The yellowed pages crackled softly beneath Len’s fingers, the sound dry as desiccated birch bark in winter.
The sheets were cut from heavy linen thick parchment, eight inches wide by twelve inches high, bound along the left margin with coarse land-mapper’s cord dipped in beeswax. Water rings had stained the lower corners. That turned the thick parchment the color of tea. But the ink remained sharp, dark sepia, and impervious to the damp mountain air. Across the surface of the parchment lay the faint, ghostly scent of dried elderberry gall, turpentine, and old cedar shavings. The smell that had permeated the back office of the Tern Station waystation for the first twelve years of Len’s life.
In the upper right corner of each leaf, stamped in faded vermilion wax, was the three-sided emblem of the Northern Postal and Transit Guild. Three stylized pine boughs encircling an open compass rose.
Len leaned over the zinc table, his sound right hand smoothing the topmost page with a gut, respectful gentleness. His breath caught in his throat, a cold tightness seizing his ribs that had nothing to do with the sulfur draft whistling beneath the kitchen door.
“This is my father’s hand,” Len whispered.
