Day In. Hide Out.

Chapter 9

A soft sigh emerges beneath me. I gasp and sit up, sucking in breaths and wiping my tear-stained, pink cheeked face. "Ascot?" I say in a voice both light and sad. "Please, Ascot! I can't do this without you, I'll be captured. Please live! You're my best friend," I sob, beginning the waterworks again and setting my head on his shoulder with my eyes closed. I'm afraid to look at his wound, see if his eyes are open, and feel if his heartbeat is there.

Though there's soft motion underneath me, I don't move from my place. But suddenly, I stop crying....because a warm hand sets softly on the back of my head. Ascot groans quietly and I lift my head, wiping tears once again from my eyes. "Zanna?" he says in a gruff and trying tone. "You looked that ghostman in the eyes, didn't you?"

I break into a wide smile and begin to softly laugh, while crying still along with it. Ascot smiles and tries to rise, but the blood from his rib area gushes and dampens his coat again and I softly push him down. "I may have, Ascot," I say with a grin and sniff, then I reach over to my bag. Inside, I pull a red dress from it and unfold it. I help him take his coat off and set the red dress over his bloodstained white undershirt.

When I push it down, he cries out in pain, but lies back down helplessly and allows it. After a long while of sitting and waiting for the blood to stop, I help him to his feet slowly but surely. The men have long left, taking no heed to the dying boy lying in the dirt, or the damp cheeked mess sitting beside him.

He puts his arm around my shoulder and leans on me, holding the dress to his ribs with a cringe. "I know the place, but it's far, Ascot. I don't want you to walk, but I don't expect you'll be climbing any trees," I say, and he grins with a sigh.

"I suppose not," he agrees. "We will walk." And I guess he's made up his mind.

So I follow the path, stopping every so often for Ascot to rest, and finally we reach the shed. It is nowhere near daybreak, yet halfway through the night, and we are tired and weary, and for Ascot, in pain. I help him down to the ground in the rusty old shed and block the door with heavy boxes from the corner. Then I lie down in the opposite corner, accompanied only by cobwebs and Ascot's unsteady breathing, and fall into a deep and much-needed sleep. 

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When I wake up in the morning, Ascot is sleeping once again. He must have changed his shirt in the night, because it is replaced with a clean white shirt and a dusty green coat draped over his knees. I see the outline of some kind of dressing over his wound, but I don't know what he could've found in here, or how he could've gotten up to get it.

I slip out the creaky door with my bag and into town. It's a bustling and busy Monday morning and people are out and about. I pass the town school, and in the yard play a crowd of little boys ranging from age four to fifteen. The baker is setting new bread and pastries in his window and waves to me, though this is different from my village. I stop in the drugstore, for I'm hungry and have little money to pay. I buy only a small honey wafer, and savor the flavor it gives me. The man at the counter calls to me on my way out.

"Boy! I have a question," he says with a raised eyebrow, still holding the coins I'd paid him.

"Yes, sir?" I say in a soft voice, trying it low but coming out with a mixed result.

"Why isn't a boy your age in school at this hour of the morning?" he asks. "My son went to school bright and early like a good boy this morning and you're out buying...wafers?"

He sounds suspicious and untrustworthy, so I answer simply, "Oh, sir, I must go to the doctor's today to get checked for...." I mumble the rest since I don't know what to say and go on my way out the door.

And I do not tell lies, either. I find the doctor's office soon after and walk in, surrounded by coughing and sneezing and the musty, unpleasant odor of illness. The office is an old barn, the loft still filled with bales of moldy hay. A receptionist sits at a low desk and glares at me, staring at the trail of dust I bring along. "I need the doctor, my brother is very ill," I tell her, and she silently points with a glare behind her.

I follow her gaze and step in through a door to an exam room. A grizzled man with a amber beard and chocolate brown hair in a white coat leans over a desk intently, muttering to himself. "Sir, my, my brother is very ill and we need you now. He's been shot," I say loudly, hoping he'll hear me over his own mumbling.

"Oh, shot you say?" the man says, turning around quickly. "Where is he, child?" he asks, setting down the paper before him.

"In-uh, in a shed in the woods. He was shot by an off-aim hunter," I fib. "In the ribs, he was! Hurry, please," I add, leading him out by the wrist. I walk purposefully down the street and to the entrance to the forest, where it gets significantly darker as you go deeper. We finally reach the shed, still half submerged in shadows, and I push the door open carefully.

Ascot jumps and pushes his back against the wall, crossing his arms over his ribs instinctively.

"Henry, this is Doctor...." I trail off. "I'm sorry I didn't catch your name."

"Hello, Henry, I'm Doctor Nicholas," he says with a warm smile, stepping closer.

"Hello, Doctor Nicholas," Ascot answers with a raised eyebrow in my direction. I put up my hand with a quiet sigh and he shrugs lightly. "I have this wound, see...."