Unattended And Yet Found

He was aware there was a big gathering that evening, but Robert wasn't the least interested in going. Mingling with a large group of curious folk, all of whom would wonder who he was and why he'd come to the Glen, was at the top of his list of things to avoid. Taking his axe, a smaller hatchet, and several knives, he headed out alone into the wood. He'd been having luck finding great pieces of branches and gnarled old trees that lent themselves perfectly to his carving. He was also gathering longer, thinner branches which he soaked and planned to make some bentwood furnishings from.

Julie was stuck. The next paragraph in her new book simply wouldn't come. She looked out her front window, partially obscured by dangling rose canes. The sky was blue with moundings of white, puffy clouds. Perhaps a walk might clear her mind. Yes, she'd do that then come home and make pot of tea. Possibly her muse would resurface then.

She pulled on a pair of good English walking oxfords as she intended to explore the woods near Rose Cottage. The distant sound of a stream had reached her ears as she sat quietly by the open window and she wanted to find it and maybe sit by it a while and just think. The beginnings of what might be called a path headed away from the cottage and she followed it until it completely petered out in a tangle of underbrush. The stream sounded closer now, though, and so she struggled through, getting several scratches on her hands and one long one down her left cheek for her troubles.

Finally coming out into a small clearing, she found her oxfords sinking into wet, boggy soil. But now she could actually see the stream as it rippled through lots of rocks and she was determined to get to it come hell or high water. Her next step sank her right oxford in mud up to her ankle and when she pulled her foot out, her shoe remained.

"Damn!" she breathed, bending and exploring with her fingers to release the shoe. It was stuck fast and she tugged hard, losing her balance and falling. She twisted to avoid the bush behind her and ended up  on her side in the mud. Startled by her fall, she lay there a moment to catch her breath, but the mud coated the left half of her face and was in her eye and most of her nose. Her left arm was pinned
beneath her. She pushed with her right hand, but it, too, just sank deeply in the mud. Pulling her right hand free, she wiped at her face, only succeeding in smearing the mud over the other half of it, too. She tried wiggling her legs as hard as she could, one foot finding a buried piece of stump to push against and with great effort, heaved herself up into a half-seated position. Spitting mud from her mouth, she
swiped at her long blonde hair which hung now over her eyes. She had to keep her left eye closed or it stung terribly. "Happy New Year's Eve, Julie," she mumbled, then spat more mud.

It was thus that Robert happened upon her. He stood silently by the bush while the woman repeatedly spat brown goo from her mouth. Never had he seen quite so bedraggled a human before. He would have simply faded into the forest but for the fact she seemed unable to free herself from her predicament. Robert sighed. There was no getting around it.

"Good morning," he said, stepping out where she could see him.

Julie peered at the man through her half-open right eye. How long had he been there? No matter, he was there now. She straightened her shoulders, vainly attempting to recover some vague semblance of what might pass as dignity. Lifting her chin, which only made a glob of mud slide down her jawline and plop into her lap, she tried to speak, but found her throat too raspy with mud particles to form clear words. So
something garbled and almost animalistic came out.

"You wish help?" Robert asked.

Damn him! Of course she wished help!

Gripping a small tree with his left hand, he leaned out over the mud, extending the handle of his axe to her. She gripped it, but her hands were both too slipperly with mud for the grip to hold and the both simply slid off. Robert frowned. Getting himself covered in mud had not been on his day's agenda. He pulled back his axe and looked at the woman a while. Her head had drooped down, her shoulder sagged, and she appeared utterly wretched. Sighing again, he stepped out into the mud and slid both hands under her armpits, tugging her free and hauling her rather like a sack of flour onto drier ground.

Eyeing the distance to the stream, he asked, "Do you think you can make it to the water?"

His movement of her had made mud slide from her hair into her right eye and she had to keep both of them closed. "Can't...can't...see," she managed to mumble.

The stream was only about 20 feet away, so he lifted her again, half-dragging, half-guiding her to it. "Sit," he ordered, directing her bottom to a mid-sized rock right on the edge of the stream. Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out a cloth, and squatting to wet it, began to wipe her face.

She squinched her eyes tightly shut. "Hurts," she said, so he scooped up a handful of the clear water and let it wash over her eyes. It took several of those to clear enough mud away for her to open them. He rinsed the cloth and wiped softly over her lids again.

"Better?"

She nodded then leaned way forward to scoop water into her mouth, rinsing and rinsing until the feel of grit was gone. She was afraid she'd swallowed some mud as her stomach was feeling queasy. She made a feeble attempt to wipe more mud off herself with the cloth, but she was simply too entirely coated and her arm dropped limply by her side.

Robert scooped her up and sat her in the stream. "What?" She was confused and didn't understand, but then the warm water flowing around her waist began washing the mud from her lower body and she relaxed and sat quietly. Robert knelt in the stream beside her and, using his hands, began to wash down her arms. He even lifted handfuls of it and let it run from her throat down her chest. She closed her eyes, sitting silently, letting him do his ministrations. He didn't speak, he just kept pouring water on her body. When he moved around to her back to do the same thing, his hands followed the water, wiping down her spine, over her shoulders.

She hadn't gotten a good look at him and had no idea who he was. At the moment she didn't care. What he was doing felt too good to care about such matters. Suddenly she felt one of his hands supporting her back while the other was leaning her toward the water. He'd tipped her backwards enough so that the stream could run through her long hair. Still supporting her to keep her head above the stream, he used his free hand to wash water over the top of her head, too. She was amazed that she could simply lie there and let a complete stranger do that. With her eyes closed, she listened to the movement of the stream, the sound of the water he let fall on her head, his breathing. She felt like she'd fallen through some crevice and were in another world and her author's mind began
to form the sensations into sentences she might use at some future time. It was how her brain worked. Everything she saw, she thought, she did was transformed into invisibly written sentences.

When he sat her up again, she kept her eyes closed. She'd imagined him in her sentences and wanted to keep him that way. He couldn't possibly be as good as she'd imagined him to be and she didn't want to lose that.

"Are you all right?" His voice was deep, very masculine, yet soft as he asked his question.

She took three slow breaths then let her lids open. The man was kneeling in the stream directly in front of her, wet to his waist, his sleeves wet to the elbow from where he'd dipped into the water. He had a neat, short beard but it was his eyes that captured her attention. Bluish green they were, and lit from within by some deep intelligence and expressiveness. They were better eyes than she'd imagined. She had no idea what to say to him. Their circumstances were just too strange. She licked her lips and his eyes followed the movement of her tongue.
That disconcerted her even more.

"Tea?" she asked, her voice breaking on the single syllable.

He smiled, a closed-mouth, lip-curving smile. "You are English," he stated, his own accent proving he was, too.

"London," she nodded. "Would...would you like some tea?"  She had no idea why she kept mentioning tea. Her brain was fried. That had to be it. When one's brain was fried, tea was always a good thing. Her throat hurt from the grit. She wanted hot tea and lots of it.

"Do you live in the Glen?" he asked. He did not want to go there.

"The...the cottage...with the roses."

Ah, there. The house that was too close to his own, yet still way away from the Glen in the woods. "I know the place," he said. "Let me assist you in getting there."  She didn't look like she was capable of making it on her own. The mud washed off her face, her skin was very pale. Standing, he held out his hand.

She looked at it a moment. It was a fine hand, large and strong, and she put one of her own slender ones in it, feeling the warmth of his close around her fingers. As he helped her to her feet in the stream, her stomach lurched and she turned quickly to the side, throwing up into the swiftly-flowing water. She felt terrible and swayed and he caught her in his arms, carrying her out of the stream. He eyed his axe and hatchet  as he passed. He'd have to
retrieve them later. Without a word, he carried her through the woods, her head cradled on his shoulder.