The garden was quiet. Too quiet for a house that had once held laughter.
The four of them sat together among the crooked rows of herbs and the few struggling vegetables that still clung to the soil. The earth smelled damp, the evening air heavy with the scent of sage and wild thyme. The sun was sinking, staining the sky in bruised shades of orange and purple.
No one spoke at first. They sat on broken stools and stones pulled from the ruins, bowls untouched in their hands. The silence was a living thing, pressing against their chests, stealing the words from their throats.
Mara was gone.
Not taken by the Nordits. Not by sickness or old age. She had left them by her own hand, as quietly as she had lived, with a letter folded neatly on her bed.
"My little ones… I have carried you as far as I can. You are meant to walk beyond me. Forgive me for staying too long."
Oisla could still see her handwriting burned into his mind. His grandmother's words, simple but heavy, weighing on his ribs until it hurt to breathe.
He finally broke the silence. His voice was low, rough, as though it had been buried beneath stones. "She thought she was holding us back. She thought… we couldn't leave if she stayed."
Gable looked down at his hands. His knuckles were raw from training earlier that morning, but his grip was trembling now. "She wasn't wrong."
Oisla turned to him, startled.
Gable's eyes shone in the fading light, wet with tears he refused to let fall. "You remember, don't you? How she made us stop fighting. How she told us not to go chasing death before we had learned how to live." He drew a shaky breath. "I would've gone north years ago if it wasn't for her. But I stayed because… because I couldn't leave her behind."
Oisla's throat tightened. He remembered. He remembered too well.
The flash of memory came unbidden—
Two boys, no more than fourteen, crouched in the forest clearing, wooden swords in hand. Their faces still round with youth, but their eyes already hardening. Mara's voice carried sharp across the clearing: "Enough!" Her stick had smacked the ground, startling them both. "You think war is something to play at? You'll get enough of it soon enough. Not today. Not while I still breathe."
Oisla had pouted. Gable had kicked at the dirt. But they had obeyed. Because when Mara's voice carried that way, even the forest seemed to listen.
The memory faded, and Oisla looked at his friend. "She saved us, Gable. Again and again. Maybe she thought it was time we stopped needing saving."
Xinon cleared his throat, the sound rough, as though unused. His massive hands turned the bowl in his lap, though he hadn't touched the stew. His eyes, shadowed by years of loss, stared at the soil between his boots.
"When the Nordits came to my village," he began, his voice a gravelly rumble, "I was hunting in the woods. Came back to smoke and screams. My brother… my mother… gone before I could draw breath. I stayed in the ashes for two days before I moved again. I didn't want to live, but my legs carried me anyway."
He finally looked up, meeting Oisla's gaze. "Then I found her. Mara. Sitting by the roadside with nothing but a stick and a half-empty sack. She told me, 'If you can still walk, then you can still live. Come along, boy.' And I did."
Jim-Yok snorted softly, though his eyes were damp. "You had it easy, big man. At least you had a home to come back to."
Xinon's jaw tightened, but Jim-Yok raised a hand, shaking his head. "No, listen. I was born to nothing. My mother died birthing me, my father thrown from a horse before I could walk. I grew up stealing bread, hiding under tables, begging from drunks. When the Nordits came, they didn't burn my village. They didn't need to. It was already broken. They just swept through like a hand clearing crumbs from a table."
His smile was bitter, sharp as glass. "I was ready to be swept away too. But then she found me. Mara. She gave me soup before she asked my name. That was the first time anyone had ever given me something without asking for it back."
The fire in the garden crackled faintly, its glow warming their faces as the night thickened around them.
Oisla felt the ache in his chest twist tighter. He had thought Mara belonged only to him and Gable. But hearing Xinon and Jim-Yok speak, he realized—she had saved them all. Not just with food or shelter, but with the stubborn belief that broken things could be mended, that young souls deserved time to grow even in a world that wanted to crush them.
And now she was gone.
Gable finally spoke again, his voice raw. "Do you think… she wanted us to hate her for it? For leaving?"
"No," Oisla said quickly. Too quickly. His hands clenched around the wooden bowl until it creaked. "She wanted us to be free. To stop looking back every time we thought of stepping forward."
"But I can't stop looking back," Gable whispered.
Neither could Oisla. He could still see her face, wrinkled and kind, the lines around her eyes deepened by laughter and sorrow alike. He could still hear her humming by the fire, smell the herbs on her fingers when she tucked him in at night, feel the strength of her arms when she held him after his father died.
The garden blurred before his eyes, and this time he didn't try to stop the tears.
The night deepened, stars scattered like salt across the sky. The four of them remained there, bound together by silence, by grief, by the ghost of a woman who had been more than blood to them all.
Finally, Xinon set his untouched bowl down and spoke, his voice steady. "She's not holding us back anymore. That was her choice. Now the choice is ours."
Jim-Yok leaned forward, elbows on knees, staring into the flames. "And what choice is that?"
Oisla answered without thinking, the words rising from somewhere deep, from the place where his grandmother's voice still lived.
"To keep going. To finish what she started. To live for more than survival."
The fire popped, sending sparks into the night. None of them argued.
And in the garden that had once been Mara's pride, under the shadow of her absence, they made their unspoken vow.