Maren Goldweaver's Arc

Chapter 39 of 42

They ran until the ferns thinned and the ground turned to needles. Maren's chest burned. She could still hear the boy's voice pitching her description back through the trees. He would reach a village by dark. Her face would be on the road before her. Miller pulled her behind a fallen trunk. He listened. No dog. No shouting. The trapper had not come after them. That was not what worried her. "He knows you now," she said. "Both of us." "Me," Miller said. "He'll remember me. Tall. Blonde. Called you my wife." Heat climbed her neck. She hated that the word landed the way it did, and that he had said it so quickly, without thinking, like it was already true. She looked at the dirt. "You need a cloak," Miller said. "Or change your hair." Her hand went to one of her braids before she could stop it. "Not the hair." He watched her a moment. He did not ask why. She was glad. Her mother had done these braids in her lap on the kitchen bench. It was one of the few pieces she still had, and she carried it on her head. "A cloak, then," he said. "For both of us." He found a laundry line at the edge of the next hamlet. A widow hung sheets and traveler's coats there for coin. They would not knock. They would take two and leave a gold link on the post. They moved parallel to the road, low through the pines. The hamlet sat in a shallow bend, six roofs and a well. Smoke rose from two chimneys. The line ran behind a shed, heavy with wash. Maren waited in the ditch while Miller crossed. He cut two hooded cloaks from the line with his knife and left a link from her bracelet on the post like he'd said. He was back before she counted a hundred. Gray wool, patched, smelling of soap and woodsmoke. He handed her the smaller one. She pulled the hood up and tucked the braids inside her collar until nothing brown showed. "Better," he said. She pulled his hood up too. It hid the blonde. It hid the blood at his lip. In gray wool he looked like any tired man walking his wife to the crossing. "How long before the boy reaches a village?" she said. "By dark." "Then we don't stop at dark." They climbed out of the ditch and walked east under the hoods. The trapper's face would travel. Hers would travel with it. But the woman on the notices had bright braids and no cloak, and the man beside her had gold hair and no beard shadow, and for another day at least those two people did not exist on this road. She kept her chin down and counted trees again.