Risk

Chapter XL

Jasta squeezed her eyes shut. She'd had enough. Her mother's tears, Rose's apparent shock... she just wanted it to go back to the way it used to be. She wanted all of the stress and tension to end. She felt hot tears welling up behind her eyelids, and she willed them to leave. Crying wouldn't solve any of her problems.

She heard someone talking, maybe calling her name or trying to tell her something, but she just blocked them out and tried to concentrate on not crying, on getting her emotions back in check. She took a deep breath and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. She just couldn't take it anymore. She jumped to her feet, shoving past the person trying to console her without even registering who it was, and she ran. She hardly even remembered opening the door, but she seemed to suddenly find herself out in the woods. She kept going.

The huge white trunks closed in on all sides. The ground here had hardly any shrubbery, except for the occasional bush of bright, poisonous berries. Huge clover leaves gathered in thick sheets on the ground, an almost ashy consistency when they were dry, and a slimy mulch when they were wet. At the moment, they were somewhere in between, thought closer to dry than wet. Flakes of brown clung to her shoes and feet as she kept going.

She didn't really know or care how long it was before she stopped. She entered a small cove. It was a bowl in the ground, surrounded on all sides by thick white trunks like sentries, guarding some secret that might lay in the shallow black pool at the bottom that she had once caught minnows in during the long lazy days of summer when she had nothing better to do.

Frondy, greyish plants grew all up and down the sides of the little hollow. They looked a bit like ferns, though maybe an older relation. She sank to the ground among these grey plants and closed her eyes again, taking huge breaths to try and calm her chest after the long run she had just taken. She tried to remember where she was in relation to Yarul, but even though she once could have called up the information with little more than a second of thought, she couldn't seem to find it at all now.

The urge to cry again overtook her, but she took a few more rapid deep breaths and managed to beat it back again.

She heard footsteps and sank back into the shadows of the plant she was taking refuge under. She didn't want to be found and she didn't want anyone to try and convince her that she was wrong or what she should do or how she should do it or how evil Rowan was. And she didn't want to see the hurt in Rowan's eyes as he tried to convince her that he would be fine and that she could stay and he would just leave. She just wanted to be left alone with her thoughts for a while. She needed to think.

The footsteps went as far as the lip of the hollow, and paused. She guessed that whoever-it-was was trying to see her. She held her breath and hoped that she could blend into the shadow that surrounded her, even with clothes as white as hers were.

The footsteps retreated, and she let out the breath she had been holding. She heard voices, only a dull murmur muted by the trees in between her and the speaker. She could tell that it was a man speaking, though. Maybe Rowan? That seemed the most plausible. She felt bad for hiding from him, but she just couldn't deal with anyone else at the moment.

More steps could be heard, and this time she could recognize a new voice as Mother, calling her name. "Jasta? Please come out!" she closed her ears to the plea. The last person she wanted to talk to was her mother.

After a while of calling her name and poking around into different bushes, and one time even passing within several feet of her hiding place, the small group of people left. Jasta crawled out slowly, searching the trees in case they hadn't really left, and when she was sure that they had, she went down to the water and drank a few cupped handfuls. It wasn't yet late enough in the summer for the small pool to have gone stagnant, and it was still pretty fresh from the last rainfall. She drank until she was full before sitting back on the shore and laying in a patch of sunshine.

It seemed that she was there for a long time, and the sunlight made her drowsy. She could hardly keep her eyes open and she decided that there was no reason to. Maybe she could just dream her way out of this whole mess. That would be nice.

Her eyes fluttered closed as the rays of the sun warmed her shoulders.

**********

It was the old cabin in the woods. The one place that Jasta had never really wanted to go. She had free range over all the woodlands that surrounded the village, but that place held no appeal. Even the animals seemed to sense how dead it was. It had been empty for years, and no one knew where the inhabitants had gone.

There were rumors that it was a witch's meeting place, for smoke had apparently been spotted rising out of the chimney on many occasions, but for Jasta, the cabin's only mystery was why it was empty. Who had lived there and where had they gone? She had only gone in once, but the short search had revealed nothing, and the sheer emptiness of the place had driven her out.

Now she approached again. Perhaps the old owners had died of some horrible disease? Maybe they had been killed by the cold of a winter long forgotten? They could have simply left after discovering that life in the cabin was not everything they had dreamed. Endless possibilities, and she hadn't even delved into the ones that had to do with ghosts and witches and the like.

Maybe the people who had lived in the cabin were Risks, driven out for no other reason than that they were born the way they were. Jasta almost wanted that one to be the truth, because then she would have one more reason to hate her own village, and one more reason to leave with Rowan and not give a care in the world that she was doing so.

A fog had settled around the dark brown wood of the cabin's walls. The windows stood empty of glass after trouble making boys had knocked out all the panes with well-aimed sling shots.

With no regard for the fact that she had never before liked entering, Jasta pushed the door open and went inside. She could almost imagine a family living there, long before it was so empty. They had been happy. A cheery fire had burned in the hearth, which now stood empty and black, scarred with the memory of what had once been.

She could imagine a crock of soup, roiling hot over the flames and filling the space with the rich aroma of the coming supper. A mother laid sliced of meat on a pan before setting it on the hot rocks in front of the fire to sizzle and fry.

All the thoughts were so close and real that Jasta could almost wish away the emptiness of the place. Instead of the bare walls and scuffed dirt floor, she saw lost potential. There could have been a happy family here, living until the mother and father that first built the place as a newly married couple were old and gray, holding grandchildren on their knees and making supper by the fire as they had for years upon years.

The thought made her sad. Why couldn't things just turn out like they were supposed to? Jasta imagined she might have been good friends with the children of the children of the original two. But that would never be.

Even so, she let her mind wander just a bit as she ran her fingers lightly over the dusty wooden mantle.

She wondered about what might have happened if things that had not happened had, or if things that had happened had not, but she knew that this kind of mindset would leave her none the better.

She turned to leave again. She wouldn't find anything in here, no matter how much she looked around. It was just the same dust and wood as had been there for years on end.