A Night in the Stable

A short story from the First World

Photo by Lorene Farrugia on Unsplash

The straw tickled Lew’s nose. He tried to ignore it. Sometimes that was enough. This time it was not. It pulled him towards wakefulness, and he batted it away. It came right back, and Lew batted it away again. He had finally shifted enough that the irritation subsided.

A new irritation rose in its place: Lew couldn’t get back to sleep. The horses huffed, their breath heavy. The rats scurried, their every footfall clear in Lew’s ears.

Back home, the end of first sleep meant a few hours of fun, of quiet joking about, of stories in the darkness. And then after second sleep, an early start to the day’s farm work. Here? He had the same early start, but they worked him later, and he had no one to share the midnight hour with.

No one to laugh at his impressions of Old Mister Barnacle, who lived next to the smithy. No one to sing lullabies to the little ones, which Lew had secretly enjoyed listening to. No one to share stories of dreams or gossip or fancy. The horses didn’t care for such things at all. So he would just lie in the dark, thinking instead of all the things he had done wrong that day, and all the ways Master Thadfas would berate him tomorrow. After an hour or two of that, he’d finally fall back to sleep.

But first sleep had ended too soon. There was still the sound of revelry, seeping through the walls from the tavern. Much too early for him to be awake. He worried more about tomorrow, how without proper sleep he’d make more mistakes, forget more things, and get Thadfas’ strap even more. The worry made it all the worse, of course.

Eventually, the sound of revelry ebbed, but Lew’s mind still didn’t settle. He had a strange feeling, worse than the days when he knew he was to be sent away but didn’t yet know where. Worse than the time Mistletoe dashed off into the woods after some fox or rabbit and didn’t come home for three days, and then when she did her white fur was matted and bloodied, her left eye was an ugly red wound, already infected, and she couldn’t put weight on her front left paw. Worse than the dread of that time he’d been so ill the witch had been at a loss, and Lew had heard her tell Ma that not even magicks could help me, and there was nothing to be done about it. Lew smiled to himself. The witch had been terrified of him when he recovered, and never came near the house again, thinking he was some kind of haunting spirit or something.

No, this was worse than anything he had felt before.

And in the next moment, the stable door was pulled open from outside.