I hadn't known, until a day of it had gone by, how tired the body could be left from riding in a wagon. I ached everywhere, my limbs were stiff, and my head seemed to bump of its own accord, even when the wagon had stopped. And I was young, and so comparatively unaffected: Father moved like an old man, creaking and grimacing as he stretched. The boys were hardly bothered, leaping about when we stopped and sometimes running alongside the wagon, even in the cold, for an hour or more. After the first day, I joined them as often as I could, and Opal emerged whenever she thought Maman could be left alone for a while. Maman and Annalise refused to leave the wagon except to do the necessary, but once in a while even Pearl stalked along beside the wagon to stretch her legs.
She would not, though, deign to touch the reins. Opal did, with shy amusement, and Flint took them with obvious pride. Even Jasper had a go, and Jet, sitting in Father's lap, held their tails while chattering to birds and rabbits. Mostly, though, Father, Glover and I took turns driving, while Flint walked beside Beauty—for so the big nag had been deemed—at her head, talking softly to her and, as far as I could tell, transforming her personality from surly to soft.
Four days along the road, at lunchtime, Annalise exited the wagon with her chin high and fierce color in her cheeks. "My home village is two miles down that track," she announced. "I'm going back there. I won't go with you to the ends of the earth. I've done nothing wrong and won't serve you in isolation when I've family and friends at home."
Maman let out a terrible cry that affected Annalise not at all as she turned and simply walked away from us. Opal gazed after the girl in pure astonishment, while Pearl's beautiful features pinched with disbelief. I was only surprised because I hadn't known she had somewhere to go; it had been clear she didn't want to be with us. "We have no way to pay her," I said to the cold afternoon air. "There's no reason for her to stay."
Maman cried out again, sending Father and Opal into the wagon to tend to her. Pearl and I exchanged glances before she said, coolly, "There will be more food for the rest of us, then," and climbed into the wagon as well. The boys, standing in a circle of surprise, looked between Glover and myself, and after Annalise, and then Glover said, "We might as well be on the way, then. No sense in losing daylight."
"Will she be all right, walking home from here?"
Glover shook his head. "We've seen no brigands and she seems to know the territory, so I can only assume so. I've a quick step, miss, but I can't walk her home and catch up with Beauty's pace while it's still light out."
"No, I…" I looked after Annalise a moment longer, watching her cloak mottle and fade with distance, and spread my hands. "No, you can't, and she didn't ask. I hope she'll be all right."
"That one lands on her feet." Glover lifted Jet into the back of the wagon. "All right, lads, let's move along."
Flint took up his place at Beauty's head, and we moved along. Barely an hour later, for the first time, we saw a boar on the road: a massive thick-shouldered beast with small eyes and long tusks. Beauty stopped dead and lowered her head, steam puffing from her nostrils as Flint slowly backed up to the wagon's bench. The boar snorted and glared at us while my heart pounded increasingly hard. Surely even a boar understood that Beauty herself was twice his height and ten times his weight, and that without the wagon's cover rising up behind her to treble her apparent size.
But then I remembered that boar hunting was done by groups of men on horseback, often with dogs, and that the boar did not always lose, despite those odds, and I reconsidered what a boar might or might not understand.
Beauty took one solid step forward, leaning her weight into her leading leg, and the boar, with another snort, turned and trotted away into the woods. Glover, at my side on the wagon bench, let go a sharp sigh of relief, and Flint's voice skirrled high with excitement. "Did you see it, Amber? Did you see it? It was bigger than I am! Do you think it would have stomped us all? Oh, but if we could have killed it we would have had boar for supper! Wouldn't that have been delicious?"
Glover chuckled and ruffled Flint's hair, a vastly more familiar gesture than he would have allowed himself a week ago. "Yes, lad, but we lack every single weapon we would need to slay such a beast. Had we tried, we would have been its supper, not the other way around."
"Boars don't eat people," Flint said stoutly, but he climbed onto the bench with Glover and myself anyway, and kept a wary eye out on the road until darkness fell.
I didn't need to have traveled regularly to know how fortunate we were in the weather. It remained clear the entirety of our journey, the roads staying frozen and easily passed. Clouds followed us on the retreating horizon, thick and grey and threatening snow, but they never caught us. I imagined they might have caught anyone who might pursue us, though, even as I wondered if anyone had. None of us spoke of the possibility; what conversation we had centered around Maman's health, which remained fragile, and how we might barter for food or drink at the next village. We scavenged more than one of our dresses, but left the boys' clothes alone, as they had fewer to begin with. We drove past farms and through villages, but mostly we were alone in the forest, until it began to seem the world was nothing but forest.
Each morning Father had a low discussion with Glover, who then drove us onward as if he knew the way well. The trees grew thicker and the road narrower, until on the eighth afternoon we passed through a village almost too small for the name, and up an ill-kept track that might once have been a road, and finally through low stone gates to a stone building two stories tall, with a peaked slate roof and windows whose sliding shutters remained tightly sealed. Beauty thudded to a halt and dropped her head to nose at ankle-deep snow. The family slowly climbed out of the wagon to stare at the building, myself with a numb disbelief that seemed reflected in the others. It was not dismay at the small size or condition of the lodge—after weeks in the hotel and then nine days in the wagon, two stories seemed absurdly luxurious to me, who had only a month ago had a room and a library of her own—but rather an inability to fully believe we had arrived.
"The door," Opal finally said. "Is there a key to the door? Maman?"