"I will," Zoe answered in a hush, ticklish of the doctor's eyes on them. It was when Corinne kissed her so, that her guard dropped. There was a deliverance in the raw emotion of Corinne's lips which neither rescue nor landfall had brought. Her eyes shut, and it would not be difficult to imagine a different place, the pristine white beaches of paradise, in a place of one's own.<br/><br/>When the last pine box loaded, Zoe took her place with the wagons. Four laborers went with them, driving the horses up switchback muddy slope into the rutted path through shaggy forest. As the animals labored and the wood groaned and tethers strained taut, Zoe regarded Corinne shyly from the passenger seat, as though too long a gaze might hex their rendezvous.<br/><br/>What hospitality the sailors provided folded abruptly once the wagons were underway. No more goods were exchanged, and the Common tongue was refused with the same coarse phrase, no matter the speaker.<br/>"Utazik mezze!"<br/>It was a black phrase, no matter the meaning, uttered like a curse with the emphasis of a clenched fist. The<em>Charlotte's </em>castaways were not meant to be here. No outsider was meant to be here.<br/><br/>Still, Sage Laporte placed herself in the hands of those unwelcoming sailors. Her fate seemed grim indeed when she set foot upon the ship which had cast all of them out, but there was no dissuading her now.<br/><br/>There was nothing more to be gained on the tense shore. Margaret Hotspur and Michelle accompanied on the walk up the muddy path, among the crisp evergreen and prickling moss raised like hackles from warped trunks.<br/><br/>The journey up onto the hill, where Medb's shelter squat watchful over an undisturbed stretch of old forest, was mercifully brief. It was there shelter could be found for the second night.