Page 91 of Homeward for a Spell

Denby waves a hand, interrupting her. “Please, don’t say anything else. It’s fine about the ring, no loss to my family fortune. And you and I seem to have done perfectly well without each other to date, so I’m sure we’ll continue to be fine without each other in future.”

“I can assure you we won’t be running into each other in town. I’m leaving directly and won’t be back for a long time.”

There’s the tiniest hint of a smile at the edge of Denby’s lips. “We would’ve made each other miserable, I’m sure. Not that you’re not lovely, but I suspect you’re as glad to be free of me as I am to be free of you. Our families, on the other hand? Well, I’m sure they’ll work it out. Plus, not getting married allows me more time to work on my inventions. Would you like to see my latest design for a mining machine?”

A shudder goes through Araphi at the thought. “I can’t spare the time. Someone else is expecting me soon.”

Denby holds out a hand. “Well, it was very odd being engaged to you, Araphi Clauneck, but good luck on your journey.”

Araphi shakes his hand. “And good luck with your mining machine.”

Denby’s eyes light up at the words and he drops her hand to gather up his drawings.

Feeling at peace, Araphi leaves to meet Sage at the Dragon’s Bane in the Rookery. If she’s lucky, perhaps she can play a song or two before the ranger arrives.

35

Sage

Returning to the Rookery for the first time in ten years doesn’t feel like coming home. For a heartbeat, it does feel like turning back the clock, however—like Sage hasn’t changed much at all from the barefoot kid who used to sneak out of her parents’ house and down to the docks to watch the ferries pull away from shore, dreaming of the day she’d board one and then simply keep going. Now, here she stands in the same dusty streets, frozen amidst the market day congestion and clamor, and knows that she isn’t the same at all.

For one, she no longer feels the bone-deep need to run and run and never stop.

She would, however, like to get this bit over with and head to the Dragon’s Bane for a well-deserved ale.

Turning down an alley three over from the one where she grew up—where Sage’s parents still live, and where they welcomed her with tears and too-fierce hugs, and will be expecting her to stop by with Araphi tomorrow morning before leaving the city again—her boots lead her to the door of the cottage her mother described. It’s roofed with straw and moss, and the rippled windowpanes sit crooked in their frames, but it’s well cared for and cleaned despite the ever-present soot that blows across the river from the factory district.

Sage spends entirely too long on the little stoop preparing to knock on the door. But she’s going to.

Any moment now, she’ll raise her fist and knock.

She will.

She hasn’t so much as twitched a hand when the door swings open and Ollie stands in the doorway, arms crossed over their chest. Like Sage, they’re both the same and deeply changed all at once. Their black curls have clearly grown out, piled carelessly at the crown of their head with the help of a sharp brass pin, and they’ve traded their traveling cloak and knife belt for a soil-streaked wool tunic tucked roughly into loose breeches. But their pale-green, thickly lashed eyes are flint-sharp as they regard Sage in a terribly familiar way.

It’s the look Sage remembers as Ollie watched her walk away.

And when they sigh from the depths of their chest, it’s a sound Sage remembers too well. “Would you come in already and stop dithering on my stoop?”

Ollie’s house is as modest and well-kept inside as it is out. The floors are rough old timber, but covered here and there with tidy little rugs made of dyed rags, worn though they are. Early spring wildflowers rest in a milk jar on a little table with only one chair. Ollie claims it, kicking the chair out from the table to sit.

Which leaves Sage standing in the center of the low-raftered room, unsure of what to do with her body or where to put her hands. “Hello, Ollie,” she blurts out once she realizes she’s yet to speak. A clever start, to be sure. “I…I suppose I came to say…that I’m sorry.”

Ollie only taps her long fingers against the table in an impatient rhythm.

Perhaps she’s meant to continue? “Sorry for, er…the way I left. You.”

“Thank you for the clarification,” they say dryly.

Sage is mucking this up, indeed. “Right. I just wanted…I needed to say that you were good to me. A good partner and party member and friend and wife. And you deserved somebody who loved you enough to choose you over everything else, so I’m sorry that isn’t what you got.”

“It’s all right, Sage. You can apologize for your part in our mess, but don’t neglect mine.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Another deep sigh, which seems to expel more air than a body should be capable of holding. “I knew you loved the road. Before you died…and after. I guess…I just didn’t know how to love you anymore without needing more of you. Maybe all of you.”

Sage scrubs a hand down her face. “Well. I guess I didn’t know how to give you any more of me without becoming less. Without losing myself. Especially after I died. But it wasn’t just you. It was everyone, for a really long time. I suppose I was also afraid that…that anybody who got a little too close and wanted a little too much would soon discover how little there was of me. Like…when you’re climbing a tree, and put a boot on a branch only to feel it give beneath you, and find it’s been hollowed out by dire beetles. Do you know what I mean?”