Mouse is the first thing

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” Mouse asked.

Wulf shrugged and sighed. “I know, but I couldn’t sleep. And I remembered something I wanted to tell Wyn.”

“I don’t think he’ll hear you, honey.”

“Then how come everybody talks to him all the time?”

“Well…”

“My Da even calls him funny names and makes fun of his curls so he’ll wake up.”

Sir Egelric also shaved him every morning and combed his curls just so, because Ethelwyn would have been horrified if he had known himself otherwise than perfectly presentable, even unconscious. Egelric had always intimidated her, and after what she had seen him do to Catan he frightened her, but now he only shamed her by his gentleness with this man who was his friend.

If she had been his wife, she could have been the one combing his curls just so.

“But I don’t want to call him names,” Wulf assured her. “I just want to tell him something. But I must whisper it in his ear. May I?”

If she had been his wife, she could have been the one whispering things in his ear.

“Well… I suppose so.”

“But I shall have to get on the bed next to him to do it. May I?”

If she had been his wife, she could have been the one climbing onto the bed and lying beside him, even if he never woke.

“Well… don’t hurt him.”

“I shan’t!”

“And don’t take long, because I don’t think your Da would like you to be down here in the middle of the night.”

“I shall only take till I count to five hundred! I promise.”

“All right.”

“I mean, a thousand!”

“Can you even count to a thousand?” she smiled.

“Easy! And even more than a thousand, too. Because after a thousand, you start over, but you say ‘a thousand’ before everything. ‘A thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand three – ’”

“I know, I know.”

“That’s the trick! Wyn told me.”

They both looked at the bed.

If she had been his wife, she told herself, they might have had sons of their own whom he would have taught to count.

“Better hurry up, Wulf. Your Da will probably come before a thousand.”

“I’m hurrying!”

Wulf scrambled up onto the bed and went cautiously to kneel beside Ethelwyn’s head. Mouse fidgeted against a reflex to protect him, but she would have welcomed even a kneecap to his nose if it had meant that he would wake from his long sleep. And if he would not, then it did not matter anyway.

She could not see what Wulf was doing behind the rise of Ethelwyn’s shoulder, but he was whispering something, and his arm moved as if he was stroking his curls.

Wulf loved him. They all loved him. This was his family – not she. None of them thought she had any right to be there after refusing him and then ignoring him for months. It was only the presence of the Duchess that justified hers so far, and she did not know how long the Duchess would stay.

Wulf had long since passed the count of a thousand, and he had stopped whispering, but still he sat and caressed Ethelwyn’s head. That was why he had truly come, she thought.

She understood – it was what she longed to do. But she was not his wife, and she had lived four days with people who thought she did not belong at his bedside at all, and so she had come to believe it too.

She dared not even dream that he would wake and sit up and smile at her. If he woke – which seemed less likely with every passing day – he would not see the girl he loved. He would see the girl who had broken his heart, and one did not smile at that girl. It almost seemed cruel for her to sit here in this chair. If he woke, she would be the first thing he would see.

And then he did wake.

He woke, and he sat up so suddenly that he bowled Wulf over. He shook his head and then looked anxiously around as if he saw a menace in every corner.

Mouse’s first surge of joy was quickly overwhelmed by a flood of fear. He was no longer tied to the bed, and little five-​​year-​​old Wulf was at his side.

“Wulf! Come!”

At last one of his panicked glances came to rest on her. “Oh my God!” he cried in a voice gone hoarse from too much shouting followed by too much silence.

“Wyn!” she sobbed.

“Where am I? And who are you?”