He pushed the seax back in its sheath. He was going to reverse that choice and prove his worthiness of the gift. He pulled his heavy woolen coat over his head and belted it at the waist, the weight of the knife close and reassuring across the small of his back. He checked his pouch for the fourth time to ensure his flint, hook and line were still there, then rolled a candle in his blanket and tied it into a bundle. He grabbed his mantle and hood from the peg on the wall, wrapped them about his body and secured them with a brooch. He stopped and squinted hard at the floor, willing it to tell him if he had forgotten anything.

“If you are looking for your axe, I put it in here.”

Padric blinked out of his mental inventory to find his mother standing in the doorway holding a large, round object. There was a smile on her face that did not reach her eyes and a hesitance in the way she held the object out to him.

“I covered one of our apple baskets in goat hide and then with otter pelts. It should keep most of the wet out. These straps…so you can carry it across your back.”

He took the pack from her and looked it over. Solid. Elegantly simple. Brilliant. Just like she was. He took his time inspecting it, afraid to look up again. She was the one thing he would miss from this suffocating place and he felt sick that he had to turn his back on her along with the rest. The last time he left was not difficult for him. Maybe he knew he would come back. Maybe he did not know what he was leaving. He did now.

He was her son and a walking curse. A shadow she bore from her own body. He was given names that tainted them all. The ridicule had turned him sour at an early age and often he turned his spite on those who fed him, clothed him, held him when the loneliness was too much to bear. He feared she blamed herself for his lot in life. Her own life would improve with him gone. In a short time, the hamlet would no longer be able to lay their sorrows at her door; the door behind which slept the black head of her ill-luck offspring. He would go for good this time and things would be better. And it would almost break her, again. It did not matter what others said of him. He was her son. And it would pain her to see him go, but she would bear that just as she bore the disdain of her community, for him.

“This is grand, mother. Thank you.” His voice was thick, the words choked out. He glanced up briefly and had to immediately look down again when he saw her face.