West Winds' Fool and Other Stories of the Devil's West by Laura Anne Gilman

Author:Laura Anne Gilman [Gilman, Laura Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2019-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

Within a few strides, the first road was lost to view, and she did not look back again. Her path lifted and declined, a fierce stream interrupting its passage at one point. She eyed the running water cautiously, shifting her bag as though to gauge how well the tapestry cloth might fare were it to be dropped into those clear waters.

There was nothing for it: the wagon was long gone by now, even if she were to turn back, and there was no way forward save though the stream. With a deep breath, she stepped into the sandy waters at the edge, finding a shallow bridge of stones underfoot, slick but not slippery and enough to carry her across with dampness rising only to the ankle of her boots.

“Almost as though it wanted you to cross,” she said to herself, as she reached the sandy bank of the other side.

“Almost as though.”

She turned swiftly, her hand reaching for the knife she’d bought before beginning her journey, cold fury at having been crept up on filling her throat.

But there was nothing there. No human shape watching her, no four-legged beast, nothing save the shape of three birds far overhead, turning and turning in a widening circle.

She let her hand drop from the blade’s handle, achingly aware that she had little sense of how to use it, save to cut things already dead, and tightened her other hand on the handle of her bag, aware of the weight of it. She would have better luck using it as a weapon to knock an assailant out than trying to defend herself with a knife.

An echo, that’s all it had been. Some trick of the wind and water.

“Uncanny,” she said, and for a moment, she thought she felt fear.

Suddenly, she was aware of how very far away she was from her home, much further than merely the miles she had traveled. But then, that had been what she had desired, had it not? To flee the confines that had pressed at her throat, pushed and pulled her into shapes she could not naturally form.

And if she met her end here, on a dusty deserted road in the middle of the uncanny wilds, well, that at least would be a more interesting fate than spending the remainder of her life trying to be what she could not.

That was what she told herself, as she shook the last drops of water from the hem of her skirts and tips of her boots, and looked up the hill in front of her.

Some, she had learned, crossed the river out of need or desperation, their past lives in ashes behind them. Some came in hope, thinking to make their fortune in some way, become something greater than they could be in the States. And some, like her, had no reason driving them, no dream or fear or incentive to leave all they knew behind for the unknown, save a thought that somewhere else had to be better.

And here

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