I have no real excuse for waiting so long to update this, so I am very sorry for that. Here is the second chapter of Sheila's adventure.
My thanks to: blue mariposa, On top of cloud 9, Zerrin of the Wind, Kitunny and Da Demon Mystrice for reviewing.
Note, I haven't quite decided whether Sandry, Briar, Tris or Daja will be involved in this story...Sheila's been dictating the story to me, taking her time about it.
Tessadragon
Chapter 2
Sheila wasn't used to sleeping at night; that was why she lay restless, the quilt tossed on the floor. She wore nothing but a simple pale shift and gazed numbly up at the ceiling, trapped in dreams of her past.
Sometimes her past wasn't clear, even to her, but she remembered flashes of it. She remembered many horses, and she remembered a garden of jasmine. And a voice. A man's voice, calm, cool and authoritative. And something enthralling about fire. It was the fire that she couldn't understand. How did that fire cast so many shadows?
Agitated, she rolled out of bed and went to the window, gazed out at the courtyard. By day it was cheerful, many girls and all kinds of initiates strolling through it, or trimming its many bushes. But now, at night, it was pitch black, but for the tiny gleam of a lamp within the cart, which lay dormant just beyond the old elm tree.
Her dark eyes danced from the full dormitory, her ears taking in the mumbling snores of her fellow boarders, and then she pulled the window fully open and climbed out, grabbing hold of the thick coat of ivy and slowly lowering herself as near to the ground, her ears attuned to the sound of breaking ivy leaves.
Softly she landed barefoot on the courtyard flagstones and, crouching, hurried to the covered cart. For a moment she stood still, listening intently for the sound of any humans. Nothing…she reached out and lifted the cover, peered in, then recoiled.
"A body," she whispered.
It was a girl, laid out ready for burial. Her face had been cleaned: it still shone with water. Her clothes were already that of a funeral shroud. Sheila numbly looked at what might as well be her own reflection: this body had once had magic, but just like her, it had been stripped of it. She reeled as a foul memory shot through her:
A cavern with many shadows. The vile smell of rotting flesh. A door…she didn't want it to open. She didn't want the two men to return. She was curled up in a stone cell. Distantly she heard a great and terrible, raging river, but over it was the loud, sharp guttering lamp, which filled the cavern outside her cell with sharp shards of relief as it noisily devoured the animal fat which it was fed by her jailers.
Then the cavern door swung open. Oh god, she remembered that shrill grating of metal across rock. Her body clenched against it, and she shoved herself into the corner of her cell, quivering.
And then she was back in the courtyard, awoken from her nightmare by having fallen back against the flagstones. She lay, her eyes wide open with fear. Then a tear slowly forced its way down her cheek, as initiates came out and approached her. Moonstream was at the front of the group, her face expressionless.
"Leave me alone!" Sheila yelled at them, laying the blame on them for having aroused her curiosity, leading her to come look at the corpse. She scrambled to her feet, shot them all a murderous look and then ran. The initiates gave chase, but for Moonstream, who called after Sheila, "Come back…it isn't safe out there."
No. The world isn't safe, Sheila thought bitterly. But at least I know who I can trust. Me.
She ran faster into the night, leapt over the walls of Winding Circle and landed, rolling, on the ground, surged to her feet and ducked her head against the wind-rush. Through the night she fled down the rocky hillsides, skidding, almost plunging into an uncontrollable fall, then landed rolling on the road, just as the loud clatter of hooves rose through the early dark air. She pressed herself against the rocks at the side of the road as a line of great shire horses stamped their way down the narrow road, followed closely by a number of gaudy caravans, many from which chimes rang, warding off evil. Lamplight splashed over Sheila's face as she began watching this spectacle, entranced.
"Ahoy! Who spies?" a man called out sternly, and a swinging lamp settled its light focus upon Sheila, whose own eyes were sharp enough to define this man's face just as well in this dim darkness. He was a handsome older man with fine curly brown hair, touched by silver at the very ends and close to his scalp at his fringe. He was clean-shaven and his eyes were like obsidian to everyone else, but with a sparkle of dark blue, like sapphire, to Sheila.
Slowly, unsteadily, Sheila got to her feet, then fell immediately, her ankle giving way. She landed heavily and swallowed her own cry of pain, expecting that the caravan would hastily make its way onwards.
Instead the man jumped from his ledge where he'd steered his shire horse, and landed lightly, coming straight to her and taking off his black cloak as he came. Draping his cloak over her shoulders in an attempt to chase the blue cold from her lips, he helped her to his feet, murmuring, "Lean on me, my dear." He guided her to the caravan and up into the back as someone from two caravans behind called to him, "Is there a problem?"
"I should get the caravan moving," the stranger told Sheila. "Can you abide until we can come to a resting place?"
It is to get away from Winding Circle, Sheila thought reasonably. "I am very grateful for your attention, sir," she said quietly and curled up against the wall, too tired to look at the interior of this cosy caravan.
The stranger leapt back sprightly to his place and clucked to his shire horse. "C'mon, Asparagus. Not too giddy, but a little way up the road." The shire horse gave out a heavy low neigh and began a slow trot up the narrow road, small stones skipping from his dish-sized hooves, while Sheila slept and forgot her temporary wonders of what would happen tomorrow.