Day Seven

As Esmeralda’s consciousness crept back, she lied staring up at the stars for a few moments. It was incredibly relaxing. She felt so happy, staring up at at those little lights in the night sky. The longer she stared, the more it seemed like they were dancing. Not the exciting, thrilling sort of dance, but a gentle dance, where they really weren’t moving at all. She could feel their stillness. And every twinkle went straight to her heart. She was content. More content than ever before. The stars were shining brightly, while everything else was dark. Why was everything else dark? Esmeralda snapped fully back when she looked to see where she was, and what took place earlier that evening flooded her memories.  She jumped to her feet, and ran back to her room at the inn, passing a trio of guards playing cards.

Taking stock of herself, she wasn’t badly injured. Her hands and knee were scraped, and she was frazzled, but she felt fine otherwise. Her clothes were a bit dirty, but only ripped where she had scraped her knee. She had all her clothes. It seemed unlikely that her clothes would still be on if he’d done to her what she’d been expecting. I mean, he wouldn’t put them back on, right? They would at least be mussed up. Then again, it also seemed implausible that she’d still be alive. She already saw he didn’t mind killing. She checked her pouch, and she had all her money too.

It didn’t make any sense. She had fainted. You can’t get any more defenseless than that. He was in a position to take whatever he wanted from her. Why did it seem like he hadn’t done anything to her? Maybe someone scared him off. Someone that would have gone through the trouble of scaring off an attacker, but not help the woman being attacked? Why would she wake up exactly as she was when she fainted? Maybe the less-than-stealthy assassin suddenly had something more important to do. She had the fleeting thought that she might have been hallucinating, but it was not a thought she could entertain. She couldn’t even begin to guess where to go, or what to do next if she was going crazy. Maybe she should just consider herself lucky and not worry about why she was okay now. 

Once she had calmed down, she remembered the guards and marched out to where they were playing.

“A man attacked me tonight!”

Not one of them looked up from their cards.

“Are you going to do anything?”

The guard closest to her sighed, put down his cards, and looked her in the eye. He looked like a soldier, maybe even a captain, with his big ugly square face, and his dark rough beard. She took a few steps back, startled (having an unhappy guard stare you down will do that). He asked her if the man was a native.  Esmeralda was puzzled by this question, but answered, “No…”

“Then it isn’t our job. Our job is to stop smugglers, protect cargo, and keep out the savage natives, which if you ask me, is all of them, but the empire considers some more civilized than others.”

“But he—”

“Not. My. Problem. Look, we’re off duty as it is. We’re all tired, and we don’t want to be doing somebody else’s job. All we want to do is cards, and then bed.”

“Whose job is it?”

He shrugged and went back to playing cards. Esmeralda hated the swamp. She dragged herself back to her room, locked the door, and tried to sleep. It was impossible. The more she tried to get comfortable, the less it worked, and the longer she stayed awake, the harder it was to stop thinking about the events of the night, and to stop her imagination from running wild with ideas of what could happen to her if she did fall asleep. All she could think about was that man, who was either still out there, or never existed in the first place. Why wouldn’t the guards help her? None of the explanations she could come up with made her any more safe, or less alone. She stayed in bed until she had enough energy to move on the next morning. She wasn’t sure if she had slept at all. (She had, if only for short periods here and there.)

She considered going back to Fishery. She didn’t like her family, but she could finish her last year of school, get an apprenticeship and never concern herself with her family again. Perhaps she could take her time and find some sort of caravan on their way to Capitol. She heard that’s a wonderful place to live. She thought on this as she procured a knife (which was actually a dagger) and a cloak for herself, useful for whatever she chose, since she would have to spend at least one more night in the swamps. But confronted with the decision, she began moving forward to Penance. She was certainly not going to let this get the best of her. She absolutely was not going to let her mom know she’d failed at the one thing she took the initiative to do herself.

She did, however, need to be less careless. She had no idea how to take care of herself, that was obvious. She cursed herself for believing that the fear and worry she felt was all in her head. But she could do this. She just had to concentrate, be confident, and practice. Upon her arrival in the next village, which for the life of her, she could not tell apart from the first two, Esmeralda wasted no time in getting to a room where she could practice using her new knife.

Out, in, out, in. The first step was getting it out of its sheath quickly, without hurting herself and most importantly, without dropping it. Gripping objects should be a basic human function, something you get the hang of as a toddler, so she found it amazing how easy it was to fumble the blade. Sometimes after arming herself particularly quickly, Esmeralda would reward herself with a few swishes. Over the next few days, it was more of the same, slowly progressing towards practicing slicing and stabbing the bedframe, which was beat up enough that a few extra notches didn’t change its look.