Juoth got down and they tied the horses and then he unlashed the girl and moved her limp form to the side of the clearing and laid her down. The boy watched this intently and Brack watched the boy. Juoth looked at the girl a long time and then Brack saw that he was smelling the air above her and looking at her and then he shook his head and moved away from her and began to gather wood for the fire.
Brack still watched the boy and he went and stood beside his sister. Then knelt. Putting a hand on her chest, her forehead. He sat back on his haunches next to her and he stayed there a long time and eventually Brack went to the horse and got down the crossbow and left the camp. Nodding at Juoth as he went.
It was not good forest for deer but it was for rabbit and he took one and then recovered the bolt and took another with the same one. Checked the fletching and found it still intact and put the bolt back after he cleaned it in a stream. Took the boy's knife out and cleaned it too and thought for only a moment of the highwayman's body lying beside the road with blood on his chest and fingers and then used the knife to split the rabbits and take out the entrails. The hair was thin and came off easily and he butchered them and threw aside what was left for the wolves. Far from the camp. Then walked back in with the meat in a bag at his side and found Juoth had the fire going and hot and a spit already made over it.
The boy was sitting still beside his sister and looking down the trail and not seeing it. The glaze over his eyes of some faraway place.
Juoth stood from the fire and came over. Motioned toward the boy with his head. The line of twisted skin there where it would scar and the short hair growing back around it. “He hasn't said a damn thing. Just sat there like that.”
“You talk to him?”
“I tried.”
“He didn't tell you anything about a ship sinking?”
“A ship?”
“A ship going down.”
“Didn't even open his mouth. Just sat there.”
Brack took the rabbit meat from the bag and went over to the fire and started putting it on the spit. It was hard with the pieces and he wished he had kept the rabbits whole to roast them but he knew he'd done the right thing for the wolves and eventually he got them on and moved the spit across the fire so that the heat and smoke would reach them and the flames would not.
“What do you think?” Juoth said.
“About the boy.”
“Yes. Look what he's doing.”
“I know what he's doing.”
“Well.”
“You do too.” Brack looked up. He could hear the rabbit cooking. “You know what's happening to him and you can act like you don't and that won't change it. That won't change any of it.”
Juoth did not answer. After a while the rabbit was cooked and they took it off the spit and ate it with their hands. There were ten pieces and when they'd had enough Brack took the ones that were left over to the boy and held them out to him. He did not take them, but did look at Brack in the same way that he'd been looking at the trail. When he'd held them for long enough Brack took the boy's hand and put the two pieces into it and folded his fingers closed over them and then the boy held them. He went back and sat by the fire and when he looked back again a few minutes later the boy was eating the rabbit, pulling it apart with his teeth, ripping each piece off and holding it up to the moonlight and nodding and then eating it. One and then the next and then the next.
Chapter Thirteen
She sat in that pestilent darkness and leaned her head back against stone both cold and wet and watched him come to her in the shadows. He moved like a thing very long imprisoned, picking his way with a strict care and silence. Looking always at the door and stopping to listen and on his face endlessly the hint of a smile, as if he possessed some knowledge the rest of the world did not but which it craved at every turn. He came through that gloom and sat next to her and for a long time said nothing and then said:
“It's time.”
She held a hand up, the chains rattling. Black and rusted and unbreakable. She had tried many times when she first arrived and then given up and now they were a part of her the way that the changing of the guard marked time. Her world and all that it contained.
He nodded. “You're ready to cut them?”
“I won't have a week.”
“I know.”
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes and when he closed them he looked very old and she became all at once afraid that he would die. But then he opened them again and that light was still in them and he said: “I'm a young man, you know. A—”
And then he stopped and his mouth hung open for a moment as if he had forgotten it and he blinked twice and then looked at her and turned his head to the side and closed his mouth. Looking very calm, as if expecting nothing, as if not knowing that he had just been speaking. He nodded once and looked away across the room.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“Mountains fall,” he said.
She'd forgotten how it made her feel and it was as if her vertebrae were all ice. A sudden and cold feeling as it moved in spine and nerve and bone. She swallowed hard and was very aware of her own chains and that she could not run and she watched him carefully.
“Mountains fall and worlds turn,” he said. “I've told you with the young goat and you've not listened. But they fall as they fall as they fall.”
Now he looked at her and he was gone. There was no other word for it. In his eyes was another man or the lack of a man altogether. A great and hollow emptiness where once he had been. That light of youth in old eyes replaced by nothing and more of the same. She did not know if he saw her or not or if it was even to her that he spoke.
Then he reached over calmly and said: “Have you heard?”
She moved to the side just slightly and he did not follow. His hand extended as if wanting something. Asking perhaps for coins in the drizzling rain, a vagrant under a bridge. A child perhaps in need of food. The fingers slightly bent and white at the ends and it was then that she saw he was barely breathing. His chest moving like that of a man already looking into death's realm and seeing him there in his robes and steadying himself for that meeting.
“The mountains fall,” he said. “They always fall.”
She did not speak and he looked over at her for a long time and then finally he lowered his head to his chest and he slept. His breath still shallow but in sleep at least in constant time and growing stronger. She wanted to wake him and did not and just watched him sleep. Hearing the guards changing in the hall and not knowing what she would do were they to come in and find him there.
When he opened his eyes again, they had changed back. He blinked as he had before and looked at her.
“It's time,” he said.
“What's happened to you?” she said.
He looked at her a long moment and she could see tears in his eyes. There contained and pooling, but also something else. A deep-rooted fear like someone standing on a snow bridge over a great crevasse and understanding only at some vast midpoint that it was snow and ice and not stone and suddenly feeling the distance below them in a different way as from the bottom that bridge crumbled and the burning sun rose over the mountains.
“I don't know,” he said. “I don't remember.” He raised a hand, touched his face. His temple. “But I know that it's time. I know it.”