Chapter Twenty-Two - Leave Taking

All was quiet inside the little cottage in the woods.

The forge fire had not been lit that day, and the deep, dark stillness of midnight hung heavy over the pines. It clung to the heavy shadows of the doorway, dripping like wax into the quiet places beneath the eaves. Whispered softly over the thatching. It was a watching quiet. A quiet of waiting.

The man that came down out of the trees felt it, as he always did. He took it, shaping it as his own, and though it might have broken for another, it slid around him like an old cloak, putting silence in his footsteps, thick as water. So it was quiet still, as he added his broad shadow to the rest, flowing out of the trees and into the deep dark of the doorway, slipping it shut behind him.

There was little light inside the cottage, but he knew the place. It had been his since a time before, when he made it so, and the darkness paid him no heed. He stood for a time, waiting in the gloom. He had been waiting for a long time, now. He should have been more careful. Should have kept control. He never could afford a moment of weakness, in all these long years. Now least of all. But what was done was done, and now that it came time to end it, he hoped he had done well what he’d known he must.

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There was a deeper darkness in the cottage. A shadow thicker than all the rest. Separate. Whole. His eyes were drawn to it. Held by it. A brooding black in the night. He went and knelt by it, running his hands over the smooth wood, hands tracing lines only he knew. He would have waited, still, if he could. He found now, at the ending of things, that the waiting was almost all he remembered.

But when a thing needed doing, it was best to have it done. So he reached out, setting his palm against the lock. It murmured at his touch, springing open, and he pushed the lid of the nightwood chest back. There was only one thing inside. Something dark, wrapped in black cloth. It was heavy to the touch, as he lifted it in his hand. Heavier than he remembered.

He slid the lid closed after it, and gave the room one long, last look. Then he slipped quietly out into the night, and something dark gleamed in his hands, lit by the light of a watchful moon.