The Dream Keeper's Dragon

10. Three Hundred Steps to the North

The trees danced to the calmest of winds and created shadows all around them. It was too silent. There were no songs from the birds, no crickets roaming around. No animals making noises or shuffling the leaves and grass with their footsteps.

She and Jermyn did not speak. Both of them were caught in their own thoughts and plans, and at times, grief. Aurelie tried to think of her aunt and uncle as they were before and trained her mind to go elsewhere as soon as thoughts of their deaths popped into her head. It mostly worked, but when it didn't an iron fist tightened around her gut, and made all her insides ache with their loss.

She felt that same first tighten now. "What do you sell," she asked him, mentally shaking herself out of the dark grief that was about to engulf her.

"Hmmph?"

"You said you have a customer. What do you sell?"

"Ah, that, yes. My sap."

"What do they do with your sap?"

"Not they, she. There's only one, a witch that has a hut on the south side of the Dead Woods."

"That's where I came in. I didn't see any hut." She didn't mean to sound like she did not believe him, but the Dead Woods wasn't very big, and because all the trees were merely snags, it wouldn't be hard to spot something as big as a hut hiding among them.

"No, you came in by the bridge on the south-west side. What kind of a witch would live near a bridge? Not one with all her wits attached, I'll tell ya that!"

She had gotten rather breathless, trying to keep up with his giant steps. "What does she do with it?"

"Sells it as medicine."

"Oh?"

"Yes, it supposedly heals some human ailments. She's doing quite well, I hear. Bought one of them big cauldrons, got herself a donkey and a cart, and is opening a shop in Berillian."

Aurelie stopped for a moment, wondering whether she should risk sounding as ungrateful as she felt. "You have a witch with a donkey and a cart, traveling to Berillian and you're making me walk there?"

Jermyn gave Aurelie one of his long, irritated glares and shook his leafy head. "Do ya think I bloody well feast with the wench? I hardly know her. How am I to know whether she'll take you to Berillian or dump you in front of the King?"

Aurelie sighed. "I'm sorry, you're right. My damn feet might not agree though."

Her heels were hard as bone, and her feet red and swollen, with blisters spread over everything but her ankles. Add that to the pain in her joints and the itchy scabs on her leg . . . Hold on a minute.

"Your sap heals!" she exclaimed. "Your sap heals? Half the skin on my leg is oozing and scabby and you're telling me that your sap heals. This bandage reeks of rot and death . . . and Jermyn's sap heals," she wasn't even talking to him anymore, just trying to come to terms with the information.

"You didn't have anything to trade."

"I didn't have anything to trade . . . Brilliant, bloody brilliant."

"It's good you got injured."

"Is it? Is it good, Jermyn?" Her voice sounded squeaky even to her own ears.

"Yes, pain hardens you, and you sure need some hardening."

"I can't believe you, you stingy bastard!" She had never used that word before. It felt great to say it, to puff the b and roll the r. "What does it take you a month to harvest it or something?"