Aria Blackwing's Arc

Chapter 5 of 24

Three days passed without another visit from the animal. Aria and Derek fell into a rhythm inside the cabin. She changed the owl's splint at dawn. He fed the fire and boiled water. She ground willow bark. He mended the shutter latch with a strip of leather. They spoke about small things. The bird's appetite. The weather. What kind of creature left a print that wide. By the second afternoon they had a working list. Not a wolf. Not a bear. Not a lynx. Derek said he had seen a mountain cat once, near a river crossing, and it had been half this size. Aria pulled down an old book her mother had kept and turned the pages until the light went. Nothing in it matched. "We'll know when we see it," she said. "Until then we keep the bar down after dusk." The owl grew stronger. It gripped her finger when she lifted it. It turned its head to follow Derek across the room. He started calling it by no name at all, just talking to it while he worked. Aria watched him hold a cup of water to its beak with his good hand and felt something ease in her chest. That night she lit a pair of tapered candles on the table. She had been saving them. The wax slumped soft in the heat from the stone hearth. Derek sat across from her with his bandaged arm on the wood. The knife stayed in his boot now. He looked at the candles a long time before he spoke. "I had a brother," he said. "Younger. He got sick two winters ago. I went for a healer three villages over. By the time I brought her back he was gone." Aria set down her cup. "After that I couldn't stay in the house," he said. "I took work moving goods. That's how I got the shoulder. Men on the road wanted what I was carrying. I ran. I ran until I couldn't, and then I was on your porch." "You've been carrying that knife since then." "Since before then." He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table. "I didn't know if you'd send me back out." "I wouldn't have." "I know that now." She reached across and touched the back of his hand. He didn't pull away. The owl shifted in its basket. The fire popped. For the first time since she had found the bird in the storm, the cabin felt like more than a place she was defending. "Stay," she said. "Past the shoulder. Help me build this into what it should be. A place for hurt things to come." He looked at her across the candles. "Yes." Outside, past the shutters, a heavy step pressed into the mud at the tree line. Neither of them heard it. The bar was down. The candles burned. Inside the cabin, something had already changed.