Burn(70)

“It’s your blood?” she said.

He shushed her, still watching for Darlene. “I told her I made it from beets in her larder. Runes have to be written in dragon blood or they do not work.”

“Work for what?”

“Never you mind. There are bigger things to be thinking about. I need to write what I need to write before the dragon comes back for the Spur.”

“She won’t know we still have it. She might think Malcolm is carrying it, wherever he’s gone.”

“No, she will be able to smell it,” Kazimir said.

“My oatmeal?” Darlene said, bringing over two bowls.

“No, I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” She set down the bowls and returned to the stove. “I’m capable of making a joke.”

The scent coming from the bowl of oatmeal—cinnamon, little bit of honey—was enough to get the tears going again for Sarah. Nearly everything this woman did made that happen.

Her mother. But also not.

“So she’ll smell it,” Sarah said, wiping her eyes and looking at the claw he’d set down so he could eat (which he did making all sorts of fascinated faces as he swallowed his first ever oatmeal). “And she’ll come for it.”

“It . . . poses a danger to her.” He picked it up, added a bit to a rune he’d made on the paper. When he connected the last corner, Sarah was astonished to see it light up and disappear. “My blood still has a little magic in it,” he said, quietly.

Sarah shook her head in wonder. “There’s so much we still don’t know about dragons.”

“With good reason, Sarah Dewhurst,” he said, in a normal voice.

There was a clang at the counter. Darlene had dropped the oatmeal pot. “That name,” she said, looking into the sink.

“My name?” Sarah asked.

Darlene said, “I can’t, I just can’t . . .”

Sarah stood. “This was a mistake. I’m so sorry. We’ll leave you in peace—”

She was interrupted by Darlene taking a swift step over to her and wrapping her in her arms. “How can it be you?” Darlene spoke into her neck. “My God, it even smells like you. How?”

“I don’t really know either,” Sarah said, but boy, was her mother right about the smell. Every scent from her mother’s body was a lightning flash of memory: of being carried as a little girl, of being sung to sleep in bed, of being shown how to wean the pigs with her mother by her side.

It felt as if she were falling, into a past she’d held at arm’s length during the two desperate years when she and her father had been too busy trying to save the farm to ever properly grieve. But now, but this . . .

Keeping her in the hug, Darlene stepped over to a low bench built into the kitchen wall. She sat them both down, keeping Sarah close to her. “You were gone, my girl,” she whispered to Sarah. “Just gone.”

“So were you. I missed you so much sometimes I couldn’t breathe.”

And this was true. Sarah would often be caught unawares by something as small as, say, the smell of cinnamon this morning, or a random brush of her hair before bed, or when she found herself humming a song her mother liked, something from the forties, after the war, after her father had come home safe and sound. Then, for a moment, the world would tumble down, and there would be nothing between Sarah and her loss, just a naked, unfillable expanse that could never be crossed. Until now, until this. . . .

“Do you remember . . . ?” Darlene started. “But I don’t know how you could.”

“What?”

Darlene smiled. “My Sarah was afraid of geese, which makes sense really, they’re terrible creatures, but she, you, she once ran all the way home from town after one chased her in the grocer.”

“And you were on your bike behind me the whole time?” Sarah said. “And I wouldn’t even stop to let you pick me up?”

Darlene’s eyes were wide now. “It happened to you, too?”

Sarah nodded. “Except it was geese who were loose out in front of the school where you dropped me off for the first day of kindergarten.”

Darlene leaned back and shook her head. “I don’t understand this, but . . .” She didn’t finish.

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “It’s a big but, isn’t it?”

They smiled at the feeble joke. Sarah took that moment to ask the question that had been burning on her since she arrived.

“How did Dad die?”

Starting out the night before had been a foolish decision, Malcolm had come to realize shortly after leaving the farm. There had been no cars at all for the first hour, and by then, it was so cold, he’d had to stop in the trees and make a fire just to stay alive. He considered going back, but he thought Kazimir would apply pressure to make him stay this time. He’d be right, too, and Malcolm would probably do it. He knew the most about the Mitera Thea after all, and he wanted so desperately to get back to Nelson it felt as if someone had sewn a large stone in his chest.

These were good reasons.

But he had something to do here, even if it was a fool’s errand—as he had so little information to go on—and he would never get another chance. So he rose at dawn, and found a ride in the first ten minutes with, of all people, Hisao and Jason Inagawa. Jason grumped at having to make room in the truck’s front seat, but Malcolm gratefully climbed in.