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“Yours?”

He nods, taking it down when I point at the marks.

“Väinö taught me. He’d set out the sticks and take some away. I had to tell him how many were left.”

“And you kept the board?”

“He’d tap it on the table when I stopped listening.”

The edges have gone shiny. Rauk turns it over with his fingertips, so his claws don’t mark the wood. “I hid under the table once. Thought he couldn’t give me a lesson if I wasn’t in my seat.”

I lean in to see the dents. “Did it work?”

“He moved his chair closer and began. I stayed there until my legs hurt.” His thumb goes over the marks.

I laugh, and my throat catches halfway through it. “Stubborn little bastard.”

“He was.” He doesn’t look up from the board.

I knock my good elbow into his arm. “I meant you.”

Rauk puts the board back and nudges the sticks away from the edge. “Were you better for your teachers?”

“I was a pleasure.” I put my chin up.

He turns his head to look at me, so I keep going. “They were very fond of my questions.”

One of his ears goes back. “How many questions?”

“All of them.”

He huffs through his nose, and I grin at him. “You would’ve hated sitting beside me.”

“I’d have learned none of it.” He takes the lamp farther down, and I follow him past the cloth until the light hits a little wooden animal next to a shallow box.

It has four squat legs and a large tail curling around its feet, and one ear’s shorter than the other.

“Can I touch that?”

Rauk sets the lamp down and picks up the animal between his thumb and blunt fingertips, then puts it in my hand.

“A fox.”

“I could’ve guessed that.” I turn it toward the light. Someone’s cut a mouth into the pointed face, slightly off to one side. Probably.

“Jouni made it.”

Jouni. I stop turning it and look up at him. “For you?”

“For a game.” He nods at the fox in my hand. “We moved pieces on a board. He’d made himself a bear, and I used a stone. He kept telling me it spoiled the game.”

I hold it up between us. “Did the stone keep winning?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t even have to think about it.

“Terrible. He had to do something.” I turn the fox around to face him.

Rauk bends closer, pointing beside the short ear with one claw.