Boots Chapter 13

Boots dreamed. 

He was being chased through the woods, he could hear horses and heavy feet crashing through the trees. Slashes at the undergrowth told him there was cold steel glinting behind him in the night. 

“He’s up ahead, don’t let him escape.” Burig’s voice said from somewhere behind. Boots heard an indistinct response but knew the voice as Bridda’s. 

His heart jumped and he redoubled his efforts to press through the leaves and bushes in the dark night. His breath was ragged, and his skin was covered in sweat. 

No matter how fast he went, he wasn’t able to gain any distance between himself and his pursuers. His thoughts were muddled, but he knew that his luck had run out. Burig and Bridda were here to finish what lord Narosh had started and complete Boots’ punishment. They had been kind enough while they waited, but now it was time. 

What was it time for? How did he know? These were answers that only existed in the indistinct knowledge that was sleep. 

His hand pained him, and he reached down and gripped his wrist. The injury was bleeding again, the bandages wetter with each throb. 

He stumbled and tripped, hands coming down hard in the wet earth at the top of the riverbank, the water below him swirled. 

“No!” He cried out, knowing that what was below would be worse than what was behind. 

He tried to push himself back up, but his hands slipped in the mud and soon he was sliding down the steep bank into the rushing water of the river. 

It was no longer night, instead it was that strange greyish light that marked the ends of days. He could see the frothy water below him was streaked with blood as he tumbled into the shocking cold. But the blood did not belong to fish. It belonged instead to the nikka. 

Carried along the current as pale and twisted as driftwood, their severed limbs were bleeding from torn and punctured flesh. But they were not dead. The hands twitched towards him as they floated by, and the heads rolled their black eyes at Boots and opened their tongueless mouths. Instead of their tuneless song they crooned his name above the rushing sound of the water. 

“Boooootssssss….” 

Boots felt a cold dread fill his heart. He scrambled out of the cold water back into the mud and looked for shelter. The bank seemed to go on forever, lengthening his terror. He saw that the mouths of the nikka were rimmed with blood, and he somehow knew that they had eaten the shark, and if they pulled him into the river, they would eat him too. 

He managed to get his feet under himself and keep running. Burig and Bridda were lost to the dream, his pursuers were now the nikka slithering up the bank behind him and lurching along on mangled limbs. His heart beat like a drum. He wondered where Colin was, if the village was at risk. Flashes of the empty houses, trails of river water and bodies in the streets of Holding played through his head and he could not tell if they were memories or fears. His heart bounded against the taught panic in his chest. 

The overbearing greyness persisted, washing everything in a bleak light. He felt the sky was leering closer, weighing him down, trapping him in. 

Somehow, the ground beneath his feet had become the path to his home. He struggled up it with leaden feet, desperate to get inside. He crashed against the door, threw it open, and latched himself inside. He pressed his back and hands against the rough wood and looked around. 

There was no fire lit. 

Without any sunlight to filter through the windows, the inside of the house was as dark as dusk. The air was still and cool, it seemed to hang from the rafters, making it feel as close and overbearing as the world outside.  

He knew he should check on his mother. 

The curtains were drawn around her bed. 

His throat was dry, and the air was earthy, almost like the underground storage dug into the earth that housed the mysterious aelph stone. Boots’ breaths were shaky, and impossibly loud in his ears as he took the few steps from the door to the curtain that hid his mother’s bed from view. He reached out a hand, slowly, so slowly. 

A part of his mind screamed to stop, to turn and run, to drop his hand. But he was trapped in the moment. He felt as though there was a stone weighing down his chest. He could no more change the course of the dream than he could wake himself up. 

But something else started to change the dream. His hand was still making the impossibly slow reach forward, the fabric of the curtain a breath from his fingertips, when he felt the ground beneath him begin to tremble. 

It was a strange tremor that met the soles of his feet, then jiggled through the bones of his ankles and up his shins. The feeling shuddered up his body like a slow wave. Now it was at his knees, his thighs. The sound of his breathing had turned into a whooshing that was taking on the characteristics of a chorus of people yelling, but from far away. Boots broke out into a sweat as his arm, still straining forward, began to quiver from the bones outwards. 

He could almost understand the yelling that was growing in his ears. It was full of pain, and warning and triumph. His teeth rattled together. 

A hand fell on his shoulder and his heart climbed up his throat. His body went limp with terror and the fingers dug painfully into his shoulder as his legs tried to drop out from under him. 

“Found you, boy.” A deep voice intoned. 

The air became heavy, movement became strained and slow, as if moving through thick water. Boots turned his head and his eyes locked onto the hand that gripped his shoulder. He saw long, sharp fingernails on rough, thick-knuckled fingers, all of it grimed in dirt. The hem of a heavy dark cloak shrouded the wrist. Boots turned to try and see more of the figure, but a sword whistled downwards with a woosh of air across his face. Boots heart jumped as the blade severed the mysterious hand at the wrist. 

Boots’ eyes traveled along the space where the arm was to try and glimpse who the hand had belonged to, but the body was already falling away in a billow of black cloth and shadows. 

Heart thudding with fear and shock Boots looked instead for the face of the sword-wielder. The arms that held the sword and the body were clearly that of Burig, dressed in his neat, black and grey uniform. But as the disembodied hand dropped from Boots shoulder, he saw that the face of the swordsman was somehow that of his mother, set in a grim line that was as pale as death. 

The effect was so disturbing that Boots woke up in his hammock with a jolt that sent him flailing to the ground. He landed in the rushes then scrambled to his feet. Aware that his shirt was wet and sticking to him. He looked over it, and at his hand, to make sure none of it was blood. With his mind still half in the dream, he had a strange feeling that it might be. 

But it was just sweat. 

He pushed his hands through his hair, which was also damp, and patted at the shoulder where he had felt that hand. He looked at the floor, half expecting to see it laying in the rushes. 

He threw a log on the fire, grabbed the bag of shark’s teeth off the mantle then stumbled as an aural memory of the dream rang in his ears. 

“Found you, boy.” 

That voice, the timbre of it. The way it seemed to travel straight towards him from a great distance and clutch right for his heart, the way it seemed connected or tethered at the other end, as if he could turn and look in the direction it came from and follow it back to its owner far, far away. 

He hurried to the back door, opened it a crack, flung the bag of teeth away, then closed and latched it. The dream left him jumpy, but he felt a little better getting that reminder of both the shark and the nikka out of his house. 

Across the room his mother started coughing. The log he had thrown on the fire had caught and it painted a warm orange over the darkness. Emboldened by the comforting feeling the light brought, he went over to his mother’s bed, seized the curtain, and pulled it aside in defiance of his nightmare. 

No voices or clutching hands came out of the darkness. Just his mother, pale, and coughing. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. When he pressed his palm to her face, he was relieved to feel that it was cooler to the touch. Her fever had broken. 

With the firelight slowly filling the cottage and something to focus his mind, Boots was almost able to shake off the nightmare. But that voice, and the ghostly pressure of fingers digging into his shoulder, tripped him up from moment to moment. He thought, too, of the trembling through his body, from deep in the ground to deep in his bones. He felt strangely chased and caught. 

He prepared something for his mother to drink as her cough worsened. He poured some into a cup for her, then added more dried sleepybells to the remaining mixture for himself. After he had coaxed his mother to drink and made her as comfortable as he could, he filled a cup for himself with his new, stronger brew. The sleepybells made the drink bitter, and he grimaced at the taste, but he finished it nonetheless. 

His eyes had that permanent wideness that follows a nightmare, the kind of eyes that were ready to snap open and stare into the gloom at every sound. 

Parts of the nightmare were fading, but not that voice. The tone of it was so clear, as though it had been spoken into his mind and left an imprint there, like a foot in soft earth, he thought the shape of that voice would be with him forever. 

He shuddered as he finished the dregs of the drink he had made, mostly because of the taste, but not entirely. 

He moved the fire around, helping it to die back down. He checked on his mother again, taking a moment to stare at her face and fix it in his mind to replace that strange hybrid of her and Burig he had seen in his dream. Then he went back to his hammock, making himself comfortable. He waited for the prickling numbness in his fingertips and toes that told him the sleepybells was having its desired effect. 

In a counter to the trembling of the ground and his body in the nightmare, the tingling from the potion traveled gently up his arms and legs leaving nothing but stillness in its wake. It traveled straight into his brain where it opened itself wide and sucked up the images of nikka, blood, severed hands and disembodied voices. He slipped into the darkness that was left and slept. 

Boots woke before it was fully morning with his cheek covered in drool and his head feeling as if it were full of sand. He eased out of his hammock, sifting off the remnants of the sleepybells potion as he got his feet under him. He foraged around the cottage for water and found some in a bowl. It tasted stale and a bit sandy; it must have been used to rinse some berries, but he drank it anyway to wash away the bitter aftertaste and dryness in his throat. It was possible he had overdone the sleepybells in the mixture, but he had slept soundly, so he could not regret it. 

He stumbled over to check on his mother. She was asleep, and pale, and feverish again; but none of these were to an alarming degree. He dabbed at her forehead, face and neck with the cloth from the bowl of herbed water next to her bed and swiped on some more ointment to ease her breathing. Now that the fever had broken, he expected it would come and go for a few days but hoped the worst had passed. 

That taken care of for the moment, he grabbed a bucket and went out the back door in search of water from the well. He promptly dropped the bucket, letting out a yelp, as he spotted a figure slumped against the side of the cottage. 

“Luthi!” Boots exclaimed as his sleepy brain recognized the man resting against the cottage who opened his eyes as if from a restful slumber or peaceful daydream. “Rig’s balls! I mean good morning. What are you doing here?” Boots stumbled over his words as he fetched his bucket from the ground. “I mean, it’s nice to see you, you just startled me.” 

In contrast to Boots rattled energy, Luthi was his usual calm self, as unflappable as an oak, or a stone on the hillside. The man wore his tattered vest and faded cap that had once been red. His face creased into a reassuring smile. 

“Just checking on things,” Luthi said, as though it was not at all unusual for him to be resting there against the cottage so early in the morning. He held out an arm, fingers outstretched, as if reaching for something that only he could see. The way Luthi passed his hand through the air made Boots almost believe there were currents of gold running between the man’s fingers. 

Luthi’s smile slipped a little. “Haven’t the same knack for it,” he muttered to himself. “But it seems in order. How is you mother?” 

He asked the question at Boots, but his hand was still testing the air in that strange way. As Boots answered he watched Luthi press his hand against the dirt and close his eyes, eyebrows drawn together and forehead creased, as if he was somehow listening to the earth through his palm. 

Boots rambled off an answer, watching Luthi with curiosity. “Um, she’s better this morning. Better than she was, I don’t know if you’ve heard or not that she isn’t well. Did you talk to Jayna?” 

Luthi opened his eyes, slid them in Boots’ direction and nodded at the bucket. “Were you getting some water?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Boots said, half forgetting what he was holding. 

 Luthi stood up and took the bucket from Boots. “Let me. You seem a little worn this morning. Get some food then come and sit.” Luthi squinted around them, taking in the yard and the first rays of the sun peering through the trees. The corners of his eyes creasing in amusement. “The air is fresh with wonders today; it clears the mind.” 

Seeing no reason to disagree, Boots took a moment to relieve himself and splash water on his face from the rain barrel. Then went back in the cottage and took some food from the bag Jayna had left and a pair of cups. When he came outside Luthi had returned with the water and was sprinkling something in and chanting softly under his breath. Then he faced the sun and closed his hands together in a prayer to the morning. 

Boots approached and offered Luthi some food and the cup. Luthi thanked Boots and – to Boots secret relief – took only the cup. He really wanted that food to last as long as possible. 

“This water has been blessed by the dawn,” Luthi explained, dipping each cup into the bowl to scoop up some water. “It will bring the freshness of the sun’s rays to your day.” 

There was nothing pressing in Luthi’s tone, but Boots felt compelled to mutter a short blessing to the morning as he accepted the cup from Luthi. Although Boots almost never bothered with daily rituals, in his half-hearted reciting of the blessing, he felt more settled and connected to the ritual than he had expected to. Boots took a sip of the prepared water and felt the freshness wash over his tongue and the meaning of the words fall into place. He swallowed and he felt a sort of peace deep inside of himself. 

He looked over at Luthi, who smiled as if he understood even though nothing had been said. Boots smiled too. There was something about Luthi that made you feel at ease, that made you feel you did not have to hide from him or from yourself. 

The old vidari nodded, and they sat in comfortable silence while Boots ate some breakfast and drank his water. His mind easy and free for the moment as he enjoyed the morning sounds and filled his belly. Beside him Luthi stretched out a hand and, again, brought it to the ground. Boots threw some crumbs out to the delight of some small, hopping birds and looked over at Luthi. 

Boots was working out a question about what he was doing when Luthi raised one of his own. 

“I saw a target that took a recent battering on my way to the well,” he said. One eyebrow raised high, creasing his forehead. 

The eyebrow stayed raised, a clear question mark on the statement. Boots ducked his head, abashed at being caught out, but encouraged by Luthi’s patient waiting. 

“I’ve…I’ve been practicing. Only a little it -” He stopped and absently ran his left hand over the scars on his right hand as he stared across at the birds swooping down to peck out the remnants of crumbs. “I miss it. And it isn’t even really going well but,” he held out his hands in a sort of shrug, “but I just can’t stop. It still wants to be part of who I am, even if I’m not very good at it anymore.” 

Luthi nodded, seeming to understand all the unspoken parts of Boots’ answer. How even though there was little progress with his bow, he somehow was not discouraged. Possibly because he no longer looked at it as a difficulty to overcome, but as a retreat from the new difficulties in his life. 

It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t going well. But compared to all the other problems that seemed to be crowding around him this was something simple, something he understood. The routine of setting up, the familiarity of the pieces involved, the living stillness of the woods around him, it ordered his mind. And as he shifted a shoulder or elbow to adjust his aim, all his other concerns faded away to nothing. There was only the target in the distance, and the tension of the drawn string humming against his fingertips. 

Luthi poured himself another cup of water and began to speak in that gentle lull of a practiced storyteller. In a way that blended into Boots’ thoughts without pushing them away. 

“There was once a man,” Luthi said, eyes fixed on the distance, “who was a baker. This was long ago, after the time when the gods walked the earth, but before the time that much of the magic had gone. There were many wizards and witches then, in constant battles for power. But this story is about a baker who lived in the King’s City of Alfwoldom, when it was known by its old name, and this baker was the most excellent of bakers. He made loaves of bread in every size, shape and colour, he made towering sweet cakes, miniature pastries, biscuits and all sorts of wonderful savouries and sweets baked into the perfect roll. It was said there was not an ingredient you could bring him that he could not make delicious with dough.” 

As Boots listened, he stared into the trees beyond, watching the slow rise of the sun spill colour through the mist that drifted between the trunks. He could almost picture the baker, a small, neat man, working calmly between heaps of strange ingredients and clouds of delicious smells by the warm glow of his ovens. 

“Now it happened that the city was under the protection, or perhaps control, of a powerful sorceress. It had many riches, many skilled people, and many arcane and magical artifacts. This brought the city much prosperity and filled it with wonders, but it also made it the envy of many other powerful magicians who wanted its riches for themselves. The magical protections and brave soldiers of the city did well to repel any attacks for many years, but nothing endures forever. 

“Eventually the city caught the eye of a powerful wizard. Rather than fight outright, he harried the walls with small attacks, and placed the city under-siege, allowing people to leave, but no resources to go in. Peppered by attacks and slowly drained of resources, the city weakened, and many of the nobles fled the city with their wealth. They called to the baker to leave with them. 

“‘Come,’ they said. ‘You can no longer make your rarest cakes and pies, we are without any of the exotic ingredients that made you famous. Come with us, we will pay you handsomely and give you all the ingredients you desire.’ But the baker shrugged them off. And when he ran out of strange and wondrous ingredients he baked with dried fruits and nuts from his stores. The smells from his ovens brought a measure of comfort to those who remained, and they were grateful for his services. 

“The siege wore on, and the city suffered, and the tradesmen fled to find safer and more prosperous places for their skills. 

“‘Come with us,’ they said. ‘Your fame proceeds you, and you will surely find a place in some great court with the rest of us.’ But the baker shook his head. For although many were leaving, there were still many hungry mouths in the city, and he worked hard to feed them all. As the buildings crumbled around him, he worked tirelessly. Making bread from the simplest ingredients, and when he ran out, he ground what grains he could gather and made plain flatbreads that he handed out in piles to the children who ran to the shop as soon as the smell of baking drifted down the abandoned streets.” 

Now Boots pictured the baker’s shop as grey and worn, most of the ovens gone cold, the streets outside crumbling and littered with debris. He imagined bland piles of various grains in baskets and the baker grinding them to flour in a stained apron, a cloth tied around his forehead to keep the sweat from falling into the mixture. 

“Eventually, it became apparent that the city was falling into the hands of the wizard, who was now attacking the city outright. The baker tied a few belongings into an apron and fled with the remaining citizens as the city was ravaged by magic. Fires burned for days, and the sounds of buildings crashing to the ground shook the trees while the sorceress and the wizard clashed.” 

Here Luthi had another sip, and his tone changed, more teacher than storyteller for a moment, before slipping back into his tellers’ cadence. 

“Now, there is a strange thing about wizards and witches and kings and those of their like. They want just to have, because they never seem satisfied. And what they want is to own, to get power. But like spoiled children fighting over a toy, they often break what they cannot share. So, when the city was destroyed in the battle, no one wanted it. Not the sorceress who had lived there, and not the wizard that had attacked it. All that was left were piles of rubble, and smoke. 

“The people did not know what to do, they wandered back over and past the ruined walls once the dust had settled and the smoke had cleared and stared blankly and hopelessly around themselves. The city was broken and smashed and splintered. There was little to recognize and, it seemed, less to salvage. But one man did know what to do. 

“The bakery was completely destroyed, but he did not need the bakery to be a baker. It took some time for people to distinguish the weak smells of bread from the woodsmoke. But it called to them, and they followed. At the source of the smell they found the baker, crouched over a fire, cooking flat breads on a shield he had scoured clean with ashes and sand. As calm and composed as he’d ever been in his old kitchen. 

“A few masons who remained began collecting bricks to build an oven. Woodcutters went out to find and stack wood, kitchen maids began to gather ingredients and supplies, children ran through the streets with purpose, each one with a mission to complete and a piece of warm bread in their bellies. 

“Slowly, but steadily, the city rebuilt itself, they say, around that very oven that was built by survivors from the rubble of the ruined city.” 

Boots let the story settle in his mind like the last of the morning mist sinking into the forest floor. “Is that true?” Boots asked, “about the city rebuilding around a baker’s oven?” 

Luthi shrugged. “Perhaps. The name of the King’s City, Alfwoldom, comes from the old tongue meaning ‘hearth’ which could mean home, but could also mean a fireplace or an oven.” 

The rest of the little birds had finished eating up the crumbs and singing their morning salute and had fluttered off to their day’s adventure. Boots watched the softly swaying branches of the trees with an amused grin on his face. 

“I know that there are likely many lessons for me in the layers of your story,” Boots said. “But right now, all I can think of is that you can be a terrible wizard, or a mighty king, or a great sorceress; but at the end of the day the centre of the kingdom might be named for a baker who scraped flour out of the ashes.” 

Luthi smiled too and shrugged. “That is still a lesson, maybe one of many. Or it’s just a nice story. Hard to tell.” 

Boots slid his eyes in Luthi’s direction, but the man was drinking his water with the same calm thoughtfulness he always possessed. Boots wondered, not for the first time, how old the man really was. Luthi’s hair was an ivory yellow where it peeked out from his floppy hat, his skin was brown and seamed at the corners of his eyes and mouth, but his cheeks were strangely smooth. His forehead only wrinkled in thought, or query, or amusement. And all of these things could be simply age or could be from endless days and nights spent in the wind and sun, squinting through the elements to find whatever hidden truths he sought. 

Luthi’s life, Boots thought, is fulfilled by whatever it is he does with his days, like the baker’s life was fulfilled by simply baking. There was a tickling at the edges of his mind that signalled maybe some lessons were fluttering in the layers of the story, but Luthi interrupted those thoughts. 

“You still have that piece of yew aging up?” Luthi asked. 

“I do,” Boots said, a little surprised that Luthi remembered. But maybe not so surprising; to Luthi a significant tree or a piece of wood was as good as a family member or a pet. 

“Might be something we can do with that to suit your hand better. When it’s ready to shape you let me know.” 

Boots’ mouth opened, then closed, unsure of how to best respond. When Luthi worked on a piece of wood it did not look so much carved as it seemed to have been coaxed from the tree and dropped from the branches like fruit. Every new dwelling in Holding had a piece selected and shaped by Luthi, it was considered lucky to do so. And when you roamed the woods closer to his moss-covered home you passed trees and shrubs growing in intricate lattices and archways that had been gently shaped over the course of decades. If anyone could help Boots shape a bow that would fit his maimed hand it was Luthi. 

“I, that would, I certainly will,” Boots stammered. “Thank you.” 

Luthi nodded, and Boots tried to keep the silly grin off of his face at the prospect of what an incredible bow he may be able to create with Luthi to guide him; not to mention what wood-working secrets he might glean from the man. This reminded Boots that there was something more pressing that needed the vidari’s expertise. 

“How is the mill?” Boots asked. “I haven’t been able to see it since, well since the flood. Is it going to be hard to fix?” 

Luthi sighed deeply, but it was a thoughtful sigh. “It’s bad, but it could be much worse. I’ve been going to look over the pieces that are still whole to see if they are, in fact, still whole, making sure that there are not any hidden cracks or weaknesses in the grain from the strain and twisting of the floods. Some large pieces will need to be remade, and it will take time, but I believe it can be fixed in time to finish the harvest.” 

“Good, good.” Boots said. 

He thought once more of the heaved-up mess of splintered wood and tangled branches that he had seen the day of the storm. It seemed a miracle that anything could be salvaged. He thought, again, of the wishing fish and mercy, and of the blessing of thanks he had murmured over the water Luthi had given him to drink and admitted to himself that there were, in fact, things to be thankful for. 

“Speaking of the mill, I am expected there later today and should be on my way,” Luthi said, standing and dusting himself off. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to take this roll with you?” Boots asked. The water, the story, the bow, all these things Luthi had to offer, Boots could certainly spare a piece of bread. 

“No, but thank you,” Luthi said. “I admit I sampled from your mother’s garden this morning when I arrived. I feel it would be unfair to take anymore.” 

Luthi had his arm outstretched again, fingers testing the air. 

“How long were you out here before I woke up?” Boots asked. 

Luthi shrugged, as inscrutable as Meranin but more mischievous, and dropped his arm. “I’ll be around, Boots. Take care and send word if you need help.” 

And off he went.  

While Boots tidied up the breakfast things his eyes kept straying to where Luthi had been sitting. The woodsman tended to wander as he pleased, it was true. But sitting outside someone’s cottage in the early morning was a bit stranger than the usual. It certainly had not happened before. 

Putting down his things, Boots walked over and sat where Luthi had been resting and looked out towards the forest. Nothing unusual, just the garden and the trees beyond. Boots stood and looked in the same direction. Again, there did not seem to be anything in particular for Luthi to be looking at. 

Then Boots reached out an arm to the place where he had imagined Luthi’s fingers running through a golden stream in the air. Teasing his fingers through the air, Boots copied the gesture. He crouched and tried pressing a palm to the ground, then stood up and lifted his arm again. 

Nothing happened. Just the warm air against his skin. 

What had Luthi said, that he was checking on things, something about not having the same knack for it. Same knack for it as who? 

But as Boots dropped his arm, he thought he already knew the answer. As much as he told himself that his mother was just very good with herbs and reading signs in nature, he often suspected there was something more. And that this “something more” was probably the reason she kept herself and her past tucked away in this cottage. Sometimes, he wondered if it was also part of the reason he had never known his father. 

He looked around one last time, then drained the rest of the water, once more enjoying the briskness over his tongue that cleared his head. He took a long look at the yard, the quiet trees and the golden sunlight pouring into the garden. He saw memories from his entire life filling the space. Helping his mother plant seeds, he and Colin playing hide and seek between the stalks, exploring the woods beyond, catching his first fish in the creek, shoveling snow off the roof in winter and jumping into the sifting piles of cold, the taste of honey fresh from the comb, the riot of colours in autumn, Tale and Colin coming over to help him build his first target and the warmth of the cottage he called home. 

All these memories filled up the space and spilled out from the small clearing to rush towards Holding where more memories waited. The taste of Bessie’s special brew, Albo’s anvil ringing through the streets, Tafner’s laugh and Siggu’s worried smile, the bustle of festivals and markets and Fauna’s blushing cheek. He did not have a father. He did not have much. But he belonged here, in Holding, he had that, and his mother had given it to him by making this their home. 

No, he did not know what might be on the other side of his mother’s secrets, what was in her past. But if pushing for the truth meant he toppled all this to the ground – he turned back to the cottage – he wasn’t sure it was worth it.