Nothing much to comment on today except for how incredibly lazy I feel. I haven't gotten up yet and started washing dishes, which probably accounts for the 500 or so words I've written so far today.
Chapter 6 Part 1
In Which a Night is Spent in Question
Shula
made up her mind then, as she stood over Cain’s sleeping body, and stepped back
over the sleeping bodies of the men to get to her place in front of the fire.
Staring into the flames she sighed. It was so cold outside, and this shelter
was not as well sealed as it should be. Such a small fire did only slightly
more to warm her than the accumulated body heat from the five people staying in
the cramped space. She warmed her hands above the fire, rubbed them together to
keep the heat that felt like nothing short of life itself to her inside, and
added another few sticks to the pile. With that finished Shula pushed herself
out of her melancholy mood and lay down to sleep.
The
next morning snow lay two inches deep on the ground and drifted into piles of
over a foot in random places along the steep upward path. Shula had once again
bundled herself up in yards of scarves and shawls, topped with her heavy brown
wool cloak. She helped Larkin clean up the group’s dishes, though they were
only a travel sized pan and several light weight wooden spoons, in return for
the breakfast they had shared with her, and prepared to leave with the men.
Larkin
stood holding the reins of his small sorrel mare. His lanky height made him
look too big for the animal when he rode her, but she was a good looking animal
who was clearly well taken care of. “What are we gonna do with her?” He asked
Cain, indicating Shula, with a tip of his head.
Shula,
who had just come out of the shelter heard the question and answered with a
simple, “I’ll keep up.” Her eyes dared him to say she would not be able to, but
Zija could only see the back of her head, today covered with a yellow scarf,
with her hair sticking out at the bottom of it. “You’re gonna run behind the
horses, in the snow, wearing 20 pounds of blankets, uphill, carrying that giant
backpack of yours, for the whole day?” he asked, the sarcasm clear in his
words.
“Unless
you wanna trade places with me and let me ride your horse, then yeah. Since
we’re going to the same place, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go with you guys.”
Larkin
sighed at the lack of common sense of everyone in the group. If we move the
saddlebags around to lighten one of the horses there won’t be any trouble with
her riding behind one of us,” he pointed out to the others. “Because he’s the
smallest, and seems to have a fixation anyway, you can ride with Seok,” Larkin
told Shula. Zija snickered.
“Zija
will take all Seok’s bags and the girl’s too because his horse can handle them
just fine,” Cain added.
“What?”
The question was asked by both Seok and Zija in unison. “Why does she have to
ride with me?” the younger man asked, only his words were drowned out by Zija’s
angry, “And just why can’t your lazy ass horses carry his bags?”
Cain
finished tying the knot in his girth strap and told Zija, “There are two people
here younger than you are, so you can sure as shit stop acting like such a damn
kid.”
“Who
the hell’s acting like a kid here?”
“Not
those two,” Larkin said as he pointed to Seok and Shula who were tying Seok’s
saddle bags onto Zija’s horse with wicked grins on their faces. “He’s just a
sore looser because I have to carry the heavy shit like the cooking pot that’s
uncomfortable as hell to ride with,” Seok told Shula, his voice easily loud
enough to be heard by the other three men.
Shula
laughed, “Yeah, and after the way he was hitting on me in the inn that one day,
I feel almost sorry that he has to replace my warm, soft body with some pots
and pans.” This comment even earned her a bark of laughter from normally
non-humorous Cain. After Zija’s horse was fully loaded and everyone swung into
their saddles, Shula pulled herself up behind Seok on his brown horse and
wrapped her arms firmly around his stomach as they started up the side of the
mountain.
After
they had been riding for some time Seok lost the stiffness in his back and
leaned back comfortably into Shula’s embrace. The wind coming down the face of
the mountain as icy and having the girl at his back, with all her layers of
scarves and shawls was keeping a good deal warmer than the other three men who
were riding in front of them looked. Shula had rested her face on the back of
Seok’s shoulder, so that he thought she had fallen asleep, when she suddenly
lifted her head and whispered into his ear, “Do you really not remember,
Bhumi?”
Her
warm breath blew past his cheek as she waited for his answer. Seok shook his
head, as much to shake off the feeling of her face being that close to his as
to answer her question. “No I don’t know anybody named Bhumi,” he replied.
Shula put her face back down on his shoulder and nodded. He could feel her head
moving against the fabric.
“Forget
it then,” her muffled voice came to his ears, but something about that sentence
bothered him. It was so unhappy, but not only that something about being told
to forget, even if it was just a nonsense question stirred up his anger.
Shula’s arms tightened around his stomach and she did not say anything else, so
Seok remained silent as well. His horse stumbled though, and Seok realized that
he had the reins bundled in his clenched fists. He loosened his fingers on the
reigns and the horse seemed to sigh in relief, but Seok was far from soothed,
thinking about why on earth being told to forget something made him so angry.
The
frigid air coming down from the mountain top brought with it more snow, to
blow, stinging into their faces and makes the already uncomfortable ride even
colder and hellish. Cain and Larkin, riding side by side at the front of the
group ceased their conversation as the wind blew progressively harder and
harder, cutting through their cloaks and stinging the skin underneath it. The
riders hunched in their saddles and urged their horses to keep plowing doggedly
through the winds biting fangs.
Seok
became even more thankful for his extra rider the colder it got. Though she had
stopped speaking when the snow started again, she seemed to have a higher body
temperature than anyone he had ever met, and while the front of him was
stinging from cold, Shula’s arms around his stomach formed a solid band of
heat, and her warm body, huddled against his back made him feel like he was in
two different worlds at the same time.
Finally
the ground began to level out and the men all had their eyes peeled for the
next shelter that would be nearby. They were near the top of the pass and the
second shelter house was supposed to be in the lee of an outcropping of stone
that bottlenecked the south side of the pass. It was Zija who spotted it, after
Cain and Larkin had both ridden past in the blinding snow. Though they would
have noticed soon enough that they had passed the tiny building by when the
stone cliffs closed in around them, both men were thankful to hear Zija’s
shout. They turned their horses around and converged on the building.
Whoever
had been there last in good weather had seen fit to provide the next travelers
a stack of wood for the fire pit in the middle of the hut. Unlike the last
building, this one was more of a shack than a shelter, with a roped off area
for the animals inside the building instead of an adjacent lean-to and a fire
pit dug into the floor and a rough hole cut from the roof to let out the smoke
so the occupants did not choke in their attempt to keep from freezing to death.
Aside from the hole in the roof, the walls did not let the wind through, and
the body heat of the animals and people, as well as the fire soon heated the
room to a bearable temperature.
“Why
the hell,” Shula complained, hunching herself over the fire, “Did you shit for
brains’ decide to go to Death’s gods forsaken temple at this damn time of the
year?”
Zija,
just as grumpy as Shula, was brushing the melting snow off his horse, when he
retorted, “It’s not like we asked you to follow us you know.”
Shula
made a noise thorough her nose, but made no move to leave her place by the
fire. She held her hands over the flames, so close that Larkin actually winced
when he saw her jerk back after a finger as orange as her hair brushed across
her palm. “To hell with you too.” She muttered something under her breath that
made Cain look up from caring for his own horse and stare. Larkin did not miss
the look, but he had been unable to make out her remark. He was unsure of this
whole situation they were in. None of this group were exactly normal, and they
all, every one of them, had secrets hidden in their pasts that the others did not
know.
Zija
never spoke about his childhood, and Cain had never said a word about any part
of his life before he entered the temple. Recently Larkin had heard everything
there was to know about Seok’s past, as the youth could not even remember his
own name, the name they all knew him by was actually a false thing given to him
by a doctor of the temple who needed something to call the sick child. Larkin
had a strange feeling about this girl though. Whatever kind of monster Seok was
when he was unsealed, she had just walked up to him and slapped him across the
face. Now she was still here, causing disturbances, and making him feel
uncomfortable whenever she looked his direction. So far Shula had done nothing
to warrant his suspicion of ill from her, but she reminded Larkin too much of Imara
for his comfort.
Larkin,
as normal, made something edible for the others to eat, and they dropped off to
sleep one by one as the night wore on. When Cain was the only one left awake,
sitting leaned against the wall of the shack, he crossed his arms over his
chest and said, “I’ve got some questions for you, and you can be sure if you
don’t stop pretending to sleep and answer them, I’ll leave you behind tomorrow
to try to get through the rest of the pass on your own.”
No comments:
Post a Comment