Child of thorns

Fin- chapter three

I awoke in a fever in a bed which was not my own. A violent headache made any movement impossible and sweat glistened off my body.  The orange glimmer of a fire flooded through the open door from the other room. My head felt sore and strange. I touched it and found a bandage made of leaves strewn around it. I had begun to tug at the leaves when a woman came in through the door.

"Oh no dear," said a woman, "you must leave it on or the infection will take you."

She had long brown wavy hair and bright blue eyes. I tried to hold myself up on my elbow when a sudden dizziness gripped me and I fell back down onto the bed.

She turned around and grabbed a bowl off the the table.

"Drink this child, it will make you feel better," she said handing me the bowl of green liquid.

"What is..," I started.

"If your fever persists you will die, this will help," she said passing the bowl towards me.

Her kind unflinching eyes looked into mine as I tried to steady my myself.. She seemed kind but the dark green liquid was not inviting. The pain in my head intensified and suddenly the bowl began to look inviting. I took the bowl out of her and hands and drank it. The thick liquid caught in my throat and I began to cough. It tasted worse than anything I had ever tasted. I handed her the bowl once I regained my breath. She began to walk towards the door when she turned to face me.

"Go to sleep, you have been through a lot."

I closed my eyes and was swallowed by a peaceful numbness.

The room was dark and all the drapes had been shut closed when I woke again. I felt much better but the throbbing in my head still persisted, only a dull ache on the temple of my head. I sat up and found that this time I was able to hold my bodies weight without falling, an improvement. My joints still ached even though the fever was easing.  I must have been hurt worse than I thought.

Last thing I can remember was the river suffocating me, pressing down on my chest. The force of the water dragged me under. How did I get out?

The person in the woods, could that be the mysterious woman who gave me the vile green ointment? 

A single leaf fell of my bandage as I began to look around the room. I picked the leaf off the linen fabric and saw that it was covered in blood, my blood. I touched my head and pain came flooding back but momentarily. 

A sudden noise alerted me to the presence of another in the room. Sitting on a dresser in the corner of the room was a girl who had short brown hair which lightly touched her shoulders. She was younger than the woman who helped me but bore a striking resemblance to her. Her slim appearance and dark clothing had made her hard to spot in the shadows. 

I could see it in her eyes that she was as startled as me. Leaping from the dresser she ran out of the room into the well lit room with the fire.

Sitting on the dresser was the bow I had taken with me from the cabin. It lay in three pieces entangled by the string of the bow beside my wooden sword.  A pain worse than my head wound struck me. The bow had been one of my fondest memories of Garridan. On my name day he had shown me how to use the bow and even helped me to notch my first arrow while Aegon watch amused by my attempts at archery.

Why can’t my life just be normal again just me and … Aegon and humble Garridan. The memories of the cabin came rushing back to me. They were dead, or Aegon was, I left Garridan to fight three men in heavy armour. I was a coward, part of me screamed that I should have stayed, done something to help him. Instead I ran like he told me, I had a choice and I chose to be a coward.