Movement Four — How Many Now

The meadow held its gold around them, unhurried, patient, the light falling the same warm, permanent way it always fell at that particular hour, the old tree at the field's edge doing what it always did — nothing at all, simply standing, ancient and unbothered, keeping its own quiet watch over whoever happened to be resting beneath it.

"How many now," Sorrel asked, after a while, her voice gone a shade softer, less teasing than before, though still carrying that same easy warmth underneath it. "Since I last asked."

"I don't count," he said.

"I know you don't. That's rather the point of the question, isn't it. Someone has to notice the number, even if it isn't you."

"You could count them yourself, if it mattered to you."

"It doesn't matter to me," Sorrel said. "Numbers have never once mattered to me, not about people, not about anything worth loving properly. I asked because I wanted to hear how you'd answer, not because I actually wanted the number." A small pause. "You gave me the number anyway, in a manner of speaking. You told me you don't count. That tells me plenty."

He didn't answer that. His arm, draped across her waist, tightened, fractionally, the particular small pressure of someone holding on to something without any accompanying words to explain why.

"Do you ever get tired," Sorrel asked, "of being the one everyone else gets to lean on?"

"No," he said, easily, quickly — too quickly, perhaps, though Sorrel didn't say so aloud, not yet.

"No hesitation at all," she said. "That's either entirely true, or it's the tidiest answer you've given me yet."

"Why can't it be both."

"It can be both," Sorrel agreed. "I'm simply telling you I noticed. I've always been rather good at noticing things about growing creatures, little guy. It's practically the whole of what I am."

He shifted slightly against her, not pulling away, only resettling, the particular small restless movement of a body that has decided, somewhere beneath its own stillness, that it would rather be doing something with its hands than simply lying still and being studied. His fingers found the hem of the blanket someone had left folded near the base of the tree days before, worrying at a loose thread there, unhurried, the way you'd worry at something simply to give your hands a task while the rest of you sat somewhere considerably less settled.

"Tell me about your day, then," Sorrel said, changing course, unhurried, the particular gentle redirection of someone who has decided a direct road isn't the one worth taking right now. "Not the tidy version. The actual one. What did you do, this morning, before you found your way here to me?"

"I sat with Vesalia for a while," he said. "She'd had a difficult night. I didn't ask why. I never do, unless she offers it first."

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"And after that?"

"Flora wanted help mending a fence near the edge of the meadow. It didn't need mending, not really. She simply wanted the company while she pretended it did."

"And after that."

"There was a woman," he said, and something in his voice thinned, just slightly, on the word woman, though he kept going before Sorrel could ask him to slow down and let her hear it properly. "New. Frightened. She'd only just learned what a Contract was, and someone had already tried to take advantage of that. I spent the better part of an hour simply sitting with her while she stopped shaking."

"What was her name?"

"I don't know yet. She wasn't ready to give it to me. I didn't ask twice."

"That sounds like you," Sorrel said, softly. "Waiting for a name to be offered rather than demanding it."

"And after that, you came here."

"And after that, I came here."

"That's four separate people, before you'd even reached me," Sorrel said, quietly. "Four separate griefs, four separate needs, all handed to you before the day had even properly begun. And you're telling me none of that is heavy."

"They needed me," he said, simply, as though the sentence alone should have settled the matter entirely.

"I know they needed you," Sorrel said. "I'm not asking whether they needed you. I'm asking who you handed your own weight to, in between all of that. I'm asking who sat with you, the way you sat with Vesalia, the way you sat with that frightened new arrival. I don't think the answer is anyone, little guy. I think the answer is that you simply kept walking, from one need to the next, until you finally ran out of people who needed something from you and found yourself standing here instead, and even then, the very first thing you did was let me tease you about how many people you love, rather than tell me you'd had a long day."

"You could be right about it," he said, "and it still wouldn't change anything. Someone has to be the one who doesn't need setting down."

"Does someone, though," Sorrel said. "Or has everyone simply gotten so used to you never needing setting down that nobody's thought to ask whether that was ever actually true."

"You're asking a great many questions today."

"I've had centuries to save them up," Sorrel said, easy, though there was something underneath the ease that wasn't entirely joking. "I like to think I've earned the right to spend a few of them on an afternoon like this one."

"You're allowed to be tired," Sorrel said, quietly, into the top of his head. "I want you to hear that plainly, however many times it takes before it actually lands somewhere. You're allowed to be tired, and you're allowed to say so, and none of the women who love you are going to love you any less for admitting it."

"I'm not tired," he said.

"All right," Sorrel said, easy, unbothered, letting it go the way you let go of a door that hasn't finished deciding whether it wants to open yet. "Then you're not tired."

She let the silence stretch, unhurried, her fingers still tracing slow through his hair, and for a long moment neither of them said anything further. The wind moved once through the grass, gentle, and somewhere further off, past the tree line, some small sound she couldn't quite place rose and fell again — a bird, perhaps, or simply the meadow settling into itself the way it always eventually did, whether or not anyone happened to be listening.

"You've gotten very good at not answering me," she said, eventually, though there was no real accusation in it, only a kind of tired, fond observation, the particular weariness of someone who has watched a familiar dance played out one too many times to still be surprised by the steps.

"I answer you plenty."

"You answer me a great many words," Sorrel said. "That's not quite the same thing as answering me."