At First Light

IV.

Hannah woke groggily, to find the man shaking her shoulder. She stared blearily up at him: some faint light had entered the cabin, and she could now discern his silhouette from the faint grey shadows of the barn behind.

"I think it's morning."

Clawing at the sacks, she prised herself out of the gap into which she had fallen during the night. The man stepped back as she eased herself onto the floor. Her ankles and knees seemed to have frosted over in her sleep. Gingerly, she tried to stretch, and collapsed back on the sacks with a yelp as her calf began to cramp.

"Everything hurts!"

"But you don't have a hangover," the man said, half-triumphantly. "Come on. Up."

Hannah did not get up. Leaving her to her misery, the man went to the door and opened it, allowing in a soft shaft of greyish light and a fall of snow. He went out over the snow, and Hannah's curiosity impelled her to crawl off the sacks and hobble after him.

It was dawn, and the world was blanketed in white beneath a haze of pink clouds, burning bright at the horizon. The man was staring into the burning bright spot, his hands in his pockets, his back to Hannah. Hannah crunched forward through the snow and breathed in the prickling, chill morning air.

"Oh! Isn't it pretty!?"

The man turned to her. For the first time, there was enough light for her to see his face. She found she liked it. It was a young, tanned face, framed by an unkempt mess of dark hair. The features were bony and rather heavy, but he was saved any severity of appearance the smile in his dark eyes, which she suspected might be a constant feature. As she looked, his mouth began to smile too, and he laughed.

"Well you're pretty too. But I had an idea you would be."

Hannah looked away shyly.

"There's not more than a foot of snow, but it'll put paid to walking far. I live nearby. I think closer than anyone else. Come with me, and I'll see to it that you're taken safely home."

"Oh no!" Hannah thought of her furious father, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. "Really, I can't go home. I won't."

"But where else can you go?" The man gestured at the sleeping white landscape around them. "It's impossible to get to Bath, or London, or anywhere else in this. Even with a carriage, the roads are likely unusable until tomorrow. And you can't walk!"

"Yes. I can. I will." Obstinately, Hannah gathered the folds of her pelisse around her, and marched off over the snow in the direction of the road. It was a slow march, perhaps even a waddle, because the snow reached half-way up her calves, but if it was a waddle it was an imperious one.

The man, without trying to persuade her, walked after her. His legs being longer than hers, her hurrying only had the effect of exhausting her, as all he had to do was lengthen his stride to keep up.

"Don't follow me."

"I must."

"No. You must leave me. If you won't help-" She was stopped for a moment by a wooden fence, and the necessity of climbing it. Hovering on the lip, she said severely, "If you won't help, leave."

"Help? But that's why I'm following!"

"But you won't help me get to Bath."

"No. That wouldn't be helping."

"Then – then I don't need you to follow me. Good bye, Sir."

Hannah jumped from her perch on the fence. But on the other side, banked up against the fence, the snow had gathered deceptively into a drift. Hannah sunk down into it with a scream. Her feet hit something, but not something solid enough, and she lost her balance and went down on her back in a cloud of enveloping snow.