A House With a Door

Tam had never lived anywhere with a door that locked. That sounds dramatic and it isn't, it's just true, and standing in the empty cottage holding the key he didn't know what to do with his hands. The Bell Vault was closed. The thing that had been chasing them for four years was, by every account anyone trusted, finished, sealed, done. And so here was a cottage at the edge of a town that had never heard of the Vault, and here was a key, and here was Oriel in the doorway saying are you going to come in or stand out there until dark. He came in. The floor needed sweeping. There was a stain on the ceiling shaped like a country nobody had mapped. It was the most beautiful room Tam had ever stood in and he could not have explained why to anyone who had not also spent four years sleeping with one boot on. Oriel watched him take it in and didn't say anything, which was, Tam was learning, how Oriel said the kindest things.