Chapter 155

They had not carried him to his own rooms at the top of the house. Nana would not have him anywhere she could not hear him breathe through the floor. So he lay in the east chamber over the kitchen, where the range keeps the boards warm all night, in a narrow bed somebody had brought up in pieces, with the window shuttered against the snow and a lamp burning low on the sill.

I came on the third day, as soon as Issen would let me stand.

I slept through most of the second. When I woke, the right side of the world had come back—the range ticking under the floor, a cart in the yard, Nana somewhere below telling somebody they were a fool—and the left side had not. There was no silence on that side. It was wool, packed close, with a thin high singing at the back of it that did not stop. Issen said it might come back, and would not lie to me about when. My hands were white to the elbow still. I could feel them now, a little, as you feel your feet through thick boots. That was me