Chapter 8: Papa

Wystan did not make a sound.

He simply stood up, very slowly, with a three-year-old clamped around his shin, and walked out of the cave.

Dock came with him, because he was not letting go.

Thad stood there with a spoon in his hand and watched the broad back disappear into the grey morning.

"Papa," Dock said again from outside, hopeful and muffled.

Tuck looked at Thad.

"Go," he said. "I'll watch the pot."

"You're five."

"I'm the head taster."

Thad went.

He found them on a flat rock above the stream.

Wystan sat with his elbows on his knees and his head down.

The runt was in his lap with both paws fisted in his vest.

The big man was shaking.

He did not look up when Thad's boots crunched in the snow.

"I'm not his father," he said.

His voice was cracked down the middle.

"I'm a hunter. I haul meat and I watch the ridge. I don't know how to be called that."

"He called you that anyway."

Wystan did not look up.

"He's three. He doesn't know what he's saying."

"He knows exactly what he's saying."

Wystan looked up.

There was a dark smear of soot on his cheekbone.

His eyes were red-rimmed and furious with themselves.

"You carried him home," Thad said gently. "You wrapped him in your own vest."

He waited.

"You walked slow so he wouldn't be shaken. You don't have to know how to be a father. You were already doing it."

"That's not the same."

Thad smiled a little.

"It is a little."

Wystan said nothing.

The runt, in his lap, yawned enormously and went limp.

He had fallen asleep in the middle of the conversation, with his fist still in the vest and a white whisker twitching.

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