Chapter 3 #2
Then, despite herself, the corner of her mouth turned. The child’s name pulsed at the back of her mind, but she didn’t dare to use it. It was better, for now at least, to keep a little distance between her heart and what might yet be taken from her.
When he had enough, Elara changed him, wrapped him clean, and walked him awhile until sleep took him again.
She did it with the hands of a woman who had never cared for a child before, yet she didn’t intend to fail at it simply because she lacked practice.
There were many things she had learned without being taught. This would be another.
***
Night came down in full. It came when she lifted the child from the basket to test how best to carry him on the road.
He stirred in his sleep and turned his face toward her, warm and trusting in a way that struck too near the heart.
Elara stood with him in her arms and looked at the curve of his cheek, the fair silk of his damp hair, and the small mouth gone soft with dreams.
Elara took down her mother’s shawl from the peg near the bed. She remembered it around her own shoulders when she was small, though memory made poor witness. Still, she knew the feel of it and knew the faint scent of cedar that clung no matter how many seasons passed.
She spread it over the bed and set the child in the middle, then folded the cloth about him until she had fashioned a secure sling she might tie across herself. She tested the weight.
“Heavy,” she murmured, “but manageable.”
By midnight, the house was quiet, save for Hugh’s thick breathing in the kitchen and the occasional stir from the child.
Elara didn’t sleep much. She dozed in her clothes upon the narrow bed, one hand resting against the shawl-wrapped bundle beside her and started awake at every creak of timber and hiss of wind.
Toward morning, in that paling hour when the world hadn’t yet committed itself to day, Elara rose.
The air bit cold. She lit no more lamps than she needed and moved by habit in the dimness, dressing in her stoutest boots and darkest skirt, pinning her braid tight, fastening her cloak.
At some point, she found herself standing in the kitchen, looking at Hugh.
He had fallen asleep at the table as she’d predicted, one arm crooked beneath his head. His face in sleep had a slack misery to it, as if whatever hunted him in waking didn’t wholly loose its grip when his eyes were shut. Two bottles lay on their side nevertheless.
For one heartbeat, pity rose in her and he put a blanket over his shoulders.
Though soon enough came anger. Elara thought of Delia packing while he sat and watched years ago, of herself at seventeen climbing the tower stairs with lamp oil in both hands while he promised from below that he was coming, of the rope burning her palms on the rocks two nights before while he failed even to stand.
No note would make him better, and no plea would wake him to usefulness. Elara left one anyway, just because she herself deserved the courtesy. She wrote that she had gone to Harrow on urgent business, and that the body in the back room was not to be touched until the sheriff could be fetched.
She didn’t mention the child, nor Rathburn and the detective, nor her fear, nor the fact that she was leaving him behind with less sorrow than a daughter ought perhaps to feel.
When the note was placed where he couldn’t miss it, Elara returned for the child.
He woke up as she lifted him. She held him close and wrapped the shawl about him inside her cloak, binding him against her chest so that her own warmth would shield him from the morning cold.
His head came to rest just beneath her chin.
After a moment he settled, one hand fisted against her collar.
“There now,” she murmured, locking the door of the back room. “You’ll be alright.”
The dawn outside was colorless and damp.
Mist clung low over the headland. Beyond it, the sea stretched iron-grey and restless to the edge of the world.
The lighthouse tower rose behind her, pale and tall against the thinning dark, and for one strange instant she saw it not as home but as a thing apart from her, as a post she had manned and a burden she had carried.
A place that had taken more than it had ever given.
Then the feeling passed; there was no time to indulge in it. Elara stepped out and pulled the door shut softly behind her. The road south waited, narrow and uncertain beneath the trees. Harrow lay a day and a half away, maybe more.
The sheriff, if he could be trusted, was there. The lawyer named in Nell’s letter was there, if he had not already fled or been silenced. Answers were there, or at least the beginning of them. Danger too, no doubt.
The child stirred against her chest. Elara glanced down at him, his face half-hidden in the folds of her shawl.
“Well,” she said quietly, “we shall see what Harrow makes of us.”
He made a small sound in answer, as if he knew something she didn’t. The corner of her mouth curved against her will again. Then she tightened the shawl around them both and turned toward the road.