Chapter 7 - Back to the camp

Trees. Dirt. An orange sky. The split boulder was behind us, and there was no door in it anymore, just a crack in a rock.
 
The light was the same as when we'd gone in, but the shadows pointed the wrong way. We'd lost a whole night and most of a day in there.
 
“Agnes.” I got her off my back and onto the grass, with her head on my knee. “Agnes, we're out.”
 
She didn't open her eyes. Her fingers kept twitching against the grass, and every breath sounded like it was catching on something.
 
I dug through my pack until I found a potion, the cheap red kind we bought three at a time. My hands were shaking, and I spilled half of the first one on my own wrist before I got the cork out properly. I poured the rest over her shoulders and down her arms. It glowed red and faded. The scrapes on her arm and the cut on her knee closed up and were gone.
 
She still didn't wake up.
 
I said her name again, louder. I patted her cheek. I lifted one of her eyelids, because I'd seen a healer do that once, and saw nothing but white, and let go fast.
 
Cheap potions close cuts. If something was wrong inside, a hit to the head or worse, she needed a high potion, and the only place I knew that sold them was the apothecary in Ardglass. Half a day's walk, carrying her.
 
I got her onto my back and started walking.
 
It got dark about an hour in. I didn't light the lantern, because lighting it meant putting her down and picking her up again, and every time I did that my arms got worse. I kept to the track by feel and by the sound of the creek. Every so often I stopped anyway, just long enough to listen for her breathing. It was always there. It was always rough.
 
Somewhere around the second creek I started talking to her. Nothing important. That the boulder was gone. That the gold was in the sack and she'd get her share, and so would everybody, and I'd tell the others she was the one who wanted to be careful. That she was heavier than she looked. I don't know why I said that last part. She'd have hit me for it.
 
It was the middle of the night when I finally ducked under the camo cloth. The other tents were still tied shut. Nobody had come home.
 
Her tent was neat the way it always was: prayer books stacked by size, the little statue of Althea, the white candle, her spare habit folded on top of her pack beside a bag of clean clothes. I laid her on her bedroll and pulled the wet veil the rest of the way off so it wouldn't sit cold on her face. Then I pulled her blanket up.
 
Her breathing had slowed. It sounded almost normal now. That should have made me feel better, and it mostly didn't.
 
I tied the flap shut and went back out. The laundry was still hanging on the line from yesterday. I left it there.
 
The apothecary would be closed. I'd wake him up. If he complained, I had enough on my shoulder to buy the shop.
 
I was halfway to the road before I remembered the lantern.