THE SILVER BRACELET

Winter is nearly over.  Heart is glad-but she is also afraid. 

Will Tin Blackaby's men start searching for her again?  Ruth Oakes, Ash Grove's healer, is the only one who knows where Heart is hiding.  She brings Heart   food.  She gave her leather boots and a thick felt coat.

Heart knows she can't hide in her cave forever. 

 But where can she go? 

Where will the unicorns be safe?

CHAPTER ONE 

  Heart stood behind the lightning-split pine tree, waiting.
 
  It was cold.

  She envied Moonsilver and Avamir, still warm and asleep up in the cave. Kip would be curled up between them, warmest of all. 

  "Please be careful, Ruth," she whispered.

  Little clouds of her breath hung in the air.

  Heart rubbed her mittened hands together.

  Somewhere above her on the mountainside, she heard a quail waking, piping sleepily.

  Heart was nervous even though they had been very careful.    

  Sometimes Ruth came in the evening, sometimes at dawn.

  Sometimes the visits were ten days apart. Sometimes five, or seven or twelve.

  They never met twice in the same place. 

  Ruth always went to visit a patient first-she checked on a number of older people farther out on the Derrytown road.  She met with Heart on her way back to Ash Grove.

  So far, it had worked.

 Tin Blackaby's men were used to Ruth coming and going to tend the sick. There had always been baskets of apples and bags of wheat in her wagon. Her patients paid her with whatever they had.

  Heart sighed and glanced out at the empty road.  

  They had worked out a signal. If Ruth wore her red hat, it meant she had seen someone on the road. 

  The red hat warned Heart to stay hidden, that Ruth wouldn't slow-or even glance at her-as she passed.

  Ruth had worn her red hat only twice.

   The first time, Tin Blackaby's men had been following her. The second time it had just been a farmer's wagon.
 
  Heart rubbed her hands harder, trying to keep them warm. 
 

art by omar rayyan

  Finally, she heard a faint clopping sound and held her breath as it got louder.

  She peeked out from behind the tree and grinned.

Ruth was wearing her blue hat, pulled low over her ears.

  As the wagon came closer, Heart stepped forward just far enough for Ruth to spot her.

  "Whoa, Banjo," Ruth called to her bay gelding. She pulled him to a stop, then sat, looking straight ahead. "Hello, dear girl," she said without turning.

  "Hello," Heart whispered back.

 
  Ruth got down out of the wagon and walked around to lift the bay's rear hoof. 

  She always did this when they met.
  
  In case someone came up the road, it would look as if Ruth were seeing if her horse had picked up a stone.

  "You are well?" Ruth asked, using a stick to clean Banjo's hoof.

  "I am," Heart assured her.  "Kip is still catching rabbits almost every day.  Avamir and Moonsilver are finding enough grass."  Heart stepped forward. "How are you?"
 
  Ruth let go of the bay's hoof. She fiddled with the harness, her back to Heart. "I can outwork any mule I ever met."

  Heart smiled. "Have the rumors died down?"

  Ruth shrugged. "The man who thought Moonsilver was a goat is still boasting about what fools the others are. Simon still claims you stole his horses."

  "But have the unicorn rumors stopped?" Heart asked.

  Ruth shrugged again. "No. Everyone loves the old stories too much.
  But people laugh.  No one really believes there was a unicorn in Ash Grove."

   Heart sighed.  It was the best she could hope for. "Will you hide the wagon and come up to the cave with me?" Heart asked.  She wanted Ruth to stay. 

  "Better not," Ruth said. "I am expected back to tend Tibbs Renner's twisted ankle."

  Heart frowned.

  Tibbs had always been mean to her, but she pitied him and understood him. The children of Ash Grove made fun of them both.

  "He's being apprenticed in Derrytown," Ruth said. "Wants to learn blacksmithing, his mother says. I suspect he just wants to get away from that cruel father of his."

  Ruth walked around her horse, her fingers going through the motions of harness checking.  "Simon has been ill."

  Heart gasped. "He has?"

  "Oh, he will soon recover," Ruth told her. "I made him pay me this time, though."

  Heart covered her mouth with one hand. "He paid you?"

  "Yes," Ruth said. She glanced up the road, then back toward Ash Grove. "With these." She pulled a little woven bag out of her coat pocket.

  She tossed it to Heart, meeting her eyes for an instant. "Simon said they're from the blanket you were wrapped in when he found you. They're silver threads like the one my grandmother gave me.  You still have it?"

  Heart nodded. "Of course."

  "It hurt Simon to give these up," Ruth said.

  Heart pressed her lips together.  She slipped the little bag into her pocket. "Poor Simon."

  Ruth nodded. "Poor indeed.  He does not have a single friend."

  Heart wiped her eyes.

  "Don't pity him too much, Heart," Ruth said. "If he had known for an instant that Moonsilver and Avamir were unicorns-"

  "He'd have sold them to Tin Blackaby-or even Lord Dunraven," Heart finished for her.

  Ruth nodded. "Knowing it would break your heart."  She looked up the road again, then down it.
   
  Ruth shook her head.

  Then, swiftly, she pulled three cloth sacks out of the back of the wagon.  She tossed them neatly into the trees. 

  Heart saw a little tin of cheese roll out the top of one of the sacks and her mouth watered.

  "Thank you so much, Ruth," she said quietly.

  Ruth looked straight at her for just a moment. "It worries me to death, you being out here alone."

  Heart blinked back tears.   Ruth smiled at her and walked back around the wagon.  She kicked at the narrow iron footrest to knock the snow and mud off her boots.  Then she climbed up.

  "I will repay you for all this," Heart said.

  Ruth made a quiet sound of dismissal. "There is nothing to repay.  I just wish I could make things right, that's all."

  Heart sighed. "Be careful, please. Tin Blackaby might-"

  "No, he won't hurt me," Ruth interrupted her. "I tend him, same as everyone else."

   Heart nodded, knowing that Ruth couldn't see her.  She was looking straight ahead again.

  "Let's meet in five days, by the white boulder on the straightaway before this one," Ruth said. "Come at noon."

  Heart knew the flat-topped white rock that stood near the road. "I will be waiting," she said. "Thank you, Ruth."

  Ruth glanced at her. Heart felt the look like a warm touch.

  A single instant after that, Heart heard the thudding of hooves on the snow-packed road.

  Someone was coming fast, riding hard.

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Read the first chapter of the next book: click The Mountains of the Moon