Chapter 12
The fire cracked with fresh oak curling smoke into the chimney. Marta sat on a rocking chair backed with a thick quilt, the chair creaking with a weary sway. Gerald had fallen asleep in his chair, his mouth agape, pointed at the ceiling.
Reis sat beside her in a trance of watchful vigilance. He listened to everything. Her breathing, her tiny whimpers, the sounds from beyond the door, the rain pattering on the roof thatch. There wasn't much else they could do for her. Now was the hard part—the waiting.
There was a knock on the door. Gerald woke with a snort. "I'll get it," he announced, as if pretending he, in fact, wasn't asleep. He jumped from his chair and hobbled towards the door.
"It must be Lettie," Marta said from her chair.
Reis was pretty sure it was. He had heard the small footsteps through mud from the neighboring cottage and the heartbeat that followed it.
A small woman, a young thing with bright orange hair, stood in the doorway. Her wavy hair fell down her arms like rippling water. She appeared wearing a worn apron and a patchwork linen dress, carrying a steaming pot between two thick pads.
"I heard you had a sickun..." She trailed off when she saw Reis. Her pale blue eyes widened like an owl.
"Don't just stand there all day, bring it in," Marta said in a hushed voice, getting up from her rocker.
Lettie let out a tiny, strained sound in response, words apparently failing her, and followed Marta to the small kitchen. It was a simple wooden counter fixed to the wall piled with clay bowls and plates. Spices hung drying from rafters above.
Reis turned his attention back to changing the cloth on Mirielle's forehead.
"Did Kay get that beast dry?" Marta asked. "The poor thing will get horse cough after a ride like that."
"When Gerald said there was a sick girl, I didn't realize ye'd invited death himself into your cottage," she scolded under her breath. "Ye know who that is, right?"
"Aye, girl, he ain't goin' to harm ye, now answer the question."
She huffed, but her shoulders slumped. "Aye, ye know Kay," she said. "He's already in love with the great thing. He wouldn't fit in the shed with Goat so we had to put him under the awning."
They finished spooning soup into six equal portions. Marta brought a bowl to Mirielle. "It's leek soup. Lettie here is half famous for it. It does wonders for the sick."
Reis went to grab it, but Marta put up her hand. "Oh no you don't. You smell like horse sweat and yer getting mud all over my clean floors. I'll feed her and you'll scrub before you sit in my chairs."
Reis hesitated. He had a great urge to make sure Mirielle ate.
"Let me."
"No," she said harshly. "Out back, water barrel, use soap or wash in the rain. I'll have Gerald bring you some of Kay's clothes." She pointed at the door with terrifying authority for a woman only half his size.
Reis exhaled, a look crossing his face that suggested he would rather face a battlefield than this woman.
Marta didn't care.
Then, unbelievably, Reis obeyed. He ducked out the door and disappeared into the wet dark.
*
Mirielle's condition improved very little over the next few days. Her fever would return at night, leaving her trembling and pale, only for it to finally loosen its grip by morning.
Marta sat at Mirielle's side like a sentry, experienced enough with sickness to know it was too soon to celebrate.
The hamlet itself was small, tucked beneath great oak trees. It held only four permanent residents. Nearly every corner of it revolved around one trade—the creation of casks and barrels, buckets and tubs. At its center was a small stone courtyard with a simple well.
Gerald was a cooper and Kay, a broad man with short orange hair like his sister's, was his apprentice.
In reality Gerald spent most of the day sitting on an upturned bucket ordering Kay around, only to claim exhaustion by the end of the day.
"Not like that, boy," Gerald grumbled from his seat while chewing on a strip of dried venison. "You shape your stave against the grain again and I'll not pay you for the next one you do right."
Kay muttered something under his breath about preferring the presence of horses.
Hank had been able to rest and was happily grazing on some hay while watching the boys work.
Marta had refused to let Reis mope around the cottage uselessly and ordered him to work in payment for their hospitality. She declared that she refused to have any king owing her anything.
He had spent the greater part of the last three days in the forest chopping wood and felling trees for their trade, a task he was silently grateful for. It felt like punishment and it allowed him to burn his self-loathing.
He had spent the days hauling timber to Gerald's workbench where they busily bent staves over steaming fires, hammered iron rings into wood and toasted the insides of barrels over flames.
The hamlet was built along a forest trail. Travelers would sometimes pass through, merchants and ale crafters wanting to buy their wares. For this reason Reis kept to the forest as much as possible, wanting his presence to remain hidden.
The volume of wood that Reis had been able to fell in the last few days was astounding. What would take most men weeks, Reis had accomplished in only three days, felling and mincing an entire clearing.
"That man is not built normally," grumbled Gerald.
Kay nearly split a stave again, trying not to laugh.
"I think he enjoys fighting the trees."
Another great oak fell to the ground in a mighty thump that shook the snow from nearby branches.
"At this rate we'll have enough wood for the next three winters and no more forest."
"He doesn't even breathe hard," Kay whispered.
Across the clearing, Reis drove his axe into another victim.
Thunk
The muscles straining his shirt pulled at the seams as he removed his newfound weapon from the trunk, only to drive it in deeper a moment later.
"Reis!" Marta called his name from the doorway.
Reis went rigid and for one terrible moment his heart sank.
"She's awake now."
Reis's chest collapsed as the breath he had been holding for what felt like days released. He staggered from the shock of it. He dropped the axe into the stump and ran up the hill to the cabin.
Then he was standing in the doorway, suddenly breathing hard, his chest rising and falling beneath a borrowed shirt. His whole body was braced, as if he expected to walk in on something horrible.
But there she was. Mirielle was sitting up in bed, her blanket wrapped around her shoulders, pale with bed-tossed hair.
"Mirielle."
She looked at him for a moment, her eyes still grey like the light had been stolen from them.
He saw recognition flicker across her features, then remembrance.
Her eyes lowered submissively to the floor as though awaiting judgement, as if she had already decided what he was going to do with her and had resigned herself to that fate.
Marta promptly made herself scarce, muttering something about making soup before skirting around Reis.
Reis remained in the doorway, afraid that crowding her would make her shrink from him more. For a while Reis just listened to her breathing, clinging to it as if it were the air he needed for his own lungs.
"How are you feeling?"
She looked away. "I'm alright," she lied. Reis could tell, but he hid it from his face.
She didn't know what to feel. Lost maybe. She remembered pieces of the last few days. She remembered finding him next to her bed, exhausted, his hand checking her forehead, feeding her medicine.
Then other memories surfaced.
Him binding her in her bed, a blood-streaked face painted in anger, the threats he made to her home. Reis was a contradiction and that contradiction frightened her. It made him volatile and unpredictable.
Then she remembered his apology and that only confused her more. Orbin had tormented her for ten years and not once had he apologized for any of it.
"Can I come in?" he asked carefully.
The fact that he was asking permission at all surprised her too. Yet another thing Orbin would never do.
She nodded slowly.
Reis slowly entered the room and took a chair at the table, picking a seat far enough away so he wouldn't crowd her.
For a moment they sat in silence. Reis looked like he was in physical pain. He wanted her to feel safe. He had no idea how to accomplish that. He had spent days trying to find the right words. Every explanation sounded like an excuse. Every excuse sounded like cowardice.
Finally he cut the silence. "I... I have no excuse for how pathetic my actions were." The floor drank his gaze as he remembered her eyes when she broke apart beneath him.
She said nothing. She just sat staring at her palms folded upwards in her lap, her dark hair shielding her face.
"I promised to keep you safe." His eyes finally lifted to her. "Then you stopped waking." His voice fractured at the last word.
Still, she stayed silent.
Reis let a long sigh through his nose. "But I cannot convince myself that letting you go would be safer for you."
Her fingers slowly curled into her palms. Reis watched her body's reaction carefully. His voice lowered. "I know that sounds like a prison to you. For that, I am sorry."
She blinked at the small pink crescents that had been left in her hands by the curves of her nails. For a while there was only the sound of the hearth and the wind outside against the trees.
"I would like to sleep." Her voice was so quieted by defeat it was barely audible. She grimaced as the words passed her teeth.
His expression dimmed.
"I would—" Her voice caught as a cold, wet cough cut through her.
Reis's hands tightened around his knees as he fought his instinct to crowd her.
She held the back of her hand to her mouth, trying to keep the next one at bay but it forced its way up her ravaged throat along with a fit of rasping coughs that followed it.
Reis lost his battle with himself and stood but Mirielle winced and held up her hand, requesting space. He barred his body from moving toward her.