Page 41 of The Washwoman at the River’s End

It’s cold and slick—a broken shoe, the sole pulled away from the fabric that makes up the body. The leather is worn, a hand-me-down, I think, based on the several rows of replaced stitching.

The image of Billy’s shoe tumbling off his foot as he fell flashes in my mind, and a pang of sadness for the boy settles beneath my sternum.

It’s what I thought when I first saw the child emerge into the valley with hate in his eyes. That he was nothing but a lost boy, looking for something to distract him from his hungry belly—a feeling I know well. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to catch a fish, existing on nothing but berries and water.

His clothes were worn, threadbare, and his cheeks gaunt. It sours my stomach, knowing the way the Fates bask in luxury in their gilded palaces when there are children who go without food in the very same kingdom they claim to love.

I wince as I scoot back to my bed, biting my lip against the pain. It takes several minutes to slow my breathing and heart rate, but eventually the pain dulls enough to allow me to raise my arm to remove the small strip of leather binding back my unruly hair.

Picking up the moon-shaped rock I use as a pillow, I sift my fingers through the soft peat to search for my needle. It’d been a gift from the goddesses, I’d thought, when I found it between the rocks on the river's edge. Likely from a time long before it became my prison, when women would do their mending and washing on this shore. I was once one of those women, trading stories and laughing with friends as we went about our daily chores, ignoring the clothes floating down the stream as if turning an eye would keep death from coming for us. The memory is like a splinter in my finger, a dull and persistent sting. If only things had remained that way.

I thread the thin strip through the needle and begin to work on the boy's shoe. The leather is brittle when the needle punctures it, but somehow, it holds, and I wonder if Brennen would be willing to spare some oil from his lantern to soften it.

Brennen.

Thinking his name sends a shiver down my spine, but I’m not sure if it’s from apprehension or wonder. I can’t stop thinking about the way he’d stopped the attack without even a moment’s hesitation. I know it couldn’t possibly have been for my sake, but it makes me once again wonder what he experienced in his life to react so viscerally to witnessing violence. And yet, he joined the Dìdeanair—chose to serve the Cutter—the most violent Fate of them all.

“What’re you doing?” A gruff voice skates along the back of my neck—Brennen’s—and I stiffen. My heart rate picks up as, with deliberate, commanding steps, he stalks around me, eyeing the needle in my hands.

“Where did you get that?” he snaps, his mouth pressed into a tight line.

Even with pain radiating through my entire body, a smirk tugs at my lips at the distrust in his eyes.

Good. Let him wonder where I found it. The needle hadn’t been on me when he’d searched my body yesterday, his invasive hands touching places he had no right to feel. Though, will this lead him to search harder? Will he somehow think to look beneath my pillow?

The thought is too horrifying to even entertain, but I don’t want him to see my fear.

“Why?” I ask, slipping a hint of amusement into my words. “Are you afraid I'll fell you with a mending needle?”

He doesn't answer, hand on his sword as he stops directly behind me. “You're fixing a child’s shoe,” he says it as a statement, his voice clouded with disbelief.

“Excellent observation. No wonder you made An Àrd,” I say, giving him nothing more. He doesn’t seem to notice my taunting.

“Is it the boy’s?”

I lift it up slightly to show him. “Aye.”

There are several heavy beats of silence, but I sense when he drops his hand from his waist.

His brows pull together in obvious confusion. “Why?” he asks. The word doesn't sound angry or taunting, but like genuine confusion, and I take a few seconds to think of my answer, wondering how much I want to say. I’m rather enjoying him being so afraid of me. It brings a humor to his presence here that makes it almost tolerable. Will telling him my true intentions make him think he has nothing to fear from me? That I’m not quite as dangerous as he believes me to be?

Or maybe it will humanize me a bit. Maybe if he’s not afraid of me, he’ll be willing to have actual conversations with me. That would be even more enjoyable than watching him fear me.

Hope flickers in my chest at the thought. Maybe I can convince him to tell me stories. Things I’ve missed in the kingdom over the last century. It would certainly be a preferable way to pass the time than drawing a half-finished dàn over and over in the mud or skipping rocks for the thousandth time.

Honesty it is, then.

“I don't think his family has much,” I say, my eyes never leaving the shoe as I weave the needle in and out.

I feel his eyes shift from the shoe to my back, and it takes everything in me to not flinch from the way his gaze burns my skin.

“Dinnae pretend to care for the child.”

His words are a punch straight to the gut, another blow to add to my already battered body.

“I’m not pretending,” I say, keeping my voice light, fighting to appear to be unaffected by his verbal jab.

He lets out an exasperated breath. “Do you know the lad? Has he been here before?” I can't trace what's in his tone this time. Maybe anger? Confusion?