The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: Cinder Gap

I looked at the line on his arm for a long moment.

"Then you'd better hurry," I said.

I left him behind the stones with his sleeve rolled up.

I didn't look back.

My hands shook the whole way along the ridge, and it wasn't the rot.

Conall caught up with me at the bend where the Line dips toward the east.

"Where are you going?"

"Cinder Gap."

"Now?"

"I've wanted to go there for eight years," I said. "They never let me. I'm packless now. Nobody gets to let me anymore."

He walked beside me without arguing.

Hettie had fallen asleep on the warden house bench with her mouth open, so it was just the two of us.

The Gap was a notch in the ridge a mile east, where the Line ran down between two shoulders of rock.

The post sat just below it.

A stone cottage with a slate roof, one chimney, one door, one window facing the valley.

Half the slates were gone. A young pine had pushed up through the step.

The door hung off one hinge.

I stood in front of it and couldn't make my feet move.

"It looked better with her in it," Conall said.

"You came here?"

"Every week, from ten to sixteen." He nodded at the doorframe. "Look."

There were knife notches on the inside of the frame, low to high.

Little cuts with letters beside them.

C. C. C. C. C. C.

The last one was taller than my head.

Under them, much lower, there was one more notch, and a different letter.

I put my finger on it.

"She measured me," I said. "When was I ever here?"

"You were four. She brought you up once in a basket of laundry. You slept the whole time." He scratched his beard. "You drooled on my coat."

"I did not."

"I kept the coat."

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