Seven Days

Author note

 <<If honeyfeed deems this  story not worthy of them it exists as a traditional full novel. 

If any reader would like to read the full novel of this story please let me know in the comments. My efforts here are more about summarizing 100k words into 6000.>>

The boy Arin called her brother had priced himself at seven days.

He stood on a stool inside a ring of black salt, holding out his hand. His other hand gripped the counter. When Arin stopped in the doorway to catch her breath, he watched her chest.

“Sit down,” he told her.

Seven small candles waited among inward-facing mirrors. The chandler breathed against the glass; Pip’s reflection leaned toward a wick. His red coat lay beside the candles, its sleeves tucked clear of the wax.

“Seven days for what?” Arin asked.

Pip snatched his hand back.

The chandler glanced from her to the boy. “You weren’t supposed to come together.”

“I wasn’t supposed to come at all, apparently.”

She had searched three markets and the public baths. At the baths she had shouted his name into the wrong changing room. Her throat hurt. She reached for him, stopped, and picked up his coat.

“You left without telling me.”

“You were working.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It is why.”

Arin put her hand through Pip’s sleeve to turn it right-side out. Someone had repaired the lining. The stitches were smaller and more even than hers.

“Who did this?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“While I was waiting.”

The chandler slid a paper beneath his palm. Arin caught its corner.

“His consent is voluntary,” he said.

“He’s seven.”

“He is the original donor.”

“Then you should have no difficulty showing me the original agreement.”

She gave him her professional smile, the one she used for customers who believed stitching a hole between worlds ought to cost less than replacing a trouser button.

The chandler’s fingers tightened on the paper.

Arin touched the counter with her burned thumb. Her sewing needle passed through the wood as if through linen. She drew one short stitch, joining the edge of his sleeve to the grain.

He tried to lift his hand. The cuff held.

“Madam.”

“Seam-witch. Madam costs extra.”

With her free hand she drew out the paper.

At the top was a black circle containing two names. One said ARIN VALE. The other kept slipping out of sense. She could see letters. Whenever she tried to read them together, her attention caught on something else: the chandler’s nails, the whine of a fly.

Underneath, in ordinary ink:

Forty days. Renewal to be completed before the last midnight.

Below that lay a space for a thumbprint. Empty.

“What is this?”

The chandler tugged harder at his sleeve. “An extension.”

“Of what?”

Pip’s stool scraped the floor.

“Of you.”

Arin turned.

He was trying to put his coat on without asking for help. He had both arms in one sleeve.

“It came yesterday,” he said. “It said your days were nearly finished. You were asleep, and I counted you breathing. Sometimes you stopped.”

“I’m recovering from a fever.”

“That’s what you said.”

The chandler took a knife from beneath the counter. Arin flicked her needle. His sleeve came free before he could cut himself loose, and he stumbled against the shelves.

“Where’s the first agreement?” she asked.

“At Saint Orra’s. Ask the woman who lit it.”

“The hospice is shut.”

“Most hospices are, after they sink.”

Arin folded the renewal paper. A tide-mark crossed its lower edge. Beneath it she could make out the hospice’s ferry stamp.

The chandler held out his hand.

“That belongs to my business.”

“So did your sleeve.”

She put the paper in her pocket and carried Pip off the stool. He was too big for carrying, and his heels knocked her knees. She carried him anyway, past the candles and the polite little bell. Outside, the late-afternoon market was packing itself away. A woman folded a meadow into a suitcase. A fishmonger poured his unsold fish into a raincloud and tied it to his cart.

Arin set Pip down beside the canal.

He watched her face. Arin looked down at his coat.

“Did he touch you?”

“No.”

“Did you sign anything?”

“I can’t do my name properly.”

She crouched. The hem of her skirt went into the gutter.

“You don’t buy things with yourself. Do you understand?”

Pip nodded.

“What did you think would happen afterward?”

“You’d have another week.”

“And you?”

He stared at the paper in her pocket.

Arin pulled his coat straight. Its cuffs barely covered his wrists. She had meant to let them down; there had been paid work to finish first.

“I’ll put enough in the sleeves for next winter.”

Pip looked at her instead of the coat.

“Will you do it?”

“As soon as we’re home.”

“I mean when it gets small again.”

Arin thumbed the cuff flat.

“Home,” she said. “Then we find out what this is.”

He took her hand. At the canal bridge he moved to the traffic side and stayed half a step ahead of her.

She nearly laughed at him. Then her heart missed a beat. Under her collar, something gave a faint, hot flicker.