CHAPTER 4

  Some hours later, he continues to trudge through the woods. The rain has hardened into a downpour, replete with thunder and the occasional flash of lightning. Yet, not nearly enough to illuminate his blind trek.

  "Surely a hamlet should exist this deep into the kingdom..." he thinks aloud, "yet, so long after the border, I find none." He continues the walk, his leather boots soaked through with water, aching his feet. He could feel his toes shriveled and sore, not long yet until they begin to tear and bleed. "Yea, t'least the rain hath hidden mine scent." he remarks, trying to pull his thoughts off of his soles. He leans against a tree, with his head hanging down, looking upon the soaked ground squishing beneath his boots. "Pray I find a hovel. A wagon even..." he begs, in the hopes that something might respite him from the rain. "Should I wait the night? I fear I shall traipse in circles without my lantern..."

  A sharp glinting in the distance catches his eye as he looks up, trying to find something to latch his senses onto, give him a sense of direction that is so easily curtailed in a darkened forest. A warm glow, just beyond the endless abyss of darkness between the trees. A flame of something. What it might be; he cared not, for it meant something of civility. Something of mankind. Hopefully a structure, even more-so a structure with inhabitants. "Lord..." he sighs to himself with a welcome light-hearted jest, "your humor finds me at ill times more than I would care to admit..." Straightening back up from his rest against the tree, he steps forward, thinking aloud: "It is close enough to scry through this storm. So I shall press on..."

  The storm begins to subside as he closes in on the haunting light in the distance. Using its dim glow that barely gave trees enough shadow for him to wade through the foliage, he slowly approaches. Carefully, softly, quietly, as he yet still knew nothing of its source, and even less of what or whom might await his arrival to.

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  As the trees thin out, and he slowly gains for confidence in his steps as not to tumble over a stray root or collide into the trunk of a pine, he ever so slightly is able to make out a silhouette of a building. Finally, clearing the edge of the forest and stepping into an open field bisected by a dirt road, stood the structure from which the light emanated. A holy building. "Is that? Oh! A parish!" he jovially proclaims upon seeing the building outlined by the moon's ghastly gaze. In a steeple overtop the outdoor foyer, a window held the lantern that which guided his steps. A guiding star that beckoned him here.

  He quickens his pace to a light trot, wincing against his screaming side that throbbed with every other step. He finally reaches the door: heavy oak boards strewn together by hefty rivets and wooden straps crossing the ends parallel to the floor. Strips of soft candlelight seeped through the seams between the boards and pooled on the stoop, giving a welcoming glow as he fell to his knees at the door and crashed his fist onto it. Savagely rapping at the door, hoping that in this late hour, someone might hear.

  "Hail! Hail, fellow!" he cries into the door in between thuds of his hand against it, "I need aid! I've suffered injury!" For a moment that drags, no reply. No sound apart from the gently patting of rain just behind him against the soaked ground. He calls again into the door, pleading for answer of any kind, "Friar! Father!" And yet still: no answer.

  He feels his eyelids growing heavier with every moment he holds to his consciousness, knowing there is little more he can do now besides cling to lucidity until someone should aid him. He grows more pleading, more desperate as he calls into the door again, "Priest? Sister?", yet no answer. "Bellman? ANYONE?"

  With his final, desperate request of anyone that might answer his hail, his eyes darken with fatigue and he begins to slump against the door. His hand leaves a bloodied trail on the wood as he slinks down further onto the floor of the stoop. Just as he closes his eyes, he sees the door crack open and listens to it creak on old hinges as he succumbs to slumber.