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Running In Circles
By Irony Illuminator
Encounters
Travis
“And stay out!” the angry farmer yelled, wielding his pitchfork in warning. “We don’t want anymore of your kind around here, so just git!”
Travis tripped over a tree root in his haste to get away and went sprawling to the ground on his face. He scrambled up, tangled in his cloak, face flushing at the rough laughter from the gathered farmers.
“Git out of here and don’t you come back!” the leader shouted once more before he turned away and disappeared into the crowd of village people. The observers and participants in the gathering wandered away, losing interest in the outcast. As they moved off, their laughter dissipated, but it still rang in his ears, humiliating him.
“Like I’d want to stick around a hovel like this,” he muttered to himself, slinging his bag over his shoulder and marching away, his face burning. Good grief, you’d think that some simple farmers could stand up for themselves in a tavern brawl. Well, apparently they could, but only when they were all united and trying to kick him out of their pathetic little village.
“Who needs ‘em anyway,” Travis told himself with a shake of his head.
“Not you? Is that what you’re saying?”
Travis started and whirled around. There was a little boy standing here behind him, a shepherd’s staff in hand and a small sheep next to him.
“You talking to me?” Travis demanded.
“Yes.” The little boy studied him with big blue eyes, strangely intuitive ones. “Is that what you meant?”
“Sure. Whatever.” Travis started walking again, not expecting the child to follow, but he did. The tiny bell around his sheep’s neck jingled, seeming rather loud in the silence. Travis gave a sigh of annoyance. The bell grated on his already tight nerves and he didn’t want the kid following him.
He never knew what to say to kids…
The silence stretched on the longer they walked and finally Travis turned to the little boy in frustration. “Are you planning to follow me all the way to the next village or what?” he demanded.
“If it takes that long,” the boy said with an amused smile.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If it takes that long for you to stand still for a few moments and listen,” he elaborated. Travis heaved a sigh of long suffering and stood still, arms crossed over his chest, foot tapping on the ground. The boy eyed him skeptically. “You’re standing still, but you’re not listening.”
Travis dropped his arms, rolling his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked rudely.
“I want you to run.”
He blinked. “What did you say?”
“I said I want you to run,” the boy repeated, his voice soft.
“What are you talking about?”
The boy sighed. “Do you know that you’re very hard to talk to? You’re hard to get through to. Possibly the hardest of all of them…” He shook his head. “Listen carefully to me, Travis. I want you to run. I want you to run for me.”
“Why? Where? How? Who are you?” Travis fired off the questions, uncomfortable with the chills that were working their way down his spine.
“Are you afraid?”
“No!” he exclaimed shortly, face flushing.
The boy smiled. “I thought you would say that. You have so many questions too. That’s just like you, Travis.”
“Well, here’s another one for you,” Travis shot back. “How do you know my name?”
“I just do,” the boy said simply. “As for your other questions, well…perhaps now isn’t the best time to answer them. Right now, you should just run.”
“Run where?”
“Run in a new direction. Run away from what you’ve been running toward. Run for me this time, run for something different.”
“Why should I run for you? Who are you anyway? What is the something different that I should be running to? What was I running to before? Why am I running?” Travis stopped when he ran out of breath and stared at the boy, waiting, though somehow he doubted he would receive any answers.
His hunch proved mostly accurate.
“So many questions,” the boy said, laughing. “Like I said, the important thing now is that you start running. Oh, and by the way, the reason you’re running is because if you don’t, if you only walk…” He sobered and his features, the features of a child, became serious. “Let’s just say it won’t go so well for you.”
A strong wind blew at Travis, whipping his cloak up, tangling him in it. By the time he had fixed it, the boy was gone.
Travis looked around, shivering. The hillside about him was still, empty of anyone other than him. The path before him wound its way down the other side of the hill, toward the next village. A forest loomed above him to his left, dark and gloomy. Who knew where it would lead.
“Run for me, Travis. Run in a new direction for me. Trust me…”
He ran, away from the path and into the darkness of the forest, cursing as he went. His legs carried him to a place he did not want to be. He didn’t care where this forest went, or who that little boy was. He didn’t want to leave the path.
But he was.
“Fine. I will run. But you can forget about the trust part,” Travis muttered to no one in particular through gritted teeth.
“Curse you for an honest businessman!” Eliya shouted furiously, her face red with anger. “You’ve never earned an honest penny in your bloody life!”
The hue of the merchant’s face now matched her own. His eyes glinted dangerously, but his jowls wiggled and flopped so much in his anger that Eliya simply couldn’t take him seriously.
“Do you think that you can insult me honor and my blood and then walk away, ye scurvy wench? I’ll teach you some manners, and I don’t be thinking that you’ll forget them soon!”
Eliya drew herself up. “You would dare to threaten me?” she demanded in a voice as cold as ice. The merchant laughed at her mockingly.
“Perhaps if you was the queen, then I wouldn’t be talking to you so!” His words drew a laugh from the crowd of passers-by who had gathered to watch the entertainment. From a certain point of view, the scene could be highly amusing: a girl dressed as a scullery maid, shouting insults at a merchant for trying to weasel more money out of her than even he himself was worth.
“But you are not the queen. Ye be a wench, a kitchen maid, and I stand by my thought to teach you a lesson!”
Eliya stared at him for a moment and then abruptly snapped her fingers at him.
Guards swarmed into the town square, almost as though she had called them. The crowd dissolved into confusion and a shared desire to not stand out before the queen’s men.
The girl dressed as a scullery maid took advantage of the chaos and slipped away. She left the merchant to look around wildly and then rage when he discovered that she had taken what she desired to buy and left the money on his stand: but her price, not his price.
Eliya walked down the street carelessly, one arm swinging while the other and her hand held a piece of fruit to her mouth. It wasn’t the best fruit she’d ever had, but it was passable.
No doubt that snake of a merchant knew as much. That would explain his outrageous prices.
“Find anything particularly interesting today?”
She whirled and found her friend Miena standing there. “Oh, it’s you. No, I didn’t find anything, only that the merchant in the town square overprices his goods past endurance.”
Miena smiled. “I thought I saw some guards milling about. I was there a moment ago. You left quite a stir behind, didn’t you?”
“No more than I usually do,” Eliya said with a light laugh. “What about you? Did you find anything?”
“No. The town is quiet this afternoon. I suppose the news of Captain Jordan’s death on the frontier has had a subduing effect, of sorts.” She glanced at Eliya shrewdly. “Does it pain you to hear talk of it? Surely it is the most common topic of conversation in the town.”
“Yes, it is, and no, it doesn’t pain me,” Eliya said shortly. Miena raised a brow.
“Surprising,” the other girl said with a small shrug. “I would have expected it to. You were in love with him, weren’t you?”
Eliya wrapped her arms around herself, tossing the remains of her fruit into an empty barrel. “I don’t know,” she said bleakly. “I thought so, until we fought before he left…” Miena’s face was a mask of sympathy and Eliya’s lips tightened slightly, if only because she knew her friend felt sincerely sorry for her. Eliya didn’t take very well to pity. “Maybe he never loved me to begin with. Perhaps it was all just an illusion anyway.”
“I suppose love can be an illusion sometimes,” Miena agreed absently, her mind wandering. Eliya took a closer look at her face and forced a laugh.
“Get along with you then,” she said, giving the other girl a shove. “You still have the East Quarter to cover, and I the West, and it will be time for the calling back before we know it. The queen will not be pleased if she finds that we neglected our duties.” Miena moved off down the next narrow street, grumbling good-naturedly.
Eliya shook her head and turned onto another street as well, heading in the direction of the West Quarter. The sun was starting to drift toward the horizon, no longer right above her head, but it was still doing its job of scorching the city nicely. Eliya cursed the long skirts she wore and wished she could tear half of them off. With all the layers she was wearing, no doubt she would still be decent after she did.
“Where do you go to in such a hurry?”
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. Eliya turned and saw him standing there in a broken down doorway: a little boy with big blue eyes and glossy brown curls. She looked around her quickly, but there was no else near.
“What did you say?” she asked, so startled that she forgot what his question had been. The boy smiled sweetly and walked over to her. She saw that he held a bright red ball in his hand.
“I wanted to know where you’re going in such a hurry,” he repeated patiently. Eliya looked into those strangely piercing eyes and fought the urge to lose herself in them. Such strange eyes for a child to have…
“I am going about my business,” she said, shaking herself. “I have duties that I owe to the queen, and I must not neglect them.” She turned and walked away, but the boy followed her. Her jaw clenched into irritation. “Won’t your mother be angry with you if she finds that you wandered away with a stranger?”
The boy laughed softly, as though sharing a joke with himself. Was it just her imagination, or was there a hint of sadness there as well. “Oh, I don’t think she will mind,” he said lightly. “Besides, you’re not a stranger, are you?”
Eliya opened her mouth to say that of course she was, she’d never met him before in her life, and she didn’t know his name, and he didn’t know who she was, or what her name was…
But nothing came out.
At all.
They stopped in the middle of that narrow street and stared at each other.
“I think you have been running in the wrong direction, Eliya,” the boy said gently. Chills ran down her spine. How did he know her name?
“What do you mean?” she whispered. “Who are you?” How do you know my name? Her mind screamed.
“What do I mean?” He paused for a moment, as though not entirely sure himself. “I mean that I think it is time for you to move on. There is something else out there that you should be running to, something more important than what you’re running to now.” A shrug of his thin shoulders. “Does that make any sense at all?”
“None.” Her voice was hoarse.
He smiled gently. “No, of course it doesn’t. How could it make sense now? But it will, soon, someday soon. One day you’ll just wake up and…” His voice trailed off. “If I asked you to run towards something new, would you do it, Eliya?”
Her tongue felt thick and dry. She swallowed.
If I asked you to give up what you knew, what you loved, everything that you have ever experienced, and then asked you to run in another direction, would you do it? Would you say yes to me?
“Who are you?” she asked again. It was the only thing that would move past her lips.
The boy shook his head chidingly. “You haven’t answered my question, Eliya. Will you run in a new direction for me?”
Yes. Yes, I will run in a new direction for you. I will run into the sun, into the earth, into nothingness. I will run anywhere for you, even if it only leads me in a circle.
She cleared her throat, pushing away those traitorous, ludicrous thoughts. She wanted to ask him more, to get more details. Instead…
“Yes,” Eliya blurted out, and then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth. She didn’t know where the word had come from or why in the world she had spoken it. It was just there, on the tip of her tongue. It had beaten the words she meant to speak, making first place out of her mouth.
She couldn’t take it back.
The boy grinned, but there was a look of tenderness in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said simply. “You don’t know what it means now to say yes. You don’t know why you just said yes, and right now you’re trying to remember what exactly it was that you said yes to. But none of that matters. All in good time, Eliya. It will all make sense with time. Run for me, Eliya. Run in a new direction for me.”
A cat darted out of a nearby alleyway, knocking over a crate and startling her. When Eliya jerked her head back to where the boy had been standing, he was gone.
A voice whispered in the stillness.
“Run in a new direction for me, Eliya. Trust me…”And she did trust, implicitly.
And she did run, also. She ran for the castle, ignoring the fact that she had yet to visit the West Quarter. None of it mattered anymore. None of it.
None of it made any sense, either, but she was trying to drown out that part of her brain, the part that was starting to wake up and demand of her what she was doing.
I’m running. I’m running as fast as I can, and I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m running. I’m running because you told me to, whoever you are.
…Great. Just great…
Avar
The shop was quiet, the light of the afternoon sun peeking in through the half drawn curtains that hung over the windows. Avar picked up the herb pouches and set them back on the shelves, returning the vials to their former places, making sure the labels were in plain sight. Master Martin was a bit obsessive about such things. If he couldn’t see the labels without turning the vials around, he was bound to explode in fury.
The door swung open and Master Martin strode in, a permanent scowl fixed on his face. He looked about sharply, eyeing the evidence of Avar’s work.
“The floor needs sweeping and those vials are out of order,” he said shortly. “Finish up here. I’m going to Madame Lorie’s house to pick up the order of snowroot she promised me. Don’t mess with anything while I’m gone.” He stalked out without a backward glance.
Avar gave a soft sigh and adjusted the vials, then picked up the broom and began to sweep. It seemed strange that the apprentice would stay and mind the shop while the master went to run errands, but Master Martin didn’t trust Avar to handle his special herbs.
In fact, Master Martin didn’t really trust Avar to do anything significant at all. It was a miracle that Avar could even touch the vials and herb pouches, much less arrange them at the end of the day.
This was all he would ever amount to: an apprentice. Master Martin would never grant him the title of a master of his trade, not with the way things were going. Avar had been an apprentice for six years and nothing much had changed during that time.
His father, on top of disapproving of his choice to be an apothecary, was convinced that Avar was doing something wrong. Why else would Master Martin seem no closer to granting the title of master than he had six years ago?
“Maybe it is my fault somehow,” Avar murmured to himself, drawing the broom over the rough wood floor in sharp, jerky strokes. Sweeping was a surprisingly good outlet for frustrations. “Something must be wrong with me.” But what? What was wrong with him?
He had wanted to be an apothecary since he was a little boy. Herbs and elixirs had always fascinated him. Even before he became an apprentice to Master Martin at age fourteen, he had memorized countless herbs and their uses. In short, his apprenticeship had not yielded the results he’d hoped for. He’d learned more, yes, but he had very little opportunity to put what he learned to use, to practice it.
No one would give him the chance.
The door swung open again, but slower this time. Avar looked up, and then down, when his eyes couldn’t find a person of suitable height for that glance. A boy stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the doorknob and the other holding onto a small shepherd’s staff. Avar frowned slightly. The boy didn’t look familiar. The town was small and Avar knew most everyone in it.
A shepherd’s staff… Perhaps he lives out in the hills where the better grazing grass is. Still…
“Can I help you?” he asked the child gently, leaning his broom against the wall and wiping his hands on the apron he wore.
“My mother sent me to fetch some snowroot.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Master Martin has gone to get it from Madame Lorie. He just left.” The boy’s face fell and Avar felt bad. “He shouldn’t be too long. You can wait for him here, if you like,” he added hastily.
The boy smiled cheerfully and perched on a stool near the door. Avar took up his broom again and continued to sweep, a little uncertain as to what he should be doing. He could feel the boy’s eyes following him, watching his every move.
“Do you like to run?” The boy’s question came out of nowhere. Avar blinked and looked at him.
“Do I…run? Do I like to run?” He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. I suppose so. I don’t really run very often.”
“Ah,” the boy said in a wise voice, as though he understood something that Avar didn’t. “I think running is fun. I think you should run, Avar.” He had become serious. Avar didn’t know what to say.
“Why?” he stammered finally.
“Because you should,” the boy said firmly. He softened when he noticed Avar’s confusion. “I suppose you’re thinking that it would be nice to know what I’m talking about.” Avar merely nodded. “I wish I could explain it to you, but I can’t. Not yet. Not right now. You don’t know enough.”
A spark of anger ignited. Avar’s mouth tightened. Wasn’t everyone always telling him to wait, that he wasn’t old enough, that he didn’t know enough?
“Are you angry?” the boy asked, sounding surprised.
Avar calmed. “Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe only a little.” Somehow, the boy’s open expression invited him to share his thoughts. “It just seems as though I’ve been waiting for so long. Everyone has always told me to wait until I’m older, or to wait until I know more…” His voice trailed away.
“I know,” the boy said softly, sympathetically. “It is hard not to know, to not understand what’s going on, and then have someone tell you that you can’t find out until later. As frustrating as it sounds, sometimes it is better to wait until you’re older, or until you know more before everything is explained to you.” He cocked his head to one side. “Does that make you angrier?”
Strangely, it didn’t. Coming from this boy, who looked as though he couldn’t be more than ten years old, but spoke with the wisdom of an adult, the words seemed to make comparative sense. Avar shook his head. “No,” he said simply.
The boy smiled. “You have a lot of patience. That’s one of the things I like about you.” He hopped down from the stool, seemingly oblivious to the effect his words had on Avar. Chills ran down the latter’s spine. Suddenly it hit him that this little boy wasn’t very much like a little boy at all, and he talked as though he knew Avar quite well.
Avar had never seen the boy before in his life.
The boy turned to face him. “So, do you like to run, Avar? Will you run? Will you run for me? Will you run in a new direction for me?”
“A new direction?” Avar stammered. It occurred to him that this boy knew his name. …How did this boy know his name?
“Yes, a new direction.” The boy laughed. “I suppose, first off, you should start by running. But in starting, you’ll be going in a new direction anyway. Run, Avar. Run for me.”
The apprentice shivered. “But- Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?”
He couldn’t speak, mostly because he didn’t know. The boy walked toward the door, and Avar found his tongue. “Aren’t you going to wait for Master Martin to return with the snowroot? Doesn’t your mother need it?”
The boy smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in the smile. “No, I don’t think she needs it anymore.” He turned and walked out the door, disappearing into the street.
Avar stood there in the empty apothecary shop, mouth hanging open. He couldn’t form a sensible thought.
“Run for me, Avar. Trust me…”A wind blew the door open farther, almost beckoning to him.
Run? Run for you? Run where? Where do you want me to run to?
Avar took a deep breath and stepped out of the shop. His broom, released from his hand unconsciously, clattered on the wood floor, but the young man hardly noticed. He walked into the street and looked around at the men and woman bustling past, going about their business.
There was no sign of the boy.
Run…
He took off running down the street, away from the apothecary shop, away from his apprenticeship, passing Master Martin on his way back from Madame Lorie’s. The master stopped and gaped as he tore past, but Avar didn’t stop.
He ran.
I’m running…
Jevirae
Jevirae grunted as the pot slipped out of her hands and landed on her foot. The cook whirled at the sound. “Ye clumsy gel!” the heavyset woman snapped. “Pick that up and get back to work. I’ll be having none o’ ye dawdlin’!”
“A’right, a’right!” Jevirae grumbled. “I be goin’.” She picked up the pot, shooting a glare at the cook’s back. “Crazy ole witch,” she muttered. She dumped the heavy pot in huge cauldron of boiling water and set to scrubbing it viciously.
How she hated this, especially scrubbing this particular pot. Why did it seem like she always got stuck with the biggest one? And it always had dried scraps of meat stuck to the bottom, so she almost had to climb inside of it in order to reach them.
Raucous laughter drifted in through the swinging door, testifying to how busy the inn was this afternoon. Suppertime was approaching and the dishes from lunch weren’t even finished yet. It was all Rose’s fault. If she hadn’t up and skedaddled with that no-good jack-of-all-trades of hers… Well, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Why didn’t they hire someone to take her place?
“Cause times be tight, that be why,” Jevirae grumbled, mimicking those who had told her such. “How kin times be tight if there be so many people in that thar room, drinking up all of our wine?” She jerked her head toward the swinging doors, and then almost lost her grip on the pot she was scrubbing. A curse slipped past her lips and she glanced up to find the cook’s glare fixed on her in warning.
“She canno’ punish me fo’ that,” the girl muttered to herself. “I kin say what I be wantin’.”
The cook snorted, almost as if she’d heard what Jevirae said, and pushed through the swinging door, disappearing into the main room of the inn. Jevirae rolled her eyes and returned to scrubbing her pot.
The door swung open again and half the heads in the kitchen turned toward it. Jevirae’s was not among them. She jumped when something small and bouncy rolled over to her foot. She looked down and caught sight of a small red ball beneath her skirts. When she raised her head, there was a small boy standing next to her, watching her with big blue eyes.
Jevirae started. “Oy!” she exclaimed. “What be ye doin’ ‘ere?” She glanced down again. “Oh…that be ye ball, ain’t it?” The boy nodded, still blinking at her. “Well, are ye just gonna stand thar and stare at me forever? Git ye ball!” She nudged the ball with her foot, rolling it toward him.
“Thank you,” the boy said.
“Yeh, yeh,” Jevirae said, ceasing to pay attention to him. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she realized he was still standing there, watching her. “What do ye want? Ain’t ye mum out thar somewhere, a-lookin’ for ye?”
“No,” the boy replied. Jevirae frowned. He seemed a little sad, and yet he wore a small smile.
“Well then, what is it?”
“Do you like this?” he asked, motioning to the steamy kitchen and the pot she was cleaning. Jevirae snorted.
“Ye bet your ball I don’t,” she said disgustedly. “But me pa were only a sailor down at the docks, y’know? So none o’ his chilluns could ever amount to anythin’. That’s why I be ‘ere, workin’ me fingers to the bone in this ‘ole of an inn!”
“If you hate it so much here, why don’t you go somewhere else?”
“Cause it ain’t that easy.” There was a moment of silence between them before the boy spoke again.
“Do you like to run?”
“Run?” Jevirae gave a short laugh. “Boy, the only runnin’ I ever do is runnin’ from me pa’s belt. No, I don’t like runnin’.”
“But running is good for you.”
“Then ye must be talkin’ of some runnin’ that I ain’t never seen before, boy.”
“Oh, I am,” the boy said with a laugh. “I think you should run, Jevirae.”
Jevirae’s nose wrinkled as she frowned. “How be you knowin’ me name?” she asked, confused. “Ye been to this ‘ere inn before?”
“No, never,” the boy said, tossing his red ball into the air and catching it lightly. “But I do know you, Jevirae,” he clarified. “I know you very well.”
“Well, I don’t know ye, so-” she began, but the boy interrupted her.
“Just hear me out,” he said patiently. “You are almost as bad he was.” He almost sounded amused.
“He? He who? Who are ye talkin’ ‘bout?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. You’ll find out later. The point right now is you, Jevirae. You and running. I think you should run because what you’re doing now obviously isn’t working. You hate it here, Jevirae. Why would you stay in a place that you hate when there is something out there that you’re meant to be a part of, something you’re meant to run toward?”
She stared at him for a moment and then laughed, shaking her head. It wasn’t a cheerful laugh, however. “Ye know, ye remind me of me grandfather. He were always tellin’ me that one day I would find me place, that one day I would git out o’ here and, and… I don’t know, be a princess or somethin’. Grandpa were crazy like that.” She sighed. “And ‘e died crazy too… The point, as ye say it, be that the only thing I’m meant to be is a servin’ gel, and that be a fact.”
“You’ll never know until you try, Jevirae. Please? Will you run…for me?”
“I dinna even know ye!” she protested.
“But I know you,” he repeated. “Besides, does it really matter? I want you to run. Run toward something new, something better, something different than what you’re running toward now.” He studied her solemnly. “You don’t believe. I know. I understand. You will later. You too will understand soon.” He backed towards the door. “So, what will you do, Jevirae? Will you stay here and serve in this inn for the rest of your days, just as you father has sailed for all of his days? Or will you run?”
The cook barged back into the kitchen shouting at anyone and everyone who could hear her, furious because someone had neglected to fetch some of the lunch dishes from the main room. The boy slipped past her through the swinging door, disappearing from sight.
Jevirae gaped at the place where he’d been, thoughts spinning through her head at neck-breaking speed. She released her hold on the pot and threw her rag into the cauldron, swiping her hands over her apron and dashed for the door. The cook was too surprised to stop her, although as Jevirae made it through the door, she heard the shocked and enraged shouts starting.
There was no sign of the boy in the main room; only groups of men laughing boisterously. A few whistled when they caught sight of her, but Jevirae ignored them and ran out of the inn and into the street, looking around frantically.
No sign of him out there either.
She propped one hand on her hip and wiped the sweat from her forehead. All that for nothing. The boy was gone. He’d probably vanished into thin air. It wouldn’t have surprised her one bit.
People walked past, some of them turning aside to enter the inn behind her, giving her strange looks as they did so. Several bumped into her, muttering curses. She ignored them all.
“Run for me, Jevirae. Run in a new direction for me. Trust me…”
She huffed in frustration and fumbled with the knot in her apron. The cook burst out of the inn and forcibly turned her around, face beet red with anger.
“And what did ye think ye was doin’, ye stupid gel? Git ye self back to work, before I decide I dinna need ye anymo’ and put ye out of a job!”
“I ain’t gonna give ye the chance to send me away!” Jevirae snapped. “I be quittin’ right now!” She jerked off her apron and threw it at the stunned cook. “‘Ere, take it. I won’t be a-needin’ it where I be goin’.”
“And where exactly do ye think ye be goin’?” the cook blustered. “No one is gonna take a gel like ye to do any work at all! Ye’ll be on the streets before ye know it!”
“I dinna care,” she said stoutly. “I be leavin’ anyways, and ye cannot stop me.” She whirled on her heel and marched away, leaving the cook standing there in the street, gripping Jevirae’s soiled apron in her clenched fist.
“Trust me, Jevirae. Trust me.”
“I ain’t gonna trust ye until I git some answers,” she muttered. “That be the reason I be leavin’, not because I’m goin’ to run for ye.”
But she did start running, as fast she could, trying not to trip over her thick, coarse skirts. She ran as far from the inn as she could.
I be runnin’, darn ye. I be runnin’.
