The wind fell, there’s maybe three or four hours of calm before it picks up again. Unless it’s the end of this damn storm. Looks like the last of winter, but I could be wrong.
I pulled out my nice binoculars, the ones I bought off of a soldier who couldn’t hold his booze. Bit of a stretch to say “bought,” though. More that he was snoring like a freight train and I left four beer bottles by his head as I left. Too much booze for a guy his size. Four bottles—that’s hardly worth the trouble he’d get into for losing a piece of equipment, but that’ll learn him. Way I see it, my taxes paid for those binoculars, so they’re just as much mine as his. Never mind that I’m not really paying taxes these days. No government man’s ever come around these parts to demand money I don’t owe. Benedict loves saying taxes are for infrastructure, but the path down to my place is all my doing. I don’t ask anything of other folks, so they shouldn’t bother asking anything of me, least of all my money.
I squinted to see if I could pick out anything, but everything was white, like a huge blanket thrown over the whole world. But there have to be things hidden under it: treasures or corpses.
Then I saw Benedict sitting on a rock, staring off. A sad sight, that. No telling what had him sadder, not knowing where the kid could be or feeling so powerless. It wasn’t like him not to know what to do. He’d always been sharp as a tack. When he was little, he always had to be doing whatever the grown-ups were doing, never mind how many bumps and bruises that meant. Magnus had carved two toolboxes for his sons that he’d filled with kid-size tools he’d made himself. Benedict liked anything that went fast and made lots of noise, while Thomas was more the sort to stand back a bit, take it all in, then, once he’d figured out what the guy cutting planks or polishing a piece of wood for an order was up to, he took his little tool kit and got down to help. Always so serious. Always so focused.
Handsome as an angel, too, with that curly hair that Maud wouldn’t dream of cutting getting in his eyes. Now, that’s a picture: some cherub falling from the sky and landing here, in the middle of the forest—but everybody here said it was sheer luck. No wives or kids around, so why not watch this boy with skin like buttercream play? It was a nice sight, and I wasn’t the only one who was mighty appreciative.