“What’s your name?” her son asked quietly.
“Wren.”
“Like the bird?”
The stranger glanced at the boy. Ever so slightly, he smiled. “They teased me when I was your age. Flap your wings, Wrenny Boy. Fly away home.”
Udi glanced at Majka, seeking permission to grin. Majka felt herself blushing once more and rose to stir the soup.
She cleared her throat. “Well, Mr. Wren—”
Sudden terror. Broken glass, her mother-in-law screaming, a dark object landing on the rug. The storm suddenly loud through the shattered window. Udi clung to her, his nails biting her wrist.
“It’s a horseshoe, mama. Someone threw a horseshoe at our house.”
But Majka was gazing at the stranger. He was flat against the wall of the parlor, twelve feet from the woodstove. This man named for a bird had moved like a snake, faster than the eye could follow. He had slipped one hand into his coat, reaching for something beneath his left underarm.
He had a knife after all.
Through the broken window, a man’s voice, loud and derisive: “Majka! What’ll you do in a month’s time, eh? When the snow lies deep and you’re hungry?”
“That’s Pankolo,” said her son, his voice trembling. The stranger shot a hard glance at Udi.
“You can come to the back door,” shouted Pankolo. “There’s a little dish Tabitha puts out for the cats. You can bend down and lick, you hear me? You and your boy.”
The stranger moved to the window, looked out through the shattered pane.
“Never mind him,” said Majka. “He’s a drunken fool. Get the broom, Udi.”
Her son did not seem to hear her. “Pankolo,” said Wren. “Is that short for Panarikolos? Is your drunken fool Panarikolos Rabak?”
Majka froze. Wren turned from the window and studied her, waiting.
“Yes, that’s him,” said her mother-in-law.
Majka winced; the old woman’s voice was caustic. She had never said a word about Pankolo, but she knew.
“Tata—”
“It’s a large family, the Rabaks, though most of them have ended up in Shyram. They were respectable once.”
Majka couldn’t look at her. “I’ll make him pay for that window,” she said.
“Will you?” muttered the old woman, nudging the horseshoe with a slipper. “I’m sure I don’t want to know how.”
The stranger walked to the front door and opened it wide. Cold wind flooded the parlor; the rain lashed him in the face. There he paused, and Majka took a step towards him, not knowing why. The man glanced up at her fiercely, then closed the door behind him and was gone.
SHE CUT A square of canvas and nailed it over the broken pane. They rebolted the front door and fastened the chain lock on the door in the kitchen. Udi asked if the man was going to fight Pankolo, and she told him yes, probably. When he asked if one of them would be killed she sent him upstairs to pray.
The wind grew fiercer. Majka took a lamp into her bedroom and gazed mutely at a trio of crude earthenware saints on her dresser. Behind them stood a little congregation of lead and glass bottles: half-empty salves, rancid skin creams, a bottle the size of her little finger that contained the ghost of a perfume and the memory of the night Udi was conceived. No one would ever hurt him. There was no logic left to her but that.
Her fingers crept to the bottle with the tooth. As always the little lead vessel was extremely hot. She lifted it gingerly. No reason to open it, now or ever. There was nothing inside but sesame oil and a fragment of bone.
“A finger bone, I think,” her husband had said. “You keep it, Majka; remember that it’s something to be proud of. And perhaps it will bring good luck.”
She walked to the window overlooking the ravine. Four years since she’d made the descent. Four years since that river stopped giving and decided to take. She held the bottle in her fist until she could no longer stand the heat, then wrestled open the window and hurled the bottle into the night. She let the rain cool her throbbing hand. She was done with luck.
Returning to the dresser, she opened the bottom drawer, slid a hand beneath her petticoats and drew out a machete. She removed its sheath and ran her fingers up the blade until they met with a dry spot of blood. Something else to be proud of. She tested the weight of the machete in her hand.
Then she heard it: the clop of hooves on the muddy street. She left the sheath in the dresser and hurried downstairs, where she looked around the empty rooms in desperation. At last she rushed to the cellar door. With great care she propped the machete on the first stair, handle against the wall. There came a knock on the door of the kitchen.
Majka closed the cellar door. She had to compose herself. When the knock was repeated she walked to the kitchen door and opened it as far as the chain would allow.
Wren stood there, drenched. He’d gone out without his hat. One of Pankolo’s better horses stood steaming behind him.
“He subtracted six cockles from the price of the stallion. For your window, of course.”
The stranger reached through the gap, and Majka let him pour the heavy coins into her hand. Six gold cockles. Twenty times what she needed for the window. “You bought a horse from Pankolo? Just like that?”
She might have been asking if he had walked on water. But what was odd about it? He needed a horse, he bought one. And if his hand was shaking a little, what did that mean?
“Your friend said you might have room in the barn.”
“He’s not my friend. And you. You looked like something drowned.”
He brought his face close to the gap. “The prospect grows more likely by the minute,” he said.
No smile, but a wryness to his look. Majka found herself laughing. She grabbed her overcoat and unchained the door and stepped out into the rain.
PAST MIDNIGHT. THE mandolin sang softly in her son’s gifted hands. Udi smiled as he played; Majka rarely let him stay up late. The room was dark: she had lowered the flame on the oil lamp as far as she could without snuffing it altogether.
Her mother-in-law had retired. Bishkin purred at Udi’s feet. Wren had changed into her husband’s clothes, although the dead man’s shirt would scarcely button across his chest. He still had his cup of wine; she had never seen a man drink so slowly. Majka herself had taken a cup, her first in several years.
The music affected Wren. The line of his mouth softened, and the wariness left his eyes. He paced the house, listening with great intensity and turning often to glance at Udi, and sometimes at Majka herself. They had spoken no more of what was to come.
Majka tensed each time he drew close. She felt him pause behind her chair. In her bedroom she had rummaged through her old crates and foot-lockers, at last finding a warm shirt and pair of trousers. She had turned, and there he was in her room, watching her, glistening with rain.
“I’ll undress now, if you don’t mind.”
She had placed the folded clothes on the bed and stepped into the hall. When she returned a moment later with a towel he was already removing his shirt. He grew still, noticing her gaze. She put down the towel and turned quickly away.
I was only looking for his knife.
Udi finished his tune. Wren stopped his pacing and nodded his approval.
“You’re a fine player already,” he said. “Do you have a profession in mind, boy?”
Her son averted his eyes. “Stone,” he mumbled.
“Stone?”
“Walls and such. My mother’s teaching me; she’s better than anyone. She built our garden wall.”
“There’s no demand for it,” said Majka. “He can’t make a living from stonework in Chamsarat. But then what could he make a living from?”