Sister Margaret came back on Sunday, exactly on time, and she wiped her feet before Dumpling had finished clicking hello.
She did not sit down. She stood in the middle of our kitchen with her walking stick in one hand and a folded paper in the other, and I knew it was bad news, because she was holding it the way she used to hold report cards.
"I copied this out of the archive myself," she said. "The original is under three locks, and the Council does not know I have read it."
"Margaret," said Noctavia, "you broke into the archive."
"I was invited into the archive. By a very junior clerk. Who is now quite worried about his eternal soul." She unfolded the paper on the table. "They have drafted a summons. It will reach you in nine days, with a seal, and it will say that the Hero is to present herself before the Council 'for her own protection and recovery.' It does not mention a knife."
I read it twice. It was very polite. It used the word concern four times.
"It's the same wording as the letters," I said.
"Of course it is," said Margaret. "They were written by the same hand. I just can't tell you whose."
Nobody said anything. On the windowsill, the jar of dead yellow flowers stood in the morning light, because nobody in this house would throw them out.
"If you go to that hearing," said Margaret, quietly, "you will not come home from it. Not by a blade. By a door that locks from the outside, and a very kind room with a very good bed." She folded her hands. "I do not say this because I have changed my mind about your marriage. I say it because I changed my mind about them."
Noctavia looked at her for a long moment.
"The stew was acceptable," she said at last.
"Yes," said Margaret. "It was."
I have decided that was the most emotional conversation they will ever have.
We held the meeting at the kitchen table, because that is where we hold everything.
Noctavia had pinned a map to the wall beside the schedule. It was an old map, soft at the folds, with a coffee ring over the Ashen Plains. Toby sat on a stool with Dumpling in his lap. Clara sat very straight at the far end of the table with her hands flat on the wood, like a girl waiting to hear a verdict.
"We are going to move," said Noctavia.
She said it plainly, with no speech around it. I watched her ears. They stayed perfectly pink.
"West," she said. She laid one finger on the map, past the river, past the last of the Church's bell towers. "The Council's letters travel by cathedral road. Past the river, there are no cathedrals. There is a valley. I have seen it from the air. It has a stream, and a hill, and one house that is currently a barn."
"A barn," said Clara.
"We will correct the barn."
"We'll correct the barn?"
"Elise is good with a hammer."
"I'm adequate with a hammer."
"She is adequate," Noctavia told Clara, as if that were the warmest endorsement possible.
Clara did not smile. She kept looking at the map. I watched her count the distance with her eyes, the way she counted exits.
"How long?" she asked.
"Nine days to the river if we walk. Four if Valeria carries the wagon."
"Valeria is carrying the wagon?"
"Valeria has volunteered," said Noctavia, "which means she lost an argument with herself and wants it kept quiet."
Toby put up his hand.
"Yes, Toby?"
"What about the hens?"
"The hens are coming."
"What about the tomato?"
Noctavia opened her mouth, and for the first time in the whole meeting, she hesitated.
"...I'm working on the tomato," she said.
"What about Harlan?"
"Harlan will be given the opportunity to say goodbye."
"What about the girl with the tooth?"
"She will be given flowers." Noctavia looked at the ceiling. "I will give her flowers. Don't look at me like that, it's a logistics matter."
"What about my room?" said Toby.
And that was the one that did it. I saw it land on her. She turned to him, and her whole face changed, the way it does when she thinks nobody is watching.
"Your room is a very good room," she said. "You are right to ask. It has a window, and a bed, and a creaky third stair outside, and I know exactly what it's worth." She knelt down by his stool. "You are going to have a new one. It will have a window. It will not have the stair. I will make sure the third step creaks in the new house, so that it feels the same."
"Can you do that?"
"I can do anything I decide to do."
"Okay!" said Toby, delighted, and went back to Dumpling.
Clara had not moved. She was looking at her hands.
"Clara," I said.
"It's fine."
I did not say anything. I have a dictionary. I know what that means.
I found her on the back step that evening, in the gray coat, with a cup of warm milk going cold.
"You don't have to tell me," I said.
"I know." She did not look up. "I was just thinking. We've been here almost two months." She turned the cup in her hands. "That's the longest we've stayed anywhere. Ever. And I think I let myself get used to it."
"You're allowed to."
"It makes it worse when you leave."
I sat down beside her. After a minute, I put my arm around her shoulders, quick and light, and she let me.
"We're not leaving it," I said. "We're taking it with us. The hens. The schedule. The salt. Toby's letters. All of it goes in the wagon."
"Houses aren't wagons."
"No." I looked out over the garden, at the leaning tomato, at the crooked chimney. "But you know who built this house? Nobody. A woodcutter. It was a shed with a stove. We made it a house. We can do it again." I squeezed her shoulder. "And this time, you get a vote on the barn."
She let out a very small sound. It was almost a laugh.
"...Can I pick the color of the door?"
"You can pick all the doors."
"There's only one door."
"Then you'll have very strong opinions about it."
She wiped her face on her sleeve, quickly, and glared at me. I did not say anything about it. A girl is allowed to have a private face.
When I looked up, Noctavia was standing at the corner of the porch.
She had been there for some time. I could tell, because her tail was wrapped around the post, and her ears were at half-mast, and she was holding a very small, very old, very battered gray stuffed animal, with one ear and no eyes.
"Toby gave me this," she said, stiffly. "To hold. For the trip. He says it is not allowed to be left behind. I was told to keep it safe." She looked at it. "I have been given command of a rabbit."
"Is it a rabbit?"
"It has been described to me as a rabbit."
Clara made a noise into her milk.
"I'm only mentioning it," said Noctavia, "so that if anyone were to ask, I take this very seriously. I will carry it personally. If it is lost, I will burn the world." She coughed. "Figuratively."
Clara laughed.
It was a real one, helpless and wet and short, and it surprised her so much that she put her hand over her mouth. Noctavia pretended to inspect the rabbit very closely.
Please keep this one, I thought. I don't know to whom. Please keep this one.
We left on the ninth day.
I'm going to skip most of it, because most of it was packing. Toby labeled the hens with ribbon, then un-labeled them, because he could not tell which was which. Harlan arrived with a sack of flour and a loaf of bread the size of a cat and pretended he'd happened to be passing. The little girl with the missing tooth stood at the gate with her mother, and Noctavia knelt in the road in front of a six-year-old and was handed a bouquet of yellow ditch flowers.
"For the new house," said the girl.
"...Thank you," said Noctavia, and she said it out loud, and I think half of Millbrook fainted.
The wagon stood in the road, loaded to the axle, with Valeria standing next to it in full black armor, staring with enormous dignity at a hen that had climbed on her shoulder.
"Do not," said Valeria, to nobody, "say a word."
Nobody did.
The last thing was the tomato.
Noctavia knelt in the garden at dawn, in the brown apron with the yellow duck, with a spade. I watched from the porch. She dug a wide circle around the stake, very slowly, down and down, with no magic at all, until the whole plant came up in one piece with a ball of dark earth. She wrapped the roots in damp cloth and set it in a deep wooden crate. The plant stood in it, three leaves up and three flowers high, leaning slightly to one side.
She looked at it for a long time.
"It will be all right," she said. "It needs support. I've been told it must be allowed to lean."
"Noctavia," I said.
"Don't." Her voice was thick. "I'm busy."
I went down off the porch and put my arms around her from behind, with the crate between us, and the plant between that. She said don't touch me. I waited. One second. Two. Her hand came up and held my wrist.
"Do you know," she said, "I have never lived anywhere I wasn't ready to burn down."
"I know."
"I'm not ready to burn this one down." She looked at the cabin, the crooked chimney, the loose shingle she had meant to fix. "It's very strange. I think I might miss it."
"You're allowed to."
"I know." She was quiet. "I'd just like it noted that I did not want to."
"Noted."
"Don't be soft."
"I'm being as soft as I can."
"...Idiot," said my wife, and her voice cracked in the middle, and I held her until the sun was up.
Then she stood, straightened her apron, picked up the crate in both arms like a newborn, and walked to the wagon without looking back.
The cabin stood behind us with the door left a little open, in case a hen came back. I locked nothing. I thought about it, and then I didn't. Let someone have the shelf, and the stove, and the schedule on the wall with a crayon heart on it. Let the house go on being a house.
Clara was already in the back, with Toby asleep on her lap and Dumpling in the crook of her arm. She had her chin on his head. She was looking at the road ahead, not behind us, and the corner of her mouth was turned up.
"Door color?" I said, climbing up.
"Green," said Clara. "Like the ribbon."
"Green it is."
I opened the dictionary on my knee. There were a hundred things I could have written. In the end I wrote only one, and I underlined it twice.
"I'm busy." means I'm not ready to say goodbye.
Then, because it was true, in smaller letters at the bottom of the page:
We're going west.