Under This Roof

Lirae would not let Rishi close the pack.

She had one more folded cloth to put inside, and beneath it a small jar wrapped against breakage. Rishi shifted the healer’s pouch to make room. Across the low bench, Maeril watched the supplies disappear among her books.

“If you go much farther, something will have to come out.”

Lirae looked at the books.

“Something else.”

Morning light reached the Root-House in narrow bands between the woven screens. The lamps were out. Cloaks hung near the entrance, their hems dripping onto the packed earth, and the smell of warm bread mingled with resin from the living walls.

Maeril had slept after the ceremony. Getting dressed had used much of what the sleep had given her. Now her injured leg rested on a stool beneath a folded blanket, and the cup beside her had been moved twice until she could reach it without leaning across the burns.

Lirae tucked the jar into place.

“That is the last.”

Rishi waited.

She drew another strip of clean linen from her basket.

He held out his hand. Lirae put it there without comment, and he folded it into the healer’s pouch instead.

Across the room, Faelar broke a small loaf and passed half to Caereth. Elenya sat beneath the great root that curved from the wall into the ceiling. Thiarel had moved her spear out of the way of the packs; Sirael sat beside her. In the mouth of the sleeping alcove, Nessari struggled to tie a packet of papers without bending their corners.

Seamwarden held the packet steady for her. White light rested behind their ribs, visible even in the morning. When they bent to look at the knot, the green stone in their brow caught the light from the screens.

Maeril watched Nessari pull the cord too tightly, stop, and begin again.

“Leave room for your finger beneath it.”

Nessari loosened the knot.

“I know.”

Maeril let her do it.

Caereth finished his mouthful before speaking.

“Mosstone first?”

“Yes,” Rishi said.

“How long are you allowing?”

“Two weeks,” Maeril said.

Lirae’s hands stopped above the basket.

“And if you need longer?”

“Then we take longer.” Rishi sat beside Maeril. There was room for him without moving her leg, but he still checked the stool before settling his weight.

Elenya looked at them both.

“You know you can remain.”

“We know.”

“The ceremony changes nothing about that. You do not have to leave because we have thanked you.”

Rishi shook his head.

“That is not why.”

Maeril drew the blanket away from her knee far enough to see the edge of the splint. The linen ties lay neatly against the wood. She had watched him check them that morning, remembering each turn so she could do it herself when reaching her own leg no longer cost so much.

“I keep forgetting what I cannot do yet,” she said. “I reach for a cup and find the table instead. I turn toward someone on my left, and by the time I see them they think I have not heard. Yesterday I thought wanting to stand would be nearly enough.”

Her hand rested on the blanket.

“I have to get accustomed to this body. I would like to begin somewhere I know.” She looked at Rishi. “With him.”

“We know the paths now,” Rishi said. “Where we can stop. Where to find water and dry ground.”

Lirae regarded Maeril for a moment. “You knew where the sleeping plank was yesterday.”

“And I went back to it.”

Lirae nodded.

Rishi laid his hand beside Maeril’s on the bench.

“We will walk as far as she can. Rest before she has nothing left. There is no one waiting to judge how quickly we reach Mosstone.”

“And the forest knows us.” She looked toward the pale bands of daylight. “I do not feel as though every path is asking what right we have to be there anymore.”

“It trusts you,” Elenya said.

Maeril’s mouth softened.

“Yes. I think it does.”

For Rishi, the thought of those paths brought the remembered feel of ground beneath his feet: wet roots, firm soil beneath leaf mold, the give of moss where a tired body could sit. He would have to learn a different pace too. He looked at Maeril’s leg, then at her waiting hand, and covered it with his own.

“We have time to learn.”

Lirae reached for Maeril’s cloak, which lay over the back of the bench.

“Then let me finish this fastening before you learn in the cold.”

She drew the needle through the last stitch and cut the thread. A small fold of soft cloth now covered the place where the clasp would have rubbed Maeril’s neck.

Maeril touched it.

“You did not have to do that.”

“You kept moving it yesterday.”

Rishi looked down at his own sleeve. He knew the seam beneath his thumb: he had held that panel while Lirae marked it and Maeril explained three different workings at once. He had spent afternoons expecting to be useful for an hour and finding himself still there when the lamps were lit.

“I will miss the looms.”

Lirae paused with the cloak in her hands.

“The work will still be here.”

“I will miss working beside you.”

She folded the cloak slowly, then placed it within his reach.

“That, I cannot put in the pack.”

Rishi took her hand before she could return to the basket. She closed her fingers around his and held them a little longer than he had expected.

Thiarel rose from the bench near the door.

“And the training yard?”

He looked up at her.

“That too.”

“Though perhaps not before breakfast.”

“Especially before breakfast.”

Maeril shook her head, and Thiarel’s mouth moved at one corner.

She stopped beside Rishi and offered her forearm. He took it, feeling the old strength beneath her sleeve. She kept her grip clear of the bandages at his wrist.

“I would train with you again.”

“So would I.” His hand tightened once. “Thank you. For the yard. For the Sanctum.”

Thiarel inclined her head. When she released him, she turned to Maeril.

“And I would work beside you again.”

Maeril had been ready with an answer about the unreasonable hour. It left her.

Thiarel waited.

“I would like that,” she said at last.

Thiarel nodded and returned to her seat.

Rishi fastened Maeril’s pack. When he looked up, Sirael was coming across the room with a staff in her hands.

Pale steel capped the dark wood. Near one end, two fine silver lines curved around a small crescent.

“This belonged to my father,” she said. “I have kept it since he died.”

Rishi’s hands stilled on the pack.

Sirael offered the staff across both palms.

“You gave the Living Staff to Seamwarden. This is the best gift I can offer you.”

Rishi rose and received it. He checked the space beneath the arching root, then shifted his grip and let the shaft turn through a short, careful arc. The wood slid smoothly beneath his palms. He tested the weight once more, brought it upright, and bowed.

“Thank you. I will carry your father’s staff with honor.”

He sat again, resting the staff against the bench beside him.

“He will,” Maeril said.

Sirael looked toward her.

Maeril met her gaze.

“Thank you, Sirael.”

Sirael inclined her head and returned to her place beside Thiarel.

Faelar brushed a few crumbs from his knee.

“I shall miss the discussions in the passage.”

Maeril looked at him with suspicion.

“Which discussions?”

“The ones I could hear before either of you came into sight.”

“We were not always arguing,” Rishi said.

“I said discussions.”

Maeril laughed, then pressed her hand against her ribs until she could breathe comfortably again. Faelar waited without changing his expression. Only when her hand lowered did he offer her the last piece of bread.

“You must come back with more.”

She took the bread. For once she did not improve the joke.

“We will try.”

Caereth leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“Send word when you reach Mosstone. If I am not there, leave it for me. People know how to get a message into my hands.”

“We will.”

“And tell me where you go afterward. I am willing to carry your letters. I am less willing to search every road for you first.”

“That sounds like a fair distinction.”

“I have learned to make them carefully around you.”

Rishi smiled. Then he looked across the room at Nessari.

The knot was finished. She had been turning the packet over and over on her knees while the others spoke. Seamwarden sat beside her now, their long hands resting open.

“May I see?”

Nessari came to him. He shifted along the bench so she could sit between him and Maeril, and she held the packet where they could both look at it. On the top sheet, a ward diagram had been copied several times. Maeril’s corrections crowded the space beside the first attempt. The last had only one mark.

“Better.”

Nessari traced that remaining mark with her finger.

“You will not be here when I get it right.”

Maeril looked from the diagram to her face.

“You will tell me.”

“It is not the same.”

Rishi had been about to speak of letters. He stopped. Her shoulder was warm against his arm, and soon he would not know what she was doing with her morning until a message found him weeks later.

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

Nessari looked down.

“I will miss seeing it too.”

Maeril put her hand beside the packet. Nessari caught it, carefully avoiding the healing skin at her wrist.

“Send me the work anyway. The attempts that fail as well. I want to know what you tried, not only what you think will please me.”

“All of them?”

Caereth drew a breath.

“The interesting ones,” Maeril amended. “We should leave him room to carry food.”

Nessari’s mouth moved without quite becoming a smile.

“Sirael in the mornings,” she said. “Then these. The same exercises until I can hold them properly.”

Sirael nodded from across the room.

“Seamwarden said they will watch my spellwork.”

“I can watch the weave. You will have to show me the exercises.”

Nessari looked toward them.

“You still have to let me show you other things too.”

“I was counting on it.”

Maeril’s thumb moved over the back of Nessari’s hand.

“And the questions?”

“To Caereth.”

“With the drawings,” Caereth said.

“We will send word from Mosstone. And answers,” Rishi said.

Nessari glanced toward Elenya.

“Under my roof still,” the Root-Mother said. “As we agreed.”

The girl’s fingers tightened around Maeril’s.

“I still want you to teach me.”

Rishi touched the red cord at his wrist.

“We have not finished.”

“Not remotely,” Maeril said. “You will be sick of my corrections.”

Nessari leaned toward her, then stopped short of the bandages. Maeril drew their joined hands onto her lap and turned her uninjured shoulder toward the girl. Nessari rested against it. Rishi stayed close on her other side until she was ready to sit upright again.

Seamwarden came to the bench when Nessari rose. She went to Lirae’s basket and lifted the weather-wrapped bundle waiting beside it, holding the practice sheets under her other arm.

Rishi watched the light move beneath Seamwarden’s bark. In the clearing it had reached into a working too large for him to grasp. Here it shone over the bench, the packed earth, and a scrap of cord Nessari had dropped.

Seamwarden picked up the cord and wound it around their fingers for her.

Rishi turned to Maeril.

“I hoped we could help them find their way,” he said, his voice roughening. “I did not know it would lead here.”

Maeril reached out. Seamwarden lowered their head until she could lay her hand against their cheek without lifting her aching arm too far.

“Are you happy here?”

“Yes.”

She let the answer settle before drawing a breath.

“Good.”

When Rishi rested his hand on their shoulder, Seamwarden asked, “You will write before you are very far away?”

“As soon as we can send a letter. You are still our family, Seamwarden.”

“And I want to hear about you,” Maeril said. “Tell me what you do when everyone lets you rest. I want you to have some days like that.”

“Nessari still has things to show me.”

Their fingers closed around Rishi’s wrist. For a moment the three of them stayed together, Maeril’s hand warm against the living wood.

“I will miss you.”

“Oh, we are going to miss you too.”

She could have kept her hand there longer. Instead she stroked their cheek once and let it fall back to her lap. Seamwarden remained beside the bench as Nessari returned with the bundle.

“Linen. Salve. The heat stones are wrapped separately.”

Rishi accepted it with both hands.

“Thank you.”

He found a place for it in his own pack where it would stay within reach. When he closed the flap, Lirae did not stop him.

The small click of the buckle carried through the room.

Elenya rose and came to them. Without the distance of the ceremony, Rishi could see how tired she was. He had watched her move from one need to another for days. Now she stood with her hands empty, looking at the two closed packs.

“When Sirael lay poisoned, your fire opened the way to her, Maeril.” Her gaze moved to Rishi. “And you drew the venom from her blood.”

Rishi remembered the failing pulse beneath his fingers, Thiarel kneeling across from him. Sirael sat beside her sister now, both feet flat on the earth.

“You helped bring my family home. I thank you both for that.”

Her attention moved to Nessari.

“You have given her work she loves. I want her to have years in which to learn it.”

Rishi’s throat tightened.

“So do we.”

Elenya looked at them again.

“You have a place here when you return.”

Maeril’s gaze moved around the hall: the cup she had failed to finish, Lirae’s basket, Thiarel’s spear set aside so they could pass. Nessari stood in the open with her papers against her chest.

“I know,” she said. “I did not always know.”

Rishi bowed his head. After a moment, Maeril did the same. Elenya answered with a slow inclination of her own.

For a little while, neither of them reached for the packs.