Chapter 9: The Harvest Supper

I stood there in his cloak with my laces half undone.

"Forever," I said.

"Forever."

"And the frost is in fifteen days."

"Fifteen days," he said. "And you can still go home on any one of them."

I looked down at the bonfires for a long time.

"Then I won't stand at that altar until I'm sure," I said. "Not sure enough. Sure."

He nodded slowly. Something in his face eased.

"Good," he said.

"You're relieved."

"I'm relieved you didn't lie to me just now."

He tied my laces back up himself, very carefully, with his big clumsy fingers.

"Most people would have."

The next four days went by in sawdust and smoke.

We cut the east valley clean. Then the south slopes.

The old man from the wall turned out to be a fine pruner when he forgot to complain.

His grandsons hauled, and the women ran the fires.

The children made a game of collecting the cut twigs. Dulcie paid them a bean for every bundle and kept the tally on her slate.

She'd added a new column called "Days the bride has cut trees."

Every evening she chalked another line.

"That's not a bet," I said.

"It's accounts," she said. "Somebody in this castle has to keep accounts."

On the fourth day, the old man called me over to a tree in the east valley.

He didn't say anything. He just pointed.

On a branch I'd cut clean the week before, at the very tip, there was a tight green bud.

In autumn. Where nothing had grown in eight years.

He blew his nose loudly on his sleeve.

"Wind in my eye," he said.

Cassian didn't hear any bell.

That night the village held a harvest supper.

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