The Princess and the Peaches

Chapter 7: Almie's Side of the Story

The light shining on my closed eyelids finally wakes me. Stiff, sore, and utterly wrung out from our wild ride, I lie still for several more minutes, listening to the trickle and splash of water droplets from last night's rain dripping from the ends of branches and pine needles into the sparse undergrowth below. The air is crisp and damp, and smells of wet soil.

Groggily, I sit up, squinting in the bright light. About me, everything glitters with water.

We didn't even manage to find a clearing in which to sleep last night, but collapsed among the trees. The ground is carpeted with ferns. In the shadows, stubborn patches of snow hide from the sun. The sky overhead is blue, the white sun peeking through the leaves a hand's-breadth above the eastern horizon.

I'm soaked to the skin. As I stand, my skirt clings to my legs, weighing me down. Unbuttoning my leaf-green jacket, I peel it off and drape it over a handy tree branch. My bundle is gone, and with it all of my supplies, but this fails to worry me; if we hurry, we might reach Crescent City by early evening. I'm too bone-weary to be hungry anyway. Peaches and the horse appear to have wandered off as well; this concerns me slightly more.

Behind me, the ground slopes gently upward to the crest of a low hill. I hold still for a moment, listening to the sounds of the forest. I hear leaves dripping and squirrels hopping from branch to branch. A jay chatters somewhere. Trees rustle, ferns crackle, the cold breeze blows gently, and somewhere, below it all, is the sound of running water.

The noise comes from down the slope. I snatch my jacket off the tree and drape it over my shoulders. Then I make my way downhill.

Before long I encounter the noise's source. Halfway down the hill is a shallow gully, perhaps twenty paces wide. At its bottom trickles a pebbly, broad creek. The fresh, clear water is a welcome sight, but an even welcomer one is the chestnut horse a few yards downstream, head bent, drinking deeply from this natural water trough. I swing my legs over the lip of the rock wall, slide down the bank, and promptly trip over a rock and stick my foot into the creek.

The horse looks up, and I swear it raises an eyebrow at me.

"Well," I huff, grinning despite the freezing water. "You certainly look pleased to see me."

The horse snorts derisively as I extract myself from the creek, kneel by its side, and drink deeply from cupped hands. After Coidar's stale well-water, the creek tastes as sweet as honey. I splash more water onto my face, never mind that I'm already wet enough as it is. The water serves to clear my head and wake me up fully. When I have finished, I step back and sit on a mossy rock, watching the horse.

I determine that the horse needs a name, but I don't know even if it's male or female.

"Female," I decide. "You exhibited common sense last night. Never met a boy with a shred of it."

The horse lifts her head from the creek to regard me with those liquid brown eyes. Then she returns placidly to drinking.

"Chessie," I say experimentally. She ignores me.

"Acorn?" I suggest. "Gloss? How about Streak? Brown-eye?"

Nothing.

"Obstinate," I decide.

Obstinate whickers approvingly.

"Very well," I say. "Nice to meet you, Obstinate. Have you seen Peaches recently?"

Needless to say, the horse doesn't answer. However, hearing her name, a grey shadow detaches herself from the boulders near my foot, to nose at the hem of my skirt.

"Good morning, Peaches," I say, picking her up and planting her in my lap. "Did you have fun last night?"

Peaches daintily twists around to groom her fur.