“Yes,” he said, voice solemn, eyes dancing. “You could make your own, later on. I could help you.” He shot a little deferential glance at Handy. “Or, well… Handy’s the best teacher.” The tops of his ears turned bright pink. He looked at Curran. “Are you coming, too?”
“Next time, bud. I’m going to stay and do some more sorting.”
“Let’s go,” Handy said, “before the weather decides to muck up on us.”
The three of them trooped into the yard, Kory looking nearly beside himself with pleasure. “Not too far out,” Arie called after them. Handy lifted a hand in reply, thumb and forefinger indicating a small distance. Talus gave the still-chattering squirrel a last look and jumped up to join them.
Curran went to a cupboard built into the back wall and squatted to inventory its contents. He pivoted to Arie, a flat cardboard box in his hand, and lifted the battered, dog-eared thing toward her. “Monopoly,” he said, grinning.
She stared at him with a blank expression.
“Fake money? Deeds? Hotels?”
“Sorry,” she said.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking pained. “That’s just wrong, Arie,” he said. “Do not pass Go, do not collect two-hundred dollars.”
“If we can’t eat it, trade it, or sleep under it, I don’t need to know.”
“We can use the money for tinder.”
“Put that foolishness away and lend me a hand. We’re going to celebrate tonight, and I need your help.”
Curran tossed the box back into the cupboard with a resigned shrug. It landed with a small, muffled clatter. “Okay,” he said. He dusted his hands on his jeans. “What’re we celebrating?”
“New beginnings,” said Arie. “Distant vistas. Heretofore unimagined adventures.”
“Oh boy,” he muttered. “You may be overselling a little.”
She retrieved a canvas sack from a hook by the stove and handed it to him. “If you were eleven years old, how would you want to hear it?”
“Ah, marketing. What do you want me to do with the bag?”
“I need apples out of the cold cellar. Eight or ten will do for a pie.”
“You’re going to make a pie.”
“After you grind me some flour, yes. And don’t you tell. I want it to be a surprise.” She yanked her hair up into a bun with such quick precision it almost seemed like sleight of hand. “I’m going to put a bunch of these leather britches on to soak,” she said, indicating several bristling strings of green beans that had been hung from the ceiling to dry. “And while you’re cranking out flour, we’ll decide how to divvy up this wild boon of goods for travel.”
“Got it. And Arie,” he said on his way out the door, “I might just have a little surprise of my own.” He waggled his eyebrows. “An after-dessert surprise.”
She made a small snort. “Be still, my heart,” she said, and waved him out. “Apples.”
By the time Kory, Handy, and Renna returned, Arie and Curran had made a remarkable shift in the appearance of things. Food was simmering, wood was split, and heaps of goods had been assiduously sorted and stacked. Things deemed impractical, too weighty, or simply too abundant to carry were consigned back into storage areas. Everything that fit their needs was put in orderly piles under beds and behind the sofa.
“We all have a great eye,” said Kory, flushed with enthusiasm when he found Arie in the kitchen.
“Looks to me like you have six eyes, counting all three heads,” she said, setting dinner plates around the table.
He grinned affably. “Arie,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
“So your slingshot works, eh?”
“Straight as an arrow. That’s what Handy said. Handy said he was going to start calling me Eagle Eye. A nickname, because I got so many targets.”
“Throw a little more wood in the firebox, Birdy. I need the oven hot, hot, hot.”
“You’re just kidding me,” he said, grinning ear-to-ear. He grabbed a chunk of stove wood—the same piece Arie would have chosen herself—and set it in the flames, deft as any adult she’d ever seen. The way this boy could be so capable and so innocent by turns made a mash of her heart. One more soul pushing its way in, she thought. Yet another chance to end up broken on the shoals of grief.
She turned her back and made her hands busy again. “Tell you the truth, child, you smell more like warthog than eagle. Better work your fire magic and fill a tub for yourself. I didn’t cook all afternoon to have a soured boy ruin my appetite. And no,” she said, lifting a peremptory finger when he drew a breath to reply, “I am not kidding you. Get yourself clean. Clean enough for a party.”
“Going!” he shouted. He gave Talus, now crashed-out on the sofa, one last boisterous rubdown before he set to work on his bath.
Handy came in from outside, soaked hair plastered to his back in dark strings. The shoulders of his shirt were wet, and he was visibly shivering.
“Get over to the fire before you rattle your teeth loose,” Arie said. “I guess you cleaned up at the spring?”
“I wanted to have a look around up there before it got full dark,” he said. “Fog’s already socked in the river valley.” He blew into his cupped hands and held them to the fire that Curran had laid not long before they’d returned.
“There goes our fine weather, I imagine,” said Arie. “You saw the tracks?”
Handy nodded. “It was definitely one animal, definitely wolf. He didn’t linger.”
“Good. Maybe he’s moved on now. She’s certainly not worried.” Arie said, looking at Talus, stretched out so luxuriantly that she took up the entire sofa. “How was shooting? Eagle Eye thought it was splendid.”
Handy chuckled in his quiet way—a whiffle of air through the beard with not much sound. “He was something else,” he said. “Tell true, Sister, I’ve never seen anything like it. The only time he missed, I’m pretty sure it was because Ren was starting to miss a fair number and he didn’t want her to feel bad.”
“Does she have any eye?”
He sat down on the hearth and leaned toward the fire, rubbing the fingertips of one hand through his hair to dry it. “She does,” he said. “More practice would be good—slingshot isn’t so easy. Not if you’re trying to catch dinner on the move.”
“Not if you’re trying to slow down a predator. Four-legged or two-legged, either one.”
They listened to Kory quietly singing to himself in the tub, and Curran outside, splitting even more wood. Arie had taken her apple pie out from where she’d hid it on a little shelf behind the stove and popped it in the oven. She’d searched every bit of foodstuffs for a touch of sweet to add to the apples. A scrape of crystallized honey, a stiff spoonful of old brown rice syrup, and a bit of blackstrap molasses worked surprisingly well with the fruit. Even more enterprising was the hunt for fat to make the piecrust; the finished pastry gave off a mild but distinct meaty smell.
After a few minutes in the oven, though, when the aroma began to permeate the cabin, it filled her with a sense of mingled pleasure and… something else. Something akin to pain, she thought. Their table was laid with a cloth and candles. Touching match to wick, she wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. Baking was such a civilized smell, one that spoke of time that could be spent combining and adorning food especially for pleasure. The rest of the meal was far more catch-as-catch can, serving bowls and placemats lending gravitas to a lot of canned and packaged food.
“Here, now,” she called to them. Talus’s head popped up like Jack from his box, making Arie laugh.
“Let’s go,” Handy told the dog, who didn’t need to be told twice. He met Renna at the foot of the stairs as she came down. His face, where it showed under his beard, was flushed from sitting near the fire and he pressed his cheek to hers. Kory came running, damp from the bath, and Curran tramped in with a last armload of wood, bringing a chilly smell of the damp evening with him.