Mairi ate her supper.
Catriona looked at the table in front of her and waited for the warmth in her face to settle, and did not look at the head of the table again. She told herself it had been a long day and she was tired, and almost believed it. But the feeling of his gaze remained, a ghost of a touch on her skin.
Three days later, James got out of bed.
Catriona had been watching for it.
The strengthening had been building in his chest for two weeks, the breathing easier, the color better, the particular quality of a body beginning to remember what it was supposed to be capable of. She watched the way he moved in the bed, his small limbs testing their own weight with a new, quiet strength.
She had noted it each morning without saying so, the way she noted everything she wasn't ready to feel yet. Her own heartwould give a small, hopeful leap every time he sat up without a struggle.
She was compounding the evening preparation at the worktable when Fox's tail flickered.
That was all. A flicker, a quick side-to-side at the tip, the signal he gave when something had caught his attention and he was deciding whether it warranted full engagement. Catriona froze, her hand hovering over the mortar.
James, in the bed, was watching the tail. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly parted in anticipation.
Daenae.
He pushed the blanket back and put his feet on the floor. The soft thud of his feet hitting the stone sounded like a drumbeat in the quiet room.
She set down the pestle. "James." Her voice was a sharp, instinctive warning.
"I'm just standin'," he said. He looked at her, his chin set with a stubbornness that was terrifyingly familiar.
He was standing.
Both feet flat on the cold stone, both hands still touching the mattress. Upright in the thin winter light from the window with his dark hair damp at his temples and the particular expression he wore when he was doing something he'd decided on before asking. His jaw was tight, his focus entirely on the space between him and the hearth.
Fox's tail flickered again.
James took a step.
She was halfway across the room before she'd decided to move. Not to stop him, she realized, but because she couldn't stay at the worktable. But because her feet had made the decision before the rest of her caught up, the same way she'd moved toward every patient she'd ever had in the moment when something shifted. Her breath was trapped in her chest, a painful, heavy thing.
James took another step.
Then another step, arms out, eyes down, the tip of his tongue just visible at the corner of his mouth. Fox moved ahead of him, tail up, at exactly the pace of a small boy taking unsteady steps across a stone floor. Catriona watched the way his knees trembled, her hands reaching out in the air, not touching but ready.
"Ye will fall," she said, and stopped, because her throat was doing something she hadn't given it permission to do. A thick, aching lump had formed there, making it hard to swallow.
James laughed.
High and bright and startled out of him by his own success, his arms windmilling slightly as his balance found itself and held.
The sound of it went into the room and the corridor beyond. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated triumph, and it made the air in the room vibrate.
The two servants passing outside stopped and looked through the open door. And then one of them made a sound that brought the other one running. Then there were four people in the doorway, and Fox was doing a second circuit of the room like a creature leading a small parade. Catriona felt the collective indrawn breath of the people in the doorway.
James was still walking, still laughing. He hit the far wall with both hands and spun around, laughing, as though he had just come a very long way and wanted everyone to know it. His face was flushed with exertion, his eyes shining with a light she hadn't seen since she arrived.
The servants were clapping. Catriona did not register when that started. One of them, the young lad who always froze when Fox looked at him, Tam, had his hand pressed over his mouth and his eyes were bright. The joy in the room was a living, breathing thing.
She crouched in front of James and put both hands on his arms, steadying him. His skin was warm, his muscles pulsing with the thrill of the movement.
His face was flushed and delighted and six years old and entirely, completely, alive.
"I did it," he said. He was breathless, but his grin was wide.
