Aria Blackwing's Arc

Chapter 10 of 24

The days after the trade settled into a quiet rhythm. Aria kept the knife on the shelf by the door and did not speak of the sound in the brush. Derek did not ask. The raven ate from her hand by the third morning. The owl tested its splinted wing against the perch and looked at them with round golden eyes. Something in the cabin had begun to feel like a shared thing rather than a borrowed one. On the fourth morning Aria came in from the herb beds and stopped on the porch. Derek was on one knee at the far post, a hammer in his hand and a scatter of nails between his boots. He was driving a loose board back into the rail. His bandaged arm moved stiffly, but he worked around it. He had already fixed the sag in the step and reset the latch on the shutter. "You should be resting that arm," she said. He set the hammer down. "It rests better when I use it slow." He nodded at the rail. "This would have gone through in a hard wind. I don't want the birds finding a hole where the porch should be." She sat on the top step. She watched him line up a nail and tap it, then drive it clean. He talked while he worked. He told her about the house his father had built and the winter it lost its roof. She told him about her mother teaching her which leaves stopped a fever. Neither of them hurried the words. The hammer kept a slow, even beat between them. When he finished the rail he sat beside her on the step. His shoulder brushed hers and stayed there. She did not move away. "I heard something on the path," she said. "On the way back from the village. In the brush. I didn't tell you." He was quiet a moment. "I know." "You know?" "You kept the knife on the shelf instead of putting it away. You've been watching the tree line." He looked at her. There was no anger in his face. "I wasn't going to push. I figured you'd say it when you could." Her throat tightened. She had carried the sound alone for four days and it had weighed more than she understood. "I didn't want you going out there again." "I won't go alone," he said. "Not for that. We decide together now." She nodded. She reached over and took his hand, the one without the bandage. His fingers closed around hers. Inside, the owl called once from its perch, low and curious. The raven answered with a rasp. "Then I'm telling you," she said. "Something followed me part of the way home. And I think it's still out there." He did not let go of her hand. He looked past her, toward the tree line, and his face changed.