An hour before dawn, Esteban finished packing.
There wasn't much to pack. Two dry loaves of bread. A leather water flask. A worn blanket. A piece of hard cheese and a rusty lighter. After some hesitation, he added a small folded scrap of cloth he had found in Elena's dress pocket long ago. He didn't know why he had kept it. Then he hung the sword he had made with his own hands at his belt, the one he had finished in the last days of his training.
Before going downstairs, he stopped in front of the blue door at the end of the hall. He didn't go in. He just laid his palm against the cold wood and stood perfectly still, the way you'd stand beside someone sleeping. The room would wait for him, exactly as it was. The doll, the drawing, the yellow blanket. And if he came back, he wouldn't be coming back alone.
He said nothing. He had already said everything the night before.
In the main room of the house, he looked around. The small stove. The rough table. The two chairs no one had sat in for years. The shelf with the portrait of a woman who smiled with only half her heart. The house was small, but in that moment it felt bigger than it ever had.
"I'll come back," he said quietly, to the house or to the portrait. He wasn't sure which.
No one answered.
He closed the door softly, locked it, and slid the key under the third stone beside the steps, where Matteo knew to look. Then he walked through the silent alleys. Fog crept between the shuttered houses, as if it had drifted in from some older age.
Light was already glowing in Silvia's bakery, as it did every dawn. When he stopped at the open back door, he saw her bent over the dough, her hands buried in it up to the elbows. She didn't look up.
"Esteban?"
"How did you know?"
"Your footsteps." She pulled her hands out and wiped them on her apron. "You're the only man in this village who walks like he's carrying something heavy and afraid to drop it." Her eyes went to his bag, then to the sword, which she had never seen him wear before. "You're leaving."
"Yes."
She didn't ask where, or why. She had lived ten years among ovens and closed doors. She had learned which questions were not worth asking.
"I need something from you," he said.
"Tell me."
"Matteo." He lowered his voice. "His grandmother is blind, and she can't look after him. I want you to check on them every day. Leave a loaf with them. Make sure he sleeps in his own bed, not on the road."
"I've been doing that for two years. You just never noticed."
His eyebrows went up.
"I thought you'd seen." She smiled faintly and went back to her dough. "Do you think that boy eats two loaves a day on your wages alone? Where do you think the second one comes from?"
He had nothing to say to that.
"And if they come back in a week?" she asked after a moment, in a different voice. "If you're not here?"
"Then I might be able to stop them before they reach you."
"Might."
"I'm not promising anything."
"I know." She pushed the dough hard with her fists. "That's why Augusto, Carmen, and I are going to hide them. There's a cellar under the church that nobody knows about. Augusto's father used to hide the communion wine there. If anyone comes near, we'll seal the door."
"They'll find it."
"Maybe." She kept repeating his word, stubbornly. "But maybe they won't."
Esteban looked at her. This was a woman who had lost her husband and three sons, and still kneaded bread every dawn. In that moment he understood that some kinds of courage never carry a sword.
"Thank you, Silvia."
"Don't thank me." She handed him a hot loaf wrapped in cloth. "A hungry man doesn't fight well."
Augusto was sitting on the steps of the cracked church, the way he had every morning since he stopped digging graves. He leaned on his cane and gazed at the empty square with eyes that held only one kind of sorrow. When Esteban approached, he lifted his head. He didn't look surprised.
"I knew you'd come."
"Silvia told you?"
"Silvia says very little." He shook his head slowly. "I dug this village's graves for thirty years, my boy. I know how a man walks when he's decided on something that can't be undone."
Esteban sat down beside him.
"If I fail..."
"You won't."
"If I fail, make sure the boys stay in the cellar."
"Why would I tell you to fail?" The old man gave a short laugh. "I don't believe in failure. I've seen enough to know that rivers can run backward, and that half the world can vanish without a grave. So why shouldn't a woodcutter come back a winner?"
"I'm not..."
"Don't tell me what you are." Augusto raised a hand. "Tell me what you're going to do."
Esteban was silent for a long time.
"I'm going to try to protect them."
Augusto rose with difficulty and gripped Esteban's arm, pressing it with a thin, trembling hand.
"When you come back, I'll bury you if I have to." He smiled sadly. "But I hope I won't. I haven't buried anyone in ten years, and I'm afraid I've forgotten how."
The fire in Marta's cabin was burning as always. The sound of her hammer rang out even at this early hour. Esteban stopped at the threshold.
"I told you not to come back."
She didn't lift her head from the anvil. She kept striking a piece of red iron, in the same rhythm that never changed.
"I didn't come to learn," Esteban said. "I came to say goodbye."
The hammer stopped.
"Where to?"
"To find him. The Seventh Star. If I stay here, he'll take the boys. And if I refuse, we'll be next. Or the children will be."
She turned slowly and looked at him for a long time. Her gray eyes no longer tried to hide what she felt.
"Do you think you can face him?"
"No."
"Then why?"
"Because if I stay here, I'll only wait. And I've already waited ten years."
She walked to the wall, took down a sheath of tough black leather from an old nail, and held it out to him without a word. The leather was worn smooth from years of use.
"It belonged to a sword I made for a man who never came back," she said at last. "It isn't worthy of yours. But it will keep the rain off."
Esteban took it and slid his sword inside. The blade slipped in smoothly, as if the sheath had been made for it.
"Marta..."
"Understand the weapon." She said it more roughly than she meant to. "Don't imitate it. And don't kill anyone who doesn't understand why he's dying."
"I won't."
"And if you face someone who doesn't understand?"
He didn't know the answer.
"Then run," she said coldly. "Life is heavier than courage."
"Goodbye, Marta."
She went back to her anvil. The hammer rose, but this time it didn't fall. It hung in the air for a long moment.
"Come back when it's over." She didn't turn around. "I'll have something hot for you to eat."
He didn't answer, because he didn't know how. He walked out into the dawn. Behind him, he heard the hammer come down on the iron, slowly at first and then faster, as if its owner wanted to drown out something else with the sound.
Matteo was waiting on the stone steps.
Esteban wasn't surprised. The boy sat in his usual spot, wearing a little coat that had grown too short for him. His hands were stuffed in his pockets. His face was pale, and his eyes were red from lack of sleep.
"You were going to leave without telling me."
"I was going to tell you."
"When? After you were far away?"
Esteban sat down beside him, the bag between his feet.
"No."
"Liar."
"Yes." He didn't try to argue. "I was afraid to tell you face to face."
Matteo gave a small, shaky smile.
"I know you're leaving. I saw you go into the room you never go into last night, and I heard you talking." He looked down at his hands. "I didn't mean to listen. I was bringing you firewood."
Esteban said nothing.
"Are you going to kill him? The Seventh Star?"
"I don't know."
"Will you come back?"
"You said that yesterday. That isn't a promise."
"It's all I have."
The boy was quiet for a long time. The sun was starting to tint the edges of the hills pink, and somewhere a bird sang in a fragile voice.
"My grandmother asks about you every day," he said at last. "She says you're the only man who comes into her house without raising his voice."
"She's a good woman."
"And she's blind, but she sees things. Last night she said, 'This man is going to do something great, and he'll pay dearly for it.'"
"She said that?"
"She said, 'And don't let him forget why he started.'"
Esteban felt his throat tighten for no reason he could name.
Matteo pulled his hand from his pocket and opened his palm. In it was a small piece of wood the size of a thumb. It was carefully polished, with a little house carved into it using a fine knife. The house had a triangular roof.
"I carved it last night." His fingers trembled. "It's the house from Lucía's drawing. I saw it on her wall once, when I went up to put the firewood away. The red roof. I couldn't color it, so I carved it."
Esteban took it with slow fingers and studied the carving. It was simple and exact. Every line held the effort of a child trying to say something he didn't know how to say.
"Keep it," Matteo said. "So you'll come back."
Esteban had no words. He slipped the carving into his breast pocket, directly over the blue stone, and buttoned his coat.
Then he did something he hadn't done in years. He reached out and pulled the boy against his chest.
The body was so thin he could feel the small bones of the boy's back through the coat. A heart was pounding fast. Matteo didn't cry, but he clung to Esteban's shirt with all his strength, the way he had in the square.
"Come back," the boy whispered into his chest. "Just come back."
He passed through the square at the last moment.
It was empty, except for one man standing in front of the lock shop at the edge of it. His arms were folded across his chest, and his eyes were on Esteban. It was Fernando.
Esteban stopped.
For a while neither of them spoke. The bald man looked smaller and more tired than he had the day before.
"I heard you're leaving."
"Yes."
"I said things..." He swallowed. "Yesterday. In front of everyone. I didn't mean..."
"You meant them."
"I was afraid."
"So was I."
A short silence passed. Then Fernando reached into his apron pocket, took out something small and shiny, and placed it in Esteban's palm without a word.
It was a little brass padlock, with its key.
"I've been making these for years," Fernando said. "I never found anything worth locking with one. Take it."
Esteban looked at the lock, then at the man.
"What do I lock with it?"
"I don't know." Fernando rubbed his bald head, embarrassed. "Something precious. Then open it when you're done."
Esteban nodded and put the lock in his pocket. Neither of them said anything more.
At the bend of the northern road, Esteban stopped one last time and turned around.
Marina lay behind him in the pale dawn light, its gray stone houses and wooden roofs stretched out below him. Thin smoke rose from only two chimneys. From the far edge of the village, faint but steady, came the sound of a hammer falling on an anvil.
He didn't know where the Seventh Star lived. But the men in black coats had to return to somewhere. The hooves of their horses had carved deep lines in the dew-soaked dirt of the northern road. Those lines stretched toward the horizon, as if they were inviting him to follow.
He knew very little. He didn't know where the Seventh Star was, or how strong he was, or what waited for him on the road. All he had was a stone beating against his chest, a new sword never tested in battle, a small piece of wood with a house carved into it, and a brass lock he didn't yet know what to close.
And yet, for the first time in ten years, he didn't feel like he was running away from something. He felt like he was walking toward something.
He hitched the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.
Then he walked.