Corvus

EPILOGUE

The snows were gone from the deep glens, though the mountains still blazed white on the blue horizon. They waded across the river, feeling the bite of the water, the ice not quite done quickening in it.

Rictus walked through the ruined doorway of what had once been his home. The walls still stood, blackened and broken, stone upon stone. He picked his way through the wreckage and knelt in front of the beehive hearth, in which Aise had baked the bread. The hearthstone was still in place. There were blades of grass rising through the joins between the flags.

He lifted aside a beam and it crumbled to charcoal in his hands. Broken pottery crunched underfoot. He startled a blackbird, which launched itself from the ruin with an indignant clatter.

He passed through what had been the side door, to the space where he and Aise had slept.

And knelt there, remembering. Something glittered in the sunlight, and he stooped and rummaged through the ashes. A piece of aquamarine blue glass, a shard of memory. He clenched it in his palm and bent over with the sudden pain of the pictures it conjured up in his mind.

At last he rose again, breathing hard, his eyes burning. He looked up, and there were swallows in the air above him, carving gleeful arcs out of the sky. They were dropping mud as they swooped, building in the crevices of the walls.

He left the house, walked out to join the others in the sunshine and the placid glimmer of the river. Above him the woods hung on the slopes of the glen, new leaves unfurling green-tipped on the beech and oak and birch thickets. The place was alive with birdsong.

Rian took his hand. He lifted Ona up into his embrace, and the child put her arms about his neck.

He looked at Fornyx and Philemos.

“We’d best get started, I suppose. There’s a lot to be done.”