I peered into the shade. “Okay.”
“Stay there. Find a seat, sit on it, and wait for me. Do not wander off, do not get in trouble, and do not talk to anyone!”
I glowered at him. Our brief moment of camaraderie had faded in the dreary sludge of nonexistent roads, chilly mountaintops, and steamy valleys, and he’d been getting progressively more ill-tempered all afternoon. Not to mention slower, as the missing shoe took its toll despite being replaced by a spare length of gray wool. Well, gray-red now, Rosier’s tender flesh having been lacerated by a couple thousand sharp-edged rocks.
“I can’t talk to anyone when I don’t speak the language,” I pointed out. “And where are you going?”
“To find the right road!”
“Why can’t I go with you?” I wasn’t thrilled about the company, but I was even less happy about being left on my own in the Wild West of Wales.
“Because I can travel faster alone,” Rosier said, his voice clipped as he tried to fish rock number 2,914 out of his makeshift shoe.
I scowled. “I’ve been matching strides with you all damned day, and even been ahead most of the last—”
“And if I have to endure your infernal chatter one more minute, I will murder you,” he added, panting. “And while that would undoubtedly be to earth’s great advantage, it would stick me here, without magic, for the next millennium and a half!”
He stomped off.
I stared after him, and scowled some more. Then I went to find this “mill.” I did not have high hopes.
Of course, I could be wrong, I thought, breaking through the trees. And finding a tumbledown structure with a water wheel that might be mistaken for a mill if someone squinted. But I barely noticed.
Because there was a stream, and it looked like a small, gurgling slice of heaven.
I hacked and stumbled and then slid the rest of the way down the hill and sat on the bank, tugging at the “shoes” my sadistic bastard of a traveling partner had supplied me with. Because, apparently, if anyone caught a glimpse of my Keds, it might change all of history. He was probably just pissed that he hadn’t thought to bring any hiking shoes himself.
Not that thin sneakers would have been all that great, either, since apparently Wales is a Celtic word meaning “muddy rock pit,” but at least they had soles. The closest thing these had was a hardened piece of leather, and then a bunch of leather flaps with a drawstring loosely pulling them up to where they tied around the ankle. They weren’t so much shoes as baggies for the feet, and they sucked, oh my God.
But I finally got the laces to release and plunged my blisters into the water and oh. It was cold. It was perfect.
I lay there awhile, gazing up at the tree canopy. A couple of determined feeder vines were blowing in the wind toward the branches on the other side. Dip and reach, dip and reach. I kept thinking they’d grab hold any minute, and start stitching up the remaining seam of the sky, but they never did. It was sort of hypnotic to watch, though. Especially with liquid pleasure coursing over my bruised heels and battered toes.
After a while, my feet started to feel better, but my legs began to point out that they could use some attention, too. They were all scratched up, thanks to the fact that the latest “road” had been more of a goat trail and we’d had to tramp our way through miles of prickly flora. I wiggled down a little lower, but that left me with hard little pebbles under my butt, and a sweaty, mud-splattered body crying out for a swim.
I glanced around.
The big wheel was lazily turning, but I didn’t see anybody around the mill, which was half obscured by weeds anyway. Of course, that didn’t mean it was abandoned; everything around here had weeds. But even if not, people didn’t use mills all year, right? The harvest came in, you did your thing, carted off your flour or whatever, and that was it until next year.
At least I hoped so, because I really, really wanted a bath.
I sat there, chewing my cheek for a while and thinking it over. And scratching, because the damned dress was rubbing me raw. It was basically another sack, only with holes in it. Which would have been fine since my head and arms needed somewhere to go. Only these holes didn’t make sense. Unless the thing had been designed for a hunchback with an arm growing out of her chest and a neck where her shoulder ought to be. So I wasn’t wearing it so much as being imprisoned by it, and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore.
After another surreptitious glance around, I shucked it, and just that, just getting rid of twenty pounds of damp, scratchy wool, was the most amazing feeling I’d had in a while.
I sat there for another few minutes, with the scratchy mass in my lap like a dead Snuffleupagus. And waited for someone to call out something about a trespassing naked chick. But nobody did.
Nobody appeared at all, and there were no sounds, except for the occasional call of a bird, the gurgle of the stream, and the rhythmic creak, creak, creak of the distant wheel. A fish flipped into the air and did a happy little wriggle before disappearing again. A fat rabbit stuck its nose out of a bush, regarded me for a moment, and started chewing on some grass. A tiny breeze sent a ripple across the top of the water, breaking the late-afternoon sunlight into a scintillation of gold.
And I left the wool monster on the bank and eased into the stream.
And, okay, that was cold.
Just stay in, I told myself. Stay in, stay in, stay in, and it’ll get better. And it did. In a minute, it got awesome.
I felt my whole bruised, scratched, and wool-tortured body relax into a feeling of quiet bliss. Oh God, I thought tearfully. I loved Wales.
I spent maybe ten minutes paddling around, mostly floating on my bruised butt, and watching my toes peek out of the water. It was a sweet little place. Very green. Of course, saying that about Wales was like saying that the desert was brown. Or that the sky was blue. Or that Rosier was a dick. Wales had to be the greenest place I’d ever seen in my life, almost startlingly so after Vegas.