20 Forage

  The next day, Sara started by going to the pond and throwing in the blankets she got from the thief. She washed them out the best she could and laid them out to dry. After that, she shoved the hatchet into her belt, beside her new knife, grabbed her staff, and the other things she would need. With those items ready, she prepared to enter the forest.

  As Sara headed into the forest, she startled a few deer. Seeing them run off, Sara wished she had her bow. The bow had been in the barn when she had prepared to leave, and she never even thought about getting it. She remembered her practice shots and admitted that a bow wasn’t going to help her.

  Since she only had a knife and a hatchet, Sara figured that meat wasn’t on the menu this week, that was until she heard the cluck of a chicken. David had taught her how to kill, clean, and cook chicken, but she decided to try it later. Now, she had to get more firewood and perhaps some fruit or nuts. She knew this small forest had a lot to offer from the times that David had brought her here to teach her the different foods she could gather. Now those lessons were going to come in handy.

  With her thoughts going to the nuts and berries that she could find, Sara decided that though she would gather firewood if she found it on the ground, her priority was going to gather something to eat.

  Sara turned towards the area of the forest, which she knew had some berries. Within a couple of hours, Sara had set up several stacks of limbs that she would use as firewood and had found the berries she was looking for.

  Sara ate until she was full, and her fingers were red from the juice. The berries had just turned ripe and hadn’t been cleared out by birds or other animals. She thought about throwing a bunch of the berries in the bag she had, but seeing how ripe they were, she was convinced they would all be smashed by the time she made it back to her cave.

  “If I had a basket, I could have had enough for a couple of days,” then she shook her head, dismissing the idea as she didn’t have a basket nor the knowledge of how to make one.

  Moving away from the berries, she moved to where she knew there were some fruit trees. There might still be some cherries, and though not as ripe as she would like, there were apples and pears

  As she moved to where she knew they were, she thought again about how this valley was made to provide for people. It was a perfect place to put someone who didn’t want to escape easily. Sara thought about what history she knew about Zuri, the continent that Rishona lay within. There was nothing she remembered about anywhere that people may have been exiled to. This didn’t mean they weren’t in Rishona or even in Zuri. Sara just couldn't know for sure. She wished she could ask Mistress Carmarthen. The royal librarian would know or know where to find the answer.

  “Mistress Carmarthen, you of all people would appreciate all the things I’ve learned in the last couple of months,” Sara said to herself. The one thing Mistress Carmarthen always cared about was knowledge and learning. Even in the middle of this forest, Sara could imagine the librarian saying, don’t waste this opportunity to learn. Mistress Carmarthen could be stern, but Sara thought she cared about her.

  Now Sara slowed down, thinking about the palace and the people there. It was a different world than where she was now, but since the death of her parents, the castle didn’t feel the same. Sara thought that this valley was starting to feel more like a home than the last few years at the castle. What felt like home didn’t matter. The one thing her parents told her often was that she was the princess and her responsibility was to watch over the nation. She wasn’t watching over the nation here. She had to survive before she could worry about the nation. Sara shook her head, trying to put the thoughts out of her mind as she walked into the area of the forest that held the fruit trees.

  There were some cherries, but they were too ripe to carry back to the cave in the bag. She ate a few, but she was still full after the berries. The apples and the pears were not quite ripe, but they were edible if not a bit firm. The pears being firm meant they would store for a while, so she picked half a bag full. She guessed that it would be all the fruit she would want to eat this week. Finished, Sara headed back to her cave.

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  On the way, she found a long stick that was six feet long and a little wider than one inch. She pictured using it as a crossbar and hanging the blanket she got from the thief on it. She would need a couple of sticks with a Y at the top, but put that off for later, as trying to walk with a bag of fruit on her back, a staff, and this stick was difficult enough.

  Once she got back to her cave, she hooked the bag with the fruit on top of the staff and leaned it against the wall, hoping that if there were any small animals around that it would discourage them from getting into it.

  There were a few hours left in the day, so Sara went out to get the long sticks that she wanted to hold up the pole she had found. She left her staff at the cave as she felt confident that she wouldn’t need it, but she would need her hands free to get the things she wanted.

  By the time night fell, she had the sticks she needed and had what might have looked like the beginning of a tent. Sara planned to use it to dry the blankets she had washed and then place it in front of the opening of the cave to serve as a door.

  She knew that the door wasn’t needed to survive, but she figured if she was going to be out here, she would make the place as homie as she could.

  As the day ended, she had planned the week out, and when she lay down to rest, she fell asleep at once.

  Sara looked up at her mother. Her mother was standing in the throne room telling her how handsome she thought the king, her husband, looked sitting on the throne. Her mother laughed a little and reached out to take Sara’s hand. Sara reached out and grabbed the hand tightly, not wanting this to end. She wanted to ask her mother something, then the memory of her death crawled into Sara’s mind. Sara tried to push it away, but then the dimly lit cave filled her vision. Sara sighed and closed her eyes. Maybe, she thought, Maybe I can but the dream was gone, and she was awake.

  Sara hadn’t had a dream with her parents for a while, and she wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. She had decided long ago to take these dreams as a gift rather than a curse. In those moments when she was just waking, she didn’t know loneliness or the pressures of the Lords. She was safe in the dream, and for a few moments, she had them again. Those moments ended, but at least for now, she didn’t have to move. She didn’t have to get ready to play princess or servant for the day.

  Even though she didn’t have to get up, the habit of getting up was part of her life, first for getting to lessons at the castle and in the last three months for dealing with being a servant, and later for training. Though Creator’s Day was typically a relaxed day at the castle, there was morning service, and here in the valley, it just felt right to continue getting up at the same time. Besides, she found that sleeping in late one day usually meant it was harder to get to sleep at night, and since living as a servant, being late was never a good idea.

  Now that she was up, she reached over and took a drink from her water container and proceeded to the place where she would fulfill her body’s requirements. She had considered using the cave that the thief had stayed in, but the smell was somehow worse than any privy she had ever been in. She hadn’t, of course, been in too many as the castle had facilities which made life easier. It wasn’t until she came to the valley that she realized how much easier. After that, she went to the pool, washed up a bit, and then prepared to go out and get some kind of bird or maybe some eggs. Eggs out here could be tricky, as they may be spoiled or have unhatched birds in them. She knew that she needed more than just fruit to live on.

  She got her staff and, on inspiration, tied her original knife to it. It wasn’t a perfect spear, but it would work better than just a knife. She took the hatchet, also not for hunting but in case she found a long, straight stick that she could work into another spear, one that she wouldn’t kick herself for losing.

  An hour later, she found where the chicken was hiding and snuck up and grabbed it. It looked just like the ones that were on the farm, so Sara guessed this one had escaped. She was smart enough to know it was also the reason she was able to get it. She didn’t like the process of cleaning an animal, but she quickly learned on the farm that if you didn’t do this work, then you didn’t eat or at least didn’t eat well.

  Once the chicken was cleaned, she began to cook it. She had no method of preserving the meat, so the best thing to do was to eat it, and by the time the day was over, she had eaten the whole thing.

  In the meantime, after the bird was cooked and she finished off what was left, she explored the field of stone. Now that she had the time and the sandals, it seemed the right thing to do. It was, after all, the only part of the cliff wall surrounding the valley that she hadn’t explored.

  She found another cave, but this one was only a little deeper than the one she was staying in. The rest of the cliff was exactly what it had looked like from further away, a wall of stone. There was no sign of exit, and the cliff was unscalable at least by someone like her. With that done, she decided to try and make a couple of torches. She had purposely saved the grease from the chicken to help the little bit of cloth she had tied on the top of the sticks to hold a flame. She really wished she had some type of oil, but this was the best she could manage, and she was determined to search deeper into the cave the thief had lived in. The other hope she had was that the smoke from the torches would mask the smell.