Terry Goodkind - The Pillars of Creation

Sebastian rifled through the dead men’s pockets, pulling out money he found, cramming it in his own pockets. He unstrapped all four knives, none as good as the one he’d tucked behind her belt, the one with the ornate letter “R” on the handle, the one from the fallen dead man, the one her mother had used.

Sebastian slipped the four knives down the side of the pack as he yelled at her again to hurry. While he took the best sword from one of the men, Jennsen went to the table. She scooped up candles and stuffed them in the pack. Sebastian attached the scabbard of the sword to his weapons belt. Jennsen collected small implements—cooking utensils, pots—pushing them in her pack. She wasn’t really aware of what she was taking. She was just picking up whatever she saw and putting it in.

Sebastian lifted her pack, took one of her wrists, and stuffed it through the strap, as if he were handling a rag doll. He put her other arm through the other strap he held out for her, then threw her cloak around her shoulders. After he pulled the hood up over her head, he stuffed her red hair in the sides.

He held her mother’s pack in one hand. He tugged twice and freed his axe from the soldier’s skull. Blood ran down the handle as he hooked the axe on his weapons belt. With the heel of his sword hand against the small of her back, he urged her onward.

“Anything else?” he asked as they moved toward the door. “Jennsen, do you want anything else from your house before we go?”

Jennsen looked over her shoulder at her mother on the floor.

“She’s gone, Jennsen. The good spirits are taking care of her, now. She’s smiling down on you, now.”

Jennsen looked up at him. “Really? You think so?”

“Yes. She’s in a better world, now. She told us to go from here. We have to do what she said.”

In a better world. Jennsen clung to that idea. Her world held only anguish.

She moved toward the door, doing as Sebastian said to do. He scanned in every direction. She simply followed, stepping over bodies, over bloody arms and legs. She was too scared to feel anymore, too heartsick to care. Her thoughts seemed completely muddled. She had always prided herself on her clear thinking. Where had her clear thinking gone?

In the rain, he pulled her by her arm toward the path down.

“Betty,” she said, digging in her heels. “We have to get Betty.”

He gazed at the path, then toward the cave. “I don’t think we need bother with the goat, but I should get my pack, my things.”

She saw he was standing in the downpour without his cloak. He was soaked to the skin. It occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t thinking clearly. He was so intent on escaping that he almost left his things. That would be the death of him. She couldn’t let him die. Betty would help, but there was one other thing that she remembered. Jennsen ran back in the house.

She ignored Sebastian’s yells. Inside, she wasted no time rushing to a small wooden chest just inside the door. She looked at nothing else as she pulled out two bundled sheepskin cloaks—one hers, one her mother’s. They kept them there, rolled and tied, at the ready, in case they ever had to leave in a hurry. He watched from the doorway, impatient, but silent when he saw what she was doing. Without looking death in the eye, she rushed back out of her house for the last time.

Together, they ran to the cave. The fire was still crackling hot. Betty paced and trembled but was uncharacteristically silent, as if knowing something was terribly wrong.

“Dry yourself a bit, first,” she said.

“We don’t have time! We have to get out of here. The others could come at any moment.”

“You’ll freeze to death if you don’t. Then what good will running do? Dead is dead.” Her own reasoned words surprised her.

Jennsen pulled the two rolled sheepskin cloaks from under her wool cloak and started working loose the knots in the thongs. “These will help keep the rain out, but you need to get dry, first, otherwise you won’t stay warm enough.”

He was nodding as he shivered and rubbed his hands before the fire, the sense of what she said finally overcoming his urgency to be gone. She wondered how he managed to do all he had done with a fever and after having taken herbs. Fear, she guessed. Stark-raving fear. That, she understood.

Her whole body ached. Not only had she been banged around, but she saw now that her shoulder was bleeding. The cut wasn’t bad, but it throbbed. The sustained level of terror had left her drained and exhausted.

She wanted only to lie down and cry, but her mother had told her to get away. Only her mother’s words motivated her now. Without those last commands, Jennsen would be unable to function. Now she simply did what her mother had told her to do.

Betty was beside herself. The distraught goat tried to climb the pen to get to Jennsen. As Sebastian hovered over the fire, Jennsen tied a rope around Betty’s neck. The goat was as thankful to be going as a goat could be.

They would give Betty a chance to return the favor. When they had gotten away and found at least simple shelter, they would not be able to build a fire on such a wet night. If they could find a dry hole, a spot under a rock ledge, or beneath fallen trees, they would hunker down beside the goat. Betty would keep them both warm so they wouldn’t freeze to death.

Jennsen understood the plaintive calls Betty made toward the house. The goat’s ears were at attention. Betty was worried for the woman who wasn’t going. Jennsen collected all the carrots and acorns off the shelf, stuffing them in pockets and packs.

When Sebastian was as dry as he was going to allow himself to get, they donned their wool cloaks and topped them with the sheepskin. With Jennsen leading Betty by the rope, they started out into the drenching darkness. Sebastian headed for the trail down from the front—the way he had come in.

Jennsen seized his arm, stopping him. “They might be waiting down there.”

“But we have to get out of here.”

“I have a better way. We made an escape route.”

He gazed at her a moment through the fall of icy rain separating them, then, without further protest, followed her into the unknown.

Oba Schalk snatched the chicken by the neck and lifted it from the nest box. The chicken’s head looked tiny above his meaty fist. With his other hand, he fished a warm brown egg from the bottom of the depression in the straw. He gently placed the egg in the basket with the others.

Oba didn’t set the chicken back down.

He grinned as he lifted it closer to his face, watching its head twist from side to side, its beak open and close, open and close. He put his own lips close, so the beak was touching his lips, then, with all his might, he blew in the chicken’s open mouth.

The chicken squawked and flapped, madly trying to escape the viselike fist. A deep laugh rolled up from Oba’s throat.

“Oba! Oba, where are you!”

When he heard his mother hollering for him, Oba plopped the chicken back on its nest. His mother’s voice had come from the nearby barn. Squawking its terror, the chicken fled the henhouse. Oba followed it out of the coop and then trotted toward the door to the barn.

The week before, they had had a rare winter downpour. By the following day, the standing water had frozen and the rain had turned to snow. Windswept snow now hid the ice, making for treacherous footing. Despite his size, Oba negotiated the icy conditions without much difficulty. Oba prided himself on being light on his feet.

It was important for a person not to let their body or mind become and dull. Oba believed it was important to learn new things. He believed it was important to grow. He thought it was important for a to use what they had learned. That was how people grew.