Aria Blackwing's Arc

Chapter 24 of 24

The frame was up. Now the room needed to become a place a man could live. Eldric had made his three trips from the village and stood his belongings in the corner. He was Aria's uncle, her mother's younger brother, and he would arrive to stay for good in three days. Aria looked at the bare boards and knew what she had to do. "We finish it before he comes," she told Derek. "All of it. So he walks into a home, not a job site." Derek dragged the bundle of supplies to the doorway. He pulled out the saw, the hammer, the coil of rope. "Then we start with the bunk." They worked two full days. Derek cut the posts and Aria held them plumb while he drove the nails. The hawk watched from its pen through the open wall. By the second dusk the bunk stood solid against the far corner. Aria pushed her weight against it. It did not shift. "It'll hold him," Derek said. He wiped sawdust from his good arm. "It'll hold anybody." The last day was for the small things. Aria hung a shelf for his tools and a peg for his coat. She carried in a straw tick and beat it soft, then laid it on the bunk boards. She spread the blankets. She set his carved perch on the sill where morning light would reach it. She placed a cup and a bowl beside the bed. She stood back and counted the room the way her mother once counted stitches. A place to sleep. A place to wash. A place to sit. Nothing missing. Derek came in wiping his hands. He looked at the made bed and the shelf and the perch. "You thought of everything." "I wanted him to have somewhere that was his," Aria said. "Not a corner he borrows. His own." On the third day Eldric came up the path at midmorning. He carried nothing but a small sack, because everything else was already here. He stopped in the doorway of the new room. His eyes moved over the bunk, the coat peg, the perch catching the light. He did not speak for a long moment. Then he pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes the way he did when he was alone. "I haven't slept in a room that was mine in twenty years," he said. "It's yours now," Aria said. Eldric set his sack on the bed. He touched the perch with one finger. Then he turned to Aria, and his face was steady again. "I have something to give you in return," he said. "I never told you how your mother died. I was there at the end. You should hear it from me before winter closes us in." Aria's hands went still. The room she had built was ready. The story she had waited her whole life to hear was not.