Page 51

Ask me about the tree.

The fire’s low enough to feed, so I add thicker wood, then fetch another fur and lay it over her feet. Her toes move under it once.

“Your feet were uncovered.”

She lets the fur settle.

I stay crouched, waiting for her to tell me she owns her feet. She’s fought me over less. I wasn’t thirsty. That was yesterday, over a cup of water she drank anyway.

My chest rumbles once. Her toes stay where they are.

I’m still there when my knees begin to ache. Then I get up.

There’s enough deer for days, and I bring out another cut anyway. There are roots left for everyone I’ve ever met. She said that over four roots when she’d asked for two, and ate three, so I pick the four smallest and cook them soft with meat across the top.

She watches while I set the bowl by the pallet.

“The meat’s cut smaller.”

Her eyes follow my hand away from the rim.

Eat it.

When the steam stops rising, I go and sit on my stone.

She’s got food for more than one meal in reach. The fresh pine touches the wall above her head, and the extra fur covers her to the waist. She’s awake under all of it.

The names I can do. Every new moon for two hundred years, and when my throat gives out halfway I wet it and go on to the next one, and I’ve never once lost my place. Here I’ve checked a closed wound twice and I’m about to look at it again. Kestria breathes across the hearth, rubbing her cheek against the folded fur, and I could speak to her now.

I’ve told her about the food twice. What else is there. The door’s what she asks me for, and she’s stopped asking.

I could sit her up. She’s light, and I’ve had her weight before, the first nights, when she didn’t know whose hands were under her. I could hold the bowl at her mouth and she’d swallow or she wouldn’t.

She clears her throat, and I turn toward her.

Her hand comes out from under her cheek, and she reaches for the cup, lifts it a little way, then props herself on her good elbow to drink. I start to rise, but she’s got it.

She drinks and lowers herself onto her side.

That’s something.

“There’s more in the jug.”

She sets the cup beside the untouched spoon.

She said my name all day yesterday. Rauk, with her hand in the fur behind my ear. Rauk, at the slab, when I was standing right in front of her. Just the stone, Rauk. You can keep hold of my hand. I turn toward her again when she shifts the cloak, and she pulls it closer under her chin.

The daylight narrows above the passage, and I look at the foot wraps on the floor, then at the opening beyond them.

I could put them beside her hand, move the slab, and take her to the flat stone while there’s still light.

She offered me her hand for that walk. Please. I touched her fingers and left her standing there.

If I open it now, after the kiss and a day of full bowls beside her bed, what am I agreeing to? I asked her yesterday whether every touch came with a request. If I move the stone tonight, then it did, and the kiss bought the door.

She could get up when she sees the wraps. She could eat when we come back.

Her eyes are open when I look at her face, fixed on the edge of the hearth.