smackenzie

Hay took Hazel's word that she could look after herself, and left her alone about her trip and Marcus' ideas about her destiny. She spent the day before she left reassuring her aunt that she would come home, reassuring her uncle that she'd come home without a city boy in tow, and reassuring her dog that he could come with her. She knew if dogs could talk, Toast would be telling her he had no desire to stay behind with her aunt who didn't believe dogs should be allowed to sleep inside the house.

Hazel packed some clothes and a blanket and made sure her raincloak was still waterproof. It was late spring, and there was always a chance she'd get rained on during her trek to the city. She planned to take the king's road, once she got to it, although she wasn't necessarily planning on staying in any inns she might find, because she didn't want to spend the money on them when she could just as easily spread out her blanket and sleep in a field. People traveling through Redhill did it all the time, and while it was considered polite to find the farmer and ask him first, not everyone bothered. When it was late and you were tired, and the fields were too big and spread out for you to see the farmer's house, you could be forgiven for setting down your pack and sleeping on the ground unmentioned. Travelers were usually up and gone not long after sunrise anyway.

Her aunt baked a couple of small loaves of bread for carrying on the road, and Hay's mother donated a nice round cheese, and Uncle Vine offered to let her take some of his smoked fish, which she politely declined. It was salty, for one thing, and full of tiny trout bones, for another, and whatever she packed it with would smell like fish after four hours, and she really didn't want to travel through forest and field and arrive at the king's city smelling like a trout. She already looked enough like a village girl, she didn't have to smell like one too. And if she really started to crave meat, she could always... well, she could at least try and trap a rabbit or something. Probably not once she got onto the king's road, but maybe she'd get lucky and run into other travelers who might be willing to trade some of their meat for some of her cheese.

Hazel was planning to walk, of course, and between Marcus and the few villagers who had actually been to the city, she figured it would take four or five days to walk, considering she was taking the dog with her. On her own she could probably do it in less time, but Toast wasn't mentally built for long-distance walking. He was a lazy dog and easily distracted. She was hoping to get rides with people traveling in the same direction - she'd ridden in the backs of enough haycarts to be prepared for the scratchiness. Maybe she'd even be lucky enough to meet someone who knew about the royal family and their missing prince, not to mention what kind of relationships all the other princes and princesses had with each other.

And until then she was prepared to walk. Her boots were in good shape and she was tough, and the only thing she might have to worry about - feeding and watering herself and her dog - would be less of a problem once she got onto the main road, because there were (or so she'd been told) regularly spaced inns and waystations and the occasional farm or small town. Toast also had the dog equivalent of saddlebags, so he could carry his own kibble and bones, and he liked cheese. Hazel wasn't concerned.

She was in fact only worried about one thing, and that was finding the prince at all. Marcus' casting had been almost no help, mostly because he didn't know what the prince looked like, he didn't have anything that had ever belonged to the prince, and he'd never been to the city himself and had no idea how the place was laid out. Although if he'd been able to determine an area of the city - the goldsmiths' alley, for instance, or the university grounds - that would have helped Hazel out. He tried focusing on the chicken-shaped birthmark, but that was either too vague or too specific, because all he could tell Hazel, once he emerged from the trance, was that there was a public bathhouse involved. Hazel remarked that it was highly likely the prince went there to bathe, as did a lot of city residents, and how was she expected to sneak into the men's bathhouse? As far as she knew, women weren't allowed, even in a city as reputedly progressive as the capital. Marcus told her not to worry, she'd find the prince because she was destined to. She told him she just didn't want it to take her a year. He said it wouldn't. She opted not to mention that no one believed him.

Hay came to see her the night before she planned to leave, while she was double-checking to make sure she'd packed enough of the right herbs and any supplies she thought she might need in an emergency. Bandages, a small corked bottle of smelling salts, another slightly larger corked bottle of apple brandy, a pack of cards, her casting bones (which were little polished circles of bone with runes carved on them, and not actually bone-shaped), some pins, needles and thread, bootlaces, a pencil, the little book in which she wrote down recipes and incantations and charms, and sketched not particularly good pictures of leaves she couldn't identify. She wouldn't have minded taking a book to read, but there wasn't exactly room and besides, she could probably find either a bookseller or a public reading room in the king's city, and she'd heard the king disseminated news by pinning big sheets of paper on the walls in front of the castle, and she really wanted to see that.

She'd just finished packing all the stuff that wasn't clothes when Hay knocked on the doorframe to her room and cleared his throat. Toast jumped off the bed, bounded over to him, and tried to jump on him. Toast knew from all the packing and bustle that he and Hazel was going somewhere, and he could smell it on Hay that Hay wasn't going with them, and he wanted to say goodbye.

"Hey," Hazel said, "come on in. I'm almost done. Toast, off." Toast landed on all four paws and butted into Hay's leg instead. Hazel stuffed the small pack of small things into her larger pack, on top of the clothes, and turned around. "I'm leaving at first light tomorrow, after breakfast. Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" She'd already asked him six times.

"For the seventh time, no." He tried to smile. "I brought you something, for luck."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Come here." Hazel went over to where he was still standing in the doorway. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather cord, long enough to wrap three times around her wrist. "Give me your hand." She held it out and he twisted the cord around her wrist and tied it. "As long as that stays on, you'll be safe from harm. I asked Marcus to charm it for me. Think of it as an early betrothal gift." Now he did smile, and Hazel smiled back.

"Thank you," she said. "Are you sure - "

"I'm not going with you. I can't. I'll wait for you."

"I know. I'll miss you."

"Of course you will." His smile broadened, then changed to something a little more private as he leaned down and kissed her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "One last time before you go," he murmured against her lips.

"Not here," she murmured back. She was going to miss this, she knew. Not just being able to see Hay and talk to him and tease him and bandage his arm when he got too stupidly close to a cranky goat, but being able to kiss him and feel his arms around her.

"Why not? Your bed is big enough."

"My aunt and uncle can hear us." She had to giggle. Not only had Adymary and Vine heard her and Hay on more that one occasion, but a few times Hazel had been able to hear them too. It had made her giggle then.

"I'm not taking you outside, Hazel Vine."

"What about the stable? You already smell like farm, what's a little horse smell?" She grinned and Hay chuckled.

"Last time we scared the horses."

"Oh, they got over it."

She was more worried about Toast either scratching on the stable door and whining to be let in, or barking loud enough to bring her aunt and uncle running to see what was wrong. There was no taboo against sex before marriage, and in fact Hazel knew her aunt at least was glad she and Hay had gotten it out of the way already, but to have your aunt and uncle interrupting you and your lover was embarrassing in the extreme. Or at least Hazel thought it was. She didn't think Hay would mind so much. Although she was the one who liked sex in the great outdoors, and he didn't. He was always worried someone would stumble over them. She'd tried to tell him that hundreds of years ago people had blessed their fields by fucking in them, and he'd just told her she was making that up to convince him it was a good idea, and what if they just played around a little but didn't get completely naked?

Now Hazel told Toast to stay, which he did after whining a little, and she took Hay's hand and led him outside and around the house and into the stable. She thought her aunt gave her an approving look as they went out the front door, but you couldn't always tell with Adymary - she generally looked approving anyway.

The horses whuffed at Hazel as she pulled the door closed. She stroked both horses on the nose, told them not to listen to her and Hay, she'd try to be quiet so as not to disturb them, and then Hay was tugging on her shirt and pulling her towards the ladder to the hayloft. She grabbed a horse blanket on the way and followed him up.

There was already a blanket spread out on the floor of the loft, which made her raise an eyebrow quizzically. Hay shrugged and suggested her aunt and uncle had been up for a little fun themselves, either that or one of them had left it for her.

"You came by here on your way to the house, didn't you?" she asked, grinning. He shook his head.

"I was hoping for your bed."

"I'm sorry. But we have privacy."

"If you don't count the horses."

"I told them we'd be quiet. Besides, they have other things to think about besides us. Now come here so I can kiss you." Hay went obediently, and Hazel took his face in her hands, pulled his head down, whispered "I love you" against his mouth, and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back. The horses whickered softly to each other.

It was dark in the hayloft, although there was a little light from the windows, and when Hazel pulled off her lover's shirt she could faintly see the scar across his chest where he'd been knifed once, when the blacksmith's son had gone insane and Hay had stepped in to try and stop the boy from killing either the blacksmith or himself. Hazel ran her fingers over the scar. It was three years ago now, that he'd done that. They'd taken the blacksmith's son away in a cart, his arms tied to keep him from hurting anyone. Marcus had cast charms on the smithy and the blacksmith's house to dispell any lingering insanity, and while the villagers felt sorry for the smith and his wife and their remaining daughter, they eventually stopped talking about it and went on with their lives. The smith's wife had a baby, and Hay's mother had sewn up the wound on his chest, and no one was ever sure what happened to the son.

Hay pulled Hazel's hand away from his chest, lifted it to his lips, and kissed her fingertips. He pulled her down on the blanket and for a while they just lay next to each other, kissing and touching and murmuring nonsense.

Hazel would have expected it to feel a little final, because who knew when she'd be back home to do this again, but it didn't feel like goodbye at all. It felt like See you later, it felt like Have a good trip, and it felt like I love you and I'll see you again.

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