At dawn she woke to hear birds calling, and it seemed, mixed with their note, she could hear the harsh screams of the kyorebni, still feeding on the waste of the battlefield. She did not know where she was going; somewhere away from the sound of those screams. She got numbly to her feet and walked, not caring in which direction, further into the wood.
She walked most of that day. She was not conscious of hunger; she moved like a wild thing, silently, avoiding what was in her path and whenever she heard a noise, freezing silently in her tracks. Late in the day she nearly stumbled into a small stream, and cupping her hands, drank deeply of the clear sweet water, then laid herself down in a patch of sunlight that came between the leaves and let the sun dry the remaining damp from her clothes. She was still numb. As darkness fell, she curled up under a bush and slept. Some small thing in the grasses brushed against her and she never thought to turn aside.
The next morning she slept late and woke with the sun’s heat across her back. Before her, a spider had spun its web, clear and jewelled with the dew; she looked on its marvelous intricacy and felt the first pleasure she had felt in many days. The sun was bright on the leaves; a bushjumper suddenly bolted on long legs, followed by four miniature babies, their bushy tails standing up like small bluish flags riding high. Romilly heard herself laugh aloud, and they stopped, tails quivering, dead silent; then, as the silence fell around them, with a burst of speed all four of the tiny flags popped down a hole in the grass.
How quiet it was within the woods! There could certainly be no human dwelling nearby, or nothing could have been so peaceful, the wild things so untroubled and unafraid.
She uncurled herself from sleep, lazily stretching her limbs. She was thirsty, but there was no stream nearby; she licked the dew from the low leaves of the tree over her head. On a fallen log she found a few old woody mushrooms, and ate them, then found some dried berries hanging to a stem and ate them too. After a little while, as she wandered lazily through the wood, she saw the green flags of a root she knew to be edible, grubbed it up with a stick, rubbed off the dirt on the edge of her tunic, and chewed it slowly. It was stringy and hard, the flavor acrid enough to make her eyes water, but it satisfied her hunger.
She had lost the impetus that had kept her moving restlessly from place to place; she sat in the clearing of the fallen log most of the day, and when night fell again she slept there.
During her sleep she heard someone calling her name; but she did not seem to know the voice. Orain? No, he would not call her; he had wanted her when he thought her a boy, but had no use for the woman she really was. Her father? He was far away, across the Kadarin, safe at home. She thought with pain of the peaceful hills of Falconsward. Yet it was there she had learned that evil art of horse-training by which she had betrayed the beloved to his death. In her dream she seemed to sit on Sunstar’s back, to ride like the wind across the grey plain she once had seen, and she woke with her face wet with tears.
A day or two later she realized that she had lost shoes and stockings, she did not remember where, that her feet were already hardening to the dirt and pebbles of the forest floor. She wandered on aimlessly, ever deeper into the forest, eating fruits, grubbing in the earth for roots; now and again she cooled her feet in a mountain stream but she never thought of washing. She ate when she found food; when once for three days together she found nothing edible, she was dimly aware of hunger, but it did not seem important to her. She no longer troubled to rub the dirt from the roots she ate; they seemed just as good to her in their coats of earth. Once she found some pears on an abandoned tree and their taste was so sweet that she felt a rush of ecstasy. She ate as many as she could but it did not occur to her to fill her pockets or to tie them into her skirt.