Tara Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 22 of 29

The midwife was won, but Bjorn was slipping. Since the night he carved the child's rune with her hand on his, he had not slept in their tent. Tara sat alone inside the blue-draped wedding tent and opened the leather journal on the antler table. She wrote down the days. She wrote how long he stood at the gate before turning. She wrote which paths he took to avoid her. He had gone to a small stone lodge past the trees, the one hunters used in summer. Smoke curled from its chimney now in winter. Tara walked the snow to the wind-worn marker he had set near the path — the stone bearing the child's name-rune, both their marks twined. The carving was clean. He had not chipped it away. That was something. But he had not come home either. She did not knock. She sat against the lodge wall in the cold and played the bone flute. One song, then another. The songs the women sang over her each night. She played until her fingers stiffened. Then she set the flute down and waited. The door opened. Bjorn stood in the frame, his eyes tired. "I am afraid," he said. He did not move closer. "Of the carving. Of what the young ones whisper. Of holding a child whose name they may not speak." Tara stood. She did not reach for him. She opened her left palm, the cord still tied at her wrist. "Then be afraid beside me," she said. "Not behind a door." He stepped out into the snow and took her open hand. He walked her back past the rune stone and did not look away from it. That night he slept in the tent. The journal stayed closed on the antler table. She did not need to time him anymore.