Not much, but then the man known as Cutter was not known for showing emotion, and what might have been insignificant on another was like a scream coming from his throat.
“Oh, please, Cutter,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m no fool, no matter what the folks in town think, and if I’m old and addled, then I’m still not blind. Not yet. We don’t get many visitors out here in Brighton as you well know. A couple who’ve never been able to have a child suddenly appear in town with a baby that was five, six months old unless I miss my guess, then you arrive barely a week later? Doesn’t take a scholar to sort that puzzle out, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“So. Will you take him?”
“Yes. If I can.”
She snorted. “You can. The boy practically worships you, you know that.”
“He shouldn’t.”
She shrugged. “The young are young for a reason—they’re the best at it and the only ones likely to survive the terrible choices they make. Anyway, should or shouldn’t makes no difference. We were all that young once, after all.”
“Not that young.”
“You’ll have to forgive Telster. He’s been around a time. Why, I’ve known him for years, even since before the Fall. We were on the same escape boat together, if you can believe that.” She paused, a tear winding its way down one craggy cheek. “We stood side by side, watched the capital be overrun by the Skaalden. By those…those things.” She paused again and for a moment, he thought that she would not go on. Then she cleared her throat, giving her head a shake as if to banish her memories, and Cutter wished it were only so easy. “Over thirty years ago, but I can still hear the screams,” she went on finally. “What I mean is, Telster, he changed that day.”
“We all did.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Yes, we did. But some men, when tragedy comes upon them, grow from it, bloom like a flower in shit. And others…well, it’s like that tragedy tears at ‘em, hollows ‘em out ‘til there’s nothing left but bitterness and the memory of what was taken. You understand?”
He nodded. “I won’t give it a second thought.”
She studied him then, the corner of her mouth upturned in a humorless smile. “No, no, I don’t think you will, will you?”
He understood that she was not asking him just about the man, Telster, not now, but he had no answer he could give, none that might offer her any comfort, and so he said nothing.
After a moment, she gave a heavy, weary sigh. “I’m old, Cutter. Older than I’d expected I’d ever be. Older than my mother was when she died during the Fall. My father too. Fire and Salt, there’s only a handful in this village that are older’n me, if you take any two and add them together.” She paused, but he didn’t speak. “What I’m saying is, well, I don’t have any illusions about what’s comin’ my way. It’s been comin’ for near on eighty years now. In your twenties, shit, maybe even in your thirties, you’re able to fool yourself into thinkin’ death, growin’ old, those are things happen to other folks, not you. They say you get older, you get more wisdom. I can’t say as I rightly agree, except that you get a better understandin’ of how fragile life is, yours as much as everyone else’s. Maybe that’s all wisdom really is, in the end.”
“Maybe.”
She smiled. “Listen to me, goin’ on harpin’ as if it’ll make any difference. Closin’ the barn door once the chickens are out, my pa woulda said. Still, I appreciate you humorin’ me. Do you think you can make it? You and the boy, I mean?”
“For a while.” He shrugged. “As you say, no one makes it forever.”
She nodded at that, her expression growing sad. “You don’t mind, I think I’ll tell myself you made it all the way. After all, I think it’ll make it easier, knowin’ someone made it out.”
She needed something from him, he thought, some sort of reassurance. But he was no priest—just about as far from it as a man could be—and he had no reassurances to give, so he only stood in silence regarding her. She sighed. “The damndest thing. Seems for the last few years, ‘bout all I do is bitch and moan about this new ache or that one. More and more often, find myself thinkin’ that it’ll be a blessin’ to close my eyes and not open ‘em again, to be buried out at the edge of the Black Wood, next to my father and mother and brother, Jim, whose been dead goin’ on forty years now. But now, now that it’s upon me, I’m afraid.” She gave a laugh with no humor. “S’pose you must think me a coward.”
Cutter shook his head. “No, not a coward. You’re afraid, and you’re right to be. I’ve seen it before.”
She watched him with a strange look in her eyes. “I believe you. I surely do. Tell me, Cutter. I get the feeling you’re somebody, maybe somebody important. Or that you were. Once. Will you tell me? You don’t have to, if you don’t want, but I promise your secret’s safe with me.” She gave him a small, wistful smile, one that he could tell cost her something. “Always been shit at keepin’ ‘em—I like to talk too much—but even I can manage a few hours, I think. After that…well, the dead tell only the one story, and it’s long since not been a secret.”
He winced. He didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to see the look in her eyes, the same look he’d seen in so many others for so many years. Hate and awe, fear and disgust all wrapped up together, knit so tightly you couldn’t tell one from the other. He wasn’t sure why he did it, why he stepped forward and whispered that name—a name that
