“Gather round, dear hearts,” said Arie. “See what Providence has landed here.”
It couldn’t be described as anything less than a proper family meal. Dishes passed hand-to-hand. Good-natured banter about the exploits of target practice, and time-honored chitchat about the changeable weather. Bits and bobs were fed under the table to Talus, who’d already inhaled her own plate and was delighted to lurk below, accepting one delectable morsel after another from their generous fingers.
After they’d cleared up and gathered once again around the fireplace, Arie brought out the pie. They oohed and aahed over the cunning knife work she’d put into the top crust; small slits curved like birds on the wing over pastry-scrap trees.
“Hold on,” said Curran. “I have something to go with this masterpiece.” He jogged over to the cupboard where he’d found the board game earlier, and pulled something out of a dark corner. “Ta da!”
“Tequila,” said Renna, almost reverently. “I’ll get cups.”
In short order, they were full of dinner and pie and the good sense of camaraderie that comes with warm quarters and boon companions. They moved away from the table and stretched out, tucking themselves into favorite cushions and seats as if they’d all lived in the cabin for years rather than days. Curran, Handy, and Renna each held a mug, sipping now and then with obvious pleasure. Arie shoved the leather armchair near the fire and pulled the redwood mandala out of the deep pocket of her apron.
“Kory,” she said, tilting the small square of wood so that the moving light of the flames played across the ridges of the labyrinth. Sprawled beside Talus, the boy sat up straight when he saw what Arie held. “I promised to tell you about it, didn’t I?”
He nodded soberly, one hand still idly stroking the dog’s ears.
She raised a finger, placed it in the labyrinth’s smooth groove, and slowly began tracing the small winding path. “It’s mostly a way for me to keep my mind on the things I believe are most important,” she said. “The design is old. Inside the labyrinth, I can wander freely without ever straying from the path.” She held it out to him. “Would you like to try it?”
“Yes,” he said. His voice bordered on reverence and Arie had to suppress a small smile. She put the mandala in his hands. He gingerly touched one sturdy fingertip to the circular design.
“As I told you, Curran made this little one for me. You see, I used to have a much bigger mandala, one I’d made on the wall of my home.”
“How big?”
“Hm,” she said. “The size of your fireplace, I suppose.”
“Wow, that must have taken a long time,” said Kory.
“I had a lot of time then,” she said. “My home was burned, though, and when we left that place, Curran took a piece of it and fashioned it into the gift you’re holding.”
Kory stopped tracing his finger and held the mandala in both hands, turning it back and forth, looking at both sides. “So you’ll have part of your home with you.”
“Something I carry with me always.”
He looked at her squarely, grave eyes incongruous in his smooth, young face. “I’m sorry your home burned.”
“My plan was to stay there for the rest of my life,” she said. “Then my plans changed.” She leaned back in the chair with a small sigh. “I do miss my home sometimes. The traveler’s life is not an easy thing. But see here, what a good thing has happened.” She looked him over from the heavy mop of his blond head to the soles of his too-large, boy-to-man feet. “If I’d stayed where I was, I wouldn’t have had the good fortune of meeting you.”
He looked away, the tops of his ears reddening in the light of her frank regard. “Did bad people burn your house?”
The adults exchanged a look above his bowed head, their mild postprandial stupor dropping away with Kory’s unexpected intuition.
“Yes,” said Handy. “It was bad people.” Renna put one hand on his arm, a little warning gesture. He put his hand over hers and continued. “We were able to help ourselves and each other, Kory. We fought them, and we got away.”
Curran was stretched out full-length on the sofa next to where Kory and Talus sat. He put a large hand on Talus and waggled the loose skin on the back of her neck. The dog pushed herself harder into his rough embrace, tongue lolling. “We might not have gotten the best of them without Talus,” Curran said. “She tore up their leader.”
“Tore him up good,” Handy agreed.
Kory sat silently for a long moment, watching Curran and the dog. “I know there are bad people,” he said finally.
“Of course you do,” said Arie. “That’s why you defended this place the day we arrived.”
“Papa said it was better safe than sorry with strangers.”
“You were right to do what you did,” said Handy.
Kory looked up at him. “Good thing I didn’t shoot you.”
“Good thing,” said Handy. “Hard to teach you to make a slingshot once you take me out with your rifle.”
“Hard to get a drink of water if you have a hole in you,” said Kory. The black humor of the exchange had tweaked his young funny bone, and Arie could see he was barely stifling a laugh.
“Kory,” she said quietly, “I’m almost sure the bad ones who came after us before have not given up trying.” She stopped rocking and leaned forward, bracing her hands on her knees. As she did, the fresh V on her thigh, that small, ritual wound, throbbed. “We aren’t far enough away yet.”
“And that’s why you’re going to leave here.” He said it plainly. No drama, his expression giving nothing. Nevertheless, the air around them seemed drawn into a tight knot. Even Talus knew it; she rose from her doggy sprawl and sat with ears erect, brown eyes moving from person to person.
“That’s right,” said Arie. “We’re going to go.” She watched him closely. “We’d like you to come with us.”
“Or they might come to burn my house.”
“Kory, we don’t know that,” said Handy. “We don’t know for sure where they might be or when they might find this place. We’re not even sure they would ever find it. But we do know they’re angry at us and they’ll try very hard to find us.”
“And we don’t want you to be alone anymore,” added Renna.
“But,” said Arie, “it’s important you understand that we won’t make this decision for you. Your life, Kory, is your own. Young as you are, it isn’t ours to live for you.”
It was a dreadful thing, telling this child that his choice was between loneliness and leaving the only home he’d ever known. Between the unknown danger that might show up in his clearing one day and the shadowy troubles of an outside world—a world about which he knew absolutely nothing.
“Okay,” he said.
Curran studied him. “Okay?” he prodded. “That’s a yes?”
“That’s a yes,” said Kory. “I’m coming with you.”
Arie saw no trace of uncertainty in his face, and it worried her. “I’m glad, Kory,” she said. “We hoped very much you’d stay with us. Come over here to me, will you?” She held out both hands to him.
He got to his feet and stood before her. His hands were larger than hers, calloused like a man’s, but his face was tender and open.
“I want you to be certain,” Arie said. “As certain as you can be. If you need to think it over, to sleep on it tonight, that’s perfectly all right.”
“That’s okay,” he said. His somber and straightforward gaze never wavered from hers. “When you came the other day, I got the gun because better safe than sorry. But after I shot, when you were really there and I could see you and hear your voices and everything…”