Pursuit of Liberty: Chapter 4

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                Liberty awoke to the sound of birds chirping. The damp warm air was pressed against her face. She tried to orient her mind. It seemed to be so difficult. There was a fog that she felt that she had to push through. She put her arms on the ground and pushed herself up so that she was sitting up straight. She looked down at her leg and everything fell in place; the wagon crashing, the horse running off, her leg snapping at the knee, her father running off to find help and a strange man.

                She looked around the cave and saw the fire was still going strong so he must be near. The cave looked neat. The man, she could not remember his name, had made a makeshift home out of the cave. He had the fire in the middle of the cave. There were a pot and a pan sitting up against some rocks surrounding the fire. On the other side of the cave there was a hiking pack, it was open as if the man had grabbed some things and then left. She could make out in the ground where he had slept.

                Then she heard some twigs snapping just outside the cave. Her heart pounded. She did not know if it was the man or a wild animal. Either one could end up being dangerous. She tried to move further back into the cave, but the effort to move her leg was too much. She cried out from the pain that shot through her leg, just trying to move that quickly.

                The man came rushing into the cave with a large knife in his hand. Liberty screamed louder. The man put the knife back in his belt and laughed, “Geez kid you scared me. I thought somebody had come in here.”

                Liberty’s heart was still racing, “Well there was someone who came in here. A large bearded man with a knife drawn.”

                He smiled and looked down at her, “Did you sleep alright and how does the leg feel?”

                Her heart started to slow down and she decided that this man could not be all bad since he seemed friendly and had helped her in her greatest time of need. “What did you give me last night? I could not feel my leg and slept through the night. I didn’t even here you leave this morning.”

                “It is called, Valerian. It is plant that people grow up north. It reduces pain and sometimes in larger doses can cause people to go to sleep. I gave you a rather large dose last night. Would you like a little bit more? I am sure that knee does not feel that much better.”

                “I do not like this feeling of being out of control of my mind and body, so I will hold off. Where did you go this morning? And forgive me I have forgotten your name.”

                The man pulled out three eggs from his pocket and grabbed his pan. He cracked the eggs on the side and the yolk came out. He pulled out a spoon out of his pack and started to scramble the eggs until they turned into a pure yellow substance. “My name is Brac and I went out for breakfast. Are you hungry?”

                In fact Liberty was hungry, she had not noticed until she could smell the eggs cooking. She nodded her head. Brac had the pan over the fire and was swirling the spoon while the eggs cooked. He stood up and grabbed his canteen and tossed it to her. She caught the canteen and started drinking. She looked up at Brac. He was a tall man and he strongly built. He looked like he had done manual labor for most of his life. His hair was cut short as was his beard. There was something about his face that made him look like he could command armies and yet be just has happy to play with children. There was harsh gentleness about him. His eyes were a deep green.

                He poured half the eggs into the pan’s lid and gave it to Liberty. He ate the other half out of the pan. When he sat down he said, “When I was looking for the food this morning I went up the path. I did not know how far your village was so I thought I would try it first. It appears that there has been a mud slide and it is bad. I could not see the path anymore. The mud seemed to have come from high up on the ridge, because it goes down far. At some points it looks like it added three times my height to the path.”

                “Did you see my father?”

                “You know I was actually worried that something might have happened to him last night on his way back.”

                A lump caught in Liberty’s throat and tears began to well. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything. Nothing?!”

                “Liberty, I am sure that he is fine. He looked like he was a strong man and probably made it through.”

Brac felt bad, because he did not believe it, but it could be true.  The man could have survived. It was just that the mudslide had done a significant amount of damage and appeared to have been longer than his eye could see. Though he had never been on the path, the destruction caused by the mudslide had taken down some of the larger trees in the woods. He had did not known how he was going to get Liberty back to her village.

“Do you think that you can walk?” Brac asked Liberty.

Liberty looked down at her broken leg. It had been reset the night before by Brac. It had two sturdy pieces of wood tied together holding her leg straight. She did not even try to bend it and did not want to try to put weight on the leg. She looked across the cave and saw a long stick that Brac had not broken up for the fire. “I don’t even want to try, but I need to get back home. There is no way that I can walk on the leg; it is excruciating just sitting here. Maybe if I could have a walking stick.”

Brac looked around the cave and saw the long piece of wood . He walked over and snapped it in half. The piece was a little more than half her body height. He went over to Liberty and helped her stand. She tried walking and using the stick as a replacement for her leg. The pain from moving was just too much she had to sit back down. Brac helped her down, “There is only one other way we can take you and that is if I carry you.”

“No you are not carrying me. I will try to walk with the stick again.”

“It is going to take weeks for you to be able to have the strength to walk on that stick the miles that it will take to get to your village. It appeared from the top of the ridge that you still had a couple miles to go before the mudslide. Now we are going to have to go all the way up to the top and then come down in a safe spot. Where the road used to be is too rugged to even carry you through and I would be hesitant to go by myself. We cannot go across from up here because I do not know if there are still some lose spots and if we fall it could be deadly. The safest route will be to go to the top and go around.”

Liberty looked down at the ground a sighed, “This is going to be two day journey, I hope you are ready for that.”

Brac finished cleaning their pot and pan and was packing them away, “I am not sure anyone is ready for a two day journey with Liberty.” 

Pursuit of Liberty: Chapter 3

              

** To get caught up with early chapters click this link Pursuit of Liberty **

              The man had been traveling through the mountain side for weeks.  The truth is that he had been traveling for years through the cities, fields, mountain ranges. He would stop for extended amounts of time when he would come to a place he felt had his answers, but they always seemed to fail him. Then he would pack up his belongings and leave. Through his journey he had made a lot of friends and a few enemies.

                Currently, he was watching a woman and what appeared to be her father, but could had been her husband, struggling with their wagon. He had felt the shift in air pressure and saw the tree leaves become lighter. The nature had a way of telling people what it was about to do, signs of warning. People normally did not notice because they were not in tune with nature the way a traveler is. He found a cave, if it could be called a cave, it was more like a large rock. The indention that made the ‘cave’ did not go back very far, maybe a few yards. Then it became dark and he could not see, but having slept in many caves he knew it only got smaller and would lead nowhere.

                The village that he had seen from the top of the mountain range had appeared to be a quaint little town. As he descended the mountain side earlier that morning, he felt that he would stay here in this village for while. The view was fantastic. From the ridge he could see the mountain range go on for miles and miles. The man had not known exactly where he was at until he had reached this mountain ridge. From this height a map could have been drawn of the mountains, cities, roads, villages, rivers, everything seemed so clear.

                Now he was in the cave wanting to start the fire, but captured by the events of the man and the woman. A lightning bolt from the heavens had come down and struck the tree right in front of their wagon. The horse had spooked and ran away. He was surprised at how easily the horse had been able to snap the trace. It had either been made by weak wood or been poorly crafted. It seemed that it had only been a couple minutes and the woman had been flung, the man found her, and left. He could only assume that the woman had been hurt and unable to move.

                As the man left the woman, Brac started gathering together his small pack. It appeared that the woman had been injured. He ran down the side up to the road. The woman was just off from the road under a pine tree. He cautiously approached the woman.

“Ma’am are you okay?”

                She tried to move back past the tree, but she could barely move. The realization came to her that she was completely hopeless. He pulled off the hood over his head. He smiled at her and said, “Ma’am, calm down. Take a deep breath. I am only here to help.”

The rain was beating so hard and the wind was picking up. There was no time; if he waited any longer he might not be able to make it back up to cave. She started to cry. He looked over her whole body. She had a little blood running from her forehead, but after a quick examination she was not bleeding from there it just had been smeared. He saw that her right leg had been broken at the knee. The blood had come from her shin that must have been where she had landed on a rock or a branch that caused her knee to break.

                Brac decided it would be better to care for the leg when they were up in the dryness of the cave, then out her under a tree that was doing nothing for the wind and rain. He reached down and picked the woman up. He realized that this was a young woman, maybe not yet, past her schooling.

                It had only taken him a couple minutes to get to her, but it was taking him a lot longer now with her screaming and the mud that was becoming harder and harder to walk up hill. Eventually, he got back to cave. She was screaming that if he did not let her go her father was going to kill him.

                “I would gladly return you to your father. If I was going to kidnap or kill a woman I would do one that was much quieter than you. Now let me look at this leg.”

                “Don’t touch me!”

                “Look at me! Look into my eyes!” He barked.

                She looked up around her first as an act of defiance. She saw that the cave looked like a make shift home. It did not appear that he had been here long. He had gathered fire wood and had a small pile. He had some big leaves that were rolled up and she thought she smelled fish. He had a laid her on a blanket up against the wall of the back side of the cave.

                “Look at me!” Her eyes darted into his dark green eyes. “My name is Brac. I am from Chesterland. I am here to help you. I want you to chew on these. This is called Valerian. This will reduce your pain from your leg and help you fall asleep.”

                “I don’t need to go to sleep and I don’t need your help.”

    Just then her leg began to twitch. He grabbed her hand and put the leaves into her hand.  He went over to pile of wood and grabbed two pieces of wood that looked similar in size and set them next to her. Then he went back over to the pile and started to make a small pile off dead twigs and dry leaves. Then he laid larger branches around them until it looked like a small tepee of branches. Then he took two pieces of flint and started a fire with two swipes. It looked like he had done this before. She could remember when her father had tried to teach her how to start a fire and neither she nor her brother had been able to start it and they had tried for hours.  

He came back over to her. “Sorry I yelled at you. I saw your wagon flip and your father run. I do not know where he is going and how long it will take him or if he will even be able to get back in time to help you. You need to stay dry and be safe. This thunderstorm will last for a few more hours and I doubt if your father makes it safe to the place that he is going that he will be able to make it back. I know how to help you. Those Valerian leaves will help you. My brothers serve in the royal army and they have used that many time on soldiers who have been wounded a lot worse than you. If you don’t take those soon your body is going to go into shock.”

Her leg that had started to twitch was starting to shake and she could not control it. It felt like knives were going all over her thigh and knee. She could no longer feel below her knee. She decided that she did not care anymore. If these leaves killed it would make no difference because she was going to die from the pain anyway. She threw them in her mouth and nothing happened.

“You have to chew them.”

As she started to chew she could instantly feel the relief coming. The pain was not completely going away, but it was being reduced. Being in the dry cave also was helping. The rain and the wind had been taking a toll on her more than she had realized. Just then she heard a loud crack and felt an excruciating pain come from her knee. The cave went dark.  

Brac wished he had been able to tell her what he was going to do, but since she had been so defiant about coming up here and trusting him, he decided it would just be better for everyone if he just reset her knee. He took the two sticks that he had placed next to her and placed on the inside of her leg and the other on the outside. He pulled the thin rope from his bag and tied the sticks to her leg making it so that she could not accidently bend her knee.

                Then he went over to the large leaves unraveled the fish that was inside. He took out his knife and gutted the fish. It only took him a couple minutes and he had the meat on the frying pan over the fire. As the fish cooked he looked over at the young woman. She looked like she was sleeping peacefully. He went and removed the wet hood from head and placed one of his warm ones that had been sitting next to the fire on her and then laid her down so that she was no longer sitting up but lying down.

                She was beautiful young woman. She had thick dark brown hair that curled slightly down to the middle of her back. Even though her eyes were shut he could not forget them from the second that she had locked eyes with him. They were a swirl of green and brown. He had never, in all of his travel, seen eyes that swirled of two colors like hers. She had been wearing a light brown dress with twirling design near the edges. She looked to be taller than the average woman that he was used to seeing, but just ever so slightly. It could have been that her legs were long and slender consequently making her appear taller, since he had never seen her stand.

                Her chest rose up and down as she slowly breathed. She looked at peace, even though he knew that was the leaves, he wished he could find that type of peace of mind. There had always been something missing in his life. He had had everything that he had every wanted or needed and he had thrown that away because it did not bring him satisfaction. He knew in his heart that there was something that he was longing for, but could not figure it out. It was that feeling that a person has when they cannot remember the word that they need and it keeps appearing in their mind for a millisecond and then disappearing. If it would only remain long enough then it could be remembered. He just needed to find that moment so that everything would fit into place.

                The fish was almost done cooking so he flipped it over in the pan. As it finished, he went over to his bag and grabbed the canteen. He would have to fill it back up tomorrow morning. The fish was finished and he pulled the pan from the fire and started to eat. The fish were fresh from yesterday. The river at on the other side of the mountain had an abundant amount of salmon. This was a treat for him since he had not had salmon in over a year. He finished the fish and then made a pillow out of one of his smaller bags. Then drifted into sleep as the storm raged on.