Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

He woke before anyone else did, and it took him a moment to work out why his chest ached.

The window was gray. The house had the hollow quiet of the hour before even the birds start, when everything seemed to be holding still. 

Somewhere close, a soft, steady rasp rose and fell. It came from the chair beside the bed, where Baur sat with his arms folded and his chin sunk on his chest, snoring.

Sebek lay and listened with a strange, guilty fondness.

Then he remembered the dream, and it was already gone.

He had known it the moment he opened his eyes. It had left no picture behind. 

There was only a residue, a heaviness under his ribs, a taste like cold leaves, the sense that something very large had just stepped out of the room. He turned toward it, carefully, and it slid away from him like a word you’ve said too many times. Green. A sound, thin and bright, like voices in a game. The feeling of falling.

That’s all?

He pressed. His skull gave a warning throb, and the fragments went to ash.

He waited until Baur’s breathing settled into an even rhythm. Then, one careful inch at a time, he slid his hand under the pillow, found the corner of the notebook, and drew it out. His ribs complained. He held his breath, and the old man snored.

The pencil stub was wedged in the spine. He took it in his left hand without thinking, and opened to the first clean page.

Dream. Forest? Lost. Voices. Falling.

He looked at it.

Five words. A whole night, reduced to five words, and not even good ones.

That can’t be all.

He tried to add something. He held the point over the paper and reached back toward the dark, and found only the heaviness, and the green, and the falling. 

Pressing harder, the lead snapped with a small dry click, and a gray streak ran off the edge of the page.

He sat very still and breathed through his nose until the heat in his chest went down. It was only a pencil. It was only a dream. But he had been so good at remembering once. 

Dates, maps, whole chapters, the order of a king’s ministers. People used to ask him how he did it. And the one time it truly mattered, the page was blank.

Stop. Use what you have.

He turned the pencil to the other end, where a little wood was left to be scraped, and found a clean edge on the paper’s margin to coax a point. It took some time. He wrote with the new stub, slowly.

Not an accident?

He looked at that for a while too.

Children? Other boys?

Something happened to me. (to him)

He crossed out me and wrote to him, and then sat looking at the correction.

Across the room, the light in the window had turned from gray to a thin, clean pink. Baur shifted in the chair, muttered something, and settled again. Sebek turned the page.

Under the first heading, he wrote the names, one to a line, the way he had once written 

He read the whole thing over, slowly, from the top.

It wasn’t enough. It was nowhere near enough. It was a boy’s scratchy handwriting and a broken pencil and a handful of names, and somewhere in the part of his head that wouldn’t open there was a whole world, and a story that mattered.

One page at a time.

It was a very old rule. It was the one he’d used whenever the books piled too high.

He closed the notebook and slid it back under the pillow, and then lay with his hand flat against the cover, feeling the soft worn edge, until his pulse was steady.

The sun came up. It put a thin gold line across the foot of the blanket and crept up the wall toward the dried flowers on their string. Downstairs a door opened, and somebody’s footsteps crossed the kitchen, and the smell of woodsmoke began to drift up through the boards.

Baur gave a great snort and woke.

He sat bolt upright, looked around the room with fierce, unfocused suspicion, found nothing to be angry at, and subsided.

“Hmph,” he said. “I wasn’t asleep.”

“No, Grandfather,” Sebek said.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Sebek’s mouth twitched. He turned his face toward the window so the old man wouldn’t see it.

And that was when he heard it, very faintly, drifting up from somewhere far down the lane.

Something metal.

Clang.

A pause.

Clang. Clang.

Baur frowned. “What in the name of...”

Clang clang clang.

It was a pot, he realized. Someone was banging a pot, steadily and without mercy, a long way off, and under it, even fainter, a small furious voice was shouting.

Sebek put his hand over his mouth. His shoulders had started to shake. It hurt his ribs, and he didn’t care.

“Is that Silver?” said Baur.

The stairs shook before the door did.

Baur stood and went to the window, scowling out at the lane, where there was nothing to see but hedge. The clanging had been joined by a second sound, a small, determined, out-of-breath voice, and under that, much closer to the house, a calm one.

“Silver. Silver. That is not what I meant by early.”

Clang clang clang.

The front door banged open. Boots hit the stairs, and the third step cried out.

“Silver. That is not what I meant by early.”

“You said before breakfast!”

“Before breakfast, yes. Not before the Hallens’ dog. I believe it has started a petition.”

Clang.

“Careful, that one—” a girl’s voice called from the kitchen.

“I know—”

The bedroom door flew back against the wall, and Silver stood in it.

He was out of breath, and his cheeks were red from running, and his coat was buttoned one hole off so that it hung crooked across his chest. His silver hair stuck up in three directions. In one hand, held aloft like a banner, he carried a small, dented iron pot, and in the other a wooden spoon.

For a second he didn’t speak. He simply stood there, looking at the bed.

Sebek was still in it.

He was propped against the pillow with the blanket pulled up, and the notebook was hidden, and his heart was doing something complicated. He lifted one bandaged hand.

“I said I’d be here,” he said.

Silver’s face crumpled, and then, in the same instant, un-crumpled into a grin so wide it nearly split it.

“You are,” he breathed.

“I’m not allowed to leave.”

“I know!” The pot swung. “I know, I said, I told Papa the whole way, I said, he’s going to be there, he promised, and Papa said I shouldn’t expect, and I said I’m not expecting, I know, and—”

“Silver,” said Lilia, appearing in the doorway behind him.

He looked remarkably well for a man who had apparently been dragged from bed at an unreasonable hour. His hair was combed, and his coat was neat, and he was carrying a pot lid in one hand, which he lifted toward the room with an expression of weary affection.

“In my defense,” he said, “I told him no pots. I said nothing at all about lids.”

“There was no lid,” Silver said, “so I used the spoon.”

“The spoon is on my list of grievances.”

“I told you it was an emergency!”

“And I told you it was dawn.” Lilia stepped aside to let him pass, then looked toward the chair. “Baur. Good morning. You look dreadful.”

“I look as I’ve always looked.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Baur grunted and sat down again, with the air of a man resigned to the day.

But Silver wasn’t listening. He had put the pot down on the chest at the foot of the bed with a clunk, tossed the spoon beside it, and climbed up onto the end of the mattress. He sat cross-legged, facing Sebek, almost knee to knee.

“Did you sleep?” he demanded. “I didn’t. I kept waking up. Papa says I snored the whole time, but I wasn’t, I was thinking.”

“A bit,” Sebek said. “I slept a bit.”

“Was it good? Did you dream? Did you dream about me?”

Behind him, in the chair, Baur’s boots shifted. Lilia’s eyes moved toward the bed, calm and attentive.

“He had a rough night,” Baur said, shortly.

“Ah,” said Lilia, very softly, and let it go.

He didn’t ask. He only tilted his head, and for a moment his red eyes met Sebek’s, warm and steady and entirely without pressure. Then he leaned back against the wall with his arms folded, and the moment passed.

Thank you.

Sebek wasn’t sure whether he’d said it aloud. He didn’t think so. But Lilia’s smile deepened by a fraction.

“I’m fine,” Sebek said. “Really. Did you bring them?”

Silver’s whole body jerked.

“Yes.”

He plunged both hands into his pockets, one after the other, and began to pull things out and set them on the blanket in a row, with great ceremony and no regard for order. Each time he put something down, he stopped and looked at Sebek, as if to be sure he was watching.

“This one first.”

It was a feather. It was long, and glossy, and a startlingly bright blue, with a band of black and white barring down the quill.

“It’s a jay’s,” Silver said. “From the oak at the bottom of the lane. It dropped right in front of me. Right in front, on the day you got hurt. I was...” He stopped. He tucked the thought away and moved on. “It was just there. So I took it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Sebek said.

It was. He turned it carefully in his fingers. The vane caught the pink light from the window and showed a deep, glossy blue, almost purple, along the edge.

“It’s a jay,” he repeated, learning the word.

“Jays steal things,” Silver said gravely. “Papa says. They take shiny things and hide them. This one must have been in a hurry.”

“What else?”

“This.”

A flat gray pebble, no bigger than a coin, with a clean white stripe running right through the middle. It was cool and smooth. When Sebek turned it, the stripe caught the light and flashed.

“From the river. You have to look really close or you miss them. There are lots of stripes, but the good ones go all the way around.” He tapped the edge with a fingertip. “See? All the way.”

Sebek looked. It did. A single unbroken band, clean as drawn.

“That’s very good,” he said, and meant it.

Silver beamed.

He brought out a pale spiral shell, empty, with a chip on the lip. A pinecone the size of his thumb. A bent copper nail, which he took out, looked at, and put away again.

“Not that one,” he said. “I’m keeping that.”

Sebek said nothing. He had a fair guess what it was.

“And this,” Silver said, with the air of someone saving the best for last, and pulled something long out of the front of his coat.

It was a stick. It was a very good stick, straight and clean and nearly as long as his arm, the bark peeled away in a spiral and the wood beneath rubbed smooth as soap. The thick end shone, as though it had been held a great many times.

“For sword training,” Silver said. “Well. For practicing. It’s not as good as the real ones, but it’s the right size.” He turned it over in his hands, and for the first time his voice went shy. “I found it by the stream. I looked for ages. Papa said it was just a stick, but it isn’t.”

He held it out across the blanket, in both hands, like something that might spill.

“You can have it. For when you can stand.”

Sebek’s throat went tight.

He took it. It was still warm from Silver’s coat. It had a good weight, balanced and sure, and his fingers closed around the smooth end before he had told them to, finding a grip that felt as if it had been waiting for him. Something small and bright turned over in his chest, and he held very still so it wouldn’t go.

It’s his.

It’s a gift.

“It’s a really good stick,” he said.

“I know,” said Silver, glowing.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Silver bounced once on the mattress. “And I’m going to tell you everything today. Everything we do, everything about everyone. Papa says I shouldn’t tire you, but I won’t, I’ll just tell you the interesting parts, and you can tell me to stop. I made a list.” He patted his pockets. His face fell. “I think I left it at home.”

“You made a list,” said Lilia, from the wall, “and then put the pot on top of it.”

“The pot was urgent.”

“I’m sure it was.”

Sebek laughed.

It surprised him. It came out short and cracked and rusty from disuse, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. Silver went still in mid-bounce. Lilia’s eyebrows rose. In the chair, Baur lowered his head a fraction, and Sebek couldn’t tell whether he’d heard.

“That’s the first time,” Silver said slowly.

“What?”

“You laughed.” He looked as though somebody had handed him a small, rare thing he hadn’t expected to keep. “Not since you woke up. You used to laugh all the time, before, and then you didn’t, and I didn’t know if...” His chin wobbled. He sniffed hard. “It’s a nice laugh. I forgot.”

“I’m sorry I—”

“Don’t,” Silver said fiercely. “I’m not sad.” He scrubbed his nose on his sleeve. “Now. Where was I. The jay. No, the list. There’s the goat, you know about the goat, and the frog, and there’s a really long frog story, and there’s the time the goat got into the well...”

Sebek sank back against the pillows with the stick across his knees.

Silver talked, and the sun climbed. It lit the window frame, the shelf, the little wooden dragon with its one wing. It laid a bar of gold across the blanket and the row of small treasures. The feather. The striped stone. The pale curl of the shell.

Downstairs a plate clinked. Somebody called up that breakfast was ready, and somebody on the stairs added that if the person with the pot was finished with it, they would like it back.

“Not yet!” Silver shouted.

“Silver,” said Lilia.

“It’s still an emergency!”

Sebek turned his face to the window so nobody would see him smile. His thumb moved back and forth along the smooth wood.

It was a very good stick.

On the tenth morning, the house was too quiet.

He noticed it the way you notice a clock that has stopped. The usual sounds were missing. No pot clanking, no brother muttering over his books, no mother’s voice from the kitchen. There was only a faint scuffle on the landing, a hushed not yet, and a thud that sounded very much like somebody walking into the wall.

In the chair beside the bed, Baur didn’t open his eyes. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m not involved.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking about it.”

The door opened.

His mother came in first, with both hands behind her back, wearing a smile so bright and so casual that it had to be rehearsed. Her scales had gone faintly pink along the jaw. “Good morning, darling. Did you sleep well? Isn’t it a lovely day?”

“Dear,” said his father, from the hall, in a pained whisper. “You’re doing it wrong.”

“I’m doing it perfectly.”

“You’ve been doing it for ten seconds and he’s already suspicious.”

He was. Sebek looked from one to the other. Behind them, in the crowded doorway, his sister and brother stood on either side of something tall and lumpy that had been covered with a bedsheet. His sister was biting her lip. His brother was grinning so hard it looked painful.

“Go on, then,” his mother said, stepping aside. “Show him.”

His sister took hold of the sheet with both hands and pulled.

It was a chair.

It was a large, plain, well-made chair of pale wood, with a high back and wide arms, and in place of legs it had four wheels. The two big ones at the back were rimmed with iron, as tall as his sister’s hip. The two small ones at the front swiveled. 

There were handles at the back for pushing, and a little footboard that folded down, and a cushion on the seat covered in dark green cloth, with a border of tiny, careful stitches in a lighter thread.

Sebek stared.

“Your father and brother built it,” his mother said. Her voice had gone unsteady. “The healer said you mustn’t walk for at least two more weeks, and she was quite firm about it. But she said nothing about being carried. Or about a chair.”

“Your father and brother built it,” his mother said. Her voice had gone unsteady. “The healer said you mustn’t walk for at least two more weeks, and she was quite firm about it. But she said nothing about being carried. Or about a chair.”

“Mostly your brother,” said his father.

“Mostly Papa,” said his brother. “I held things.”

“He held them very well.”

“I did the cushion,” said his sister, quickly, as if getting ahead of an argument. She was looking at the floor. “It’s only my first try. The stitching on the left side wanders. I can redo it.”

Sebek looked at the left side. It wandered, a little. It was the most beautiful piece of sewing he had ever seen.

They made this.

For me.

He had spent ten days preparing himself to lie in this room for as long as it took. He had memorized the ceiling. He knew every knot in the beams, and the cracked mug, and the one-winged dragon. He had stopped expecting that anything would change until somebody told him he could walk.

And all this time, in the evenings, while he slept, someone had been planing wood downstairs.

He opened his mouth and found nothing in it.

“Do you like it?” his mother asked, very quietly.

“It’s...” He swallowed. “You made this. For me.”

“Of course we did,” said his father.

It was said so simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, that Sebek had to look away. He fixed his eyes on one of the wheels. The iron rim was bright and a little scratched.

“Thank you,” he said.

It came out stiff, and it wasn’t nearly enough. But the room softened around it. His mother pressed her fingers to her mouth. His sister made a small noise and looked away. And his brother, who clearly couldn’t bear it any longer, stepped forward and thumped the back of the chair.

“Don’t thank us yet. You haven’t tried it. I tested it down the lane, and it goes really fast—”

“You did what?” said his mother.

“Only the flat part.”

“It’s a chair, not a cart!”

“It was a very short lane,” said his brother, with dignity.

Baur let out a low, rumbling sound that, on a less forbidding face, might have been a laugh.

Then he stood.

He rose from the chair with a creak of knees, rolled his shoulders once, and came to the side of the bed. His face was set. He looked down at Sebek the way a man looks at a bag of grain he has been asked to carry.

“Arms around my neck,” he said. “Don’t squirm.”

“I can do it myself—”

“You can’t. Arms.”

Sebek put his arms around Baur’s neck.

He was lifted without any effort at all, one broad arm under his knees and the other behind his back, and his ribs didn’t so much as twinge. The old man smelled of tobacco and cedar and cold outdoor air. Sebek’s cheek came to rest against a shoulder as solid as a post. Somewhere under his ear, a pulse was ticking, slow and steady.

He’s careful.

It was the first time he had been above the level of the bed in ten days. The room swung, and tilted, and for a moment the window was somewhere else, and the beams were somewhere else, and he felt a rush of dizzy, absurd freedom.

“Mind the doorway,” said his mother.

“I have carried a good deal more through narrower doors.”

“Not mine.”

“Yours least of all.”

They went out.

The hall was narrower than he’d imagined. He had never seen it before. The walls were whitewashed and hung with bunches of dried herbs, and at the far end a small round window threw a coin of light onto the floorboards. 

Behind them came the awkward noise of two people carrying a wheelchair, his father’s “left, left, your left,” his brother’s grunt, and a heavy knock against the doorframe.

“Careful!” his sister hissed.

“I’m being careful—”

“You are not.”

At the head of the stairs, Baur paused.

“Third step,” his father said, behind them, in a tone of faint dread.

“I know about the third step.”

“It’s—”

“I fixed it.”

“You did not,” said his brother.

Baur set his foot on the third step, and it gave the loud, wounded groan it always did. Nobody said anything. Sebek, with his face against Baur’s shoulder, felt the old man’s whole chest rise and fall in a long-suffering sigh.

“I will fix it properly,” Baur said, to nobody.

“You say that every year,” said his mother.

“And one year, it will be true.”

They came down into the light.

It was the kitchen, and it was huge. Or maybe it only seemed so after ten days in a single room. The ceiling was low and beamed, hung with copper pans and bundles of onions. A great black hearth took up most of one wall, with a fire banked low and a kettle steaming on its hook. 

The table was long and scarred, with seven mismatched chairs, and bread on a board in the middle, and a jug of milk. And in the far wall, beyond the table, was a wide window with the shutters thrown open.

Sebek stopped breathing.

He had been looking at this hillside for ten days through a gap in a curtain. He had known it as a slope of green, and a lane, and a line of dark hedge. He hadn’t known there was a garden. 

Raised beds of lettuces and beans, tied up with string. A washing line, with sheets standing out in the wind. 

A low stone wall, and beyond it the long, bright sweep of the hills.

It was only a view. It had been there all along.

“There,” said Baur, and set him down.

The chair had been placed at the table, in the spot by the window. His father and brother hurried it into place and wrestled the footboard down. 

The cushion was cool under him, firmer than he’d expected, and when he laid his hands on the arms, the wood was smooth and warm. Somebody had sanded it, he realized. 

Somebody had sanded every inch.

“How is it?” asked his sister, hovering. She had tucked her hair behind her ears and was twisting her fingers together. “Is it too hard? Too low? The footboard’s adjustable. We can move it. I can put another cushion...”

“It’s good,” he said. “It’s very good.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She let out a breath. Then, to his surprise, she leaned down and kissed the top of his head, quickly, awkwardly, and straightened as though nothing had happened. “Good,” she said, and went to get plates.

His brother crouched at his elbow. “Okay, so the big wheels are the ones you push. Hold the rims. Not the spokes, the spokes pinch. Just push forward, like this—” He mimed it. “Go on. Try.”

Sebek put his hands on the cold iron rims and pushed.

The chair rolled.

It went forward about a hand’s breadth, smoothly and silently, and bumped gently against the table leg. A plate rattled. Somewhere behind him, his mother gave a small, startled laugh.

“Not bad,” said his brother. “You turn by pushing one more than the other. Go on.”

He pushed again. The chair rolled back, then sideways, then in a slow wobbling arc toward the hearth. His brother shouted encouragement. His father said something about the rug. 

His mother said, “Mind the fire,” and Baur commented, “He’s fine,” and the chair came to a gentle stop a good two feet from the stones, with its occupant sitting very upright and very pink.

I can move.

It was such a small thing, and it hit him so hard that he had to look at his hands.

They were still thin, and the left one was still stiff. But they were on the wheels, and the chair was going where he sent it. Nobody was carrying him. For the first time in ten days, he had gone somewhere because he had decided to.

He turned the chair, slowly, with one push and then another, until he was facing the window again.

The sheets were still snapping on the line. It was a plain, ordinary morning, and the smell of bread filled the kitchen, and behind him a whole family was arguing mildly about who would pour the milk.

He rested his hands on the rims and watched the wind move through the beans.

By late afternoon, the kitchen smelled of lemon.

Sebek had noticed it first as a faint sharp note under the woodsmoke and the bread, and then, as the light moved across the floor, as something he couldn’t ignore. 

He had rolled himself to the window and back twice, learning to turn on the spot, and each time the smell had been a little stronger. His mother had been shooing people out of the kitchen for an hour.

“It’s only supper,” his brother said, hovering at the door.

“Out,” said his mother.

“I could help—”

“You could help by leaving.”

His brother retreated with the wounded dignity of someone who had been trusted with a wheelchair and was now being denied a spoon. 

Sebek watched him go, and then watched the closed door of the pantry, behind which his father had been working for some time with a very long knife.

What are they making?

He turned the chair back toward the window, and found Baur in the corner, filling a pipe he had no intention of lighting.

“You know,” Sebek said.

“I know nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I am scowling.”

He was, in fact, doing both. It was a remarkable thing to see.

The table was set for seven. Sebek counted the chairs, then the plates, then the little dishes of coarse salt and cracked pepper, and a small bowl of pale green oil, and a plate of lemon wedges cut into neat, careful quarters. 

His sister was arranging a handful of herbs in a cup in the middle of the table and doing it badly, because she kept glancing at him.

“Don’t look,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

He smiled and turned the chair to the window.

When the pantry door finally opened, his mother came out first, carrying a wide white plate with both hands, and she set it down in front of him as though it were something that might spill.

He looked at it.

It was salmon.

It had been cut thin. Impossibly thin, so thin the lamplight showed through it. The slices were laid in a slow overlapping spiral, a deep, glossy pink that went pale at the edges, and each one shone with oil. 

There were flecks of green on it, finely chopped herb, and a scatter of black pepper, and a few pale curls of lemon rind. A thin wedge of lemon sat at the side. It was cold, and it smelled like a clean river.

He didn’t move.

“It’s the best of the morning’s catch,” his mother said. She was wringing the edge of her apron. Her scales had gone pink again. “Your grandfather took it out of the river himself. At dawn. He was very rude to the fish.”

“I was efficient,” said Baur, from the corner.

“Your father sliced it. He insisted.”

“It’s the one task in this house,” said his father, from the pantry door, with immense dignity, “for which I am overqualified.”

“He measured them,” said his brother.

“I did not measure.”

“You did.”

Nobody was looking at the plate anymore. They were all looking at Sebek, and he knew it, and he couldn’t look back.

Salmon.

Carpaccio.

It was an ordinary thing. It was a plate of raw fish. It shouldn’t have mattered at all.

It wasn’t hers.

The thought came up quietly, from somewhere very far down. It had been a long time since he’d had it in front of him. 

There had been reasons it was never on the table, and he had never gone looking for them. He had stopped asking a long time ago. After a while he had stopped missing it too, and he had never expected to be given it back.

“You don’t have to,” said his mother, softly. “If you don’t feel like it. We only thought... you used to ask for it every week. We thought you might like to.”

“I like it,” Sebek said.

It came out quite steady. He was proud of that.

He picked up the fork. His hand shook, just slightly, and he waited for it to settle, and then he slid the tines beneath a single slice and lifted it.

It hung from the fork, almost transparent. A drop of oil ran down the edge and fell.

He put it in his mouth.

It was cold, and clean, and soft. The lemon was sharp and bright against the sweetness of the fish, and the oil had a green, peppery bite, and under it all was the faint, mineral taste of cold river water. It melted on his tongue. He closed his eyes.

He sat very still, and chewed slowly, and swallowed.

For a moment, there was nothing in the world but that. The kitchen noise, the clatter of cutlery, his sister’s whispering, all of it went somewhere far away, and he was only a person at a table with something good in his mouth. Something he had chosen. Something that had been made because of him.

His eyes stung.

No.

Not here.

He blinked hard. He put the fork down, then picked it up again, then took another slice, because it was easier than saying anything.

“Is something wrong with the dish?” his mother asked.

“No. It’s perfect,” he said.

His voice came out thick. He hadn’t meant it to.

There was a short silence. From the other side of the table, his brother leaned over his own plate and peered, with great interest, at Sebek’s face.

“He’s crying.”

“I am not.”

“You are, a bit—”

“Leave him alone,” said his sister, and kicked him under the table.

“Ow—”

“Eat,” said Baur.

Everyone looked at him.

He had come to the table without a sound and sat down at the end, as upright and unreadable as a fence post. In front of him lay his own plate, with its own careful spiral of pink. He had not yet touched it. 

Now, without looking at anyone, he took his knife, separated four of the slices with great precision, and slid them across the table onto Sebek’s plate.

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

“Baur,” said his mother.

“I’m not.”

“You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“I had a very large breakfast.”

It was the most blatant lie that Sebek had ever heard. He looked at the four slices on his plate, and then at the old man’s carefully expressionless face, and the scales along his jaw, which had gone very slightly dark.

“Thank you, Grandfather,” he said.

“Hmph,” said Baur, and picked up his fork, and began, with enormous concentration, to eat a lemon wedge.

His sister made a strangled noise. His brother choked into his milk. His father put a hand over his eyes. And his mother, at the head of the table, pressed her fingers to her mouth, and her whole face crumpled with laughter and something else.

They ate.

It wasn’t a quiet meal. It was warm, and loud, and badly organized, and nobody could agree on whether the oil was too much or too little. 

His brother gave a speech on the proper ratio of lemon to fish. His father defended the thickness of the slices with the passion of a man defending a thesis. His sister told a long story about a customer at the market who had tried to bargain for thread. Baur said nothing, and ate his dish.

Sebek ate slowly. He tasted every slice. He folded each one over the tines, and let it sit on his tongue, and thought about nothing.

When the last one was gone, he looked at the empty plate, with its smear of oil and a single curl of lemon rind, and he didn’t want to put the fork down.

“Would you like more?” his mother asked.

He thought about it.

“Yes,” he said. “Please.”

“Good,” she said, and her voice shook, and she got up and went to the pantry before anyone could see her face.

He sat there, with his hands in his lap and the evening coming in blue at the window, and listened to his family argue about lemons.

—

After supper, the kitchen emptied out.

His parents went to wash up, and his brother went to argue with someone about the wheelchair. Baur, who disliked being thanked, went out to look at the weather. That left Sebek at the table, in his chair, and his sister, who had been hovering at his elbow for most of the meal with a look of terrible casualness.

“Are you tired?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” She went to the dresser, took out her basket, and set it on the table between them with a thump. “Then I need to measure you.”

The coat.

He had nearly forgotten it. It had been a sketch in a margin, held against her chest as if she were ashamed of it. He watched her take out a tape, a stub of chalk, and a little cloth bundle tied with string.

“You don’t have to do it now,” he said.

“I want to do it now. If I don’t, I’ll put it off until the weather turns.” She flushed. “Hold your arms out.”

He held them out.

She worked quickly, in a way that surprised him. The tape went around his chest, and she wrote a number on the back of her hand with the chalk. 

It ran from his neck to his wrist, and she muttered something and wrote another. She measured the length of his back, and then the span of his shoulders, with a faint frown. 

Her fingers were quick and light and slightly cold, and she handled him very carefully, as if he were something she was afraid of getting wrong.

“You’re thinner,” she said.

“I know.”

“I’ll leave room. You’ll grow back into it.” She tapped her chalk against her teeth. 

“Probably. If Mama has anything to say about it.”

“She does.”

“She always does.”

She finished, then untied the cloth bundle on the table and spread it open.

It was swatches. Six or seven small squares of wool, each no bigger than his hand, laid out in a row. 

A dark, heavy green. A gray-blue. A russet brown. A pale oatmeal. A plum so deep it was nearly black and a mustard yellow.

“I thought you could choose,” she said.

He looked at her.

She wasn’t looking at him. She was picking at a loose thread on the edge of the basket, with her shoulders very slightly raised. It was the posture of someone who has made an offer, and is trying not to show how much she wants it taken.

“You’d like me to?”

“It’s your coat.”

It’s my coat?

He turned the thought over. It was small, and it was plain, and it caught somewhere in his chest like a snagged sleeve. 

Nobody had ever asked him to choose the color of something that was going to be his. Not that he could remember. Maybe it was only that his memory was bad. Maybe it was the other thing.

He looked at the swatches, one at a time.

The oatmeal was nice, but it would show every mark. The plum was dark, and warm, and a little grand. The gray-blue looked cold. The brown…

“Not that one,” he said.

His sister’s head came up. “Which?”

“The brown. It looks like mud.”

There was a short, startled pause.

Then she burst out laughing. It was a sudden, helpless snort of a laugh, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes went bright. “It does,” she said. “It looks exactly like mud. I said that to Mama and she said I was being dramatic.”

“You were right.”

“I know I was!”

“And the yellow’s too loud.”

“It’s a terrible yellow. I only bought it because it was cheap.” She was still laughing, wiping her eyes with her wrist. “Oh, you haven’t changed at all.”

He went still.

“I mean...” She stopped, caught her breath, and looked at him more carefully. 

Something in her face softened. “You used to tell me exactly what you thought about everything. Every cloth, every drawing. You’d march up to my table and say, this is wrong, it needs to be longer. It used to make me so angry.” 

Her smile wobbled. “Then you woke up, and you stopped. You went all quiet, and careful, and you kept saying it’s fine. I thought you’d forgotten how.”

I’m sorry.

He had said it a great many times. He hadn’t noticed.

“I thought you’d forgotten how to tell me,” she said, “that something was ugly.”

He looked at the swatches, and at his own hands lying on the arms of the chair. He thought about the gray page of a list that was no longer in his head, and a rule he had learned somewhere, a long way off, about not saying what you thought.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said slowly. “It’s only...” He swallowed. “I wasn’t sure I was allowed.”

His sister stared at him.

“Of course you’re allowed,” she said. Her voice had gone odd. “You’re always allowed. Why would you not be?”

He didn’t answer. He picked up the deep green swatch instead, and rubbed it between his fingers. It was thick, and soft, and tightly woven, with a faint rough nap.

“This one,” he said.

“The green?”

“It’s the color of the hills. And of Grandfather’s hair.” He hesitated. “It won’t show mud.”

“It will show mud. It’s wool.” But she was smiling again, with her whole face. “Green, then. I’ll order the length from the market. It’ll be a week. Maybe two.”

“And a pocket.”

“A pocket?”

“A big one.” He held his hands apart, about the width of a fist. “Deep. For things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know yet,” Sebek said. “Feathers. Stones.” He felt his face go hot. “Silver brings things. I’d like somewhere to put them.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she took her chalk, pulled the sketchbook out of the basket, and turned to the drawing of the little coat. 

She bent over it, with her braid swinging forward, and drew a neat, careful rectangle on the left side of the chest. She looked at it, frowned, and drew another one beside it.

“Two,” she said. “One for each hand. I’ll line them with something soft.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I want to.”

“...Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” She sniffed, and rubbed her nose with her wrist, and left a streak of chalk on her cheek. “Tell me when it’s wrong. That’s all I want.”

He nodded.

She gathered the swatches into a pile, tied the string, and put them back in the basket. Then she hesitated, with her hand on the lid.

For a moment she looked as though she was going to say something more. She took a breath. She let it go. Then she reached out, quickly, awkwardly, and tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear, the way you’d smooth a page.

“Goodnight,” she said. “I’ll carry the basket up.”

“Goodnight.”

She went, and the stairs creaked under her, and then there was only the fire, ticking quietly in the hearth.

He sat alone at the table, with his hands on his knees and the lamplight steady on the wood, and the smell of lemon still faintly in the room. 

The window had gone dark. His reflection looked back at him from the glass, small and pale, with his hair on end, and a smudge of chalk on his sleeve that he hadn’t noticed.

It’s my coat.

Somewhere above him, a door closed, and a voice said goodnight, and another answered. It sounded like a house settling down.

He rolled the chair a little closer to the fire, and held out his hands to the warmth.