NEW REALIZATIONS
Rubina rode back to the castle, shivering inside. It wasn't just from the cold, though that was starting to affect her.
“Who was he?” she asked her horse, Tam. Her horse snorted. “I'll never know, will I? Maybe I imagined him?”
She would almost believe it, save that someone, flesh and blood, had saved her and Tam from drowning earlier. He did exist.
Why did he make me feel so strange?
Rubina shivered, recalling the way it had felt when he passed her the handkerchief. When her fingertip and his touched, it sent a jolt through her. And his eyes!
He had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. Gray, with a hint of moss in the grayness, so they seemed mottled, like a forest stone, or like the eyes of some gentle eagle.
She sighed.
“I'm being fanciful, aren't I, Tam?” she asked the horse. In answer, he snorted. She felt her frozen cheeks lift in a smile. “Yes I am.”
The forest was darkening now, she noticed. She had left the castle round lunchtime, planning a gentle jaunt to the river and back before settling down to tapestry and warm drinks in the solar. Now, it was getting dark, a cold, hollow dusk-light settling between the trunks of the closely growing pine and fir.
She shivered, this time with cold. It was so cold. Her fingers were unbending, cramped to the reins. She started to feel really afraid. If they didn't reach the castle soon, they would both freeze. There were also wolves in the wood – not so much in summer, when they could safely skirt the places used by humans. However, in winter, hunger drove them close.
I could die here.
It was a very real possibility. She hunched forward, patting her horse's neck.
“Come on, boy.” They had to get home soon. They walked on.
As they walked, Rubina decided to sing. Not only would it cheer her up, it would calm her. Whoever was in the woods, might also hear her. If Gylas or the other caretakers were about, they would hear and could help her.
She cleared her throat. “A miller...lived...by the river's flow...” she started an old ballad.
As the words and tune flowed through her, she found herself focusing on the images of the song. It was an old tale, of a miller and his daughter who lived in a hut-like home in the woods. In the song, the daughter fell in love with a prince, who rode past each day through the woods on his way to the neighboring castle.
“And his hair...was like...the summer flax...”
The words had changed since last she sang them. The prince in the song had always been dark before, something like Callum or one of her other cousins, but the description of the prince she imagined now was a fair-haired man, or rather with hair midway between chestnut and golden-colored, with eyes like slate and the green depths of a pond...
She flushed. It was him she imagined now. The man who had saved her. The man from the woods.
“Ruby, stop it,” she scolded herself, using the nickname her relatives and companions gave her. She bit her lip, embarrassed at herself. She wasn't going to finish the song, at this rate. She wouldn't indulge these fancies about the unknown woodsman.
I'm only singing it if I can make him dark-haired and brown-eyed again.
“And...his hair...was like the coal...dark shade...”
She tensed. There was a noise.
Crack. Crackle. Crunch.
All Rubina's hair stood on end. Not a wolf, for certain. Too big by far, and alone, whatever it was. A boar? No. Not out in this weather. At twenty years old, she should be less fanciful. A bear?
Don't be silly. Bears sleep now.
“Hello?” she called. No answer. She cleared her throat and continued with the song, hoping to raise her own courage and maybe to dispel whatever wild thing heard.
“And his eyes were dark as the dark of night...”
“Hello?”
Rubina gasped as someone appeared, then let out her breath in a weary sigh.
“Oh! It's you!”
The man in question was Fergal, the head of the verderers. A friendly man, his lined, weathered face was as familiar as an uncle or grandfather and her heart rejoiced.
“Milady.” He bowed low. He looked horrified. “What brings you here?”
“I got stuck.” she said. Why on earth couldn't she think straight? It felt as if every thought was coming slowly through a haze of weariness, her mind tired, her body cold...so cold...
Suddenly she slumped forward in the saddle. Relief must have been overwhelming. Now that she no longer had to fight it, she could give in to the weariness that flowed through her blood like a dark tide. She sighed and leaned forward, unmoving.
“Oh, Mistress. Oh, milady. There, there...”
She felt strong, warm hands in thick gloves at her shoulder and she was dimly aware that she was dragged insistently but carefully off the saddle. She felt warmth surround her and the scent of wood smoke and leaf-mold and spice. She could hear a horse walking slowly behind them over the leaf-mold, hoof-beats muffled and indistinct. She felt relief. They would be safe now. Soon, they'd be safe, fed and warm. She was under his cloak, held against his chest. Cradled.
She sighed and dropped off to sleep.
Light played over her eyelids, warming her face. Rubina stirred. She felt overly warm, and made a soft sound of protest.
“There, there,” a voice said from a long distance. She stirred and felt her eyelids flicker. They opened briefly, focused on dark gray hair, and then closed again.
“Grandmother?”
“Yes, it's me,” a gentle voice said. Lady Joanna of Lochlann, Rubina's grandmother, was a seer of remarkable renown. It was a gift her mother Amabel had inherited. Rubina had not. Lady Joanna was also a healer of profound repute. She sighed and closed her eyes again, knowing she was in safe hands.
“Grandma...” she murmured. “Hot...”
“Yes, dear,” her grandmother said. She shifted in the chair and Rubina smelled lavender, sage-smoke and strewing herbs. “It is hot. You're feverish. But you'll recover soon.”
Rubina nodded fractionally. She could feel she was feverish – her feet were icy and her head hot, her body shivering painfully. Her view was blurred and she felt lightheaded and drifting.
Definitely fevered.
She also didn't question that she would recover. Grandma said so. She trusted that.
“Grandma?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I won't die?”
Her grandmother's chuckle was a rich, lovely thing in the smoke-scented darkness. “No, dear. No, you'll live. And good things are coming your way. You met someone. Someone who'll bring changes. You'll wonder where the path is. You'll feel lost sometimes. But you'll find your way back, though the place you return to will be different.”
Rubina frowned. Her grandmother's voice had that strange hollow sound as if it wasn't fully her own voice, the sound it got when she foresaw futures. She bit her lip.
“Met...someone?” Rubina queried.
She had. She remembered him. The prince from the story. He'd saved her and touched her hand, given her a kerchief and left her on the pathway back home again.
Her grandmother hadn't heard any of that from her.
Rubina bit her lip. Best not to ask too many questions. It was a troubling prophecy, but her mind was too weary to even consider it now. Sleep. She needed sleep.
She realized something as she listened to her grandmother gently rise and get something from the fireplace. It was something about the prince from the forest, the one who had helped her and been so thoughtful.
“...name..?” she murmured. She did not know the man's name.
If her grandmother answered her, she did not hear the words and she went so sleep none the wiser.