Litany of Winter

Once they left Elspeth’s storeroom, Leo sent Armin to arrange their quarters and sort the equipment and maps they had brought ashore. Four strangers moving through Grayhook had drawn enough attention. Three would still be noticed, but less like a procession.

Elspeth led Leo, Rafael, and Severin uphill, then across a narrow lane where the houses stood shoulder to shoulder against the wind. She stopped at a low stone house with a patched slate roof and a small yard fenced in with rope.

A man sat outside with a kitchen chair turned upside down between his knees. Severin looked at him, then at Elspeth.

”That’s Jonah?” Severin asked.

”If you were hoping for someone more impressive, I can go inside and come out again.”

He was broad through the chest, with short dark hair, heavy stubble, and the kind of face Severin would have forgotten in any Blackhaven yard by the next morning. Wind had reddened his cheeks. Old rope burns and small scars crossed his hands. One front tooth had a chip in it when he smiled.

A boy of about six crouched beside him with three nails in his palm.

A woman stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on an apron. ”Don’t give him another one.”

”I need another one,” Jonah said.

”You said that about the last six.”

”The chair was badly made.”

”You made the chair.”

Jonah looked down at it. ”Then I’ve got no one else to blame.”

The boy laughed.

Severin had expected pallor or weakness, perhaps a man wrapped in blankets and careful with every movement after coming too close to dying.

Jonah Lennox had sawdust on one knee.

A girl a few years older than the boy came through the doorway carrying a folded cloth. She stepped around her father without looking down, as if the overturned chair and the argument around it were nothing unusual.

Elspeth nodded toward the woman. ”Sarah.”

Sarah Lennox looked over Leo first, then Rafael, then Severin. Her gaze paused briefly on Severin’s covered left eye before returning to Elspeth.

”These are the men I told you about,” Elspeth said. ”They’re here under Crown authority. The work’s classified.”

Jonah set the hammer down. ”Sounds expensive.”

”The Crown is covering the cost,” Leo said.

”I’ll believe that when nobody sends me a bill.”

”Anyway, we’d like to ask you about the rescue,” Leo continued. ”Answer only what you’re comfortable answering.”

Jonah leaned back on the stool beneath him. ”People have been answering for me for months now. You might as well ask the one who drowned.”

Sarah folded her arms. ”Ask what you need. Just don’t turn him into a specimen.”

”I won’t,” Leo said.

Elspeth looked toward the lower slope, where a bell rang once from somewhere near the shore.

”You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get back.”

Sarah nodded. ”Go.”

Elspeth left without ceremony, and Jonah picked up the chair again. Sarah said nothing.

”What?”

”Carrick said light work.”

”This is a chair.”

”You were lifting the boat cradle yesterday.”

”That was wood too.”

Sarah looked toward Leo. ”You see what I have to deal with.”

Jonah pointed at her. ”Carrick thinks if I breathe too hard, I’ve overdone it.”

”He checks you because you were half dead.”

”According to half the island, I was fully dead. I wish they’d settle it.”

His son offered him another nail, but Sarah took it from the boy and put it back in the tin.

Rafael had been watching without speaking. ”Mr. Lennox, I’d like to go through what you remember yourself. If something came from somebody else later, just say so.”

Jonah rested both forearms on the overturned chair. ”That I can do.”

”The rescue first. Why were you on the water?”

”A fishing boat got into trouble near the approaches. We went out after them.”

”You reached them?”

”Close enough to get a line across. Then things went bad.”

”What do you remember after that?”

”The rescue boat took a hard hit. Something caught me around the legs, though I’m not sure what, and then I was over.”

”Do you remember anything after you hit the water?”

Jonah shook his head. ”Nothing. They told me I got caught in the damaged gear. I don’t remember surfacing, being pulled out, any of it.”

Rafael waited a moment. ”What’s the next thing you remember?”

Jonah looked down at the chair between his arms.

”Carrick’s ceiling.”

”Not the refuge. I woke up in Carrick’s practice. Ruth was asleep in a chair with her head against the wall, and Carrick was writing something. I tried to ask for water and sounded like I’d swallowed a rope.”

”That was the first memory?”

”Yes.”

”Everything between the water and Carrick’s practice comes from other people?”

Jonah nodded. ”Pieces from different people.”

Rafael said, ”So nothing from the time in between.”

”Nothing I remember,” Jonah said.

Severin let Rafael handle the questions and watched the household instead.

The daughter now stood near Sarah, listening despite pretending to fold the same cloth twice. The boy had abandoned the nails and climbed onto Jonah’s back, asking whether the chair would be ready before lunch.

”It’ll be ready when your mother stops stealing my tools.”

Sarah had not touched a tool, but the boy accepted this explanation immediately.

Jonah reached behind him without looking, caught the child under one arm, and set him down beside the stool. ”Go bother your sister.”

”She hits.”

”I do not,” the girl said.

”You pushed me yesterday.”

”You licked my bread.”

”It was only a little.”

”It was my bread.”

”Are they always like this?” Severin asked.

”Until one of them starts crying,” Jonah said.

”Usually him,” Sarah added.

”I don’t cry,” the boy said.

Nobody studied Jonah before answering him. Nobody watched his face to see whether he remembered the right joke or reached for the right child. Sarah interrupted him before he finished sentences, already knowing what he was going to say. His son climbed over him without a second thought.

When Jonah spoke about the drowning, he stopped where his own memory ended and told them when the rest came from someone else.

Leo looked toward Severin. ”Anything?”

Severin knew what he was being asked.

”He belongs here.”

”That doesn’t prove what happened in the water,” Severin said. ”But he’s not trying to remember how to be himself around them.”

”I think that was a compliment,” Jonah said.

”Don’t get used to it.”

Leo nodded once. ”Useful.”

Rafael returned to Jonah. ”How long were you underwater?”

”No idea.”

”What have you been told?”

”That it was too long.”

”By whom?”

”Everyone who was there.”

”Did anyone time it?”

Jonah shook his head. ”They were busy trying not to drown with me.”

Rafael did not press him.

Leo said, ”Elspeth told us some people on Grayhook disagree about what your survival means.”

”Of course she did,” Jonah said.

Sarah said, ”They disagree because people here can argue over rain while standing in it.”

”That’s unfair,” Jonah said. ”Sometimes we argue about wind.”

Sarah ignored him.

Jonah set the chair aside at last. ”Some say I was spared, so I’m sea-owed now. Fine by me. I went out for other people before this happened, and I’ll go out again when Carrick stops treating me like glass.”

”When Carrick says you can,” Sarah said.

”When Carrick becomes less irritating.”

”So never.”

Jonah pointed at her, then looked back to Leo. ”Others think the Keeper of the Drowned had me already. They think Carrick took me back after I’d been claimed.”

”Do you?”

”No.”

Jonah glanced toward the children. ”I woke up, and my wife and children know me. I still get hungry and tired, and Sarah still thinks I repair furniture badly.”

”You do.”

”There you go,” Jonah said.

The daughter laughed.

Then Jonah looked back to Leo. ”Everyone keeps talking about whether I should’ve come back. Nobody asks whether I’m glad I did.”

Leo said, ”Are you?”

”Yes.”

Sarah looked at Leo. ”Whatever you find here, remember that.”

”We will.”

Sarah looked toward the house. ”You can question the refuge. I still do. But Owen stayed with him when the rest of us thought he was gone and kept working.”

”And now he checks me twice as often as any sane doctor should.”

”He gave me my husband back,” Sarah said. ”I’m not going to pretend that means nothing because people don’t like how it happened.”

Leo turned back to Jonah. ”Then let me put it differently. We came here because we were told you died and came back. You don’t remember that happening yourself.”

”I can tell you I drowned.”

”You can tell us you went into the water and later woke in Carrick’s practice.”

Jonah nodded.

”Everything in between comes from the people who were there and from Carrick.”

”Yes.”

Rafael closed his notebook.

Jonah looked between the three of them. ”Did you come here to find out what happened, or to decide whether I should’ve stayed dead?”

Leo answered him directly. ”To find out what happened.”

”Then you need Carrick.”

”You don’t remember anything from the refuge?”

”Nothing.”

Sarah reached down and took the hammer before he could pick it up again. Jonah watched her carry it inside, then looked back at Leo.

”Whatever Carrick did, it worked.”