Chapter 12 · free to read
A hundred and six years of buying. Every wrapped thing in that room had been carried in on a hope, and unwrapped, and set aside.
She had told me she stayed for the forty-one. Watching her face in that mirror, I learned she had also stayed for one living person, and had never once said so.
The mirrors in that room did not answer to the merchant. They answered to whoever had been paying him, and they had all been listening the whole time.
We went into the wilds with nothing, which was more than we had come down with. Behind us, a tired old servant sent a paper bird north to the people who had bought him.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.