Even the smells were different. There was a damp earthiness overlaid with something that was almost familiar, something like sandalwood, but not. Another note, more floral, teased her, almost apple or pear, but not. The alien quality of this place both intrigued and intimidated her.
The deer started to drift away and Hava glanced over to see that Molly was already moving. Hava tried to follow the deer as silently as possible, painfully aware that compared to Molly she was making enough noise to scare away half the wildlife in the forest.
Hava liked Molly. Of all the young women she had met since arriving at Beran’s Hill, Molly was by far the most interesting. The others were much as she expected from her own experiences with town girls while travelling, as well as the girls she had known at home, people caught up in their day-to-day tedium, living predictable lives. They served their families, then got married, moved out, and served their husbands. Or served many men as barmaids, shop girls, or whores.
Though Hava was not yet twenty years of age, she’d travelled, learned to sail, killed a man with a rock, and had seen things these women couldn’t dream of, let alone attempt. She had observed their relationships over the years, but they had no meaning to her personally. The hardest thing for Hava to understand was their blind acceptance of such an ordinary existence.
Since leaving her father’s house and joining the class at Master Facaria’s school, Hava had been just another student, one who excelled, but unlike the town and farm girls she had met she was her own person, not someone’s daughter or wife.
Molly, too, was different, and she knew some things better than Hava did. Hava might be able to negotiate a dark alley and remain unseen, or enter a house without noise, but she was little more than an awkward child in this forest. She wasn’t even certain how she would get back to the town if Molly wasn’t there.
Then Hava realized Molly wasn’t there. A tiny pang of concern twinged in the pit of her stomach: the first hint of fear. It needed to be ignored, lest it lead to panic. Immediately she employed part of her childhood training to prevent her imagination running wild and leading her into poor choices.
She took stock of her position. What would she do in a city? She started looking for anything that made this location unique. All she saw were trees! A chiding voice from her memory echoed, from a crew boss named Hilsbek, ‘You look, but you do not see. Learn to see!’
Again she surveyed her surroundings and saw there was one tree with deep scratches in the bark at chest-height, as if someone had used a blade or saw on it, and then stopped. To the left of that tree was a stump, perhaps from timber felling, or a diseased tree falling, she didn’t know, but it was old, covered in some sort of vine.
Quickly she inventoried more details: a small outcropping of rocks to her right; a half-broken bough hanging from a large spread of branches forming a sort of canopy behind her. After a moment, she had confidence that should she return, she’d recognize this spot.
She turned around, and was making every detail indelible in her mind, when she heard Molly say, ‘You coming?’
Looking towards the source of the voice, she could barely make out Molly between two trees growing close together. Hava jogged forward, circling the trees, then saw a hint of movement behind Molly.
Without hesitation, Hava drew and shot, sending a shaft past Molly’s neck. The sound of the arrow striking and a slight grunt was followed by silence. Molly didn’t flinch or even show surprise, but turned to see what Hava had loosed at.
Molly looked back at Hava. ‘I hope what you saw was a deer and not some fool wearing a deerskin jerkin!’
Hava smiled. ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’
She moved purposefully through the trees, pausing a couple of times to circumnavigate barriers of brush and tree trunks. Reaching the fallen animal, she knelt and saw it was still alive but motionless in shock, breathing rapidly and shallowly.
Molly knelt next to Hava and with a quick movement slit the deer’s throat. ‘Best to put it out of its misery.’ Sitting back on her heels, she added, ‘Good shot.’ She glanced back. ‘You had maybe a foot of sight, through five, six trees?’
‘I saw movement and took the shot,’ Hava said with a shrug.
Molly slid her pack off her shoulder and took out a large sack. ‘Waste nothing,’ she said to Hava, unfolding the sack. Then she drew a light rope out of the pack and in moments had the deer hanging from a branch. Gutting the animal, she gathered the offal into the sack and tied it off. She handed the bag to Hava. ‘Someone might want the liver or kidneys for pie, and Jarman will give me a few coppers for the rest for his hogs.’
‘What about skinning it?’ asked Hava.
‘When we get back to town.’ Molly cut down the deer and with Hava’s help – though Hava thought Molly hardly needed it – she shouldered the carcass easily.
As Hava picked up the bag, Molly said, ‘Where did you learn to shoot like that?’
Falling into the almost unthinking default of lying about her past, Hava said, ‘My father taught us all. I was the oldest, so I had more time to learn.’ She paused, then added, ‘We all learned.’
Molly said nothing for a few paces then asked, ‘You didn’t hunt much, did you?’
‘A bit,’ replied Hava quickly, seeing where the conversation was heading. ‘It’s different where I’m from. We don’t have forests like these.’
‘Oh?’ Molly sounded curious.
‘My family lived on an island …’ Hava let the thought trail off as she quickly realized she didn’t know if Molly had met Master Bodai when he passed through Beran’s Hill in the role of a horse trader. That had been before Hava and Hatu returned to purchase the burned-out inn Hatu was working at restoring while Hava hunted with Molly. The story then was that her ‘father’ was a horse trader.
Hava resumed her story, making a mental note to speak with Hatu when they were alone so they could reconcile their false past history. ‘The island was small but pirates and raiders came close sometimes. We had little of worth, so they rarely troubled us, but occasionally they would take food and, if they could, prisoners they could rape or sell to slavers.
‘So we all learned the bow. We’d grab what we could and head up into the hills, leaving behind enough for the raiders so they wouldn’t risk following us. Everyone in my village did this.’
Molly glanced at Hava. ‘I was curious, because you’re a very good – or lucky – archer, but you seem completely lost in the forest.’
‘We left the island when I was young,’ said Hava, which was close to the truth. She had been barely seven years of age when she was sent to Facaria’s school. ‘Trading horses … you need to be able to defend yourself. Father didn’t like paying for guards …’ She shrugged as she let the explanation drop. One thing she had been taught in her training was not to volunteer too much information; it made keeping a false story consistent more difficult. She switched topics. ‘I admit I had just lost sight of you for a moment and was wondering how to get back to town.’
‘Most girls from town would get lost quickly … and a fair number of the boys, too.
‘I was an only child, so my father took me hunting, despite my mother being furious. I tried to learn the things my mother wanted to teach me, cooking, baking, and all that.’
Hava fell into stride with her as Molly went on, ‘I learned some of it. I can bake simple bread, cook a bit. I can’t make … whatever they call that fruit … preserves, yes; I can’t get that right. I recently opened a jar I’d stored away and it was nasty.’ She chuckled ruefully. ‘I never realized how much my mother knew until after she died.’
Hava