9 Barriers of Stone

  After two hours of walking, Sara came out of the trees and found a field of stone in front of her. The cliff face was just as high here as behind the trees, but here stones of all sizes covered the ground. Looking closely at the stones, she noticed that the edges were sharp, and she wondered if she could make it through without cutting her feet. There were places she could walk where the stones were larger, but the small, sharp stones were dominant.

  “I wonder,” Sara said to herself, looking at her feet.

  Sara took a step, then a second. Sara felt the sharp stones make their first cut into one of her feet.

  Sara stepped back onto the grass and shook her head. She sighed and looked at the cut on the bottom of her right foot.

  “I’ll just walk around to the other side,” Sara said. She began to walk out towards the middle of the valley along the edge of the field of stone. The field of stone was at least half the size of the forest and came out at least as far into the valley.

  Once she was away from the cliff, she looked back. The cliff went up as high as the area behind the forest, except here at the top of the cliff, the mountain didn’t go up in a carpet of green and trees, but here, going up, what looked like most of the mountain was covered with boulders of all sizes. Seeing it, she could picture that at some point not long ago, an avalanche came down the mountain and filled the valley with stone.

  Sara returned to walking, splitting her glances from where she was walking to the field of stones. Once she reached the far side of the field, she looked back again and examined it.

  “An avalanche wouldn’t have created this.” Sara told herself, “Draco and David must have spread out the rocks so that no one could escape.” She paused the said, “But why? Most people would be too afraid to try and escape.”

  Sara shook her head and remembered the way Draco had carelessly knocked over her water trough and, without a second thought, tried to burn her with fire. She realized that if it wasn’t for the hope that David would protect her from Draco, she would try to escape today. Facing the dragon alone would be just as dangerous as her ignorance of how to survive in the wilderness.

  “Better to escape than face certain death.” She told herself. As she thought about facing death, she understood something she never understood before. She had read that soldiers, knowing they would probably die, would often fight even harder. Mistress Carmarthen had said that the certainty of death gave them courage, because they didn’t have to fear death. It was one of the few times the chaperone watching the lesson had scoffed.

  Sara laughed at the memory because she remembered both the look of disgust that Mistress Carmarthen had given the woman and that at the next lesson, the woman had been replaced.

  “For now, I have time to learn,” Sara told herself, then turned, continuing her journey.

  The valley here returned to the tall grasses that filled the majority of the valley. The cliff went on here, though it was not as high as it had been; the wall was too steep for her. She was sure some people could do it; she wasn’t one of them, and things weren’t so desperate for her to risk what may be certain death.

  Sara walked over half an hour longer and was sure that she had walked almost half the valley’s perimeter when she saw something that surprised her. The cliff gave way to a wall of square stones as high as the cliff had been.

  Sara wiped her hands along the stone and was surprised that they felt like the stones of the castle. As she looks back at the field of stone and the cliffs around her, she could see that the square stones must have been cut from this mountain by humans.

  “What is going on here?” Sara asked herself. Until now, she had thought the valley was a place that Draco and David had prepared. Now it seemed that men had built this wall. Sara looked around the valley and was sure that this place must have been the original opening into the valley.

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  “Draco and David had to be the ones who cleared the rocks from the avalanche, but they didn’t build this.” Looking closely at the stonework again, Sara commented, “This is at least as old as the castle.”

  The castle was originally built four hundred years earlier, and though it had been repaired and added on to. These stones, Sara was certain where as old as the original buildings. Sara moved back from the wall and looked up. She didn’t know for sure, but the top of the wall had the same edging that the castle had. If that were true, there was a place for people to stand up there and look out, just like they had at the castle.

  She knew it was foolish, but yelled just the same, “Hey, is anyone up there?” Hello!” There was, of course, no answer.

  She walked away from the wall far enough out where she could see the top, yelling occasionally and looking for any sign of humans. A couple of times, she spotted some birds flying up from behind the walls. There was no other sign of life, and no evidence that there was any way over or through the wall.

  Sara looked around and noticed that the ground at this end of the valley was a little lower than the rest of the valley. She wasn’t an expert, but she knew that water went downhill. If the wall were here, then there should have been at least a small lake or a place for water to escape the valley, yet there was nothing. Another mystery that she couldn’t answer and wouldn’t for some time.

  Sara looked across the valley and then where the sun was in the sky, “If I continue walking the perimeter, it will probably take me a couple of hours longer than if I just walk straight across.”

  When a shadow crossed the valley, Sara looked up to see if the dragon had returned. The thought of the dragon returning early convinced her that she would finish searching the perimeter of the valley another day.

  “My feet are sore anyway, so I may as well head back,” Sara said, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t fear of the dragon that was causing her to walk back to the place that served as her home.

  The vegetation across the center of the valley was wild rye, which David said could be used to make bread. Sara plucked some of the heads of the rye, and after pulling off what looked like the outside, she got to what she thought were the seeds and threw a few into her mouth and started chewing.

  Sara had eaten a few things that tasted worse, but not many. She finished chewing and swallowed. She stopped walking as she realized, she only had the word of the giant that the seeds weren’t dangerous to eat.

  “It doesn’t matter now, if it makes me sick, then I’ll know better. In the meantime, I need to get moving.”

  By the time Sara was most of the way across the valley, she was walking a lot slower. When she got to her house, she plopped down on the edge of the porch and lay back. She wanted nothing more than to have something to eat, drink, and rest for the last hour of the day.

  Sara started to yell for a servant when she realized again, she was alone.

  “I guess if I want something, I’m going to have to get it myself,” Sara said as she pulled herself up and walked into the house. There wasn’t even the smallest coal in the hearth, so Sara cleared a spot, laid out the kindling and wood, then started a fire. It took her a little longer than it had before, but eventually the fire started, and she put a pot on to heat up. She remembered that David had said there was mint outside and decided to get some so that she could have something other than water. She found the place where David had said it was and picked a few leaves and raised them to her nose. The smell of mint filled her nostrils, and she sighed. She went back inside and placed a couple of leaves in a cup, and looked around, thinking about food.

  The potatoes were in the cellar, and looking at the setting sun, Sara knew there wouldn’t be enough light to find anything down there.

  Sara sighed, “It seems I will be having eggs again.” Sara had saved a few of the eggs from the morning gathering in the house so she could make some for her dinner.

  Sara always enjoyed eggs, especially in an omelet or in a soufflé. Sara didn’t know how to make either one of them, so she was either going to have to fry or boil some.

  “I’m going to have to learn to cook, or I’m going to really start to hate eggs.”

  Sara fried the eggs and found that the mint tea was better than she expected. Sara cleaned up her house the best that she could and looked outside. The sun had gone down behind the mountains, and it would soon be dark.

  “My bath!” Sara said exuberantly and went out to what she was now thinking of as her bathing trough. She looked around and saw nothing had gotten into the water. As she expected, it wasn’t hot, but it was warm. She washed up using the soap that was there, and as she was getting ready to set it aside, she noticed the soap was a lot smaller than it was the first day she arrived. Sara realized that she had used a lot to clean the mud off of David’s back, but hadn’t seen any more.

  Sara shook her head, “Another thing I will probably have to learn to make.”

  Sara finished up and headed into the house just as the final rays of the sun disappeared from the sky. Sara could see a sliver of moon and looked around at the stars. She had read that sailors could find their position by the stars. She recognized a few constellations; other than showing the power of creation, the night sky kept its secrets.

  Sara made her way into the house, led by the light coming from the fire that was still burning in the hearth.