Once Upon A Story | Fits & Starts: From the Beginning
Chapter 4

A scream broke the gentle stillness of the forest, and the four girls, two dressed in boys clothing looked about nervously.

“Don’t worry,” Alysian assured them, all the while glancing around uncertainly, “It’s just a mountain lion or something, and it’s pretty far away.”

“It sounded awfully close...” Josi said doubtfully.

“Don’t worry,” Alysian said firmly, “Come on, let’s go. Someone might have followed us.”

The men quickly reined in when they heard the scream.

“What in the would was that?” Clayton asked in surprise.

“Just a mountain lion,” Tim, the best hunter of the group, replied.

“Are you sure, Tim? That sounded an awful lot like a woman screaming,” Troy voiced their doubts.

“I know,” Tim said, “But what else could it be? The horse thieves wouldn’t want us to know where they were, so the only thing it could be is a mountain lion.”

“I suppose,” Troy said, still sounding doubtful.

“Come on let’s get this done with, I’m getting tired,” Allen piped up.

“Not to mention hungry,” Clayton said ruefully, rubbing his stomach.

As they galloped into the familiar clearing, Alysian veered towards the cave where they’d spent the night, swinging off the chestnut she’d grabbed. She glanced back at her sisters, thankful for the pants she wore when she saw the scrapes on Josi and Lin’s legs where their hiked-up skirts hadn’t protected them.

Waving them towards the cave, she grabbed their horses and hid them back in the forest, then ran back to the cave and waited with her sisters to see if anyone had followed them.

They were rewarded for their patience, when, several minutes later, four men came into the clearing, they looked around for a few minute, which seemed like forever to the girls, then started to leave.

Suddenly, out of the forest trotted the gray they’d taken, whinnying and prancing about as if to get attention.

“Shhhh,” Alysian hissed frantically, waving him back to the forest.

The stallion paid her no heed, but trotted over to the men and reared up on his hind legs, somehow magnificent yet playful at the same time.

The girls couldn’t make out what was being said, but when they saw the men dismount they glanced at one another nervously and drew back into the cave.

Joy glared at her sister from under the boy’s cap she wore, “Great idea, Lissy, ‘steal some horses, they’ll never know’. Now look what’s happened!”

“OK, it was a bad idea, now hush, or they’ll hear you!”

“Too late.”

The girls gasped in unison and whirled around. There in the entrance of the cave stood a blonde man, arms crossed, a mocking smile on his face.

“Hey, Clayton,” the other blonde man called, “What’d you find?”

“Nothing much,” he yelled back, “Just a couple of horse thieves.”

Immediately, the others ran over to where the cave. When Josi saw the face of the one obviously in charge, she gave a faint gasp and automatically drew back into the shadows.

“Come out of there,” they were commanded.

Josi followed her sisters, her head bent so that her hair blocked any view of her face, but it was no use, the leader looked at her oddly, then said, “You... look at me.”

With a faint sigh she slowly raised huge blue-gray eyes to meet startled green ones. “You!... You’re a thief?!”

“NO!” Josi immediately protested, “We just.. needed horses,” she finished weakly.

“I can’t believe it!” Troy, the man Josi had spent most of the ball talking to, berated himself, “I fell for a thief’s trick.”

“But...” Josi began only to be interrupted by the boy beside her, “Do you know him?”

“Lis-, er, uh.. yes,” she said quickly, to hide her mistake.

Tim interrupted everyone’s thoughts by saying, “Come on, let’s hand them over to the constable and go get something to eat.”

At the same time Troy and Josi protested, “No!”, “Not after we’ve run the horses like that!”, then looked at each other oddly.

Tim smothered a chuckle, he thought it very funny that his big brother had fallen for a thief.

“Besides, we haven’t found my horse,” Troy added.

Just then Troy’s horse walked into the clearing, a dazed, bleeding, bedraggled girl clinging to its back. The large bay came to a stop before the small group and the girl, whom the men recognized as the one who’d taken off on Troy’s horse, stared at them for a second, then looked past them. As her eyes fluttered shut she softly cried, “Help...” then her body went limp and she slid off the huge animal’s back and landed on the ground with a thump, on the far side of the horse.

The gray, who Alysian was beginning to dislike galloped over and stood beside the unconscious girl. When the men tried to get to her, he immediately reared up, whinnying, and forced the men to back up.

Quickly, Josi stepped forward and tried to soothe the horse, but he backed up, away from her. When she stepped toward the prone form on the ground, though, he herded her away. After many tries, she motioned the oldest boy to come over. The men watched in amazement as, together, they calmed the horse and the boy knelt down to take the girl’s pulse under the anxious horse’s eye.

“Is she alive?” Troy asked.

The boy nodded, “Barely,” he said, in a oddly high voice. “Go get some water,” he commanded no one in particular. The other girl, the one who stood next to Josi, hurried into the cave and returned with a leather pouch of water, which she handed to the boy. Gently, he tipped the water into the unresponsive mouth, letting it trickle in, then carefully washed the dirt away from the gash on her temple.

“Give me a handkerchief,” he demanded, then snatched the offering out of Troy’s hand.

“You’re welcome,” Troy muttered, disgruntled.

“Sorry,” the boy said absently. “Here, hold this to her temple.”

Troy did as he was asked and the boy ran to the cave and came back with a large bag of extremely old looking leather. Tenderly, he opened it and removed some plants and a small, wooden bowl. He poured some water into it, added the plants and crushed them into a paste. Next, he took the handkerchief and soaked it in the mixture, then pressed it to the young girl’s head.

The girl moaned, and rolled away, but very gently, the boy held her still, and washed the wound clean.

Carefully wrapping the bandage that seemed to come out of nowhere around her head, he told them, “She’ll be all right if the cut’s not infected.”

Suddenly, Tim spoke up, “Not that I’m not glad she’ll be okay, but now it’s too dark to get back.”

“Aww, are woo afwaid of the dark?” the younger boy mocked, the baby talking voice surprisingly feminine.

“Look, brat,” the usually cheerful Tim almost snarled, “We’ve had a bad day, so don’t push your luck.”

The other boy stepped in front of his companion, glaring, “See here, if you think you can boss my sist...” he trailed off.

“Wait a minute..” Troy began, but he was cut off by the boy’s cry of, “Run!”

The four darted off across the clearing. The two girls and the younger boy were easily caught, but the other headed for the woods beside the cave. Just as he’d almost made it, Clayton stepped in front of him.

Wildly, the boy swung wildly at him, but Clayton was a skilled fighter and easily dodged the blows. Finally, exasperated, he punched the boy, none to gently, causing the boy to fall unconscious. Tossing him over his shoulder, he headed back to where to others waited.

Tim held the other boy, who was keeping his head down. Cheerfully, he said, “Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for...” and tugged the hat off his head. Golden blond hair, streaked with silver fell to her shoulders and she glared at them, furious.

“Some reason one brother wasn’t enough?” Allen asked.

“You can’t be that stupid,” she fumed with cultured accents.

Clayton caught on immediately and tugged at the other’s hat, then pulled, then yanked at it until Alysian’s long thick curling hair burst out and fell over her unconscious face. “I hit a girl,” he said in shock.

“No you didn’t,” the fourth girl, so far silent, spoke up.

“Yes,” Josi seconded, “You punched her.”

Troy glared at them, and their chins raised in defiance.

Alysian groaned and the girls quickly turned their attention to their sister, “Lisy, are you all right?”, “Come out of it Lisy.”

“What kind of name is Lisy?” Tim asked curiously.

Joy glared at Allen, who was holding her firmly, and jerked herself out of his hold. “Her name’s Alysian,” she practically snarled. Normally she would have enjoyed so much male attention, but she’d had no dinner, been all scratched up in the chase through the forest, scared witless, chased down like a dog, and now they’d hit her sister!

Gently, Lin took ahold of her arm and quietly told her, “Calm down, Joy. Anger won’t get us anywhere but deeper into trouble.”

“She’s coming around,” Clayton informed the girls. Suddenly Alysian, who had been playing dead for several minutes jerked out of Clayton’s hold, kicked him in the shins, causing him to yelp loudly, and darted away. Unfortunately for her, the ever observant Allen had seen when she’d come around and was prepared for this eventuality, he stood, blocking her escape path, and she knew enough to not try to challenge him. Veering off, she headed away from him. Just as she was about to run into the prone form lying forgotten on the ground, the gray came out of nowhere, blocking the only escape route.

Alysian yelped in surprise, then windmilled her arms in an attempt to keep her balance and not run into the horse. She didn’t run into the gray, but she did fall backwards into Clayton’s waiting arms.

She glared at him, jerked herself upright and flounced off to stand next to her sisters.

“What,” Troy directed his question toward Josi, “is going on here?”

“We needed horses.”

“What for?”

“Ours were tired,” Josi replied defiantly, refusing to reveal why they would steal horses, or dress up as boys.

“Wha’d you mean, they..” his voice trailed off as he realized it, “You’re on the run, aren’t you?”

Josi stared at the ground, the trees, anywhere but him.

“You are,” he affirmed, “but from who? Did you do something? Did someone do something to you? Is someone going to do something to you?”

“You might say all of the above,” she said wryly. After that they refused to say anything more, so the men, determined to find out more in the morning, agreed to keep a watch on the girls and thus was the rest of the night.