Hal plowed right into the old woman sitting on the side of the road.  He could have sworn she wasn’t there just a moment earlier.  But there she was, grumbling and waving at him.  What was an old woman doing out here anyways?  They were out somewhere in the woods, in the middle of cold season.   He was on a walk looking for his friend Lucious, who had disappeared on his 16th name day, which was thirteen days ago.  It had been four days since Hal had set out and he was low on food.  That’s why he had found himself out here, and had run into this woman, who seemed to materialize on the edge of the old, overgrown foot road that cut through the forest.  He had seen a deer on the other side, a ways down the slope, and had begun creeping towards it, thinking he could get a clear shot, eat well tonight, and sell a good portion of it in the next village or town that he passed through.
“Whaddya lookin at me like that for?” The woman demanded, waving a scraggly finger at him.  Hal gaped, taking in the sight.  The woman had hair as white as snow that looked completely unnatural.  She was dressed in patched together rags and had a frayed wool cape wrapped around her against the wind.  Wrinkles around her eyes and mouth said that she had smiled a lot in the past; she was not smiling now.  She looked startled, uneasy almost, which didn’t surprise Hal, considering how he had nearly knocked her down the slope.  Something did seem off, though, the more he looked at her.  With her white hair, eyes, and teeth shining in contrast to her dark clothing she looked… healthy.  It wasn’t how an old woman found sitting on the ground in the middle of the forest is expected to be.  Her ragged clothes were streaked with mud and twigs, but weren’t quite dirty, almost like they were purposely made to look so, and she happened to be there… right in the center of his path. 
“Well?” she said, growing impatient.
“Uh,” Hal grunted.  “Are you ok?  How did you get out here?” he said, snapping out of his daze.  The woman chuckled.
  “I’m fine, boy.  Thought you were the one needing help, the way you were staring.  Give me a hand will you?” she asked, extending one arm out to Hal.  He helped her to her feet, noticing that she only answered one of his questions.  He decided not to push it. 
Hal and the woman, who over the last four days he had come to know as May, trotted down the path towards Brenwick.  The town was the only clue Lucious had ever been given about his father’s possible whereabouts, whom he’d never met.  Hal and May had agreed to travel that far together.  Hal had thought that she had wanted protection, or help making her way, but she proved to be quite capable.  May kept an impressive pace for her age, keeping Hal on his toes.  Often he called out for her to slow down, after he had been distracted by an interesting flower or mud pool they had come across. 
“Get your nose out of the dirt,” she would say, “Won’t do you any good to survive out here.”  Hal wondered what she had meant, there was nobody there but them, and an occasional bird or rabbit.  He’d been exploring on his own since he was young and had always taken care of himself. 
Hal saw only a flash of movement and then darkness as a hood was pulled down over his head and his feet were swept out from under him, his arms bound behind his back.  He twisted and kicked and screamed and thrashed but that only earned him a quick blow to the head.  Pain flared in his temple and he felt the warmth of blood roll down the side of his face as his mind drifted into blackness. 
Hal woke to the smell of smoke and the sound of crackling wood on an ironclad hearth.  He was wearing deerskin leggings and a soft white cotton shirt that was laced across a V shaped slit with a thin leather cord from his neck to his upper chest.  His dirty clothes from traveling were washed, folded, and stacked neatly in a saddlebag next to the cot he had been sleeping on.  There was a plate of bread, cheeses, and cuts of meat on the sill, along with a tall cup of cider.  Hal hesitated, but his writhing stomach soon convinced him to scarf down as much as he could manage; he didn’t know how long it had been since he had last eaten, or when he would eat again.  Besides, if whoever had brought him here wanted him dead, poison seemed an unlikely choice after all of their other opportunities.  He hoped.  Hal peered through the window, noticing that it would be just wide enough for him to slide through if he kicked out the frame, and decided that he had been there too long.  He didn’t like feeling controlled, and wanted to slip away unnoticed.  Whoever had brought him here was obviously confident that they had already succeeded in confining him.  They’ve underestimated me, Hal thought, I’ll be long gone by the time anyone comes back for me.
Hal tilted the dish and scooped the rest of the food into a side pocket of his carry bag and pulled the drawstring taught.  He slipped easily through the newly broken window and dropped to the roof a story below.  Just as he was turning to hobble away, a small ink blotched rectangle of paper fluttered down from the window above, and just out of Hal’s reach.  Just as he was reaching for it, he heard two voices coming from the room above.  He turned and sprinted to the edge of the roof, slid down drainpipe that peaked over the ledge and ran the rest of the length of the building.  As soon as his feet touched the ground he began to sprint, his mind running over what had just happened as fast his body ran through the unfamiliar labyrinth of roads and buildings.  Before his rushed escape he’d time to make make out one frantically scrawled word on the piece of paper, Lucious.