When the bird was no more than a bag of bristly skin Mother set it on the counter, then got the broom to sweep up stray feathers. With the coming of the broom, Cainy dropped the knife and sat in place. When it was upon her she got up and scrambled out the back door.
Father came in the front door, axe gripped by the neck in one strong hand, a bundle of wood locked under his other arm.
Night had long fallen. The chill had dispersed the clouds, and the moon had already had time to make most of its long progress across the sky. His stomach still felt warm with his mother’s stew. He lay perfectly still making shallow breaths and listening to every breath of his parents and every creak of the boards their bodies rested on. He waited. He heard the crickets. The chill crept in beneath him and around his covers. His stomach forgot about the stew and started rumbling.
A cold hand was on his shoulder. He sat up, startled. The back door was open to the night, but he had heard nothing. His heart was jumping, then he saw that the dark figure was Klin. He had known that all along, but the silence had startled him.
Klin raised a finger to lips which Aron was sure were smiling in the dark. He grabbed Aron by the arm, got him out of bed, and steered him toward the door. But now in the doorway was Cainy, her body tiny in the dark, her eyes looking silently up to them. Klin smiled and gave her a gentle shush, then took Aron out and closed the door with little Cainy safely inside.
The night was cold, terribly cold, but Aron thought at least he was out in it now and not trying to hide from it beneath his covers. They ran. At first Aron’s knees felt weak and his steps were unsure. The air was cold. But they were outside, they were in the forest. It was night. They couldn’t see a thing. His worries about what they were to do nagged at him only a little now, crying out to him from some region of his mind far removed from what his eyes saw and his skin felt.
They came upon Aren-Nath and slipped through its loosely bound wooden gates. The streets were black and muddy and empty. Aron could not stop looking around to see if anyone his parents knew would see him out here, away from his house at this hour. He thought he kept seeing people in the shadows, but they shrank back into darkness when he turned to look. Ahead there was one glow of light. It was the only light in the whole town at this hour. But Aron had never seen it before. He had never seen the town at this hour before. The light that shone out into the night came from the tavern.
When they came nearer, the darkness was no longer enough to stifle its eruptions of laughter and blasts of music. Outside its doors, a few figures shuffled together around the street, on the verge of collapse.
Aron glanced at Klin, then realized that his look might betray apprehension. But Klin merely nodded and gestured down an alleyway. They picked their way through its puddles in darkness and came up towards the rear of the tavern. The thin boards of its walls could not hold in its warm yellow glow or the raucous calling of its laughter and song. Aron wondered if he knew anyone who was inside, and was frightened.
Beside the tavern was the shack where the town’s dead were kept on blocks of ice until their day of cremation. Klin used a crate to climb onto the roof of this shack. From there he hoisted himself to the roof of the tavern. Aron followed, wordlessly. What else would he do? For a moment he thought about telling Klin he would just wait outside, but then decided he couldn’t. Not only did he fear standing alone in the alley, but a desire to see inside the tavern grew powerful within him and began to overpower his other concerns.
Standing on the roof of the tavern, he could see the whole town scattered like a bunch of broken pottery beneath him and rising up with solid-looking shapes to the forest above, but the only hint of the warm light of men was from beneath them. Klin was ducking into a hole in the roofing. Crouching, Aron found his way along the beam and ducked in after him.
Inside, the night was forgotten except that the feel of the lampglow told everyone that it could not possibly be daytime. The musicians completed a song, and cheers went up. Aron and Klin were in the rafters. Between thin boards and through knotholes of the ceiling they caught glimpses of rumpled hair and tables and the colors of women’s dresses. A rat scurried across the beam beside them, then disappeared into the shadows around the perimeter. Klin got down on the beam and began inching his way carefully to the other side of the room. Most of the light was streaming in from over there, and Aron knew that Klin was going to get a better look. The musicians began anew with a song featuring the flutist. Klin lay down on the beam and bent his head down to and almost through a hand-sized hole in the boards. Aron squeezed up right behind him, so Klin got up to a crouch, holding on to a rafter for support and making a little space for his friend. There was just enough room beneath Klin’s feet for Aron to slide up the beam and get a good look.
The hole was over a spot behind the bar. First Aron looked straight down the neck of the barmaid’s tight dress. One man’s laughter rolled out above the din. Then Aron saw the barmaid’s hair, the stacks of grubby glasses behind her, kegs piled carelessly against the wall. He scooted forward another few centimeters, butting up against Klin’s ankles, and turned his head to get a better look. The dust of the beam was on his face; it smelt like his mother’s old dress. The bar was wet with beer, and it seated old men stirring their soup and young men laughing and throwing back their heads and downing pints. The young ones belched and put their hands on young, dirty ladies who pushed them away, while old, toothless hags rubbed the old men’s heads. A smiling girl bounced through the room, then hopped into an older man’s lap, threw an arm about his neck, and kicked back uproariously, nearly peeling him from his stool. She swung back up onto her feet, lifted her skirt off the floor and did a little jig, dancing off into a corner where Aron could not see her but from which he heard a great deal of laughter.
There in the corner were Kruman the Carpenter and Flores, the butcher’s daughter. Feebin the Candlemaker sat at a table of quiet men, and the old hag who served as Matchmaker was being cornered by a tottering man who looked even older. An old man who sat at the bar slung his arm about his neighbor’s neck and stood, pulling his chum up in a headlock. The man cried out grotesquely at the top of his wheezing lungs, “Charlie’s leaving!”
All eyes turned to the chubby face of the man in the headlock. He smiled, and nodded. Charlie’s chum gripped the fat neck tighter and called out, “C’mon, boys!”
Aron looked up at Klin to ask what was going on. Klin rolled his eyes as if he’d seen this before. The musicians beneath them started a new song, and Aron looked through the hole again. The old man was leading the other regulars in a wheezing song, and slowly leading Charlie to the door. The music came, wheezing and staggering like its singers.
“Charlie’s gone to fill our kegs,
’Cause all that’s left is stale dregs
In the Town of Aren-Nath!
In our little Town of Aren-Nath!
Aren-Nath, Aren-Nath,