“That’s… very good,” he said, as evenly as he could, while bells of alarm were going off in his head. Darien didn’t turn. With another movement, not a tracing this time, simply a spreading of his fingers, he colored the flower he’d made. It was blue-green where the petals were, and red at the center.

Red, like Darien’s eyes, when he made it.

“That’s very good,” Paul managed to say again. He cleared his throat: “Shall we go home for lunch?”

They had walked a long way and, going back, Dari got tired and asked to be carried. Paul swung him up on his shoulders and jogged and bounced him part of the way. Dari laughed for the first time. It was a nice laugh, a child’s.

After Vae had given him lunch, Dari napped for most of the afternoon. He was quiet in the evening too. At dinner-time, Vae, without asking, set three places. She, too, said very little; her eyes were red-rimmed, but Paul didn’t see her weep. After, when the sun set, she lit the candles and built up the fire. Paul put the child to bed and made him laugh again with shadow figures on the wall before he pulled the curtains around the bed.

Then he told Vae what he had decided to do, and after a while she began to talk, softly, about Finn. He listened, saying nothing. Eventually he understood something—it took too long, he was still slow with this one thing—and he moved closer and took her in his arms. She stopped talking, then, and lowered her head simply to weep.

He spent a second night in Finn’s bed. Dari didn’t come to him this time. Paul lay awake, listening to the north wind whistle down the valley.

In the morning, after breakfast, he took Dari down to the lake. They stood on the shore, and he taught the child how to skip flat stones across the water. It was a delaying action, but he was still apprehensive and uncertain about his decision of the night before. When he’d finally fallen asleep, he’d dreamt about Darien’s flower, and the red at its center had become an eye in the dream, and Paul had been afraid and unable to look at it.

The child’s eyes were blue now, by the water, and he seemed quietly intent on learning how to skip a stone. It was almost possible to convince oneself that he was just a boy and would remain so. Almost possible. Paul bent low. “Like this,” he said, and made a stone skip five times across the lake. Straightening, he watched the child run to look for more stones to throw. Then, lifting his glance, he saw a silver-haired figure ride around the bend in the road from Paras Derval.