Trial of Fire by Kate Jacoby

Author:Kate Jacoby [Jacoby, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2002-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

23

The vision felt different: hard and mean, and full of something so horrible he couldn’t look at it. There were scrapes of blood all around on the hard floor, and thick slimy moss growing on the walls that reached so far up they vanished into infinity. But the deeper he looked, the more the walls grew into trees, with huge thick trunks and deep green bows reaching down to touch him, to warm him, to shelter him.

He sat up, blinking in the sudden bright light. It was hot and very dry and not at all what he was expecting. There was a sword on the ground at his feet, pointing towards a door. To his left, a wide open space, filled with desert, golden and red, achingly empty. He could hear them coming, through the floor, through the walls, scraping across the blood, clashing their swords.

The noise woke him.

For a moment, he couldn’t see the roof of his cave properly. It was afternoon, and the sun was coming from the wrong direction. But he blinked and gradually the rough edges of the walls and ceiling appeared to him and he smiled a little. He was getting old; they weren’t so sharp now as they had once been.

Slowly, he sat up, rolling a little over his bad shoulder, doing his best not to gasp at the pain; instead, whispering a small prayer of thanks that he could use it at all. Once he had his legs over the bed, his feet resting on the floor, he murmured another prayer, holding his hands together in obeisence, bowing his head. Once his cave fell silent again, he took his walking stick and used it to get to his feet.

He could walk well enough, but his right knee always ached worse in the afternoon, as though complaining that it had done its share and now wanted nothing more than rest. Feeling better for his nap, he stood in the doorway and breathed deeply. Spring had most certainly arrived in the forest, leaving the air richly scented with wildflowers and other growing things.

He’d smelled spring in the air in that vision. So often scent played a huge part in what he saw, and now it was telling him something he could not ignore.

Looking down to where he was putting his feet, he stepped out onto the flatstone path embedded into soft earth. He followed it around to the left of the hill, away from his cave, to where the ground flattened out and the forest was filled with young saplings dotted with fresh leaves. There, beyond his patches of vegetable garden, stood his boundary, the edge of the hermitage, on the other side, two monks and a donkey. The animal had baskets brimming over with goods strapped to its back.

‘Good afternoon, Brothers,’ he called, waving to them. ‘Come in, come in. We have so much to do.’

He smiled at them as they followed the path towards him, towing the donkey behind. They were both young

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