New Shores ➳ The Last Kingdom | Finan the Agile (The Northman's Daughter 1)

THE DREAM

The wind blew her hair into her face, and Shaylee stroked it out of her face tiredly. She had been up since the morning dawn and worked on the fields the entire day. She had finished her fieldwork an hour ago. Now she sat on the bank of the River Bann and washed the hay dust from her body.

Here some distance away from the village, the world seemed peaceful and quiet. Shaylee enjoyed the peace of the forest and the murmur of the river. After the hard work on the field, the cold water felt wonderful. She waded into the deeper water and then submerged completely. She held on to a stone so that she would not be dragged along by the current. The water muffled all sounds, and for a few seconds, it felt as if she had left reality behind. Then she ran out of air and burst through the surface. Immediately she was surrounded by the sound of the forest again. And there was something else. She sighed and quickly waded back to the shore.

She could pull over her gown just before Aidan stepped through the bushes. Shaylee looked at him while she put on her overgarment.

"If this isn't the Danish bitch.", Aidan said with his shrill voice. He was the son of the village eldest. That's why he seemed to get away with everything. Shaylee was his preferred target because of her descent. She did not take it personally. She knew that Aidan was a bully, and if he didn't annoy her, he would annoy someone else, who might couldn't take it as well as she could.

Also, today she only chuckled: "Aidan, you sound like a toddler who has just learned his first words and now simply repeats them over and over again. If I have to listen to your insults, at least change them up once in a while."

She saw how his face turned red and grinned. She grabbed her bundle and wanted to walk past him. But then he held her back. Shaylee broke away immediately and turned to him: "Don't touch me, you little scum!"

"I touch you whenever I want. You are only a Danish whore." he started to smile as Shaylee heard steps behind her. She did not need to turn; she knew that she would see his usual companions, Glyn and Niall. Now that she had three men against her, she knew that the smartest thing to do was to retreat.

She ignored the men and was about to leave the clearing as Aidan ordered his friends: "Hold her down! It's time we teach her how a good Danish whore behaves."

She felt the hand of either Niall or Glyn on her shoulder. That was the moment she started running. She broke out to the left and slipped away from the hands. But Niall blocked the path back to the village, so Shaylee had to cut through the undergrowth. It was quiet behind her for a brief moment, then Aidan yelled at his pals. To catch her again. Shaylee ran through the forest as fast as she could, but her dress kept getting caught in branches, and she heard the heavy steps behind her getting closer and closer. She already felt the men's breath on her neck, and then someone grabbed her upper arm and threw her to the ground. The moment she fell to the ground, she woke up screaming.

It took Shaylee a moment to realise she was no longer in Ireland but in her bed in Coccham. Sweatbathed, she sat in her bed and stared into the darkness of her room. Her breath went as fast as if she really just had run through the forest. Still gasping, she knocked back the furs and left the house. The cold night air would help to cool her down.

She couldn't bear to only walk; Shaylee felt like she needed to run, so she ran through the streets of Coccham. She was in such a rush that she did not see the man coming around a corner and bumped into him. She gave a sharp scream and, still influenced by the hunted feeling she had had in her dream, freed herself frantically from the hands which had been preventing her from falling to the ground. She broke away from the hands and stumbled back. In her madness, she stumbled over her own feet and fell against a house wall. She slowly slid down the wall until she sat on the dirty ground. She shivered like aspen, and her breath went insanely fast. Shaylee knew that she behaved hysterically, but she just couldn't shake off the hunted feeling she had had in her dream.