“Hey,” Briana cried out. “Check this out.” She held up a long thread. “This looks a lot like the wool Sweetie’s coat was made out of, and the same color too.”
Horland took the thread and nodded. “It is similar.”
Briana snatched it back and hurried forward. “It’s more than similar, it’s exactly the same.”
They’d only gone several more steps before Briana beamed at Horland. “Look, another one. I told her a story about how a woman was kidnapped and left threads of her shawl so the man of her dreams could find her. I wonder if she tried to leave a trail so she could return to us.”
Horland frowned at the thread hanging from a low branch. If that were true, she would have returned and forthe life of him, he couldn’t think of a reason a child of her age would go so far away from the only adults she knew there.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Briana made a clicking noise with her mouth. “Yeah, I guess it was wishful thinking. The only other reason she would have left signs of her direction is if someone had taken her.” She nodded. “Just like Laura did.”
“Laura?”
“Yeah, that was the name of the woman in the story I told the girl.”
He ran up a small incline and in the valley before him lay the ruins of the old Castle Pradwick. “I agree. And it seems their destination is the old ruins.”
Briana joined him. “It’s beautiful.”
Horland regarded the vista before him. He had never thought of the ruins as beautiful but now that Briana had said so, he looked at the sight from her eyes.
The crumbling outer walls were covered with flowering vines. Reds and pinks, so bright they stood out amongst the verdant foliage. Blue and yellow, striking against the brown time-ravaged stone. The main part of the castle he remembered was the great hall still stood intact, and the roof looked stable as the day as it was built. The rampart walls surrounding the main building had only partly fallen, but everywhere flowing vines crawled over the stones and around the base, while shrubs of red and blue berries reveled in growing free.
Briana climbed a tree and sat on the second lowest branch. “I can’t see any movement but there’s a river behind it.”
“That is the river of Lorelle.”
“It’s wide.”
The last time Horland had been there was when he was fourteen summers old. He, Garlain and some other boys andgirls had sailed down the river that ran from Frother town, behind the old ruins, and through England to the sea. The then captain of the guards, Garlain’s father, and his men had taken it upon themselves to teach the young people how to sail. It was a wonderfully adventurous week. Although the hanging beds in the lower quarters of the ship were no place to spend the days, Horland and his friends were too tired by the end of the day to notice how cramped and smelly it was.
The ship stopped at the ruins and while the men slept aboard, the young people camped out in the great hall, taking turns to cook in the broken kitchen. During the days, the guards taught them sword fighting and archery skills. Garlain won every archery competition but Horland quickly took to the sword.
That late spring was the last time they had been children. Once they returned to town, each was given work tasks and became adults for all time.
Briana jumped from the lowest branch and startled Horland out of his reminisces.
“Do you think Morla or Garlain found the child?”
“Perhaps, but there is only one way to know for certain. We will go there directly.” He turned to retrace his steps.
“Wait.” She pointed down into the valley. “We can’t go that way?”
“No, it is deeper than it looks. We must follow the descent of the mountains and go around.”
“Great. Let’s go then.”
She trotted along the path and Horland called out behind her, “It is further than it looks.”
She stopped and turned back. “How far then?”
“It will take us at least a full day, but if the storms come, it will be longer.”
Her shoulders slumped and screwing up her nose, she grumbled, “Great.”
Horland tightened his mouth. The way her small nose crinkled when she wasn’t happy about something had the strangest effect on him. He wanted to take her into his arms and tell her everything would be all right, but he had to stay wary when around her. He had to control his urges and learn the real reason why she was there, why she wanted Patricia’s trinket.
