"The Tree with the Bone-White Scar"

"The packet first," Tom said. "I'll not stand before that woman on Saint-Pierre empty-handed."

Mama Yves's mouth thinned but she did not argue. She had heard that woman in his voice and she knew the shape of it.

They went down the ridge's blind side, slower than was safe, Tom with Marrow on his back and Sary at his elbow and Beñat goaded along at Mama Yves's paring knife. The drum sounded twice, far off and confused, as if its keepers had lost the trail along with the smoke that ran it. Mama Yves's bargain, Tom thought. Holding a while longer.

He found the tree by the second hour.

The bone-white scar was where his memory had put it — a long pale wound down the bark, the lightning's old kiss — and at the third great root, north face, the flat stone the size of his palm sat where he had laid it. He set Marrow gently against the trunk. The captain's eyes opened a slit, found the tree, and a thin smile crossed his ruined mouth. Good boy, the smile said. Good boy.

Tom scraped the leaf-mould away. The oilcloth packet was there, wax-sealed, blood-warm now from the loam's slow heat. He pressed it inside his shirt against the same place it had ridden the day Marrow gave it him.

A sound, behind. Not the drum. Not the boots.

A voice, calling soft from twenty paces uphill. A woman's voice. Speaking his name.

"Mr. Pell."

He turned. Mama Yves had gone very still. Sary's good eye had gone wide. Beñat, of all of them, was smiling.