The Greykeep Chronicles

It snowed on Sunday morning.

Not much. The first real snow of the winter, the soft kind that comes down slowly in big flakes out of a sky the color of an old pewter plate and doesn’t settle on the cobbles so much as rest there for a while, thinking about it. By eight the roofs of Greykeep were white and the inner court was a patchwork: white in the corners, white along the tops of the walls, gray and wet down the middle where the carts had been. And along the foot of the kitchen wall, where the big chimney runs up inside the stone and the bread ovens are on the other side, a long strip of bare dark cobbles, six feet wide, steaming faintly, where the snow came down and melted before it ever touched.

That’s where Fenrir sleeps when he’s at Greykeep. On the warm strip by the kitchen wall. Loki says it’s the only place in the north where the ground is warm enough for him to lie on without remembering anything.

He was there on Sunday morning, stretched along the whole length of it like a gray drift that hadn’t melted, with his great head on his paws and his yellow eyes half shut and snowflakes settling on his back and staying there, because there’s so much fur that the warmth doesn’t come through.

And at the other end of the court, by the door to the little kitchen, sitting on the step on a folded sack with a blanket over his knees and a crust of Helena’s bread in his fist, was my son.

* * *

I want to write this chapter properly. Mary says I should. She says when I’m old, and the war’s long over, and Uriah is grown and doing whatever it is he’s going to do with everything he’s got, I’ll want to have this written down exactly, the way it was, the morning he walked.

And she’s right. And also I want to write it because of what came after. Because it was the last morning for a long time when nothing at all was wrong. When the worst thing in the whole of Greykeep was a crust of bread on the cobbles and a wolf with snow on his back.

So I’ll write it slowly.

* * *

It wasn’t meant to happen then. Nobody planned it.

Helena had put him on the step because the little kitchen was full of steam and flour and people, the way it always is on a Sunday morning, and Seraphina was up to her elbows in the bread with Helena, and I was carrying in wood, and my mother was mending something at the end of the table, and there was nowhere safe on the floor for a boy who crawls as fast as a dog and puts everything in his mouth. So Helena wrapped him in a blanket and put him out on the step on a sack where she could see him through the open door, with a crust to chew, and told him to watch the snow.

He watched the snow for about four minutes.

Then he saw Fenrir.

* * *

I was coming across the court with an armful of split ash, and I saw him see.

He stopped chewing. He sat very still on his sack with the crust held halfway to his mouth, and looked down the length of the inner court at the great gray shape on the warm stones by the kitchen wall. Then he put the crust down on the step beside him, carefully, the way you’d put down something you meant to come back for.

And he got up.

* * *

Not crawled. Got up.

He’d been pulling himself up on things for weeks. Chair legs. The loom. Teague’s knees. Fenrir’s fur, last night, in the great hall. Up he’d come, wobbling, holding on with both fists, and stand there, swaying, very proud, and then sit down hard and laugh.

But there was nothing to hold on to on the step. He was sitting on a sack on flat stone with a blanket half off him. And he put both hands flat on the step in front of him, and pushed his bottom up into the air the way babies do, so he was standing on his hands and feet like a small table. And then, very slowly, with his face screwed up in tremendous concentration, he lifted his hands off the stone.

And stood up.

On his own. Holding nothing.

I stopped walking. The wood in my arms tilted and three pieces fell off onto the cobbles, and I didn’t pick them up.

* * *

He stood there on the step for what felt like a very long time. It was probably three or four breaths. Swaying, his arms held out on either side of him like a tightrope walker’s, his feet in their little knitted boots planted wide on the sack, his face very red and very serious.

He looked down the court at Fenrir.

Fenrir had lifted his head.

I don’t know when. I hadn’t seen him do it. But the great gray wolf by the kitchen wall wasn’t lying with his chin on his paws anymore. He’d raised his head and turned it, and his yellow eyes were wide open, both of them, looking straight down the inner court at the small boy standing on the step on his own.

He didn’t get up. He didn’t move at all.

He just looked. The way you’d look at something you’d waited for a very long time and been told might never come.

* * *

”Seraphina,” I said. Not loud. I didn’t want to frighten him. ”Seraphina. Come here. Now.”

She heard something in my voice. She came to the kitchen door with flour to her elbows, and saw him, and put both her floury hands over her mouth.

Behind her, Helena. Behind Helena, my mother, with the mending still in her hands. And then, somehow, everyone, the way it happens at Greykeep, as though the castle itself had passed the word along through the walls. Mary from the stair with her book. Carol from the north tower, at a run, with frost coming off her heels. Grandpa from his workshop with a wooden horse in one hand and his sandpaper in the other. Roderic, who was not allowed to run and ran, and Iselle behind him telling him not to. Faelan and Mirelle from somewhere, both of them, at once, the way twins do. Adriana. My father, from the gate, with the snow on his shoulders.

Nobody said anything. Nobody went to him. We all stood around the edges of the inner court in the snow, very still, the way you’d stand around a deer that had come into the garden, and watched my son stand on a step on his own and look at a wolf.

* * *

He took a step.

Off the step. Down onto the cobbles. Which is a long way down when you’re barely more than a year old and have never taken a step in your life, and he didn’t know that, and he did it anyway, the way he does everything: straight at it, without asking anyone whether it was a good idea.

He didn’t fall.

I don’t know how he didn’t fall. Seraphina says he wobbled so far to the left she was already moving. My mother says she had her hand out. But he didn’t fall. He came down off the step onto the wet cobbles with one foot and then the other, and lurched, and swayed, and caught himself, with his arms out, and stood.

On the cobbles. In the snow. On his own.

Somebody behind me made a sound like a sob. I think it was Carol. It might have been me.

* * *

He took another.

And another.

Not straight. Nobody walks straight their first time. He went across the inner court in a long wavering curve, like a boat tacking against the wind, his arms out on either side, his face screwed up, his knitted boots slapping on the wet stones. Every step looked like it would be the last. Every step he caught himself, somehow, and took another. Snow fell on his hair and he didn’t notice. His blanket had come off on the step and he didn’t notice that either.

He was looking at Fenrir. The whole time. He didn’t look at anyone else. Not his mother in the doorway with flour on her hands, not me with the wood, not his grandfather in the snow at the gate.

Just at the wolf.

* * *

I should say something about that. Because I’ve thought about it since.

Every one of us, standing around that court, wanted him to walk to us. I’m not ashamed to say it. I wanted him to come to me. Seraphina wanted him to come to her. My father had crouched down by the gate with his hands out, without even meaning to, the way you do. Grandpa had put down his sandpaper and was holding out the wooden horse. Faelan was making encouraging noises. Even Carol had knelt down in the snow with her cold hands held open.

He walked past all of us.

Straight down the court, in his long wavering line, toward the warm strip of cobbles by the kitchen wall, and the great gray shape lying on it with its head up and its yellow eyes wide.

Toward the one who’d waited.

* * *

Fenrir didn’t move.

That’s the thing I want written down most of all. He could have got up. He could have come to meet him. Three of his strides would have covered the whole court. He’s the size of a small horse and the fastest thing on four legs in the north, and every one of us standing there knew he wanted to go to that boy so badly that his whole great body was trembling with it.

He didn’t move. He lay on the warm stones with his head up and let him come. All the way. Every wobbling step. The way you’d let someone finish a sentence they were having trouble with, without finishing it for them.

Loki was standing beside me. I hadn’t seen him come. He had his hands in his pockets, and he wasn’t watching my son at all.

He was watching his.

* * *

It took a long time. Twenty steps, maybe. Twenty-five. Mary counted, and she says twenty-three, but she also says she lost count at fifteen and had to guess.

At the end he was going faster, the way babies do once they’ve got the idea, as though falling forward and catching yourself were the same thing as walking, which perhaps it is. And at the very end, three feet from the warm strip, he stopped catching himself and simply fell forward the last step, arms out, laughing, straight into Fenrir.

Into the great gray ruff at the wolf’s neck, both fists full of fur, his face buried in it.

Fenrir closed his eyes.

* * *

Nobody moved for a moment.

Then the whole inner court of Greykeep made a noise I’d never heard it make. Not a cheer, exactly. Something bigger and messier than a cheer. Two hundred people, because by then the kitchen girls and the stable lads and the guards from the gate and the laundry women were all at the windows and the doors, two hundred people letting out a breath they’d all been holding at once, and then laughing, and clapping, and somebody in the laundry starting to sing.

Seraphina came across the court at a run with flour flying off her and fell on her knees in the snow beside the warm strip and put her arms around both of them, the boy and the wolf, all at once.

Fenrir let her.

* * *

I went over slowly. I’d dropped all the wood by then. I don’t remember dropping the rest of it.

Our son had his face buried in Fenrir’s ruff and was laughing into it, a muffled, triumphant, breathless laugh, with snow melting in his hair. Seraphina was laughing and crying at the same time, which I’ve only seen her do twice. And Fenrir lay perfectly still on the warm cobbles with his eyes shut and his great head bent around so that the boy was held in the curve of his neck, and his whole body was trembling. Not with wanting anymore. Just trembling.

I crouched down beside them.

”Well done,” I said to my son. It seemed a very small thing to say. ”Well done, Uriah. You walked.”

He lifted his face out of Fenrir’s fur and looked at me, flushed and shining, with gray wolf-hairs stuck to his cheeks.

”Up,” he said, enormously pleased with himself.

”You are up,” I said. ”You did it all on your own.”

He thought about that. Then he turned around, still holding a fistful of fur, and put his other hand flat on Fenrir’s nose. The way he does.

Fenrir opened one eye.

* * *

Loki came over last.

He came across the court slowly, with his hands still in his pockets, and stopped a few feet away, and looked down at the great gray wolf lying on the warm stones with a small boy in the curve of his neck and a princess of Concordia on her knees in the snow beside him.

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

”They chained him,” he said at last, very quietly. Not to me. Not to anyone. ”When he was young. Before he was grown. They were frightened of what he’d be, so they chained him on a rock, and he was there a very long time. He never had a small thing come to him on its own. Not once. Everything that came near him came with a chain or a knife or a lie.” He was quiet. ”I didn’t stop them. I’m his father, and I didn’t stop them.”

He looked at his son.

”And now look,” said Loki.

* * *

Fenrir lifted his great head, very carefully, so as not to dislodge the boy. And turned it, and looked up at Loki with his yellow eyes.

I don’t know what passed between them. Loki says I’m not to write it even if I did know, and I don’t. But I saw Loki’s face. And I saw him take his hands out of his pockets, which he never does, and crouch down in the snow beside his son, and put one long hand flat on the gray fur between Fenrir’s ears.

And leave it there.

* * *

The day went on, after that. Days do.

Grandpa gave our son the wooden horse he’d been sanding the ear of for three weeks. Our son put the ear in his mouth. Grandpa said that was what it was for.

Helena declared it a feast day, without asking anyone, and made honey cakes, and sent a plate of them out to Fenrir on the warm strip, which Fenrir ate in one bite, plate and all. Helena said she’d never liked that plate.

My father carried his grandson around the inner court on his shoulders for half an hour in the snow, showing him to everyone who’d missed it, which was nobody, but they all pretended. Ambrose Pelham came up from the orchard and said Teague walked at eleven months and fell in the mill race at thirteen, and that this one looked to have more sense. Teague went red.

Carol sat on the step by the kitchen door where it had started, with frost growing slowly in a ring around her on the stone, and didn’t say anything, and smiled the whole afternoon.

* * *

Eleanor asked the first of her seven that afternoon.

I only know because I passed her on the main stair at three. She was coming down from the drafting room above the chapel with her spectacles on and her plans under her arm, and she stopped when she saw me, which she never does.

”Perrin,” she said.

”Perrin?”

”The first one. On my list. I asked him this morning. In the quarry, with the golems.” She looked at the plans under her arm. ”He’s all right. He wants a new lathe. His old one’s been sticking since the summer and he didn’t like to ask.” She almost smiled. ”He cried. Perrin. Thirty years, and I’ve never seen him cry. Over a lathe.”

”Will he get it?”

”He’ll get it,” said Eleanor. ”I’ve ordered it from Orselle. It’ll come through the arch on the quay. New people don’t have to come into the house anymore.” She went on down two steps. Then stopped again.

”Six more,” she said, not looking back. ”One a day.” And went on down.

* * *

I saw Wynn that evening, for the first time in a week.

He’d been at the quay end of the arch works all week with Aldren, sleeping in the room over the Lantern and Oar so he could start at first light, and he’d come up the hill at dusk because he’d heard. Everyone in Havenreach had heard by then. He came into the little kitchen with mud on his boots and his ink-stained cuffs turned back, thinner than I remembered him, and stood in the doorway and looked at my son asleep in Seraphina’s lap with a wooden horse in his fist.

”He walked,” said Wynn.

”To Fenrir,” I said. ”Past all of us. Straight past.”

Wynn smiled. It was a good smile. I’ve always liked Wynn’s smile; he smiles the way people do who weren’t expecting to be happy and are surprised to find they are.

”My youngest sister did that,” he said. ”Walked to the dog first. Not to Mam. Mam was so cross.” He looked at my son a moment longer. Then he looked away, at the window, at the snow, as though something out there had caught his eye. ”I should go back down. Aldren wants the Concordia arch through by Tuesday.”

”Stay and eat,” said Helena from the stove. ”There’s honey cake.”

”I can’t,” said Wynn. ”Thank you. I can’t.” And he went.

I didn’t think anything of it. I want that written down too, in Mary’s book, in ink, so that I can’t ever pretend afterward that I didn’t. I didn’t think anything of it at all. A tired young man with ink on his cuffs who’d been working too hard, who’d come up the hill in the snow to see my son and couldn’t stay for cake.

I picked up my son’s blanket off the step where he’d left it that morning and shook the snow out of it, and went up to bed happy.

* * *

From Mary’s book, Sunday. Mary has drawn, very small, in the margin, a line of tiny footprints going across the page in a long wobbling curve, twenty-three of them, ending at the edge:

Sunday. First snow.

Uriah walked. On his own. Off the kitchen step, across the inner court, twenty-three steps (I lost count at fifteen), to Fenrir on the warm strip by the kitchen wall.

Past all of us. Past his mother and his father and his grandfather and Carol on her knees in the snow. Straight to the wolf.

Fenrir didn’t move. He let him come all the way.

Then he fell the last step into Fenrir’s fur, laughing. Fenrir closed his eyes.

Loki said: They chained him when he was young. He never had a small thing come to him on its own. Not once. And now look.

Loki put his hand on Fenrir’s head and left it there.

Grandpa gave him the wooden horse. He put the ear in his mouth. Helena says it’s a feast day. Fenrir ate the honey cakes and the plate.

Eleanor asked Perrin. He wants a new lathe. He cried.

Wynn came up from the quay to see. He couldn’t stay for cake.

A good day. The best. I’m writing that down in ink so I’ll know.

And under that, in a big, square, slow carpenter’s hand, every letter shaped with the care of a man who measures twice and cuts once, and who has never in his life written more than his name on a bill:

Garrick Grey, called Grandpa. I’d like it noted that I’ve been sanding the ear of that horse for three weeks because I wanted it ready for when he walked, and he walked before I’d finished, and that’s the right way around. That he walked past me to get to a wolf, and I’ve never been prouder to be walked past. And that the ear’s the best part, and he’s already found it.