‘I couldn’t sleep, and I saw you from my window.’ The young witch hesitated. Her hair had been leached of itscolour by the moonlight, and her faded clothing made her seem like an apparition, melding into the shadows. ‘Do you mind? I can go.’
Gwen opened her mouth to accept that graceful offer of solitude, but the words that came out instead were, ‘No, I don’t mind.’
Tabitha came up alongside her and leaned back against one of the pilings of the dock. The silence stretched, broken only by the soft susurration of the waves.
‘I keep thinking I’ll turn a corner and see some sign of my mother,’ Tabitha murmured, gazing out towards the town. ‘But I don’t even know where she lived – my memories are too hazy.’
Gwen glanced at her. ‘You’re thinking she was one of the sorceress’s victims?’
Tabitha’s face was troubled. ‘Maybe. Lord Bingleton’s story was just that – a story. Where are all the other witches who would’ve lived in this area? And why did the paladins leave so quickly after the evil was vanquished?’
Gwen studied the other girl thoughtfully. ‘Once the sea monster is dealt with,’ she said, managing to keep her voice even, ‘perhaps we can go find where the local records are kept, see if we can dig something up about your mother.’
Tabitha sighed. ‘That might be my best option. Every time I try to ask the people here what they know of that time, they come over all strange, like …’
‘Like Rosamund the innkeeper did.’ Gwen sighed, rubbing her thumb over the engraved hilt of her sword. ‘There’s certainly something odd going on.’
‘Is that what’s keeping you from sleeping?’ Tabitha asked, eyeing Gwen sidelong.
Gwen had the uneasy feeling that Tabitha knew her answer already. Perhaps that was why, when she spoke, the truth came out this time. ‘I had a nightmare.’
‘You get them often?’
Gwen cast her a sharp glance. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Your face. You have a grimness about you, a tightness when you say the word “nightmare”.’ Tabitha gave her a wan, wry smile. ‘I am quite familiar with nightmares.’
Gwen let go of the sword hilt and folded her arms across her chest. ‘It’s always the same dream,’ she admitted in a low voice. ‘I see the dragon I fought – the one that’s earned me all this fanfare. I fight it, and …’ Her voice caught, and she fell silent.
Tabitha waited, then said quietly, ‘Do you not think talking about it with Isobelle might help? It is hard to speak our fears aloud, but she … cares for you. Admires you, admires your bravery.’
‘We care for each other.’ Gwen glanced at Tabitha, and saw only understanding there, and perhaps a little bit of envy – no shock or judgement. Perhaps Tabitha had seen the nature of Gwen and Isobelle’s relationship from the start. ‘But she sees me as a knight. A hero.’
‘Are you not?’
‘What good is a knight who cannot move or speak for fear?’ Gwen replied bitterly. ‘In my dream, I am frozen, just as I was that night. In my dream, the dragon …’ But still she could not say it.
In her mind’s imagination, the dragon’s eye loomed up before her, huge and all-encompassing, swallowing hope, light, love … She lurched away from the memory so violently her body jerked.
Tabitha’s hand came to rest on Gwen’s shoulder, her touch warm and kind.
‘I can’t tell her,’ Gwen murmured. ‘I can’t tell her what really took place between the dragon and me. She’ll never look at me the same way.’
Tabitha squeezed her shoulder gently. ‘The dragon is gone,’ she said. ‘You killed it.’
‘But in my dream it comes back,’ Gwen whispered. ‘Over and over, no matter how many times I face it, it always comes back. It never dies, because I can never bring myself to … to look at it … What it did to me, it’sstilldoing it to me. They say I am a dragonslayer, that I defeated the beast.’ Her mouth felt dry as sand. ‘But I think it defeated me. I just haven’t finished falling yet.’
A sound, no more than a soft scrape, made both girls stiffen and turn towards the darkened houses beyond the harbour. Gwen’s hand had gone automatically to her sword. She scanned the shadows, searching for the source of thenoise, straining for the sight of some fleeting silhouette darting from concealment. The sound had been that of a shoe scraping against the packed-earth street.
Gwen shifted her weight and glanced uneasily at Tabitha. ‘This town puts me on edge. I’d better go back, but thank you, Tabitha. I hope we can help you find some sign of what happened to your mother.’
‘Fear is not cowardice,’ Tabitha said, straightening. ‘We cannot help but fear – cowardice is a choice.’
Gwen bade her a hasty farewell and hurried back towards the inn. She saw no one along the way – perhaps that scraping sound had simply been an animal on some midnight mission, and not a person following her at all.
As she slipped back into her room and slid under her richly embroidered blankets, Tabitha’s words kept echoing in her mind.
Cowardice is a choice.
