Chapter 126

Malachi

The north wall of the cabin had been letting the wind in for six years.

I had always meant to fix it. Every autumn I had looked at the gaps between the logs where the old moss had dried and crumbled, and felt the draft on the back of my neck at night, and told myself I would do it next week. Then something had always come up. Cressida. A raid. A plan. There had always been something more important than a wall.

There wasn’t anymore.

So I fixed it.

I went up into the trees behind the stream with a sack and a short knife and gathered fresh moss off the north faces of the boulders, the thick green kind that holds water. I mixed it with clay from the bank and packed it into every gap along the north wall, one handful at a time, working it in with my thumbs until the logs sat tight against each other and the light stopped coming through. It took four days. My hands cracked and bled at the knuckles and healed again overnight, the way they should