She moves quickly back behind the ridge line and off the trail to avoid further confrontation. Sigrunn moves with deliberate speed across the rough sloping ground until dusk. She stops to rest at a creek, not knowing the source she chances a drink then scouts out a hide where she can rest for the night. She makes a fire and prays for guidance and with her belly empty she drifts off to sleep beside smoldering embers under a starlit sky.
She dreams of a great wooden castle full of riches and dwarfs and a horrible fat witch with arms that reach four fathoms, ending in heavy square hands with fingers thick and hard as ram ’s horns. The witch chases her about the castle and Sigrunn struggled to escape with a companion whose face she could not see, a man she did not know.
Chains would appear from the darkness at the witches command and snake toward Sigrunn and her friend trying to ensnare them. The witch spat curses at Sigrunn and threatened to "devour her living guts as she watched her die". She could not deter the witch with any brave call or command, and desperate from fatigue she invoked the gods’ names and the witch though bothered continued to hound her. Sigrunn felt a thick chain catch her by her neck and awoke abruptly.
Cricket song filled the warm summer night’s air. Bats soared above silhouetted by the moons soft glow. She sat up and noticed she was bleeding again; the wound, just under her jaw was bleeding scratched open again in her disturbed sleep. She stood thinking it near enough to dawn to get moving again. She lit a torch and put her hand against the wound to staunch the flow. She hung her shield over opposite shoulder which caused her right arm to tire as she trudged on.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your courteous contribution.