Bastien's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

The seasons turned, and Fallon turned with them. He grew tall. His hands grew sure. He built a low pen for the goats himself, fitted the posts, mended the gate when the kid pushed through. One spring morning they raised a lattice for the pea vines together. Bastien held the frame steady. Fallon drove the stakes. Their shoulders bumped. Neither moved away. That night Fallon came to the cot again. He did not speak. He set his hand on Bastien's chest. "I am not a boy now," he said, plain as ever. "I have waited." Bastien looked at him a long time. He thought of every reason he had given. None of them held anymore. He drew Fallon down beside him and did not let go. In the morning Bastien took two strips of leather from his bench. He cut them, stitched them, and buckled one around Fallon's wrist. The other he fastened on his own. "Family," he said. Fallon turned his wrist in the light and nodded once. They worked the garden side by side after that, the goat kid trailing behind them. The cottage was no longer a home for a master and his boy. It was theirs. And Bastien knew, even as he tied the last knot, that a life this plain and this happy would draw eyes he did not want.