Sect Year 5 · fifth month · night of day 1 · the forty-ninth life: Orrel Lane, his fifty-second year
The dark came in all at once, the way it did in a room with the shutter open to the rain. Garrow lay still and listened. The lamp had died with a faint tick of metal cooling in the chimney, and nothing had come to replace it. For a while the rain on the yard was the only sound. Then there was the boy’s breathing at the foot of the bed, quick and shallow, and then the chest in his own body, catching, loosening, catching again.
Ruel had fallen asleep sitting up. Garrow could tell by the way the boot in his grip had gone slack. He didn’t wake him. He let the boy keep the boot.
Hester had left the water jug on the washstand. Garrow reached for it, and the effort of the reach made the chest seize, and he lay with the jug’s handle in his fingers until the seizing let go. The water tasted of the lodge’s iron pipe. While he drank he thought about what would happen to the boy if he died in this bed. Ruel would have the cart and the horse and the tin with its dent. He would have a sister at the mill who had not yet heard the words, and his father’s debts, and the Lantern’s clerk at the door with his book. Garrow had wanted a great many…
