Marcus Steve's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Inside the widow's house Marcus sat on a low stool while she set the wrapped pine on the mantel. She did not unwrap it. She poured him water and studied his hands again. "You cut this yourself," she said. Not a question. "Last season's," he said. "Cured on my porch." She nodded once. Then she said the thing he was not ready for. "I'll come tomorrow. With my chest and my chair." She looked around her own room like she was already done with it. "A widow doesn't wait long once she decides." Marcus set the cup down too hard. "To my house." "To your house." She sat across from him. Her hands opened on her knees, palms up. "I've been thinking since you gave me the salt. A man alone in that homestead needs more than one woman to run it. I know two others who would suit. A weaver at the low well. A girl who reads at the temple steps. I can speak to them for you." He stared. She had planned a household while he was still practicing four words on his porch. "You'd bring them." "I'd bring them. I'd sort them. I know how women live together and you don't." She leaned forward. "I want the north room for my loom. The kitchen runs under me. The others answer to me first, you second. Say yes now or say no now. I won't be a second wife to a woman you find later." His mind went to the locked box under his floor. The gold rings Lysander told him to keep hidden. For a future woman, not the widow. He kept his face still. "Yes," he said. "Good." She stood. "Go home. Clear the north room. Sweep the porch. I'll be there by the second bell." He walked back to his homestead with his hands shaking. The house looked different from the path. The dead tree behind the shed. The warped boards on the porch rail. The lamp by the door he had not lit in a week. He climbed the steps and stood in his own front room and tried to see it the way she would see it tomorrow. The north room held a broken chair and three sacks of feed. He carried them out. He swept. He wiped the window. He stopped at the floorboard over the box and pressed his palm flat on it. He had said yes to a woman who would run his household and pick the next two. He had also said yes to hiding rings from her on her first day. The fairies had promised him a harem. The widow was going to build one and stand at the top of it. He closed the north room door and went to find the fairies before the second bell.