Chapter 27: The Cairn

Ivy's POV

I had carried the box ten days over the pass, in the bottom of my trunk, wrapped in a blanket.

Nessa knew, and nobody else did.

I could not put it in the ground at the Hollin hold, because that ground had sold me.

Now I stood at the edge of a hole lined with flat grey stones and looked at the man who had dug it.

His hands were wrapped in rags that had been a shirt, and the rags were dark.

He had not stood up when I came.

I understood it was because he could not.

"I heard you on the road," Rafe said.

"You didn't turn."

"No," he said. "I didn't think I had the right."

I knelt down at the edge, on the cold stone, and I held the box a moment longer.

It was a small thing, plain cedar, that the cook's husband had made me in the autumn without asking what it was for.

He had only looked at my face and gone to his bench.

"I didn't name it," I said.

I did not know I was going to say it until it was out.

"I didn't get that far. I was going to wait until I felt it move, and then I was going to tell you."

Rafe did not answer.

I had expected him to say something, an apology or a question, and I had my answer ready.

He only sat with his wrecked hands in his lap and the snow settling on his shoulders.

I laid the box in the hole, on the flat stones, and I took my hand away.

"All right," I said, to nobody.

I had thought I would cry.

I had thought for ten days that the moment I put it down I would break, and I had been afraid of it.

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