The last houses thinned to scrub and wire fence. Laurel slipped through the gap she'd used a hundred times as a maid fetching mushrooms and news. Now she wasn't fetching; she was leaving.
Wind cut across the ditch, sharp and clean. She pulled her scarf higher and kept walking, the small bag light on her shoulder. She didn't look back.
Branches ticked against each other like teeth. The creek sounded ahead, fat from melt. She followed it until the city's scent flattened and the other smell rose—metal, wet fur, smoke from fires that burned green wood.
Three men stepped out of the scrub when she reached the fallen alder. Not boys. Not quite elders. The one in front wore the same throat scars like a second necklace—pleased to see her and surprised to mean it.
“Little deer," he said, amused.
