Vin keeps walking

“Druze!”

The cry sounded babyish to his own ears—almost like a sob—and it shamed him.

But Druze stopped walking. Perhaps that was what it would take to get through to him.

“Druze,” he pleaded. “She’s not here. There are no bats here. We haven’t seen bats in…”

How long? Here in the belly of the earth, how could a boy know what was day and what was night?

“So we look—for bats,” Druze wheezed. He began walking again, and Vin was forced to follow.

His own belly had stopped speaking long ago, and now it alternated between aches and burning pain, depending on whether he filled it with water or not.

Druze could make water come out of the rocks, but not bread. Bread…

Vin slipped his hand into the empty sack again, in search of the least crumb.

Those three girls had received more than the few grateful thoughts he had promised them. Perhaps they were the last sight of life and sanity he would ever have.

He did not much care for girls, but those three had the exotic charm of being of his own kind. It was funny to make the two of them laugh and the one of them scream. He had thought of a few other things he wished he had said that would surely have produced the same effect.

He also wished he had stopped and shared their snack with them. He could not stop thinking about the cheese gone to waste, and the honey. Honey…

“Druze, please!”

Druze slowed, but he did not stop. Vin would have to keep running after him until he collapsed. So had it been for…

How long? Days? He could not even allow his body to follow its own rhythm of wake and sleep, for if he tried to sleep, Druze eventually grew tired of waiting, picked him up, and carried him.

Druze could have carried him forever, for Druze did not sleep, Druze did not eat, and Druze did not tire. But there were few nightmares more hideous than waking up in the arms of a corpse.

Indeed, Vin had begun to believe that there would come a day—or a night—when he would not wake up, when one corpse would be carrying another.

He wished he had not followed Druze. He had only wanted to be free, to show the elves he didn’t need to be protected. He had only wanted to see how the men lived, since he would one day have to live among them. But without Druze and his magic, the elves would have surely found him again in no time.

Now it was what he wanted more than anything—now that he could not have been found even if Druze left him behind.

Anyway, he still needed Druze for light and for water. He would soon be weak enough to cry like a baby as he stumbled after him, but he thought he would rather die in the arms of a corpse who loved him than die alone. Druze was the closest thing to life and sanity he would ever see again.