Turn 2 of 8

Ask him what follows him, and how long it has been following

"What follows you?" you say, and the question comes out steadier than the situation warrants. You set down the Carrow boy's salve and give the man your full attention, which is something your mother taught you to do before she taught you any remedy. People tell you more when they feel you listening. And this one needs to tell you something. You can see it sitting behind his teeth, waiting for permission.

"And how long has it been with you?"

He does not answer right away. His mouth works, the way a man's does when he is trying to find the shape of a true thing he has never said aloud before. His hand goes to his collar, a reflex, and he touches something underneath the fabric — a cord, perhaps, or a chain — and then drops his fingers back to the counter.

"Eleven years," he says. "Give or take. It was winter when it started. I was — I was in a different place. Doing different work." He stops. His eyes are brown and bloodshot and they search your face for the moment when you will tell him to leave, the way other people have told him to leave, and he is bracing for it.

"It doesn't show itself," he says. "Not exactly. It's — you know when a room is too quiet, and you can feel that something has stopped? Like a clock winding down, but there is no clock. That. It stands behind me when I sleep. Or it would, if I slept. It doesn't speak. It doesn't touch. But it is there, and it is tired. I can feel how tired it is." He presses the flat of his hand against the counter, steadying himself.

"I have been to physicians. I have been to priests. I have been to a man in Arden who cut a goat's throat and told me the blood would break the bond." His voice is flat now, clinical, reciting.

"It didn't. The goat died. The thing stayed. And I — I was glad it stayed. That is the part I cannot explain to anyone."

You let that settle. You have learned, in thirty years behind this counter, that silence is a tool, and that the thing a patient says after the silence is usually the thing that matters. The lamp gutters, the wick needing a trim, and the shadows in the shop shift and resettle. The man watches the flame as though it might do something unexpected.

"I was the one who woke it," he says, very quietly. "I didn't mean to. But I did. And it should not be here. Not because it is cruel — it isn't. Because it is old, and it is lost, and it cannot find its way back to where it was before I —" He stops again. His jaw tightens.

"Before I took something that was not mine to take."

From the back room, there is a pause in Iris's shelving. A held breath, or an ear pressed to the door. You hear it, because you know the sounds of this shop the way you know your own pulse. She is listening.