Roommates

by Valerie Reyes

  Chapter 1

  “I need more light” the doctor kept saying, but Elspeth had none to give him. It was crowded in here, between the wounded and those nursing them. It would have been better if they could lay them out outside, but the constant Scottish drizzle they were blessed with today made certain that was not a possibility.

  “Lass, you’ve got to hold it steady!”

  Elspeth didn’t know if he was talking about the arm she was holding for him or the candle. Both her hands were occupied, and both were shaking.

  She’d seen more blood today than she’d ever seen before. Not on a single day; not ever. The battle had been a good hour’s walk away, but it didn’t matter. It had felt like it’d happened right here, right in the center of her village, when the wounded began pouring in.

  “Elspeth!”

  She felt a tugging at the back of her dress. How had Fiona gotten in here? How had she not seen her? Why was she here?

  “Get out of here, Fiona. It’s not good for you to be here.

  Elspeth craned her neck to try and see her sister, but it was difficult with the light in one hand and the arm in the other. The wounded man, who had been passed out, began screaming and jerking. The doctor was cutting.

  “Fiona, go!”

  Elspeth tried to hold on as best as she could. The man was wrenching and it made it hard for her.

  “Elspeth, the light! Please!”

  She tried to hold the candle steady. She tried to focus.

  The man was saved; the arm was not. They moved on to the next, and the next, and the next. Fiona wouldn’t leave. She kept asking for help. Their grandmother wanted to dig up as much of the garden as they could, and she needed help.

  “Why would we dig up the garden? Most of the plants aren’t ready yet. If they were ready, we’d have dug them already.”

  “So that we can leave.”

  The words struck Elspeth like a physical blow. Leave? Surely they couldn’t leave. Surely no one would expect her to leave.

  She told Fiona to run along, and to go back to Granaidh and tell her to stop digging. Elspeth was eighteen. She could handle all this. Fiona was only seven. She shouldn’t be expected to.

  Somehow they’d gotten to nearly all the soldiers. The afternoon was just beginning to turn towards dusk outside, though it was hard to tell from in here. It was smoky and smelled, but it was nearly over.

  A military man came in. He had a fine look to him, and seemed so much cleaner than he ought to have. While they were cleaning up the wounded, Elspeth couldn’t help thinking, this man had clearly been cleaning himself up.

  He tried to talk to the doctor, but at first the doctor shrugged him off. But then the man leaned towards him and whispered something to him, low and quiet. Elspeth couldn’t quite make it out over the moans of the wounded and the dim chattering of the other village girls who were attending them while they waited to be seen by the doctor’s learned eye.

  Without a word the doctor rushed out. She could hear them now a bit better. But she only heard that they were angry and speaking with raised voices, and couldn’t make out any words.

  When the doctor returned he was clearly distraught. He began gathering his tools, splashing them with water, and wiping them with the clean cloth that was supposed to be for bandages.

  “What are you doing?” Elspeth asked, though her heart sank even as she asked. She knew the answer, she thought. She knew what it must be.

  He didn’t answer her but continued to gather his things. When he was done he left the building and stepped back out into the light.

  “What are you doing?” Elspeth asked again. “Where are you going? We need you! Those men need you!”

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “There’s nothing I can do. The army is moving on, and I am part of the army.”

  She let him go now, and watched as he walked away.

  “But who will defend us if the army leaves?” she called out after him, but he didn’t reply.

  “Can you come help Granaidh now?”

  Fiona was there at her side. Had she been there the whole time? Did she know what that would mean?

  “No,” Elspeth said, “I won’t help her leave.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, she knew. Her sister deserved patience and kindness. It would be hard for her, too. But Elspeth couldn’t think about that right now. She couldn’t think of the men back in the village church, waiting to be seen by a doctor who had already left, attended to by more girls like her who wouldn’t know what to do for them.

  Instead all she could think was that it would be dusk soon, and she wouldn’t have much time.

  She wasn’t ready for the trip. She wasn’t well cleaned up, and she didn’t have any provisions. But it wasn’t that far, and she knew the way well. She passed through the trees as silently as she could. She wasn’t sure exactly why, except that perhaps there was still some lingering danger of the battle that had passed.

  She wasn’t thinking of the way; her feet just followed it. The trees were still misty with the last remnants of this afternoon’s rain, and she was getting slowly but surely soaked though.

  Elspeth made good time, and it felt like it had been only a moment after she left the village that she broke from the tree line into a clearing, although she knew in reality that the journey was several miles. She could smell the salt in the air here. She knew the smell of it well. As a child it had made her glad, but these days it meant too much sadness and solemnity to her.

  There was an old church, built many, many, many years ago. It was stone and looked as though it would stand for many hundreds of years more, if only out of pure spite for the wind and the waves that crashed below

  The village had once been here, close to the coast, where the church was. But they’d moved it inland a little when it became clear that a truly coastal village that could be seen from the sea was not the safest of things. Now it was only a church, and a little graveyard full of mostly old graves of people who had lived many decades ago.

  But there were two graves here that were newer – only six years old. Elspeth’s parents had loved this church, and had told her even from the throes of their sickness that this is where they wanted to stay when the Lord took them.

  The gate no longer opened, and the little fence that had been built around the yard had mostly fallen down. She gently stepped over it, in the place she always did. There was a path that made it look as though this was a popular place. But it wasn’t. It was only Elspeth who came here. It was only she who visited her parents, over and over again.

  She sat at the foot of their grave for a while and apologized. Whatever she did, she couldn’t stop apologizing. It wasn’t her fault, she knew. It wasn’t her wish to go away from them. She’d never go away from them, and the little land and the little house they’d left to her and her sister so that they might be well. She’d never leave the home they’d made, and the home they’d given her.

  “But Maw, Paw…” Elspeth paused, wiping a tear away. “I don’t think I’m going to have a choice.”

  It felt foolish to describe the exact circumstances to them, so she didn’t. She just sat a while and cried a little, and felt effects on her cheeks from the salt in the air and the tears from her eyes.

  She turned sharply toward the tree line. She thought she’d heard something. Had she? Had it been her excited imagination? Was the movement in the bushes real, or a creation of the fading light?

  Elspeth couldn’t be sure, and it worried her heart. But she knew, regardless, that she would need to leave. She came here often, it was true. More often, her grandmother thought, than really she should. But she knew better than to come at night, or be walking through the forest alone at night in the aftermath of a battle.

  At least, she considered to herself, she thought that she did. In reality, it appeared, she very much did not.

  She walked quickly and stepped as lightly as she could. The light was dying faster and faster, and she only wanted to make it
home before it was gone completely.

  In her carelessness, and due to the lack of light, Elspeth tripped on a root sticking up out of the ground further than it had any right to.

  “Did you hear that?”

  She heard the voice. It sounded strange to her ears, though she’d heard Englishmen before.

  “Hear what? You’re bloody making it up. You’re a coward and this only proves it.”

  Another man answered him. She could make out movement now, though the trees.

  “I’m not a coward. I’m not any more a coward than you are.”

  They were walking her way. Why were they walking her way? They should be headed south, Elspeth thought. They should at least know how to find south.

  She kept down, moving slowly and quietly to the nearest tree, barely breathing. If she sat to this side of it maybe it would block her. Maybe they wouldn’t see her. If they kept going the way they were going, and she didn’t move or make any noise, surely she would be all right.

  She could be quiet. This she could do. And she could be still, nearly. Her hands were shaking, but she buried them in the folds of her dress to try and keep them hidden.

  They were nearly passed. They bickered occasionally so she knew where they were. Nearly passed now. They were headed to the sea, and they would find the little church from whence she’d just come. They’d probably sleep there for the night, and take shelter. The thought turned her stomach, but she would be alive, so she tried to think nothing of it.

  And then they stopped. Just barely still in earshot she heard them. She couldn’t make out many of the words, but they were unhappy with each other. She heard several directions…west, south…they were suddenly learning the basics of finding their way, and apparently discovering that they hadn’t done a very good job of it so far.

  Elspeth heard them, now, getting louder. She could see the movement through the ever-darkening trees getting closer.

  She had to get away from where she was. They would pass right by her and there would be no concealing herself. She tried to stand, and winced. In the terror of hearing voices she hadn’t realized it, but her ankle was hurt.

  That left her only one option: to crawl, which, she supposed, was better anyway. Best to stay low. Try and conceal herself behind whatever underbrush she could find. Move slowly as she had to, but quickly as she dared.

  Her breathing was increasing now, she knew. There was nothing she could do about that. There was nothing much she could do about the sounds of her dress on the ground, either, but pray the Englishmen didn’t hear them.

  “There’s someone there!”

  Her prayers, it seemed, this time as so many times, went unanswered. She tried to stand. She tried to run. Her ankle complained and she couldn’t put much of any weight on it.

  She didn’t get far.

  They were all around her. Their accents changed to her from strange to brutal. The men all seemed so angular, and rough. Their English uniforms were covered in mud, and their hair was dirty. And they had weapons. They gathered around her. There were six of them.

  Fear began clouding her mind, followed quickly by shame. She shouldn’t have been out here in the first place. She shouldn’t have been so afraid as to not be thinking clearly. She shouldn’t have been leaving her sister and her grandmother, one too young to take care of herself and one too old, all alone.

  Elspeth barely heard their words over the beating of her heart. A prize, they said. She was a prize for them. They called her pretty in the harshest of tones.

  She didn’t hear, because she didn’t want to hear. She didn’t want to know a word that would come out of their mouths.

  But the growl – she heard the growl. And she would remember the growl. In her dreams, she thought, out of nowhere, she would probably be hearing that growl for many years to come. It was low and strong, like it was coming from the earth itself. Like it was from the mouth of a cave with the devil himself buried deep inside it. But it was warm, too, and rich. She felt it in her bones. Her skull was ringing with it.

  There was movement in the underbrush, and then a mad flurry of movement, and one of the soldiers was on the ground, spasming and writhing. Elspeth couldn’t be completely certain, but she thought it might have been the one who called her a prize.

  The focus of the rest of the soldiers immediately shifted. They’d been in a circle before, facing in at her. Now they were all facing out.

  Now that her focus was no longer on the soldiers, she could see it. It was huge, and ill lit by the insufficient moonlight. It was stalking them, and they caught glimpses of it in between trees as it went around the outside of their circle.

  One man had a crossbow, and he was struggling with loading it now. His hands were shaking, and the clattering of the bolt against the frame rang out in the crisp night air, cutting through the sounds of five men and one woman breathing heavily.

  Then they were all drowned out by the growl. Long, low, and leisurely this time, with an almost lazy menace, it filled the air around them. The man with the crossbow had it ready now, and he shot it at the middle of the moving shape. For a moment Elspeth thought it might hit its mark, but the huge shape was very suddenly further along, without enough time, it seemed, to get there. It came around further. It was moving so much faster, now. The growl came again, only this time it was more urgent, more forceful.

  The shape reached the crossbowman, who was hurriedly attempting to load another bolt. And then he was down, his crossbow some distance away. He cried out, and then was silenced.

  After that, the attacks came swiftly. In the chaos. One or two of them tried to run, but the creature gave chase, and they were swiftly dispatched. Elspeth, tried, too, to run, but her ankle wouldn’t let her. It couldn’t have been that bad, she thought. An ankle hurt this way should not cost her her life. But nonetheless, things are not always as they should be, and when Elspeth tried to put too much weight on it, she fell again to the ground.

  She could hear her own breath, loud in the now-quiet forest. There were no men here, now. The soldiers were, it seemed, all passed to whatever hell Englishmen go to when they die.

  She made out the sound of paws on the damp forest soil. They were hard to distinguish; the beast was nimble. But they were there, and they were getting closer.

  She could hear its breath. It was panting only a little, barely exerted from killing all those men.

  It began to keep pace with her own, until it sounded like one breath being drawn in two bodies. Elspeth tried to remember a prayer, but nothing came to her mind. She only had time, she thought, to hope for a moment that wherever her parents were, there she would be to.

  But the blow she expected – the flurry of teeth and blood and claws – never came. The beast just sat there, next to where she sat frozen on the ground.

  After a minute, Elspeth forced herself to look up. The beast was there in front of her, sitting like a common dog would sit for its owner, only so much bigger. Elspeth had only seen wolves once dead, carted back into the village. She had not seen many of them, but she knew even from this limited experience that they should be nowhere near this large. The wolf was like a small tower before her, easily the full height of a man standing, when it was only sitting down.

  And then it lay down. It was only about a foot from her now. It lay down its ears like she had seen dogs do to their masters, but something in the wolf’s eyes, catching a tiny piece of the limited moonlight, struck Elspeth with the unshakeable feeling that this was a beast that had no master.

  No, it was trying to communicate with her. It was showing her something. It was setting her at ease.

  Unbidden, her hand reached out as though to touch the head, but her better sense stopped herself. Why would she do something so foolish? The creature may not kill her, but that was no reason to tempt fate.

  She stood and began hobbling toward home.

  It was slow going, and it hurt. By moving slowly and looking down carefully for roots or rocks, she could avoi
d another fall, but she knew it would still be a long time before she would be able to get to her home.

  The wolf kept pace with her, drawing closer now and then. For a long time, Elspeth drew away when this happened, but as they went on and on together, she stopped drawing away. Eventually, the wolf was right next to her, close as her little sister walked when she was afraid.

  Elspeth was distracted by the feel of the creature beside her. She felt as though she could sense its great beating heart through the space of the small expanse of air between them. Now and then some of its fur rubbed up against her side.

  The distraction was too great for her, and she fell, suddenly, on her face. She cursed herself for not being better at walking through the dark, and for the pain that shot through her side. She’d landed on a rock. She wasn’t injured, but it would leave a bruise, she could be certain.

  The creature wrapped around in front of her. Its nose came close to her neck, its great head nuzzling her. Then it stepped back and lay its front paws down in front of her.

  It jerked its head toward its back, as though trying to make a motion. But surely a beast couldn’t communicate this way?

  Elspeth hesitated. The beast whined. It felt strange to hear that small sound come from such a great creature. It stood, drew a little closer, and did the same thing again.

  In later days, Elspeth would think of how foolish she had been. She couldn’t have known this would not spur the beast to kill her. She couldn’t have known this was anything the beast would want. But in the moment she did know, and she could be certain. She felt it clear through her that this creature would not hurt her, could not hurt her, and she climbed, as surely as she could, onto its back.

  It stood and moved cautiously at first. It seemed to be moving deliberately and slowly, keeping her from falling off. She grasped some of its thick, tufted fur in her hands to hold on. She had a fleeting thought that this might hurt the beast, but she dismissed it. This is the creature that had murdered six men with as little thought as swatting a fly. It was great, and huge, and felt ancient. It would not be hurt by her little hands grasping at it.