Sorcha nodded frantically; she was pale, her teeth chattering.
“Fine,” she said belatedly, her voice a touch higher than usual. “Everything’s fine.”
“What are you doing, then? It’s freezing.”
I rubbed at my bare arms for emphasis, despite the magic that warmed my blood and kept the goosebumps at bay. Sorcha had no such defense against the cold. The winds tugged at her thin shawl, whipping her hair around her face every time she turned to pass by the gate again. By the wind-chafed red of her cheeks and the paling of her lips, I could only assume she’d been out here a while.
“I was waiting for the post.”
Bewildered, I glanced down the empty road, then back at the empty tin box that my father had haphazardly nailed to the outside of the gate. I flung an arm at it.
“We have a letterbox! Come inside.”
Her shoulders were rigid with the cold and the shrug she offered was stilted and painful.
“I always wait out here.”
“Oh good. And what am I to tell your mother if you catch your death in this chill?”
Sorcha faltered, a slight twitch passing over her features between one step and the next. I narrowed my eyes – not that she’d stop and meet them to take much notice. Why was she being socagey?
“Sorcha?”
But my cousin wasn’t listening; she had stopped again, stiffening with something other than cold, her blue eyes wide as dinner plates. I followed her gaze and spotted the figure just down the path as they shuffled closer and offered a merry wave.
It was Ginny, who was not only Stormsby’s Postmaster but our sole messenger. She had been delivering the messages since I was a girl, hobbling around Stormsby’s ramshackle roads no matter how many locals begged her to hire a youth to help her out. Formidable as she was, she was getting on in years and had been for some time. Even Tanner had always deferred to her as an elder, sobering the moment she set foot in the tavern and acting like a scolded schoolboy in her presence. At the thought of Tanner, an image of him flickered in my mind, bent over my counter with his hands framing a pint and a cheeky grin on his weathered face. My heart gave a little pang, and as Ginny drew even with us I had to force a smile to my face.
“Morning, Miss Roz. Sorcha darlin’. Gods, I’m cold just looking at the pair of ye with barely a rag on your backs,” she crowed. “Your lips areblueSorcha! Have you been out here all morning?”
Sorcha offered her that same stilted shrug, and repeated; “Ialways wait for you.”
Ginny tutted, but seemed rather touched. Crow’s feet framed her eyes and fanned out as she held back a small smile, clearly as charmed by my cousin as the rest of the village.
“Well, I’d have tried to hurry if I knew you’d be freezing your toes off just for little old me,” she said between huffs of breath as she rooted around in the bag slung over her hip. “I was held up at Roy’s farmhouse for a while, bit of a kerfuffle –Aha!”
She finally fished out a tight scroll and brandished it at me with a hearty chuckle.
“Yetanotherone for you, Miss Roz. Would you believe it?”
“Another?”
I reached for it, and it didn’t escape my notice that Sorcha took a half-step forward as the letter passed from Ginny’s hand to mine. My cousin held her tongue, but her eyes were glued to the scroll, locked on the movement of my fingers unpicking the wax and thread that held it shut. I paused before I unrolled it, waiting for her to stop me or explain what it was that had her brows so tense, her lips pressed so tightly together. When she just continued to stare, I unfurled the paper slowly, giving her as much opportunity to cut in as I could before my eyes dropped to read it.
It was short, the words scratched out by a desperate, hurried hand. I read over it once, twice, thrice – then slowly met my cousin’s eye to find my horrified stare mirrored in her own.
???
“Roz?”
Sorcha’s voice was small and timid, almost lost beneath the whistling of the kettle. I raised my head from the cradle of my hands and caught a glimpse of her pale, crumpled face. And though something inside me ached to fold her into my arms, I couldn’t. A fearful sort of anger had tightened my every muscle. Stiffly, I rose and crossed to the kettle without a word.
“I can do that,” Sorcha said, voice trembling.
Numbly, I let her take the kettle from my hands and watched as she prepared two mugs of tea; one for Ciara, and one for Ginny, who had come in for a bowl of porridge – or more likely, to get the full story behind mine and Sorcha’s tense, wordless exchange over the mysterious letter she’d delivered.
The letter that still sat so heavy in the pocket of my apron, weighing me down with such strength that I could almost imagine my shoulders curving inward, just as Sorcha’s now were. I watched her fuss over the teas, pored over her sweet worried face in profile until the weight became too much.
“Your mother never sent you here, did she?”
