Tomas lifted the iron latch of the back door. Then he stepped across the threshold into the warm, steam-scented air of the kitchen.
The kitchen was small and cluttered, its whitewashed brick walls hung with bundles of dried thyme, rosemary, and strings of yellow onions from the autumn harvest. In the corner sat the great cast-iron cooking stove. The heavy, four-legged stove with the polished brass damper that Tomas had bought with his very first two-hundred-crown reward six years ago. The fire was banked low with river peat. It sent a soft, rhythmic hum through the chimney pipe, its flat top supporting a heavy clay pot soup pot that simmered with a rich, fragrant broth of mutton neck, leeks, and barley.
At the round oak table by the hearth sat his father, Emmet Reed.
Emmet was sixty-two now, his hair as white as mountain wool, his face deeply lined with the patient wrinkles of an old workman who had lived through twenty-six years of pain without becoming bitter. His wooden leg—carved from seasoned willow by the craftsmen of Reed Bank—was stretched out comfortably toward the hearth, its leather lacing loosened for the evening. In his hands he held a small pine peg and a piece of coarse sandpaper, carefully smoothing the edges of a model barge he was building for a neighbor’s child.
