ight. Auri climbed the ivy-knotted stone as quickly as a squirrel. She went slower up the second half, the barn-boards odd against her fingers and her feet.
The barn was full of musk and sleep. Dark too, save for a few thin bands of moonlight slanting through the wooden walls. Auri opened Foxen’s tiny box, and his blue-green light welled out to fill the open space.
An old horse nuzzled Auri’s neck as she walked by his stall. She smiled at him and took the time to brush his tail and mane. There was a pregnant nanny goat which bleated out a greeting. Auri scooped some grain into her trough. There was a cat, and they ignored each other.
Auri spent some time there, looking over everything. The grindstone. The quern. The small, well-fitted churn. A bearskin stretched upon a rack to cure. It was a quite uncommon, pleasant place. Everything was tended to and loved. Nothing she could see was useless, lost, or wrong.
Well, nearly nothing. Even the tightest ship lets slip a little water. A single turnip had gone tumbling from its bin to lie abandoned on the floor. Auri put it in her gathersack.
There was a large stone sweatbox, too. It was stacked with slabs of ice, each thicker than a cinder brick and twice as long. Inside she found butchered meat and sweet cream butter. There was a lump of suet in a bowl, a sheet of honeycomb upon a tray.
The suet was enraged. It was a storm of autumn apples, age, and anger. It wanted nothing more than to be on its way. She tucked it deep inside her bag.
Oh. But the honeycomb. It was lovely. Not one bit stolen. The farmer loved the bees and did things in the proper way. It was full of silent bells and drowsy summer afternoon.
Auri felt inside her pockets. Her fingers passed over the crystal and the small stone doll. The rock wasn’t proper for this place either. She reached inside her gathersack and felt around among the acorns she’d collected.
For a long moment, it seemed like nothing she had brought would make a proper fit. But then her fingers found it and she knew. Carefully she brought out the length of fine white tatted lace. She folded it and left it near the churn. It was the careful work of many long and drowsy autumn days. It would find purpose in a place like this.
Then Auri took the clean white cloth that had held the hollyberry earlier and rubbed it with some butter. Then she broke off a piece of sticky comb the size of her spread hand and wrapped it up as tidy as can be.
She would have loved to have some butter too, as hers was full of knives. There were eleven squared-off pats of it lined up upon the sweatbox shelf. Full of clover and birdsong and, oddly, sullen hints of clay. Even so they were all lovely. Auri searched her gathersack and looked through all her pockets twice, but in the end she still came up alack.
She closed the sweatbox tight. Then up the ladder to the open window of the loft. She put Foxen away, then made her slow way down the side of the barn, gathersack slung tight across her back.
On the ground Auri brushed her floating hair out of her face, then kissed the hulking dog atop his sleeping head. She skipped around the corner of the barn and took a dozen steps before the prickle on her neck told her that she was being watched.
She froze mid-step, gone still as stone. Touched by the wind, her hair moved of its own accord, slowly drifting to surround her face as gently as a puff of smoke.
Moving nothing but her eyes, Auri saw her. Up on the second floor, in the blackness of an open window, Auri saw a pale face even smaller than her own. A little girl was watching her, eyes wide, a tiny hand against her mouth.
What had she seen? Foxen’s green light shining through the slats? Auri’s tiny shape, obscured by hair like thistlepuff, barefoot in the moonlight?
Auri’s sudden smile was hidden by the curtain of her hair. She did a cartwheel then. Her first in ages. Her fine hair following, a comet tail. She cast her eyes around and saw a tree, a dark hole in its trunk. Auri danced toward it, twirling and leaping, then bent to look inside the hole.
Then, her back to the farmhouse, Auri opened Foxen’s box and heard a single tiny gasp thread through the silent night behind her. She pressed one hand against her mouth so that she wouldn’t laugh. The hole was perfect, just deep enough so that a little girl could reach inside and feel around. If she were curious, that is. If she were brave enough to stick her arm in nearly to her shoulder.
Auri pulled the crystal from her pocket. She kissed it, brave explorer that it was, and lucky too. It was the perfect thing. This was the perfect place. True, she was no longer in the Underthing. But even so, this was so true it could not be denied.
She wrapped the crystal in a leaf and lay it in the bottom of the hole.
Then she ran into the trees, dancing, leaping, giggling high and wild.
She went back to the boneyard then, and climbed atop a large flat slab. Back straight and smiling, Auri made a proper dinner for herself of soft brown bread with just a hint of honey. For afters she had pine nuts fresh-picked from their cones, each one a tiny, perfect treat.
All the while her heart was brimming. Her grin was brighter than the slender crescent moon. She licked her fingers too, as if she were some tawdry thing, all wicked and unseemly.
HOLLOW
ON THE THIRD DAY, Auri wept.
THE ANGRY DARK
WHEN AURI WOKE on the fourth day, things had changed.
She could tell before she stretched awake. Before she cracked her eyes into the seamless dark. Foxen was frightened and full of mountains. So today was a tapering day. A burning day.
She didn’t blame him. She knew what it could be like. Some days simply lay on you like stones. Some were fickle as cats, sliding away when you needed comfort, then coming back later when you didn’t want them, jostling at you, stealing your breath.
No. She didn’t blame Foxen. But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world. Even though she knew it was a wicked thing to do.
Even so, burning days were flickersome. Too frangible by half. They were not good days for doing. They were good days for staying put and keeping the ground steady underneath your feet.
But she only had three days left. There was still so much to do.
Moving gently in the dark, Auri picked up Foxen from his dish. He fairly smoldered with fear, there would be no persuading him like this, so sullen he was nearly truculent. So she gave him a kiss and returned him to his proper place. Then she made her way out of bed under the tenebrific blanket of the full and heavy dark. It made no difference if her eyes were open, so she left them closed while her hands sought out her cedar box. She left them closed while she brought out matches and a candle.
She dragged a match against the floor where it spittered, sparked, then broke. Her heart sank. A bad start for a bad day. The second match hardly sparked at all, just gritted. The third snapped. The fourth flared and faded. The fifth ground itself down into nothing. And that was all of them.
Auri sat for a moment in the dark. It had been like this before sometimes. Not for a long time now, but she remembered. She had been sitting like this, empty as eggshell. Hollow and chest-heavy in the angry dark when she’d first heard him playing. Back before he’d given her her sweet new perfect name. A piece of sun that never left her. It was a bite of bread. A flower in her heart.
Thinking of this made it easier for her to stand. She knew the way to her bedtable. The basin had fresh water. She would wash her face and hands—
But there was no soap. She’d used the last of it. And all her other cakes were off where they belonged, in Bakery.
She sat down on the floor again beside her bed. She closed her eyes. She almost stayed there, too, all cut-string and tangle-haired and lonely as a button.
But he was coming. He would be here soon, all sweet and brave and shattered and kind. He would come carrying and clever-fingered and oh so unaware of oh so many things. He was rough against the world, but even so. . . .
Three days. He would come visiting in three short days. And for all her work and wander, she hadn’t found a proper present for him yet. For all that she was wise about the way of things, she hadn’t caught an empty echo of anything that she could bring.
No proper gift nor nothing yet to share. It simply wouldn’t do. So Auri gathered herself in and climbed up slowly to her feet.
There were three ways out of Mantle. The hallway was dark. The doorway was dark. The door was dark and closed and empty and nothing.
So, without friends or light to guide her, Auri made her slow and careful way out through the hallway, trekking toward Tree.
She went through Candlebear, her fingers brushing the wall lightly so she could find her way. She took the long way round, as Vaults was far too dangerous without a light. Then halfway through Pickering she stopped and turned around for fear that she would find The Black Twelve ahead. The air above as dark and still and chill as the pool below. She could not bear the thought of that today.
That meant there was no way for her but damp and moldy Scaperling instead. And if that