Bastien's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

They reached the cottage by dusk. Bastien pushed open the door and lit a small fire. Fallon stood in the middle of the room, holding the scorched wooden bird. "I don't want to sleep alone," he said. Bastien nodded and made a place for him by the hearth. The first nights were the hardest. Fallon woke shaking. Bastien sat beside him and spoke low until the boy slept again. By the end of the week, Fallon slept through. By the end of the month, he smiled at small things — a sparrow at the window, bread pulled warm from the coals. In the garden, Bastien led him to the catmint bush. He crushed a leaf between his fingers and held it under Fallon's nose. "This one calms a restless gut. And a restless heart." Fallon listened with that quiet way of his, repeating each name back. He learned fast. Bastien set a carved chair under the oak for him, near the herb beds. It became Fallon's spot — where he sorted cuttings, ate his bread, dozed in the afternoon sun. One morning Bastien laid a curved blade in his palm, its steel etched with leaves. "Yours. An herbalist needs his own knife." Fallon closed his fingers around the handle and did not speak for a long moment. That night Fallon found him by the fire. He sat close. Closer than a boy sits to the man who took him in. He set his hand on Bastien's knee and left it there. "You saved me," he said, plain as ever. "I love you." Bastien did not move the hand away at once. He looked at the boy — healed, steadied, looking back at him with a want that was not a child's. He chose his words carefully. "You are my apprentice. My boy. That is what I can give you." Fallon nodded slowly and drew his hand back. Something had settled, and something else had opened. The cottage was a home now. But Bastien knew the shape of the trouble that came with it.