Victor Grimholt's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

Years passed. Lunella grew tall enough to reach the low hooks. She stood in the shop doorway one morning in her star-patterned apron and small boots, her hair pulled into two dark puffs. She watched Victor sharpen a blade on the stone. The rattle and the leather hare sat on a shelf behind her now, out of reach and out of use. Victor set the knife down. He looked at her the way he looked at good work. Then he said the thing he had decided the night before. "Today you cut with me." He took her first to the schoolhouse. Averion waited at the door, cloaked in moss and small pink flowers, staff in one green hand. Victor had taught Lunella her letters at his own table, but the law wanted a signature. Averion bent low and spoke to the girl, warm as broth. "You are ready to work, little moon?" Lunella nodded. Averion straightened and looked at Victor. "Then I release her from lessons here. She learns at your bench now. The swamp will keep whispering. She can listen while she works." Averion pressed a signed slip into Victor's palm. Victor folded it once and put it in his coat. Back at the shop he opened the heavy wooden chest by the wall. The iron bands were scratched from years of Livia's careful locking. He lifted the lid. Inside lay the blades he had hidden the day the baby came: the boning knife, the cleaver, the hooks. He took out a small paring knife with a bone handle. He had made it for her hand last winter. He closed the lid and turned the key and set the key on its nail, high but reachable now. He brought a rabbit to the block. He showed her the joint at the leg. He named the tendon and the bone. He put the paring knife in her hand and set his own hand over hers. "Press here. Not there. The blade wants the gap." She pressed. The joint gave. She looked up at him, eyes wide, not with fear. Victor almost smiled. "Again," he said. She cut again, alone this time. The cut was clean. At dusk he wiped the block down and she wiped her small knife the way he had shown her. The chest stood unlocked against the wall. He watched her hang her apron on the low peg beside his. She had done the work and she had not flinched. That was the thing he had wanted since the night he named her. Then a boy ran up to the shop door with a folded paper. He held it out to Victor without speaking. Victor opened it. The hand was neat. The words were short. A man had come back to the market asking after the butcher's girl again, and this time he had brought a seal.