Poor Girls

Unexpected

As it turned out we had next to nothing in our stores and in addition, if Grandmother hadn't suddenly roused from her deep sleep and stopped me I could have contracted a disease of the skin just before I reached into a particularly purplish slimy jar. I thanked her to my utmost capacity. Still, I was determined to gather our supplies together and endeavor to town on my own. Although Greta, sick as she was, found the strength to protest, insisting it was too dangerous. I was too recognizable and naive. She told me to wait, wait until I found the others she had been rambling about all day.

I would have attempted to feel her forehead for a fever if she had not fended me off with her arm. "I'm fine, fine," she snapped. "Go now, head south. You will find them."

I struggled to keep my composure after that but found it more difficult than ever. Especially when she still managed to hover about directing what I would need and where I should go. "I got it," I finally yelled, a little to her surprise. She shrunk back immediately, her eyes wide. "Get some rest," I added a little softer as I closed the door behind me feeling a a little more than guilty.

Lyra was half a girl when I first found her, shivering and shutting the world out with her big, half-closed eyes. She had been curled up in a low-ceilinged den about two trunks across in width. I had never expected to stumble across anyone so quickly, let alone in such a foul place as that. Dark, damp, and stinking - rotten leaves and earthy fungi covered every surface. Some, no doubt grandmother knew how to put to good use. I still would not dare to touch them, warts and nastier things still raised in their wake. Poisonous to taste, some hazardous even to smell. I had heard tell of a rare group of nasty things called the Five Deadlies, lethal to all senses at a certain proximity, although they were said to live in the most toxic, deadliest of places on earth. That blessedly, did not include here.

I followed Grandmother's vague instructions although it was with no real hope of finding anyone. This is ridiculous, I should be gathering together supplies not wasting my time on some harrowed out scheme of hers. It was genuinely difficult not to be angry at Greta. She was so impossibly stubborn and set in her ways even now that there was no word in edgewise, especially when it came to ideas like this.

I have no idea where I'm even going, although Grandma had mentioned if I hit a little roadside tavern that I had gone too far. "South," she had insisted, so certain. South I went. I stewed to myself, working my temper up more with every step I took. Why? I wondered. There will be no girls living in the woods, old hen.

 My fingers had cramped up with the biting cold and my back ached from the bundle of blankets I carried by the time I reached her. If not for the wretched sound of her chattering teeth I wouldn’t have noticed her presence at all. Pausing, I shifted the pack keenly to the other shoulder and smelled the passing wind, retracing steps I finally found her two feet tall cave made of dead browning grass, dirt, twisting roots, and the blind insects that dwelled within. She was nothing more than a twig, easily breakable in the calmest of winds and like to blow away, yet my heart inexplicably rose at the sight of another girl, to think Grandmother had actually told it true after all. Kneeling, I shrugged off my pack to lean forward and peer into the shallow dirt dwelling. It smelled so rank of rot and shit that I had to pull back almost immediately. Poor creature, how long have you suffered just so?

 It was only when my fingers touched the girl lightly on the arm that she took notice of me. Her body shook violently before she feebly wrenched her head around to look at me with big gaping eyes sunken into a gaunt sullen face. Her hair was so dirtied by filth, bugs, and caked mud that it stuck to her head and appeared entirely brown although I noted that her eyebrows were a fair blonde. Death is near at hand for this one. Probably just waiting for me to leave no doubt. Her eyes just bored into mine, unblinkingly for a lifetime. I would have thought she had passed on into the afterlife if not for the painful gasps her lungs made in an attempt to get air.