He heard the humming growl from the abyss between sleep and consciousness.
The sound confused him until the collapse of heavy cloth brought him into morning, and he woke up with the burden of his tent upon him.
Flailing through the canvas, the Wanderer pushed his head and shoulders through the flap into a whirlwind of dazzling color.
“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing?”
His heart pounded and he was suddenly dizzy, squeezing his eyes shut until it passed.
“How strange. I was about to ask you the same thing.”
The Wanderer recognized her voice and opened his eyes.
The girl he followed into No Man’s Land had finally come awake, standing over him with one hand wrapped around her necklace.
He swallowed hard.
She had the coldest blue eyes he’d ever seen. Her glare seared into him when she opened her palm and dropped a crystal in the folds of her shirt.
“So what are you doing here?” she asked.
The Wanderer felt foolish on his knees with his tent collapsed around him. The girl’s presence was unnerving. Even as angry as she was, his flesh came alive as soon as he saw her.
“Making myself at home,” he said, stepping out of the heap. “Same as you are.”
He noticed she dressed like him, in a loose shirt and pants.
But she also wore a holster, a small pouch slung around the belt at her left hip, and a pistol and dagger held in sheaths on her right.
The Wanderer glanced at her face and saw the corners of her mouth twitching.
She might be an adventurer, but not of his kind.
“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” he said.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she replied. “Maybe you should get going.”
The Wanderer sighed. The thought of packing up exhausted him, and he didn’t relish being alone if he complied.
“I didn’t mean to scare you…” he said, trailing off when the girl raised her brows. “But I saw you going into the woods the other day and-”
“Yeah, I saw you too,” she interrupted. “Did I ask you to come with me?”
“No, but I thought we’d make good company.”
“Well you were wrong.”
The Wanderer hesitated.
He couldn’t think of anything to say confronted with somebody who disliked him.
Then he remembered she addressed him as a wanderer, not a vagabond.
And he noticed the girl faced him directly and met his eye with a steady gaze. The way she talked also belied animosity, the low pitch and desultory rhythm of her speech pleasing.
If anything, the girl acted somewhat bored.
But he sensed she struggled to maintain her detached poise. He saw tension in the arms crossing her chest and in the muscle twitching in her jaw.
“Can’t we just start over?”
“No,” she snapped. “You need to get out of here.”
The Wanderer shook his head, wondering if he was in another dream.
But he looked again to see the girl’s demeanor was unchanged, her eyes staring right through him.
“Why are you being like this?”
“Because I have no use for wanderers. Now move along.”
She turned as she spoke her last, and headed for her tent.
The Wanderer stared after her back, too stunned to move for a moment.
For weeks, ostracism chiseled at his spirit.
But she was an outsider the same as he, and her dismissal birthed a fury he never knew he had. Before the Wanderer knew what he was doing, he caught up with the girl and swiveled her around to face him.
“I’d like to ask you something,” the Wanderer said. “Do you own these woods?”
“Let go of me.”
The calm in her voice made the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
Then an image of a horse and rider came to mind, backlit by the sun and running across the ridge before turning towards No Man’s Land.
“You crossed the border through the woods, didn’t you?”
The girl said nothing, but her pupils narrowed.
“I saw someone disappear in the trees,” he continued. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Are you threatening me, Wanderer?”
She spoke softly, yet there was no mistaking the menace in her tone.
But the Wanderer didn’t care, driven as he was by a wrath of his own.
“I don’t want the Lawmen around any more than you do,” he said. “But you can’t tell me whether I can stay or go.”
He released the girl and made his way back to his tent.
“You’re a fool, Wanderer.”
He knew he had shaken her composure from the hissing of air when she spoke.
That lent him some satisfaction, but her venom gave him pause.
His spine heated where her eyes burned into him and he had to force himself to focus on the fallen heap. His ears prickled from the sound of her running, then the muffled squeal of leather, and the click of her tongue.
The ground quivered when a giant stallion was spurred to action, the pounding of its hooves resonating in the Wanderer’s feet for what seemed a long time after the girl had gone.
