Chapter 5: Forest

WHEN STEVEN WOKE in the morning, he was cold like he could not remember being in all the time he had traveled with Selah. He rolled over, but she was not next to him. Rubbing sleep from his eyes he sat up and looked around. A few steps away, a soldier stood as if on guard, gazing out toward the south.

Ah, yes, Steven thought. The sergeant.

Then Steven took in the rest of the campsite. The fire still smoldered, and his pack lay at his head. But there was no sign of Selah. Or the donkey. Or the wagon. He rubbed his eyes and looked around again, scrambling out of his bedroll. He rushed to the sergeant.

“Where is Selah?” he demanded of the soldier.

“Who is Selah?” responded the sergeant.

“Selah is my ... The lady who was with me when you found us yesterday. And the donkey and cart?” Steven blurted.

“I don’t know about no lady, sir,” said the sergeant calmly. “There is no lady here, nor donkey and cart, neither.”

“I can see she is not here,” said Steven, “but where is she?”

“Now how would I be supposed to know that?” asked the sergeant. “If there is no lady here, why would I know where the lady is? You are not making sense, sir, if I may be so plain.”

“Now see here,” Steven blustered. “Yesterday you arrived with two other soldiers and found Madame Selah Welinska, Xandros the donkey, my cart, and me. You sent the other two back to court to tell the King I’d been found. We spent the day hunting and preparing supplies for the journey through the King’s forest. We ate dinner and Selah danced and you fell asleep. Now where is Madame Welinska?”

“Well, now, that is just as I remember things,” said the sergeant. “But I’m not committing to having seen a lady. No, I can’t say that I did.”

Steven was dumbfounded. The soldier was aggravating. What did he mean by not committing to having seen a lady after he just agreed that she’d been there and danced the night before? Steven had slept in her arms until ... He wasn’t quite sure exactly when, but he had fallen asleep in her arms. And he had been traveling with the blasted little donkey and cart for seven years. He began to look on the ground for tracks indicating which way they had gone.

He found none.

As far as Steven could tell by the ground, there had been no one camped in this hollow but him and the soldier. There were no donkey tracks or other signs. There were no wagon ruts. There was nothing that would indicate anything other than what the sergeant had said.

Steven sat in the middle of the road and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. He scuffed his feet into the dirt of the road looking for a sign of bricks, but even that evaded his investigation. Steven was heartbroken and confused. It was not possible that he had been here alone. What had transpired over the past seven years?

“Now, begging your pardon, sir,” interrupted the sergeant, “If you wouldn’t mind getting your pack together, we could get under way. Our journey lies that way,” he said pointing into the forest.

“Yes. Certainly,” Steven said quietly. He silently got up and put his pack together. There were plenty of strips of roast venison to pack in his bag, but certainly not a whole deer worth. He supposed it was just as well that Selah had taken the rest of the meat, because without the wagon he would surely have no means to transport it. He still could not understand how he could have slept through Selah rising, harnessing the donkey, and pulling the wagon with its tinkling bells away from the camp.

At last, he shouldered his pack, picked up his walking stick, and looked sadly around the last campsite he’d shared with his beloved.

“Are you absolutely sure you didn’t wake up when the lady left?” he asked the sergeant.

“Now, a soldier is always alert to what is going on, son,” said the sergeant. “I ain’t saying I slept the whole night long, but I ain’t saying I saw no lady get up and spirit away a donkey and wagon in the middle of the night, neither.”

“Spirit away? You mean she just vanished?” Steven asked incredulously.

“I didn’t say I saw that,” said the sergeant. “You can’t convict me for something I didn’t confess to. Now if we could get moving?”

“Lead on,” Steven growled.

He followed the soldier into the forest.

They had not gone far into the forest when Steven began to feel the need to talk. He had begun counting steps the moment they left the campsite—something he had not done in seven years. But now it seemed that if he kept track of the footsteps, he would know how far and in what direction he needed to go to get back to his beloved Madame Selah Welinska. The footsteps seemed hollow, however, and he was sure he could entice the sergeant to tell him more.

“Sergeant,” said Steven finally, “I don’t know your name. I am Steven George the Storyteller. What are you called?”

“I’m called Sergeant by those who know what’s good for them,” he answered.

“But surely you have a name, don’t you?” Steven probed.

“I ain’t saying I don’t have a name,” the sergeant answered. “You asked what I’m called. I’m called Sergeant.”

“All right, Sergeant,” Steven continued. “What is your name?”

The sergeant mumbled something in return and Steven asked him to repeat it.

“Busker,” the sergeant said more loudly. “I’m Sergeant Busker, if you must know. Now can we pick up the pace a bit here?”

“Well, Busker,” said Steven, “shall we tell each other stories to make the journey go faster?”

“Sergeant,” answered Sergeant Busker. “No one calls me Busker. And if you would like to make the journey go faster, we could pick up the pace a bit. This scarcely qualifies as a march.”

“I didn’t know we were marching,” Steven said.

“Soldiers march,” Busker answered.

“I’m not a soldier. I’m a storyteller,” Steven said. “I walk. So far, we have come seven thousand two hundred fifty-five steps this morning.”

“I’m a soldier. I march,” Sergeant answered. “We have barely ‘walked’ a league.”

It had been many years since Steven had picked up the pace, as Sergeant wanted. He had never hurried anywhere since meeting Madame Welinska seven years ago. But he remembered the one hundred five step-per-minute pace that had always been his norm on the road and determined to regain it for the sake of having civil conversation with Sergeant.

Sergeant was pleased when Steven set out a longer stride, but Steven had difficulty maintaining a consistent pace. It was once so simple, he thought. How I have changed.

“Why don’t you Once Upon a Time me,” Steven asked presently.

“I beg your pardon?” Sergeant shot at him. “Tell me a story,” Steven clarified. “Then I shall tell you a story. It will be a pleasant way to pass the time and we shall both be a story richer by the end of the day.”

“Soldiers don’t tell stories,” Sergeant retorted. “Soldiers say only what they see with their own two eyes. Soldiers must always be depended upon to report accurately to their superior officers.”

“Well, let’s start there then,” Steven said happily. “What did you see with your own two eyes when you woke up in the middle of the night just before the lady and the donkey vanished.”

“I ain’t saying I saw no lady in the middle of the night,” said Sergeant. “I ain’t saying I saw no great winged dragon launch into the sky with a baby dragon at its side and a wagon in its claws. That would be a silly thing to say I saw. No one would never believe it.”