Page 35 of The Shape of Silence

“Nothing that helps.”

He watched the way she kept her eyes forward. Ten years was a long time to make only one attempt, he thought. “Maybe ye need to go beyond what ye ken—where ye’ve found nae answers in all this time. That would be the place to start, were it my guess.”

“I told you, I tried,” she said, defensive and dismissive all at once.

“And ye have nae plan to try again?”

She didn’t answer. They walked on in silence for a while, and when the path split around the wide trunk of a low fir, he came out on the other side a few steps in front of her.

“Ye need to bathe now,” she said from her position downwind before they’d gone much further.

Unable to help himself, the corner of his mouth curved. He knew that as well, the sour reek still clinging to him, but was faintly amused by her matter-of-fact delicacy.

“The scent will stay with you,” she explained, practical as ever. “It could draw predators.”

He glanced down at his hands and did not argue.

“Aye,” he said. “Then I shall bathe.”

***

Avery was crouched in the grass several feet outside the door when Morggán returned from the loch, her sleeves pushed to her elbows while she scrubbed one of the blackened kettles with damp moss and sand. She worked with the same quiet focus she brought to all things, scarcely seeming aware of him at first as he stepped past the woodpile and toward the southern edge of the trees.

The cold water of the bath had done him good.

For the first time since opening his eyes upon the floor of her hut days ago, he felt nearer to himself again. The ache in his thigh remained, deep and persistent beneath the healing flesh, and his ribs still reminded him sharply if he twisted carelessly or drew too deep a breath, yet the weakness that had dogged him since the fever finally seemed to be loosening its hold.

Today he could move almost normally, and not once had he needed to stop for breath—a small thing perhaps, but enough that his mood had lightened because of it.

His damp hair clung coolly against the back of his neck while sunlight filtered warm through the branches overhead, and after so many dim days spent beneath furs and the shadows of the forest, he found himself craving more of that warmth. The spring air felt good against his skin, the sunlight better still.

Beyond the southern edge of the forest the grasslands rolled outward beneath the pale sky in long green swells touched silver where the wind moved through them. Open ground and unimpeded sunlight, and from where he would have a clearer view of the distant hills and any movement crossing them besides. He headed in that direction.

Charlie rose immediately and trotted after him without being invited.

“Where are you going?” Avery asked behind him.

There was no alarm in the question, only curiosity touched faintly with suspicion.

Morggán glanced back over one shoulder. She still knelt in the grass beside the hut with the blackened pot resting forgotten in her hands now, watching him beneath the filtered morning light.

He realized suddenly that she ought to come with him, that he wanted to see how she looked standing in that sunlight.

“Just out there,” he answered. “I want another look south.” After a moment, he added, “Come with me.”

She shook her head, a frown knitting her brow, and he realized that in all the days he had been here, he had never once seen her willingly step beyond the shelter of the forest, despite how inviting sun on the swaying grass seemed to be.

Her gaze remained fixed on him. “I don’t go there.”

“Ever?” he challenged, hardly able to believe it. The swaying grass was not much more than a hundred feet from her front door.

“Never,” she confirmed.

“Why?”

She shrugged, her shoulders staying lifted for more than a moment. “There’s nowhere to hide.”

He glanced outward himself. Beyond the forest the southern hills rolled broad and green beneath the pale spring sky, the long grasses bending silver-green beneath the steady wind.