Chương 55: Chapter 48 — Family Hugs or Tears?

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ XP: 4, 850 / 10, 000 The smell of smoke hung in the air even after nearly a week. The road met the town first. Fenwick had known it would. The road ran through the center of the settlement before it branched west toward the farms, and there was no way around it, and he had not tried to find one. He needed to see it. He needed to know someone had survived. If they had, then maybe his family had. The letter had ended with something at the door. Half of it was standing.

The other half was ash and blackened timber and the open sky where rooflines had been. The cooperage was gone. The old meeting hall — the one that had stood since before his mother's time — was a foundation outline and a scatter of stones and nothing else. The space where it had been was wrong. His eyes kept trying to see it. The place's worry and pain made his head hurt.

People moved through the high street with the quiet efficiency of those who had run out of things to say about what had happened and were simply doing the next thing. A family of voles with a cart of salvage. Two older rabbits are clearing debris from a doorway. A young marmot, Fenwick, didn't recognize her sitting on a step with her hands in her lap, looking at nothing. Someone looked up as they passed, recognized Fenwick, nodded, Fenwick nodded back, and they kept moving. He did not stop at the meeting hall site.

He looked at it once and kept walking. Seeing at least a few people he knew, he started to hurry toward the farm. Maybe they were ok. The farm was ten minutes past the western edge of the settlement, down a lane that had been exactly this wide and exactly this rutted for as long as Fenwick could remember. The hedgerow on the left side needed cutting. His mother had been busy. The door was green.

He had known it would be, she had written it in a letter three years ago, the year after he left, a single line about painting the door because the old color had been his father's choice and it was time, but knowing it and seeing it were different things. He stood at the gate for a moment. Max stood beside him. He raised his paw to knock. Grace opened the door before he reached it. She had heard them coming. She looked at Fenwick. One long look, checking him over from top to tail.

"You're not sleeping," she said.

"Your eyes are red. And you've gone skinny again, you always do this, you stop eating properly the moment something's wrong. You know, if you found yourself a nice girl to take care of you and started to give me grandbabies, I wouldn't have to worry so much about you—" She pulled him into a hug before he could answer any of it. He held on. She smelled like the kitchen and the lamp oil and thirty years of this exact farmhouse, and for a moment, nothing else in the world was happening.

She let go and stepped back and looked at him once more, satisfied for now, and then she looked at Max.

"Hi," said Max. Grace looked at him for a moment. Then the questions started.

"What is he. What does he eat? Does he sleep? Is he dangerous — no, don't make a face, Fenny, I'm asking. Has he hurt anyone? What does the Order say about him? Is that a sword? Why does he need a sword? What's on his finger? Is that a ring? Why does he have a ring? Can he understand me right now?"

"Yes," said Max. Grace looked at him again.

"How much can he understand?"

"Most things," said Fenwick.

"His vocabulary is still developing, but his comprehension is—""Is he going to be safe around Edie and Will?"

"Fenwick friend," said Max.

"He's not dangerous," said Fenwick.

"He's been—""Fenwick strong," said Max. Fenwick stopped. Grace looked at Max for a long moment. Max looked back at her with the steady, patient attention he brought to everything, the dark eyes calm, the red fur dusty from three days on the road. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Grace stepped aside. Edie was in the kitchen. She looked up when they came through the door and was across the room before Fenwick had fully registered she was moving, and he caught her and held on.

Tears in both of their eyes for the brother who wasn't here too. She was solid and real and smelled of the farm, woodsmoke, and the lavender soap his mother always made. He held her until she made a small protest, then loosened his grip but didn't let go entirely.

"You came fast," she said into his shoulder.

"Yes," said Fenwick. Will was by the window. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and he looked older than Fenwick expected, which was not something he had been prepared for. He had been seventeen when Fenwick left. He was not seventeen now. Fenwick let go of Edie and crossed to Will, put both hands on his shoulders, and looked at him.

"Will," said Fenwick. Will said nothing. He held Fenwick's look for a moment and then glanced away. Fenwick pulled him in. Will let himself be held for a moment and then step back. He had not said a word. They sat at the kitchen table. Grace had the lamp on the left side, the accounts open in front of her, two pages he hadn't seen before added at the back. Max settled in the corner near the door, out of the way, and watched. Grace told it in order. The merchant route going quiet. The miller's wife's report.

The three mornings of wrong animal behavior. The fire — the goblins, the cooperage, the bucket lines. She went through it the way she went through everything, methodical and precise, and Fenwick listened and did not interrupt. Then Thomas. She told it the same way. He went in. The roof came down. They waited. He did not come out.

"No body was recovered from the meeting hall," she said. She said it the way she said everything else. The same voice, the same pace, the same careful factual language. She did not draw the conclusion. She had not drawn it for six days, and she was not going to draw it now. Fenwick looked at the table. Then she turned to the last page. Two columns.

She had titled them in her account-book hand — Fire and Gone — and she read the names in the gone column one by one, each one with the settlement or address where they had lived and the date they had been noted missing. Twenty-three names. She read all of them. When she finished, she closed the accounts, set the pen down, and folded her hands.

"Nobody has gone near the cave," she said.

"I told them not to." Will told his part later, after supper, in the same kitchen with the lamp burning lower. The feeling of wrong everyone felt, and then Mum had called him down, quietly, a quiet that meant move fast and don't ask why yet. She'd had the letter already sealed and in her hand. Something was at the eastern wall — he'd heard it himself on the stairs, the weight of it moving, closer each time. She told him to go out the back door. But as he got close, he heard it rattle as something tried to open it.

Something that smelled awful, like death. He went to the window instead. He'd dropped into the garden and run through the Hadley field, staying off the road until the crossing. He had run the whole way to Cowstomp. Three hours in the dark. The cattle farmers there had not asked many questions. A young guinea pig showed up at their gate in the middle of the night, saying something was wrong in the next valley — they had pulled on their boots and picked up what was available and came back with him.

Eight of them, carrying torches and whatever came to hand. Two with proper swords.

"They came up the main road," said Will. His voice was flat and even, the voice of someone who had told this part to themselves many times and had gotten the feeling out of it.

"We saw the lights in town. Heard noises. Then whoever was doing it — whatever was doing it — saw the torches coming and stopped."

"Stopped," said Fenwick.

"Ran," said Will.

"Back toward the cave. Whatever it was, it didn't want a fight." He paused.

"We got about half the town. The ones who hadn't been taken yet. If we'd come an hour later—" He stopped. He didn't finish it.

"You ran to Cowstomp in the dark," said Fenwick.

"You saved half the town." Will looked at the table. He picked up his cup and put it down.

"Thomas would have done it faster," he said. Nobody said anything for a moment. Max, from his corner: "Will fast." Will looked at him. It was the first time he had looked at Max directly since they'd arrived — really looked, not the careful not-looking he'd been doing since Grace had let them in. He looked at Max for a long moment. He didn't say anything. But something in his shoulders changed. Grace refilled the lamp.

Outside, the farm was quiet and dark, and at the eastern edge of the settlement, the cave sat in the hillside and said nothing. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ [Sindy — Private Log — Day 76] Green door. Grace asked twelve questions before Max got a word in. He said hi. He said Fenwick friend. He said Fenwick strong. She let them in. Will saved half the town. He ran three hours in the dark and came back with cattle farmers carrying torches. Whatever was taking people ran from the torchlight. It didn't want a fight.

▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ Will said Thomas would have done it faster. ▌ Max said, "Will fast." ▌ It was the right thing to say.