catchy name

          They were still chasing me in my sleep, the townspeople.  I ran and ran, further and faster than I had in real life, except in my dream it was them hunting me from horseback, and me on foot.  I tried to hide to throw them off, but they found me, and just as the men loomed over me to take me back, one of them asked, "Who are you?"

        I opened my eyes to the ceiling of the barn.  A bed of straw enveloped me, and I nestled down into it, trying to ignore my screaming muscles and the scrapes and bruises that adorned my body.  Then came the voice again, and I realized that the question hadn't been in my dream at all. 

        "Well, you're pretty aren't you," the man's voice carried up from the barn floor below, too far away to be speaking directly to me.  I tensed where I lay, not wanting to make too much noise.  "And smart, too, let yourself in."  I could hear him moving around, and realized he was talking to my horse, or, more accurately, the horse I had stolen.  I cursed at myself, Should have been more careful!  Should have woken up earlier!  Should have... 

        As quietly as I could, I got to my feet and crept to the edge of the loft.  I could only see the back of his head and shoulders as he moved around to inspect the horse, but I could tell by the jacket and the ribbon that tied back his curly blonde hair that he was not the stable boy.  I watched as he tipped the water bucket I had filled to see how much was in it. 

        "Fed and watered yourself, too," he sounded amused.  Then, "Hmmm! You must be really good to have brushed yourself!"  Then in a quieter voice, more to himself-keeping in mind that he was talking to a horse-he added, "because you're certainly not mine...."

        He glanced around outside the stall, more like he was looking for things out of place than a person.  Just as I was shrinking back so as not to be seen, a sound like a pack of wolfhounds on a blood trail went off what seemed like right next to my head.  Startled, and in a precarious position already, I fell back, landing with a thunk on my backside. 

        "Michel, shhh, quiet," he soothed the dog, who was clearly not right next to my head, but on the floor with him.  Unfortunately not far enough away to not catch my scent.  "Now either that was a really big rat, or..."  There was a hint of laughter in his voice when he spoke, but I could hear the apprehension as well. 

        I didn't try to move as I listened to him climb up the ladder to the loft.  There was nowhere to go.  Then suddenly his face was peering at me from the top of the ladder.  A long face, but not unpleasantly so, a pointed chin.  I caught myself staring.  It was the eyes-blue eyes, the color of the sea after a storm.  The most incredible blue eyes.... It occurred to me that I shouldn't have been staring quite so much.  But then, maybe, neither should he. 

        After spending a little bit too long a time studying me, his eyes slightly wider than they should have been, he spoke.  "Hi."  It was an amused tone, the kind you would use if you caught a child trying to sneak somewhere they knew they weren't supposed to be.  Simple, unthreatening.  He had made no move toward me, had not even said anything frightening, but I was not inclined to be trusting of the man who had just caught me breaking into his stables.  I was still close enough to the ladder to reach it with my foot, and so I lashed out, kicking blindly into his chest. 

        I hit his shoulder instead, sending one arm flailing back, searching for balance.  The other hand still held tightly to the ladder, though, and he righted himself.  I scooted back, away from him, glancing around behind me for somewhere to go.  Before I knew what had happened he had finished climbing into the loft and had a hold of my foot.  I stopped struggling.  What else could I do?  This man would clearly beat me in a wrestling competition, and now that he was on steady footing, I didn't have much hope of throwing him over the edge.  I wasn’t giving up yet, but I stopped struggling.

        Still holding my feet, one ankle in each hand, he spoke again.  "I suppose that's your horse down there?"  When I didn't respond he answered himself.  "Of course it is.  And I don't need to ask you what you were doing here, because clearly you were sleeping."  His grip on my ankles had loosened enough that I could move them, but there was something about the way he was looking at me, the way he was talking to me.  If he'd wanted to hurt me or throw me out, he would not be asking these questions.  When he realized that I wasn’t going to try to kick him out of the loft again, he released me.  "Now, why you were sleeping in the loft of a barn 20 kilometers from the nearest town, I couldn't say.  Maybe you could fill me in on that?"

        His question filled me with a new kind of panic.  What would he do if I told him that I was running from a town full of people trying to drown me on suspicion of witchcraft?  I could not tell him that. 

        "No?" he asked into the silence, "Okay.  How about a name?"

        I could have told him my name, but something stopped me from even doing that.  Perhaps it was fear, or exhaustion, but somehow I couldn't find my voice to speak to him. 

        "Do you speak?"

        It seemed such a ridiculous question that I almost felt the urge to laugh, but the fear that was left over from the night before was too tight in my throat.  My nerves were beginning to unwind again, now that I had decided that he wasn’t an immediate threat, and I realized how tired I still was.

        "I'll take your silence as a yes.  Come on, a bath and some food will do you good."  He turned and climbed back down the ladder.  Perhaps I'd run into some luck after all.  If he kept this up my faith in humanity might be restored... maybe...

        When I alighted from the ladder, the brown and white short hair that had betrayed me earlier approached me suspiciously and, back legs tensed, sniffed around at my feet.  The man had stopped a few steps ahead, waiting for me.  Regarding the dog warily, I stepped away, slowly, and followed him out of the barn. 

        The scene before me had been a mass of shifting shadows when I had snuck into the barn with my horse and crept up into the loft late the night before.  Now, the hazy morning sun lit up an idyllic landscape.  A few trees grew up around a small stone castle, humble as castles go, grey stone walls and one lone tower whose black tile roof was adorned with an iron wind vane.  The second floor overhung the first in front, creating a shaded area in front of the door.  Stone archways supported the awning, and underneath lay a brick pathway.  There were no expansive gardens, but the flowers and shrubs that grew close to the wall were neatly kept and the stones themselves carefully cleaned.  To me, having grown up in a cottage built for two but housing four, it was a palace.  Behind it all stretched the endless blue of the Mediterranean.  There was no beach; the cliffs into which the house and stables were settled dropped off sheer, giving the impression of standing on the edge of the world.

         Even as I followed him across the grass to his home, I wasn’t sure what to make of him.  I’d never met someone who lived in a castle before, but they had been the subject of my childhood bedtime stories for as long as I could remember.  Handsome lords and ladies dressed in elegant fashion were the stuff of fiction, and for me just as romantic as fairies and sorceresses.  In my mother’s stories, they had gone to dances and fallen in love and lived happily ever after, but when my grandmother sat by my bed at night, nobles became cruel, making life difficult for plain folk like the people of my village.  This man didn’t seem cruel, but I’d never met anyone like him before.  Perhaps it was my curiosity about the nobles from my childhood stories that made me follow him initially, or perhaps it was this man’s straightforward manner that put me to ease and made me feel like I had found a safe refuge from all the chaos that had been drawn to me over the past few days.  Either way, I did follow him, and in retrospect, I’m glad I did. 

         A simple but elegant design was carved into the nearly six inch thick piece of solid oak that was the front door.  The entrance that came into view as it swung open was laid with a thick blue and yellow rug.  I wasn’t sure where to start looking as I stepped over the threshold and into the most beautiful room I had ever seen.  The stairway of white, polished marble curved up from the entranceway to the second story.  To the right was a parlor adorned with long dusky blue curtains embroidered with tiny fleur de lei and furnished with cushioned chair and soft, plush love seats.  In the dining room to the left I counted at least ten matching upholstered chairs set around a polished wood table with feet that resembled the claws of a lion.  Arches lined the wall behind the stair, revealing a hallway lined with brass candle holders and papered in blue and gold. 

         The door whooshed shut behind us, just barely tugging at the skirt of my dress.  As I stood enraptured by the unaccustomed extravagance, footsteps announced the entrance of a tall and stately dressed man sporting grey hair and a worried expression. 

         “Young master,” the older man’s voice held the slight stress of worry as he addressed the man whom I had been following, “has something happened?”

         His voice reminded me of my grandfather’s, old and kindly, though far less graveled by the pipe tobacco that my father had enjoyed so much.  His face, also, was not the leathery brown that my grandfather’s had become from spending day after day in the sun, but he still possessed that familial sense of fatherly concern. 

         “Yes, Antoine.” The younger man indicated me tactfully with his eyes.