Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff

shivering too much to be interested in anything else. ‘Never mind; it’s time we started out,’ he told her. ‘You’ll feel warmer after we’ve been walking for a while, and the sun will come through again, too, when the mist has done rising.’
    So once again they set out. And by and by the sun did come through, and their sodden rags dried on them as they walked, and the world seemed a kinder place than it had done last night. Owain found a hare’s form with four leverets in it, and took two of them, quite ruthlessly; and that night they were lucky, for just at dusk they stumbled on the ruins of a shepherd’s bothy in the fold of the hills, with part of its rough thatch of furze branches still on, so that there was shelter inside it, and they managed to make a fire with the branches of a dead thorn bush that had dried up in the day’s sunshine, and scorch the hedgehog a bit. The leverets they cooked too, and pushed into the old grain bag and hung up out of Dog’s reach, for next day. There was not much on them once they were skinned, but they would be better than nothing.
    Next day there was no sun, and a little wet wind soughed through the moorland grass and heather. The whole lie of the land had been rising under them for days, and now it seemed that they were on the roof-ridge of the world; and as they came wearily plodding up and over the blunt skyline, far off southward, so far that save for the unnatural clearness of the air he would not have been able to pick it out from the sky, Owain saw for the first time in his life what he knew must be the sea.
    His heart seemed to press upward in his chest. ‘Look, Regina, there on the edge of the world—there’s the sea!’
    Dog swung his tail in response; on the slopes below them a green plover cried; otherwise there was no sound save the wet wind through the last year’s heather. ‘Look!’ he said again, and pointed. ‘Have you lost your eyes? It’s the sea, Regina!’
    ‘The sea,’ said Regina, answering at last, but not as though the word meant anything. He reached out impatiently to give her a shake—and felt, despite the unexpected heat of her hand, that she was shivering.
    He looked round quickly. ‘What is the matter? Are you still cold?’
    ‘No, I—I don’t think I’m cold. My head feels hot.’
    He saw for the first time that her face was queerly flushed, and the eyes she turned on him were very bright. She put up one thin hand and rubbed the back of it across her forehead in a confused way. ‘It aches, too.’
    A swift fear touched Owain like a chilly finger. He had dried off all right from that drenching, why should she take any harm from it? But supposing she had? Regina gave a little sigh, and sat down on her haunches. ‘Tired,’ she mumbled.
    Owain stooped instantly and caught her hot hand and pulled her ruthlessly to her feet again. ‘You can’t stay here, Regina, there’s no shelter, and the rain is coming back. Look, it’s downhill now, and once we get into the woods we’ll find a sheltered place and make a fire and you can rest until your head stops hurting—as long as ever you like. We’ll take it easy for a day or two, and just hunt and live fat—’ He heard his own voice, quick and urgent. He was not sure what he said, but he knew that he must get Regina down from this bleak upland into some kind of shelter before the next storm broke. He had forgotten about the sea; the dark shelter of the woods below them was all that mattered now.
    Regina rubbed the back of her free hand across her forehead again. ‘Everything was queer for a moment,’ she said. ‘It’s better now,’ and set off downhill beside him.
    They reached the fringes of the forest ahead of the rain, and found a dry place, almost a cave, among the roots of a thicket of ancient yews, with plenty of dead wood lying about for their fire.
    But Regina’s head was still hot and the rest of her shivering, and she did not want her share of the leverets, so