Conversation resumed around him. Names began to attach themselves to faces in the slow way of places where people spoke with hands as much as with words. A man with knife-nicked fingers argued softly about kiln temperatures with a woman whose hair smelled faintly of smoke. Two boys played a counting game with stones along the bench behind him, slapping them down with fierce concentration. No one asked him where he'd come from again. That felt like a kind of kindness.
The dog in the corner lifted its head, nose working. It sniffed the air, then the floor, then turned its attention with unsettling precision to the shadow under Jay's bench. Its ears pricked. A soft whine slipped out.
Jay's boot shifted reflexively to block the book from view. The dog's eyes tracked the movement closely. He forced his foot to relax, then reached down casually to scratch the dog's head. The dog accepted the petting, but its gaze stayed angled at the darkness where the book lay. When Jay's fingers drifted toward his burned palm, the dog's nose twitched. His skin prickled.
Foss slid onto the bench opposite without making it creak, which told Jay more about how often he'd done that than anything else. He set down a second cup. "Stew's honest," he repeated. "So is the roof, most nights. Marle says you're lost."
"She said that?" Jay asked. "We barely… met." The word felt clumsy enough to make him aware of it.
"She said your eyes were like a dog looking for a hand it used to know." Foss shrugged. "Her words. You have somewhere to be?"
Jay stared into his bowl. The answer wasn't in it. "Somewhere dry," he said finally. "Somewhere I can think."
"Thinking's best done with a roof," Foss agreed. "You can stack wood in the morning. Call it payment for the stew. If you stay past dawn, we'll see what else your hands can do." He nodded at Jay's burned palm. "And what they can't."
Jay reflexively closed his fingers. The welt stung. "I touched a kettle," he said. "Stupid."
"Most burns are," Foss said. He took a long drink from his cup and glanced down. "What's under your bench?"
Jay blinked. "My boots," he said.
"Both of them on your feet." Foss's eyes didn't change, but the set of his shoulders did—careful, respectful. "I don't make people declare their goods for the sake of it. But if a thing makes my dog whine, I like to know if it will set the beams on fire."
Jay weighed the space between honesty and silence and chose the easiest truth. He hooked the book out by its spine and set it on the bench. The leather refused to shine in the firelight; it ate the light instead, drinking it in until its edges blurred. Foss leaned in, not touching it. The dog's whine climbed a note.
"Found it on the moor," Jay said, watching for any flicker of recognition. "Dry as a bone. Thought it might be worth something." He pushed the bowl aside with his elbow to give them both more space.
Foss took his time answering. "Things left under the sky usually want to be left," he said at last. "But men don't always know how to leave them." He looked at Jay's face rather than the book. "Can you read it?"
"A little," Jay said. He kept his voice even. "Letters that change when you look away." He didn't add: and a spark that bites.
Foss grunted. "If it's church-stock, the zealots will want it. If it's guild-stock, the guild will take it and tell you to be glad they did. If it's neither, it's trouble." He folded his hands, thick fingers clean despite the work he did. "You can sleep here by the hearth. Keep the book where my dog can see it. If it tries to walk while you sleep, he'll wake me."
Jay huffed the barest laugh. "Books that walk."
"Seen odder," Foss said without smiling. He stood, collected the bowl, and left Jay with the weight of the room's quiet around them.
Jay slid the book back under the bench but left its spine exposed to the firelight for the dog's benefit. The animal lowered its head again, satisfied for the moment. He leaned back, exhaustion finally needling through. The burn on his palm throbbed; the heat of the hearth soaked into his bones. Conversation dwindled. Chairs scraped. Someone sang a few rough bars of a song about a river and a lost boot and then stopped, embarrassed.
He hadn't meant to open the book again. He told himself he wouldn't. He told himself sleep was the smarter choice, the kinder one—to his hand, to his head, to whatever part of him knew enough to be afraid. But the book's presence pulled at the corner of his vision like a lantern glimpsed through trees. He reached down, thumbed the edge, and eased it open on his lap with the care of a man handling a sleeping snake.
The pages lifted as if a breeze had found them, though the air around the hearth was still. Words banked and turned, forming lines as crisp as new-cut grain. A diagram swam into view: a circle, a breath, a channel drawn like a narrow stream. Jay's skin prickled with the sense of recognition only a teacher's chalkboard had ever given him—this makes sense—and the thrill of being offered something no one else in the room could see.
He exhaled, slow. The ink drank his breath like a thirsty thing. Warmth climbed his wrist, gentler this time, almost pleasant. He glanced at the dog. Its ears twitched, but it didn't lift its head. The hearth crackled. Foss's shoulder rolled as he lifted a cask, muscles moving the way old trees move in wind.
Jay's finger hovered over the diagram. He traced the outer circle in the air above the page, a ghost of a gesture. The warmth thickened. A bead of light formed at the center of the diagram, dim as a coal at the end of a pipe.
He could stop. He should. He didn't.
The bead brightened. The book's leather grew warmer under his palm. His burned hand stung, not the flare of before, more like the memory of it. The bead trembled on the edge of becoming something else. Jay brought his mouth closer and breathed again, softer, as if not to wake anyone.
"Oi," someone said across the room, not loudly. A chair leg scraped. "What's that then—"
The bead burst into a thin filament of light that clung to Jay's fingertip like spider silk. It stretched, fragile as a thought. For a heartbeat he was a boy in a dark stairwell with a stolen match, watching the tinder take.
The dog's head snapped up, a low sound building in its chest.
"Don't," Foss said from behind the counter, voice flat, not angry and not pleading. "Not here."
Jay's breath held itself without his consent. He pinched his fingers together, trying to smother the filament. It stuck, clinging to skin. The book pulsed once, hungry. The filament shook.
The door blew inward on a gust of wet air. A figure filled the frame, water streaming off a reed hat, lantern held high, light slicing the room in clean planes. The night came in with him—the smell of rain, the cold, the faint sound of something like a bell.
The lantern's beam caught the thread of light between Jay's fingers and the page, and for an instant the filament shone bright enough to throw a thin line of glare across the ceiling.
The man in the reed hat looked at the line, then at Jay's face, and then at the book as if they were points on a compass he'd seen a hundred times.
He set the lantern down without taking his eyes off the thread.
"Close it," he said.
Jay's fingers tightened. The filament trembled. He wasn't sure whether he could.
The dog growled. Foss stilled.
Jay drew a breath he hadn't meant to take.
The book warmed, welcoming.
He began to lower his hand.
The man in the reed hat stood just inside the threshold, rainwater pooling around his boots. He didn't move further in. The lantern light he'd set on the counter carved sharp edges into the room, bleaching out the warmth of the hearth. For a long moment, no one spoke. The only sound was the steady drip of water from the stranger's sleeves.
Jay's hand hovered over the open book, the faint filament of light trembling between page and fingertip. His burned palm throbbed in rhythm with the glow. He wanted to pull away, but the thought of doing so felt like prying his skin off. The warmth clung stubbornly, too alive to release.
"Close it," the man repeated. His voice carried no force, but the air in the room seemed to settle around it anyway. The dog growled low, ears pinned back, as though the word itself had weight.
Jay swallowed. He pressed his fingers together, smearing the filament until it winked out. The page went dark. The book cooled in an instant, as though mocking the urgency it had just demanded. Jay shut it with a muted thud, keeping both palms flat against the cover as if pinning it in place.
Only then did the stranger move. He crossed the room in three unhurried steps, rain dripping behind him. His hat shadowed most of his face, but Jay glimpsed skin weathered like old bark and eyes the color of ash. The man stopped beside the bench, gaze fixed not on Jay but on the book beneath his hands.
"You found it on the moor," he said. Not a question.
Jay forced himself to nod. "It… it was dry when nothing else was."
The man's mouth curved faintly. Not amusement, not quite disdain—something in between. "Of course it was." He turned to Foss. "How long?"
"An hour," Foss said. He leaned one elbow on the counter. "Long enough to burn himself."
Jay bristled at being spoken of like a careless child, but the truth of it left no room for argument. He flexed his injured hand beneath the table, feeling the welt sting against damp fabric.
The stranger finally looked at him. "What did it promise you?"
Jay hesitated. The fire cracked. Conversations around the room had died completely; every ear was turned his way. He thought of lying, but the ash-colored gaze didn't leave space for it.
"A spell," Jay said. "Just fire. It worked. Then it… bit me."
The man tilted his head slightly, studying him like a craftsman might study a flawed tool. "And still you tried again."
Jay found his voice only after a pause. "If it works, why not?"
That earned the faintest grunt, unreadable. The man set the lantern on the table, closer now. The flame inside burned with steady precision, no smoke, no flicker. He gestured toward the closed book. "It teaches false paths. Tricks for the desperate. Every spark it grants takes more than it gives. You'll find yourself trading pieces you didn't know you had until you're hollow."
Foss crossed his arms. "We've seen it before," he said. "Travelers lost on the moor, book in hand. Never ends well. Most vanish. Some linger long enough to curse the ground."
The weight of their eyes pressed on Jay, but he kept his hand on the book as if surrendering it would leave him smaller. "Then why leave it out there at all? If it's so dangerous, why not destroy it?"
The stranger's mouth barely moved. "Because destruction is a kind of release. Better for it to hunger in the open where it lures only the careless."
Jay's chest tightened. He wanted to argue, but the stranger's presence left him feeling younger than he was, smaller than he thought. The hearth's warmth seemed distant.
Finally, the man adjusted his hat, letting the rainwater fall in a sharp line to the floor. "You've touched it now. That mark will follow. But you may yet choose how far you carry it."
Jay heard his own voice ask, quieter than intended, "And if I want to learn without it?"
The stranger's gaze didn't waver. "Then you'll need a teacher."
The words hung there, plain and heavy. A draft whispered through the open door, stirring the lantern's flame. No one in the room moved.
Jay realized the stranger was waiting—not offering, not inviting, simply leaving space for him to step into or retreat from. The choice stretched out in front of him like another road vanishing into mist.
The room stayed taut with silence, all breath and crackle and the faint drip of water off the stranger's coat. Jay's fingers still pressed against the book, though he no longer knew if he was holding it back or clinging to it for balance.
The man in the reed hat leaned slightly closer, enough for Jay to smell the damp reed and a faint trace of smoke clinging to him. "The book won't wait. It never does. You must decide."
Jay's throat was dry. "Decide what?"
"Whether to listen to it," the man said, eyes narrowing, "or to me."
That earned a ripple of unease from the room. Someone shifted their boots. The dog whined again. Foss's arms folded more tightly across his chest, his gaze weighing Jay without interfering.
Jay felt every eye on him, and the weight of the book pulsing faintly through his palm. He thought of the spark spell, of the heat burning into his flesh, of how easily he had convinced himself it was worth it because it worked. He thought of the rain and the cairn, how the book had been dry when everything else was drowning.
The reed-hat man's stare felt like a hammer. "Your hunger is written all over you. That is why it found you."
"I didn't ask for it," Jay said, voice low but steady.
"You didn't need to. Things like that choose."
Jay shifted, pulling his hands away from the book at last. The leather seemed to sigh against the loss of contact. He pushed it across the table, just far enough that it no longer pressed against his ribs. "Then let it choose someone else."
The stranger's eyes flicked to the movement, then back to Jay's face. "Good," he said simply. "Not everyone can release their grip."
Foss exhaled slowly behind the counter. The rest of the room seemed to breathe again as well, voices returning in cautious threads. The dog lowered its head, still watching but no longer growling.
The reed-hat man hooked the lantern from the table and straightened. "If you want to learn without being hollowed," he said, "be at the south gate at first light. Bring only your hands. Not that." His glance at the book was sharp as a blade.
Jay looked down at it, the cracked leather faintly pulsing as if still alive under its skin. Every part of him wanted to deny it mattered, that he could leave it and never think of it again. But his burned palm throbbed, and something in his chest twisted at the thought of letting go entirely.
The man turned for the door. Rain gusted in as he opened it. Before stepping out, he said without looking back, "Decisions are made in the dark, boy. Dawn only shows you what you've chosen."
Then he was gone, leaving wet footprints and a silence deeper than before.
Jay sat there with his hand pressed to his lap, the book glimmering faintly at the edge of his vision. Foss returned to his work without comment, though his eyes lingered once on Jay's burned hand before shifting away. The others avoided looking directly at him, their conversations careful not to touch what had just unfolded.
The dog shifted again, head on its paws, gaze fixed unwavering on the book.
Jay stared at the door, at the night beyond it, and wondered which weight would be heavier come morning—the pull of the book at his side, or the promise of a teacher waiting at the gate.