Were she to go to the dragon, her ruse would likely hold. She did have family in Morganton, and the place was far enough to the north that nobody here would ever know whether she’d arrived there or not.
The priest watched her as if he intended to see right into her heart. Einin held her breath, silence blanketing the street.
Robet, the miller, broke it, limping around a corner, a wide grin on his wrinkled face as he called out to the small gathering.
“I’m come from the woods. We’ll have timber enough to rebuild the mill! Must have been a mudslide. All the trees on the ridge felled by last night’s storm have been brought down to the valley. The timber is all right here, close enough now.”
When his good news wasn’t received with cheers and pats on the back, he stopped, his jubilant expression turning puzzled. Then he caught the undercurrents, and the smile slid off his face altogether.
Einin glanced up at the priest from under her lashes. The zealous fires that burned in the man’s eyes did naught to reassure her. If she thought her departure would be viewed with relief, she’d been mistaken.
The priest clearly saw her wish to leave as an attempt to escape his judgment. Einin’s throat tightened as she waited for him to order her to stay. He didn’t.
He scowled, then turned without a word and strode away, casting a meaningful glance to this man and that as he went.
Chapter Three
Dawn had not yet risenfrom its featherbed the following morn when Einin stopped at the edge of the woods to look back at her village. In her brother Hamm’s brown shirt and britches, she blended into the darkness. She watched her hut, the front door, through which the village elders were even now entering, led by the priest.
“Caw.” The raven on the low branch just above her gave its opinion.
Her stomach clenched. “Definitely a close call.”
If premonition hadn’t awoken her in the middle of the night, she would be waking now to hard hands grabbing her.
“The priest said I was unnatural,” she told Midnight, the black bird she’d befriended in the woods when she was a child. “He’s probably right.”
She should want to give herself over to Wilm’s godly correction instead of running from it. Something about her had been wrong as far back as Einin could remember. Maybe because she’d been raised by her father and her brothers instead of a mother.
“I don’t want to spend my life standing by the kitchen fire, bowing and scraping to a husband who beats me.” She wanted to run wild and free. Be her decisions right or wrong, she wanted to be the one to make them.
Weeks ago, when the men in the village had begun talking about a sacrifice to appease the great devil in the hills, Einin knew they were likely to pick her. She had no family to protest on her behalf, nobody left. So she’d volunteered before the priest could have put forth her name. Her choice. At least, it’d been that.
Now, having made yet another choice, Einin watched her hut with tears burning her eyes. The light of the men’s torches flickered in the windows, but not for long. Soon they came pouring out, their expressions even angrier than when they’d entered.
’Twas the rope in the blacksmith’s hand that scared her the most—a length of rope long enough to tie a witch to the stake so she could be burned.
Einin wasn’t going to volunteer again. Not today. Today, she chose to live.
“I’d better get going. Try to be quiet,” she whispered to the bird.
She turned into the woods and hurried, her heart pounding as she sneaked away. If the men looked for her, they’d look for her on the road to Morganton, God willing. They had no reason to suspect that she’d head to the deep woods in the opposite direction, staying off the roads. Nevertheless, she walked as quickly as her legs could carry her, toward Upwood, the nearest village, on the other side of the hill.
Midnight flew ahead, waiting on a low branch for her to catch up, then flying ahead again, playing the game for a good while before he grew bored and disappeared.
While Einin missed the company, she did not raise her voice to call the bird back. She didn’t know who or what might hear her instead. Menacing shadows loomed over her, the trees like hungry giants bobbing their heads to see her better. Wild creatures called to each other in the night with sharp, frightful sounds. A loud call from a hooting owl overhead made her jump.
An owl hooting at dawn predicted doom, the old women of the village always said. Einin shivered. The dark woods before her scared her nearly as much as the men behind her.
The bears will be waking. The wolves never cease hunting. And the giant wild boars…
Einin drew her lungs full of cold air and pushed the beasts out of her mind. She had to, or she might not be able to put one foot in front of the other.
She kept her punishing pace until the sun came up, then reached its zenith in the sky. A small creek called from ahead. Her parched throat sent her forward.
“Caw.” The raven settled onto a low branch that hung over the water and preened.
Einin drank, then rested there on a flat rock, eating most of the food she had brought: a boiled egg, a small chunk of cheese, tossing bits to the bird, who snatched them neatly out of the air. Then she finished the heel of last week’s bread loaf. She’d never baked that round of sourdough on the sideboard the eve before. She’d been too busy worrying about the priest.
