Page 50 of Moonless

I set it back down.

I bring warm water and kneel at her shoulder. “I need to see the shoulder.”

She leaves the cloak where it is. I fold the worn edge down, and the smell of salt comes up with it.

She cried into it last night. It’s dried into the weave where she held it against her mouth. I heard the first of it from beyond the pool, then the rest, for a long time. She wasn’t trying to keep it from me. I stayed where I was until it stopped.

You can’t agree with me and leave it there.

I loosen the shirt at her neck and ease the collar aside. Her good hand lies on the cloak beside my wrist.

Yesterday it would’ve been on my forearm by now, her thumb working through the fur.

I unwind the linen. The split’s closed most of the way, and the skin beside it is the same warmth as the rest of her arm.

“Does that hurt?”

Her eyes move toward me, and after a while she shakes her head.

Yesterday she’d have said yes just to argue.

I put my face nearer than I need to and breathe in. Skin, the salt off the cloak, pine from the bedding under her, and nothing sour anywhere. No fever. I’d have smelled that from the hearth.

It isn’t the shoulder keeping her down.

I’ve carried enough dead to know the smell, and it isn’t on her. I know grieving well enough, but that’s for the dead, and there’s nobody dead here. She’s warm under my hand and breathing, there’s nothing wrong on her anywhere I can find, and she won’t lift her head for a bowl.

I wash around it and cover it again.

“It’s closing well.”

She turns her eyes toward the fire.

I carry the used linen to the pool and rinse it while the trickle runs between the stones beside my foot. I stop with the wet linen in my hands, listening toward the chamber. Yesterday she swore at me from there once she thought I couldn’t hear. I’d take it today.

I leave the linen spread to dry and go back.

She’s shut her eyes.

I move her breakfast nearer the fire. When I sit, both ears turn toward the small rustle of her sleeve, but she only draws her hand under her cheek.

I eat from my own bowl, tearing the larger pieces between my fangs. Hers sits by the fire with the spoon where I left it.

By midday the broth’s thickened enough to need more water. I stir it in, breaking the soft meat apart against the pot, and she sleeps through the scrape of the ladle.

The pine under her bedding is only two days old, and I go out for fresh tips anyway.

Her eyes are open again when I come back.

I lay the pine along the wall by her head, where her right hand can find it.

“These are fresh.”

She looks at the branch nearest her face, and her hand stays under her cheek.

Two mornings ago she watched me bring pine through the passage and asked whether I’d lost a fight with a tree. I brushed needles from my back while she told me where I’d missed them.

There’s resin in my shoulder fur now, and she can see it from the pallet. I leave it there and go to the hearth.