“Eseld.” My name in his voice sounds different than before. Rougher. Closer to breaking.
“Yeah?”
“You should go inside.”
I step back. Cold rushes in to fill the space between us. He walks back to the woodpile and splits a log with a crack that echoes across the snow.
I go inside.
That evening, the tension in the hall has changed. Not the wary distance of the first weeks. Something warmer. Heavier. The fire crackles. I sit on the floor near the sleeping platform, the ice flower in its dish of snow on the table beside me. He sits in his chair, but it’s closer than it used to be. He moved it three days ago. Didn't mention it. I didn't mention it either.
I ask the question I've been holding for days.
“Tell me about the chair.”
He looks at me.
“You sit in it all day. All night. You've worn grooves in the armrests from your hands.” I hold his gaze. “How long?”
He’s quiet for a long time. The fire fills the silence.
“Seven years.”
“What happened seven years ago?”
“My brother died.”
His voice is flat. Vortek. His brother. Loud. The better hunter. Quick to laugh. They lived in this hall together. Twobrothers in the Wastes, alone by choice. Happy enough. Short sentences. The facts laid out plain.
Seven years ago, Vortek was sick. Fever. Thyran went out to hunt, said he'd be back in an hour. Found tracks he hadn't seen before. Something big. He followed them. Lost track of time. Was gone most of the day.
Vortek came looking for him.
The cave beast found Vortek on the trail. Alone. Sick. Looking for a brother who had gone too far and stayed too long.
“I found him on the path,” Thyran says. “Between the hall and the ridge where I'd been tracking. He was cold.”
One sentence, and I understand everything under it. Vortek wasn't killed because Thyran was gone. Vortek was killed because he came looking for Thyran. Because Thyran had promised an hour and taken a day, and his sick brother had dragged himself out into the cold to find him.
“I sat down in this chair,” he says. “And I didn't get up for a long time.”
The fire settles. A log shifts and sends sparks upward. Outside, the wind pushes against the stone walls and the hall holds steady, the way it has for centuries.
He stands. Crosses to the back of the hall. I hear the scrape of a heavy lid, the groan of old hinges. He comes back carrying something in his closed fist.
He holds it out to me. Opens his hand.
A claw. Pale as bone. Longer than my palm. Curved and sharp and heavy for its size.
“Ridge bear,” he says. “Vortek killed it the summer before he died. Brought it home and held it up to the firelight and laughed and said it was bigger than his hand.” A pause. “I told him he was exaggerating. He threw it at my head.”
I take the claw. Turn it over. The surface is smooth, worn from handling.
“There’s more,” he says. “In the chest. Pelts. Teeth. Everything he brought home from every hunt.” His voice goes quiet with the memory. “I haven't opened that chest since the week I buried him. Not until now.”
He doesn't say why he opened it tonight.
I set the claw in his palm and close his fingers around it.
