Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 151

Chapter 151: Brand new me
Anaisa stretched, her shoulder aching terribly from the hard ground she’d slept on. With surprise, she noted that there was light around her.

“Why didn’t you wake me for my shift?” She turned accusing eyes on her husband.

“You looked like you weren’t resting well, so I thought you should sleep as long as you could.” Trace shrugged as he saddled the horses. Anaisa popped up and began helping pack up the camp.

She didn’t want to be the laziest one here! She knew little of the rigors of motherhood, but she had vaguely heard Ewan’s cries occasionally in the night and knew that Deborah must have been awake often to feed and care for him.

“If there’s anything I can do to help tomorrow night, let me know. Maybe I can hold him while I’m on watch and you can get some better sleep,” She offered to Deborah.

“It would be better to have waking eyes on him at all times,” The doctor nodded approvingly. “The instant something begins to go wrong, I could be woken.”

“That’s settled, then,” Anaisa grinned, glad to not be the useless tagalong in this band of magic-users.

That was a bit of a humbling realization, now that it had sunk in. Magic users were, in her experience, exceedingly rare. And now, to be the only non-magic person was leaving her feeling a bit at odds.

Trace finished with the horses, and Anaisa helped get some small breakfast sorted from the food they had stopped to buy in a town they passed through yesterday.

Anaisa held Ewan while Deborah mounted, and cooed at him softly. He startled in her arms, making her jump slightly, but she smiled.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” She whispered to the newborn. She’d never been around babies, but holding this tiny one sparked some deep instinct in her.

Cuddling little Ewan against her, she watched him yawn and her heart nearly stopped with the joy of the sight.

“You need your own,” Deborah smiled at the other woman. “I can see it in your eyes that you do.”

“Oh!” Anaisa blinked rapidly and looked down, handing the bundled infant up to the wet nurse.

“It’s normal,” Deborah assured her. “Put a newborn baby in any woman’s arms who’s of the age to have them, and something inside lights like a fire.”

“Are you all right about it?” Anaisa looked at the magic user carefully. She thought it must be terribly painful to have to nurse a baby who wasn’t your own after such a great loss.

“More than I thought I would be,” The woman wrapped Ewan into the sling that would hold him against her while they rode. “It’s… nice, being needed, I think. It helps me set aside the grief to help one that is so helpless.”

“I’m sorry I can’t think of anything to say that would help,” Anaisa told her sadly.

“There are no words that would help. They would not bring my husband and daughter back to me. My mother said grief takes time, and will come in waves. I am still… holding. Binding myself together to keep going. Little Ewan helps remind me that breaking down would be a useless and counterproductive action.”

Watching as the woman turned forward, ready to go, Anaisa realized she should also be ready. They needed to get far today. As far as they could, to break the magic hold on Trace.

Anaisa mounted her own horse, with Trace’s help, and the group set off just before the sun was fully up.

No one had discussed destination, nor duration of the journey. Three of them knew they needed to go away from the city, and one was too afraid to learn the information to ask anything about it.

And so, they moved onward, at a quick walking pace along this road through the forest. It turned occasionally, around a hill or a stream, and Anaisa quite lost her sense of direction.

The road forked several times, and Anaisa and the others left it to Trace to pick their way. They ate a midday meal and rested the horses. Trace dozed off, exhausted from being on watch the night before, and Anaisa felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t woken and relieved him so that he could sleep as well.

She would make sure he got the sleep he needed tonight.

Deborah taught her how to change a nappy, which was a new experience. One she probably never would have gotten in her old life, where a nanny would have taken care of any children she produced, and brought them to her when they were hungry.

The experience was charming, as she got to watch little Ewan’s teeny baby feet kick, and his little arms flail for the short time he was out of his swaddle. His little fingers, such perfect little miniature hands. Anaisa was nearly overwhelmed with an involuntary affection for the prince.

“So precious,” She whispered when she picked him back up.

Deborah mounted her horse and Anaisa passed the baby up after the doctor made sure he was as well as he could be.

She then moved over to where Trace sat, his back against a tree, hat pulled down over his eyes. Anaisa hated to wake him, but it was best they keep moving.

She leaned down and gently shook his arm.

“Trace?” She asked softly. “We need to get going.”

He seemed to snap awake, lurching upright and startling her so badly that she fell backward, landing on her rear end.

“OW!” She cried, more surprised than hurt. “Goodness, you wake up so suddenly!”

He brought the heel of one hand to his forehead as he yawned and blinked. “I’m sorry, I–I heard your voice in my dream and thought there might be trouble, so I forced myself awake, and… Sorry!”

He scrambled to a standing position and reached his hand out for hers. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. She found herself, quite suddenly and without warning, practically face to face with him.