the door creaked threateningly.

The things, whatever they were, were still again. Perhaps she had imagined it.

But her heart was pounding, and the chill of the hut was considerably less comfortable than she had imagined. She turned back to look out into the swirling snow. Perhaps if she walked a little further, she would find a cottage or a farmhouse, where she could beg a room for the night. She paused at the threshold, and stared out into the darkening night, looking for a light, that might signify a window, that might signify a house.

But the snow, blustering in the moaning wind, obscured any light that might have been there, and Hannah hesitated where she was, uncertain of what to do.

"For God's sake," exploded a voice behind her, "Stay in or go out as you must, but shut the ruddy door!"

~~

A/N: This is a fluffy little short story I recently came up with between novel-writing! It's in five chapters, and will be updated every 2-3 days.