Tom reached the house towards evening.
The sun had not yet set, but the light had grown lower and colder. The yard lay before him as familiar as ever: the fence, the chopping block by the barn, the dark chimney smoke, the hens at the gate. Only now he knew the price of that familiarity, and so he looked at it differently.
His shoulder ached again. He touched the cloth at the tear gingerly. The blood was slight — too little to look alarming, and too much to pass unnoticed if his mother came close.
Tom stopped at the gate and quickly ran through the possible explanations in his head.
A bush.
A snag.
Old wire by the fence.
Nothing cleverer presented itself.
He stepped into the yard, trying to walk steadily and not too quickly.
The front door was ajar. From inside came voices, the clatter of crockery and the familiar thick smell of something cooking. An ordinary evening. An ordinary house. Tom felt a moment's impulse to turn round and go back to the copse, where everything had been simpler: tracks, a creature, blood, danger. With dark things it's always cleaner than with his mother.
Because a dark thing doesn't look at you as though it already knows half the truth.
He went in.
His father was sitting at the table mending something leather, squinting crossly in the window's light. Jack was talking quietly to Ellie by the hearth. One of the younger ones was sorting onions into a basket by the bench. Tom took all of this in at a glance and understood the main thing at once:
his mother was not in the room.
For a moment he felt relief.
— Had a proper look at the fence? his father growled, without raising his head.
— Aye, Tom answered. — It's holding at the bottom.
That was nearly true. The fence was indeed holding.
— Then what took you so long?
Tom shrugged.
— Walked on a bit further.
His father made a noncommittal sound. He evidently had no interest in an interrogation. But Tom had barely taken two more steps towards the bench when from the far corner came his mother's voice, quiet and steady:
— And what did you manage to get into this time?
She stepped out of the small pantry, wiping her hands on her apron, and Tom froze: she was looking not at his face but straight at his shoulder.
He looked down himself and saw what he should have noticed earlier — a narrow dark streak of blood on the rough cloth of his shirt. Not even a stain. Just a trace. But for her it was enough.
— Nothing, he said, too quickly. — Caught it on a branch.
His mother came closer.
— Show me.
— It's nothing much.
His father gave a short huff.
— If your mother says show her, show her, lad.
Tom held back a sigh.
He had nearly forgotten how difficult it was to conceal anything here, in this body. His adult memory offered a dozen ways to deflect an awkward conversation, but all of them suited the Tom who had been a grown man — not the boy who lived under the same roof as a mother who noticed blood faster than other people noticed mud on a boot.
— Come here, she said.
Not loudly.
But there was no point arguing after that.
Tom stepped forward.
She took the edge of his shirt, turned him toward the light, and in one movement drew the cloth aside. The scratch was indeed shallow: long, red, with edges slightly swollen. Normal enough for a claw? No. Normal enough for a branch? Almost.
Almost — the most dangerous word in existence.
His mother said nothing at once.
She only moved her fingers just above the wound, not touching the skin itself, as though assessing not so much the cut as what stood behind it.
— That's not a branch, she said at last.
Everything inside Tom went cold.
His father looked up.
— What d'you mean, not a branch?
His mother glanced back over her shoulder.
— I mean don't be pestering him just now, John. I need to wash it first.
She said this quietly, but in a tone that made even his father disinclined to argue. He frowned more deeply but only muttered something under his breath and returned to the strap.
His mother looked back at Tom.
— Come along.
She did not take him to the main room but to the small back kitchen, where herbs, jugs, bundles of dried roots and small bags of things that nobody in the house touched but her were kept.
Tom walked in silence.
This was what truly made him uneasy.
Not because she had guessed everything — she was far from that. But because here, in this narrow room with the sharp smell of herbs and the clean water, he felt too vividly who she really was.
Not simply his mother.
Not simply the mistress of the house.
Not the woman any outsider would have taken her for.
His mother set a bowl on the table, poured water, and without looking at him said:
— Take the shirt off your shoulder.
Tom did as he was told.
She took a clean cloth, wet it, and began to wash the dried blood away with careful, precise, unhurried movements. These were not the clumsy motions of someone who barely knows how to bind a finger — this was the quiet work of someone who had seen too many different kinds of pain.
He had known this before. But not quite like this.
Now every detail came through more sharply: the way she found the edges of the scratch immediately; the way she saw at once that the cloth had not stuck dangerously to the wound; the way she knew with a glance that stitching wasn't needed.
— Does it hurt? she asked.
— Bearably.
She nodded.
— Then you were lucky.
Silence settled again.
Tom stared at the shelf along the wall, crowded with small pots, and felt his heart beating badly. Not because of the wound. Because she had been quiet for too long.
— Mam...
— Hush a moment, she said calmly.
And he hushed.
Not out of fear. Because the tone was too familiar. That was how she spoke when she had already seen enough and was simply sorting through it in her mind.
She changed the water, took out a bunch of herbs, crushed the leaves between her fingers and pressed them against the wound.
The smell hit Tom sharply and strangely.
Yarrow.
Wormwood.
And something else.
Sweet.
Too heavy for an ordinary kitchen.
He frowned.
His mother noticed.
— Recognise it?
— Not all of it, he answered honestly.
— You weren't supposed to, not yet.
It sounded so simple that he didn't catch the meaning at once.
Then he raised his eyes. She was looking at the wound, not at him, but what she had said was not about the herbs.
Tom clenched his jaw.
There it was.
The very edge he had come to too late in his previous life. Not the secret itself — he knew her nature all too well. But something else: how much of the old knowledge she was already willing to let him see at this early point.
His mother set down the cloth, took a clean strip of linen, and began to bandage his shoulder.
— You've been too quiet lately, she said.
— I wasn't much of a talker before.
— Not like this.
Tom said nothing.
She pulled the bandage firm but not too tight, and only then looked up.
— What did you see in the wood?
Lying outright was dangerous.
The truth was more dangerous still.
Tom chose the middle ground.
— Tracks.
— Whose?
— I don't know.
She looked at him for another moment.
— That's true now, she said.
Tom frowned slightly.
— What is?
— That you don't know.
A cold moved down his spine.
His mother breathed out tiredly and turned back to the shelf, as though the jars of salve interested her more than her own words.
— I'm not asking where you really were, she said. — Not now. But next time, if you see something bad, don't stand near it for too long.
Tom nodded slowly.
— All right.
— And don't lie to me about branches.
He almost smiled at that.
Almost in the old way.
She turned back, and it was then that her gaze stopped at a point above the wound — at his temple.
Not at once.
At first Tom didn't even understand what had changed.
She simply went still.
Then her fingers rose very slowly toward his hair.
— Stay where you are, she said quietly.
He wasn't moving anyway.
She drew back a dark lock from his forehead.
Between her fingers something pale caught the light.
Not light itself.
Not dust.
A hair.
Grey.
Tom stared, then turned sharply toward the small copper tray hanging on the wall. Its surface was not a mirror — clouded by time — but it was enough.
At his right temple, running through the dark, there was a thin but visible streak.
Not white entirely.
Silver-grey. As though frost had settled on the hair and not melted.
Tom looked at it in silence.
He had known the body couldn't come through something like that without leaving a mark. Something would remain — in the face, the eyes, the hair. But knowing a thing in your mind is one matter; seeing it in this light, in this house, with his mother beside him, was another.
— That wasn't there before, she said.
Not a question.
A plain fact.
— It wasn't, Tom answered.
His mother did not release the lock at once.
Then at last she lowered her hand.
— Is there nothing you want to tell me?
There it was.
The most dangerous question of the day.
Tom dropped his gaze.
If he said even half the truth now, the world would bear it no better than he would himself. He couldn't pour out the end of everything, the dead field, the blood and the debt, as though it were simply one more piece of bad news from the road.
— Not yet, he said quietly.
His mother did not grow angry.
Did not seem surprised.
She only ran her palm very tiredly across the table.
— Then there will be a time when you will.
He raised his head.
Her face held no softness in the usual sense, and no fear either. Only a focused attention — nearly cold — the kind that always lay somewhere deep beneath the warm domestic surface of her, surfacing rarely, only when illness, blood, or something worse was at hand.
Tom felt his throat tighten.
He saw her again from two directions at once: the mother who had just bandaged his shoulder, and something far more ancient sitting inside that quiet woman, watching the world without haste.
— I'm not a child to be frightened by a grey hair, she said.
Then added, more quietly:
— But I don't like changes that come without reason.
Tom said nothing.
Because he understood: she did not know what had happened.
His mother moved to the shelf, took down a small clay pot and held it out to him.
— Take this with you if you go wandering again.
— What is it?
— A salve. For scratches like that one.
He took the pot.
It was warm.
As if she had been holding it in her hands in advance.
— Thank you, said Tom.
She nodded.
Then, as if remembering something, she opened the bottom drawer of the table and took out a small bundle of worn cloth.
Grey.
Unremarkable.
Tied with a dark thread.
— This is not for you yet, she said, almost to herself.
Tom was alert at once.
— What is it?
— Old.
— Whose?
She looked at him over the bundle.
— Mine.
That was all.
Not one word extra.
But it was enough.
Tom already knew who she truly was — not simply a mother, not simply a healer, not simply a woman with a dark past. A Lamia. Even his father knew only a small part of that truth. What mattered more was this: she had not hidden the bundle quickly enough. Which meant she had hesitated.
His mother put it back, but he had already caught the sight of a faded dark mark on the cloth.
Not a village woman's stitching.
Not a church mark.
Something old.
Resembling either a letter or a coiled serpent.
Or both at once.
— Mam...
She closed the drawer.
— Not now, Tom.
Again, without sharpness.
But this time he heard something else in her voice, beneath the maternal weariness.
Caution.
Almost the same caution as his own.
She already knew that something had shifted.
And now she was choosing how much could be seen, and how much could not be — not yet.
Tom stood up slowly.
His shoulder ached less. The bandage sat comfortably. The pot of salve lay heavy in his palm, like a thing that meant more than it appeared to.
— May I go?
— Yes.
He reached the door, but at the very threshold he heard:
— Tom.
He turned.
His mother was still standing at the table.
The light from the small window fell across her face from the side, making it look tired and very calm at once.
— Next time you find a bad place, she said — step away from it first. Think after.
Tom nodded.
It was good advice.
Too good.
He went through into the main room, where life continued as if nothing had happened: Ellie was lifting the pot off the fire, his father was muttering to himself, the younger boys were quarrelling over a piece of bread, and Jack was already reaching for his cup, as though nothing unusual had occurred in the world at all. The world held its place stubbornly, almost sulkily, as if unwilling to acknowledge dark creatures in the copse, or marks in a boy's hair, or old bundles in a drawer.
Tom sat down on the bench and made himself pick up a cup of water.
His hand was steady.
That was something.
He drank in small sips and stared at the table.
That night he did not fall asleep immediately.
Lying in the dark, Tom touched the grey streak at his temple with his fingertips and thought about his mother going still when she saw it.
Beyond the wall the house gradually quietened.
Someone coughed.
A bench creaked.
Then everything settled.
Tom turned onto his side and looked into the dark.
Tomorrow he would have to go back to the coin.
Check the wood.
And begin working in earnest.
With that thought he finally closed his eyes.
Sleep did not come at once.
And when it came, it brought neither the field of ending, nor ravens, nor the Reachman's voice.
Only his mother's hand, carefully drawing the hair back from his temple.