Chapter 24: Home

The lilac bloomed in the first week of spring.

It came up purple out of the old hearth at Ashfen, and the boy with the goat stood in front of it with his mouth open.

"It's a bush," the woman with the braid told him. "It does that."

I stood at the new gate with my hands full of mortar.

Eleven roofs now stood in the village where there had been none.

Forty more people had come home from the packs where they had hidden for nineteen years.

They brought their bundles and their children.

Conrad had carried beams for every one of them.

He was up a ladder now, nailing a shingle, with his sleeves pushed up and his hair tied back.

The nails in his hand were dull and dark.

The old man had melted the mask down in his own forge.

He had hit Conrad with a hammer first, as promised.

Conrad had stood still for it.

The old man had said he would live, and gone back to the forge.

I looked up at the gate.

Over the arch, cut in grey stone in letters as deep as a hand, there were forty-one names.

My aunt's was the first.

She had walked out with a braid and a bundle, nineteen years ago.

Now her name was the first thing anyone saw when they came into Ashfen.

Beneath the arch, with a barrow of stone, Cecily walked past me.

Her hands were raw and her hair was cut short.

She had walked here from Redmoor at the head of the timber wagon.

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