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“I told you not to enter these woods alone.” Silas joined him on Vala. “Did it touch you?”
Scab looked at his hands to see four pink marks on each. “It scratched me.”
“We must clean them, hold on.”
Silas washed the scratches in water mixed with ash from the fire. An old wives’ tale, but there wasn’t much else he could do. The alternative was to chop the hands off.
Scab’s head hung forward. He’s feeling sorry for himself, as he should. I couldn’t have made the instructions any easier to follow.
The bruises under both Scab’s eyes had almost faded to nothing, and many of the little scrapes and scratches were healed. How is this possible? Those eyes were black as night only days ago. Silas had bruises himself that were weeks old. No, he can’t be. He’s just a skinny little boy. I must have imagined the bruises to be worse, most likely a layer of grime.
Silas was happy with his conclusion that the boy who sat in front of him was, in fact, a boy and not a demon. A boy with grey eyes that heals at incredible speed. Not a demon.
He wiped Scab’s hands and tossed the cloth into his lap. “Your hair looks like a bird’s nest.”
Scab withdrew his hands to the cloth.
“Use that to dry them.” Silas stood and approached Vala. He untied the squirrels and a bundle of kindling and dropped them at Scab’s feet. “Stack that up in a pyramid, like I showed you yesterday.”
Scab moved onto his knees and pulled at both ends of the bundle.
Silas held out his blade. “You’ll need this to cut the binding.”
Scab stared at the blade, motionless.
“Take it.”
Scab took the blade and looked at it for a moment, then chopped at the bundle. A little violent, some may say. Silas laughed. “Easy now, you’re not trying to kill it.” Scab looked over the blade again as he twisted it. “Like it?”
“Yes.”
Silas held out his hand. “You’ll have one of your own soon enough.”
Scab offered it back, blade first.
“My fingers will fly off like that binding if you’re not careful.” Silas turned the blade around in Scab’s hand. “Hold it like this when you pass it.”
Silas sat on a log to watch Scab prepare the fire, pulled out his whetstone, spat on it, and sharpened the blade.
Scab looked at him between placing the kindling. “Can you teach me that too?”
“You will learn this during training.”
Scab finished constructing the rough pyramid on a bundle of dry grass and leant back.
“It’s not going to light itself.” Silas pointed at the flint and steel atop a rock.
After several failed attempts to create a spark, Scab held it out to him. “I can’t. It hurts my fingers.”
“You’ll get it. Keep trying.”
As Silas watched Scab carry out the tasks he’d taught him, he thought of… her. Perhaps we would have had a child of our own, a family. I would hunt and work the forge while we raised them. One boy, one girl. He was pulled from his daydream as the steel pinged on a rock.
Scab sat, arms crossed. “I can’t do it.”
“Pass it here.” Within a few strikes, the grass caught. “It’s just practice.”
They ate, and Scab tended the fire.
