Chapter 5: The East Door

On the fifth morning an old man fell in the yard.

He went down between one breath and the next, in the middle of roll-call, with his hand clutched to his chest.

Nobody ran.

I had seen what a poorhouse does with a man who falls, and I stood rooted with my cap in my fist and waited for the boot.

The Bear came down the steps three at a time.

He knelt in the frozen mud in front of sixty people and put his big hand flat on the old man's chest.

"Breathe, old friend," he said.

"Look at me.

"Slow."

The old man's lips were blue.

He breathed.

The Bear lifted him, one arm under his knees and one under his back.

He carried him toward the infirmary in the cloister.

On the way he stopped by the well.

He set the old man on the stone lip, knelt again, and took off the man's wet shoes.

He held both bare feet between his hands to warm them.

The mothers of Larrau frightened their children with the Bear's name.

I watched him kneel in the mud and rub an old man's feet back to pink.

I could not make it fit.

I could not make any of it fit.

"He does that every winter," Gotzon said at my shoulder.

"Whichever one falls."

"Why?" I asked him.

"Ask him."

"I'm not that foolish," I said.

"No," said Gotzon.

"You are another sort."

That night I could not sleep.

I lay on my pallet with the long hall breathing around me and my brother's coat folded under my head.

I counted the bells.

At the third bell after midnight I got up and walked to the east door.

It stood closed, as always.

The bar leaned against the wall.

I lifted the latch.

My plan was a child's plan.

I would go to the women's side and take Amaia's hand.

I would walk her down through the east door and along the river to the chapel with no roof.

From there it was one night's walk to our sheepfold, if the snow held and nobody followed.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.