THE CROW & THE BUTTERFLY

3. Pen & Paper

It was pass midnight, when Mary heard last steps heading to the room next to hers. Lorna must have retired, she thought. She waited for long hours until dead silence covered the house. Barefoot like a cat she stepped outside her room and tiptoed downstairs. She noticed earlier, that there's a backdoor. By the door she found James' boots. Of course she wouldn't run out barefoot again, so she took them and opened the door carefully. Not to make a sound,not loud running this time, she needs to be quite. She needs to go back to the church tonight. She needs to be away. But first she needs to avoid the hounds. The dogs were spread on the front yard luckily and didn't hear her steps as she was passing the small door of the back garden and vanished in the woods. James was sitting by the window and observed her, until she vanished in between trees. With a sigh, he shook his head. My fucking nerves, he thought, rubbing his eyes wearily. But he wasn't about to hunt her in the middle of the night. He came downstairs and opened door from her room and from bed he took a pillow. He inhaled a scent from it. It smelled like her. The lavender. Barefoot he came to his hounds and let them sniff the pillow, then opened the gate and let them free. After that he went back to the house. He was exhausted after long days of no sleep, so he laid on a divan in the attic and fell asleep. It was a gloomy morning again, when he woke up. It surely was raining during night. He went to a kitchen, made a coffee, that he drank and taking another boots, coat, he went for his horse. Slowly he made his way to the woods. After long minutes, he heard his hounds barking and growling and it didn't take him long from that point, so he could find Mary. Sitting on the wet ground, leaning against the tree. Her hair and clothes wet, one boot on her foot, the second missing. She was shaking, her lips blue from cold. "I see, that you had truly exciting wedding night," he said from the top of his horse, looking at her.

She didn't answer. She wasn't in state to even look at him, only watching carefully at the dogs, keeping her in place. Like he ordered them to give her a punishment, for what she did, keeping her outside on the rain and cold. "I need pen and paper," she whispered, shaking from the cold. "Pen and paper." He jumped from a horse and came to her. She was numb, so she didn't even have a strength to fight him, when he threw her on his shoulder and carried her on his horse. Without a word, he came behind her and let the horse walk back toward his house with the pack running around them. "Pen and paper..." she murmured in her own shuttering and shivering from cold. Inside her mind her only purpose was to reach someone a relative. Her parents perhaps could pity her finally and let her go back again. She passed out the moment they came to the gate of the garden. Collapsing on his shoulder. He carried her to her room, where he took off her wet clothes and put on her dry and clean night gown. He laid her on the bed and covered her, before he left a room. She slept whole day. The moment she woke up, it was late evening already. She blinked few times and then she realized, that she wasn't in the room alone. The boy, she saw before in the kitchen, was sitting by the fireplace, reading a book on the fury rug. She sat upright slowly. Slightly getting fever from the cold night. Watching towards the window, she realised it was night still. "What's your name?" She asked him quietly gathered up.

He looked at her and stood up, holding book in his hands. "Robert," he answered quietly.

She nodded and looked down for a moment. "I'm Mary, but I guess, you know that already," she realised. "What are you doing here, Robert?" She asked curiously, when she realised, what happened the previous night and that she was wearing dry clothes.

"He told me to give you a tea, when you wake up," he said and showed on a kettle warming above fire. He put a book on an armchair by the fire and carefully poured a herbal tea into a mug. Carefully he carried it to her bed and put it on the night table. Then he nodded toward her and took few steps back again. He took back his book and sat on a rug, looking into a fire.

"Thank you, Robert." She smiled briefly at the boy. Trying to understand, what was his role in the house, Mary observed him. "How old are you, Robert?" She asked him calmly, letting the tea aside untouched.