Page 3 of Last Rites

He didn’t look much like a silversmith anymore, dressed in the same trousers and suspenders he’d worn while working the fields. As I thought on it, he hadn’t looked like one in weeks. He enjoyed being out in the air and sunshine rather than tethered to a workbench. And Sayla wanted to stay here, too. Raise her children. Give the farm the family it deserved.

I turned toward Warren, who dipped his head in a quick hello.

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” I said.

Both bags slid off my shoulder to drop on the floor with a thunk, and I followed them by sinking to my knees. Digging into my satchel, I hauled out my sketchbook and thumbed through the pages while talking and counting on Warren to listen.

“In the excitement of the past month, I realized we never discussed Sayla’s dowry.”

A loose sheet slid out from within the bound parchment. The makeshift deed I’d made for Kit, once read by candlelight, was now exposed for all to see. I’d been willing, what seemed like so long ago, to give Kit my entire world. Everything I had to promise, I promised to him. Strange to think the farm and its trappings became so inconsequential when weighed against the present I found myself in.

I fished into the roll of coloring pencils and produced one in a shade of bluish purple like the bearded irises that sprouted in the clearing where we buried Father. It reminded me of spring. Of new beginnings.

Flattening the deed across the floorboards, I scribbled out Kit’s name. Mother, Sayla, and Warren formed a circle around me, looking on while holding untold questions. I would soon answer them all.

I wrote Warren and Sayla’s names in the narrow space between lines of text. Legible but cramped. As legal as I could make it. Then I stood, prompting the others to step back as I handed the page to Warren.

“Congratulations,” I told him. I meant it. “You own a farm.”

Sayla gasped again, this time with delight, and she flung her arms around her intended’s waist. Warren gawked, first at the deed, then around at the farmhouse that was now his home.

When he returned to me, his round eyes glittered with joy. “Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, and took his hand when he offered it for a shake. “But I’m taking the horse.”

Warren’s delighted expression shifted to a frown. “The horse?”

I crouched and replaced my sketchbook in my satchel and fastened the buckles while Sayla did as she’d promised and told both Mother and Warren what happened. Kit was gone, and I soon would be, too. Leaving the farm in good and capable hands, set to produce a record harvest.

For the first time in my life, I felt proud of what I’d done here. Not as much the plowing and planting, but that I’d finally given my family’s property a chance at success. Thinking of it thriving for generations to come gave me no small measure of peace.

My mother must have felt the same, because when I rose with my pack balanced across my back and my satchel over my shoulder, she was teary, but far from devastated.

Warren shook my hand again, pumping my arm up and down while Sayla went to the kitchen. She returned with a knapsack full of food that she foisted off onto me. I shifted my pack around to add the supplies to it and had barely tied it off when Sayla grabbed my face and pulled me in to kiss my cheek.

“Good luck,” she said, blinking back tears of her own. “And be safe.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

It seemed like I should cry, too, but my emotions were too tangled for any one to stand out. I was happy, sad, and still so scared. For Kit. For myself.

Mother waited until Sayla and Warren moved away before making her approach. She wrung her hands and turned her face aside as though trying to hide her own muddled feelings. When she didn’t reach for me, I went to her instead, folding my arms around her and pulling her close.

This goodbye might have been my last one. Try as I might, I could not shake that possibility. If Merrick had his way—if Ashpoint swallowed Kit and me—these could be my final farewells. My mother could lose another son.

But I hadn’t left the farm to ruin, and I wouldn’t leave Kit to it, either. I refused to let him face the darkness of the world alone.

After a lengthy embrace, Mother pulled back to fix her glistening eyes on mine. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” she whispered.

I kissed her forehead, then rested my hands on her shoulders as I struggled to hold her gaze. “Mother, he needs me. I have to go.”

A moment. A blink. Then she nodded. “I understand.”

She brought her fingers to my cheeks, dragging them through the trails of moisture that proved I was crying after all. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Air went stale in my lungs until I didn’t know if I was too empty or too full.

“I’m proud of you,” she said, drying my face with her thumbs while I studied her features. Memorized them. Just in case. “You’re a good man, and you’ll make a fine husband.”

Mother smiled again, but I barely saw it. I was too busy pressing my face into her neck and feeling her hair against my cheeks. I needed to be small one last time, to collect my bravery before I had to be bigger than I had ever been.