Another Experiment, Part 4 – The Hills

Votes were to run away. Sensible.

The spear wavers, just for a moment, and you make your leap, diving back through the window and crashing headfirst into a little vegetable garden. Earth goes everywhere; what feels like a carrot jams painfully into your ribs, but it is far less painful than the spear that lances down through the window and skewers a ripe turnip cleanly through the middle. The old woman jerks it back, snarling in outrage.

“Get out of my bloody garden!”

You scramble to your feet, covered in soil and damaged leaves picking your way out of the garden as fast as you can, while trying to crush as few plants as possible. The spear jabs at you once, twice – and then the old woman is gone from the window, stomping noisily away. You hear a door slam shut. She might not want to climb out of the window after you, but she is still coming. You stumble out of the garden and cast around for an escape. It is uphill or nothing; either you try to run out across the hills or make for cover in the small wood in the other direction. The thought of that bright spear flashing through the air decides for you: hide in the woods, and avoid being skewered.

You scramble up the side of the slope and into the trees, not daring to look back, though you can hear the old fisher cursing either at you or at the damage to her vegetables. The trees themselves are tall, thin things, though they are denser further into the wood. The floor is covered in bracken, and you dive into a thick patch of it behind one spindly tree. You hold very, very still. Leaves prod you uncomfortably in every exposed bit of skin, wet earth from the garden is everywhere, and the sun is almost entirely down. You are cold, and damp, and afraid.

You wait there for what seems like forever, but is only really half an hour. You let the sun set and listen intently, for any sound of the woman with the spear, but there is nothing – until you hear a throat being cleared, down below.

“You can bugger off,” the old woman calls. “But don’t starve. Don’t want you bringing those crows back.”

There is a thump, as something hits the ground, and then the sound of a door closing. You wait a little longer before standing, letting half a forest fall from your ragged, filthy clothes, and pick your way to the edge of the wood to look down into the dell. The cabin door is firmly shut, the only light that of the fire inside leaking through closed curtains. In the rivulets of light that leak through the closed front door, you see a small pack dumped at the edge of the porch.

Carefully, quietly, you pick your way down to the door, and take the pack. It is only small, but inside you find a waterskin, half a loaf of hard but edible bread, and strips of something that turns out to be fish – so salted that it is almost unrecognisable, but still filling. There is a flint and a small piece of steel, too.

You debate calling your thanks, but decide against it. The fisher has clearly had enough disturbance for one day.

Photo by Merri J (Unsplash)

You take the pack and climb back out of the dell. The sun is down, but the air is clear and cold up here in the hills, and the moon and stars shine brightly. In the distance to the west you can see a dim golden light – whether it is the setting sun or the lights of some settlement, you cannot tell. You will certainly not be able to reach it tonight, but you could make a start, and sleep under the stars.

The woods above you were sparse at their edge but became thicker and far darker further in. There is wood there for a warm fire, but you will have to go in deep to find enough and to stay out of the old fisher’s way. The embrace of the trees will shelter you… but it could well shelter other things, too.

The mountains loom to the north. You almost dismiss them – it is getting too dark to attempt a further climb. But something glinting in the moonlight catches your eye. It is stone: not mere bare rock but worked, carved stone. Walking a little closer, you can see that it is the stub of an old milestone, at the edge of what had seemed to merely be a fall of scree but now appears to be the last remnants of a very, very old road. It winds further up into the mountains, swiftly disappearing from view. Where it leads, you cannot tell. But it might lead to something, even if it is a half-fallen roof to shelter beneath.

Towards potential civilisation; to certain, if dubious shelter in the woods; to gods-know-what in the higher mountains.

Where will you go?

Let’s see your votes in the comments.