Part Four
Dinner was chicken with rosemary dumplings and what remained of the cassia cookies, served with tea.
Dorrimin sat at one end of the kitchen table—the dining room was for formal occasions and holidays—listening to the howling wind outside and the occasional bang of something, a shutter or a door or a sign, coming loose to be blown down the street.
His mother eyed him with concern but Ollis was going on about some new beau of hers and that didn’t give their mother a chance to question Dorrimin about his flinches.
Dorrimin was grateful, even though he was a bit tired of hearing about Ollis’ romances.
Ollis was built on sturdy lines herself, sturdier than Dorrimin despite being nearly his height, and forever had a pack of wispy, delicate, pretty men chasing after her.
His father, irritated at being interrupted at work although aware that the storm would likely cut the city’s electricity and end his work regardless, was scowling down at his notes while eating, absently petting Bemmi as he did but not feeding her the scraps she was begging for.
Yet he straightened up first, somehow hearing the sound before Dorrimin did: knocking, fast and regular. Close.
Dorrimin was on his feet and dashing downstairs before he had even consciously decided to.
The store was dark, lit only by the flickering streetlamps outside and the low fire in the fireplace creating just enough heat to keep the products on display from freezing.
The outline of a figure at the door was visible through the glass, knocking insistently and yet politely, far too politely as far as Dorrimin was concerned.
He fumbled with the lock, tore open the door, dragged Tommick inside, slammed the door shut again, then crushed Tommick against it to sweep snow from his clothes and hair.
“You’re all right!” There was snow inside Tommick’s clothes too, and snowflakes in his eyebrows. Dorrimin dealt with them quickly, though not as gently as he probably should have, and then heard himself say it again, “You’re all right,” before squeezing Tommick as tightly as he could.
Tommick wheezed. His cold skin was a shock against Dorrimin’s cheek. Dorrimin yanked himself away immediately to pull him toward the fireplace.
The thundering sound in his ears wasn’t his heart, but the rest of his family tumbling down the stairs and into the room. Dorrimin stopped, his hands on Tommick, his arms around Tommick, and stared blankly at his family.
Tommick stared back up at him and no one else. “You were worried about me?”
His teeth chattered so much Dorrimin hardly understood him. He was shaking noticeably.
“I’ll get a bath going,” Ollis called out from behind them, then darted back upstairs.
“Warm, not hot water!” their mother shouted after her.
“His hair’s wet,” Dorrimin’s father announced disapprovingly, suddenly there and pulling Tommick out of Dorrimin’s arms while his mother tugged Tommick’s coat from his shoulders. Tommick was large eyes in the dark fixed on Dorrimin until he was finally wrestled away.
“Dorri, find him some clothes,” his mother ordered as she and his father surrounded Tommick and urged him on, “unless you want him to freeze. And get some towels.”
It was about the only thing that could have made Dorrimin move. That, and Tommick asking, “Dorri?” in a startled voice as Dorrimin’s parents continued to strip his cold clothes from him right there on the landing.
Dorrimin saw the necessity but it did make him dash to his room to gather what he could as fast as he could in order to return in time to help Tommick to the bathroom and the filling tub so that his father or mother, or worse, Ollis, wouldn’t be the ones to do it.