What Cannot Be Weighed

My mother wrote of a cart stuck in the mud. Of a child with a fever, and a soldier who had disobeyed his orders to guide them to a safe road. I was the child. I knew the cart from her stories. She had never mentioned the orc in them. Perhaps I had never asked the right questions.

I read more slowly than I needed to. Some words caught in my throat. Rukhan watched his hands. When I finished, he asked whether the fever had returned. Of all the things he might have asked, that moved me most.

That evening he brought a little wooden figure. A bird with a beak far too large. He had carved it for me back then, but my mother had already gone. Ever since, it had travelled in a box of fishing hooks. I ran my thumb over its worn wings.

Before leaving, I wrote down his reply. Only three sentences. The last took him a long time. I showed him where he could make his mark. He pressed the pen so hard that the nib broke. We both had to laugh. It eased something that had lain between us all day.

The goblin asked whether my journey had been worth it. I could have told him about the letter, the bird, or the fever that had never returned. Instead, I showed him my ticket home. ‘I’m still working it out,’ I said. I carried the bird in the pocket where the sealed letter had been.