The Weight of a Promise

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Thorn’s instincts were a peculiar thing.

One moment, I’d been standing next to Bone talking. The next, I was hauling myself away from his hut and sprinting down the path looking for Shade with Echo right on my tail.

People cleared the path as they saw us approach, backing away to the edge and diving for cover, clearly not wanting to be the one that got in Thorn’s way.

The distant sound of a child crying made me sprint faster.

Around me, I managed to catch a few pieces of chatter.

“Oh, here he comes now…”

“Father lynx to the rescue…”

“... probably isn’t going to end well…”

That only made me worry more. Rescue? Not going to end well? What the hell had happened to Shade?

I slid around a corner into a clearing in the center of the village, earning some surprised shouts from a few onlookers that had gathered to see what the commotion was about.

In a matter of seconds, however, the worst of my worry faded and my brow furrowed as I took in the scene in front of me.

Shade and a little girl were sitting on their knees in the snow, faces red with fists balled up near their mouths as they wailed loudly beside one another. A fox therian, a woman I’d come to know as Fern, was crouched beside the girl, rubbing her back as she tried to reassure her. Next to Shade was Raven, looking completely overwhelmed as she cradled something in her hands.

I blinked as our eyes met.

Raven didn’t look relieved to see me there. She didn’t look angry or annoyed either. Mostly, she just looked tired. Like she had already done everything she could to try to help in this situation, and none of it had worked.

“What happened here?” I asked, taking in the scene again.

The little girl Fern was trying to comfort began crying impossibly louder as she looked up and saw me. Waves of tears poured out of her big blue eyes as she shrank back slightly.

“Oh, please don’t be angry with her!” Fern pleaded, rushing up to me, “She’s just a child. She didn’t mean it!”

I shook my head, trying to think through the cacophony of crying, “Didn’t mean what?”

I glanced over at Raven, who lifted the thing resting in her hands.

I approached with caution.

As I knelt down to examine it, I realized what it was.

It was Bunny.

The crudely-made toy that had been crafted from rabbit pelts had been torn in two, and not cleanly. The edges were frayed, the pelts had multiple tears in them, and it appeared to be missing an ear.

Shade crawled to my side, burying his face into my furs as I sat down in the snow and wrapped an arm around him.

Raven’s eyes looked from him to me before she silently handed me Bunny’s remains.

A sympathetic smile crossed my face, “Looks like Bunny had himself a rough morning.”

“I’m really sorry!” the little girl wailed looking up at me.

“And I believe you,” I responded gently, “Do you mind telling me what happened?”

The girl let out a few hiccups as she tried to get her words out.

“We… We were playing… with Bunny… And I ripped him up!”

“Ah… Started playing a little too rough, did we?”

“Uh-huh…” the girl hiccuped again, “I’m really, really sorry!”

I shifted a little closer to her, “What’s your name, little one?”

“B-Brook…”

“Well, I accept your apology, Brook,” I said, “But I think Shade needs the apology a bit more right now.”

“I tried! I think he hates me now.”

I glanced down at Shade as he continued to sob into my side.

“Shade?” I called to him softly, “Is that true?”

I felt him shake his head.

“Well, I think it would make Brook feel a little better if you told her that.”

Shade hesitantly pulled himself away from me and turned towards Brook.

“I don’t hate you, Brook,” he sniffled, “I just want B-Bunny back…”

And just like that, another dam burst, and their tears returned with a vengeance. I let Shade cry into my side again.

Raven let a breath out through her nose.

I turned to her, “Are you okay?”

She shot me a look, and I remembered my conversation with Bone. That was probably something else that Thorn wouldn’t have said.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she explained, throwing her hands against her lap, “I’ve tried hugging him. I tried to tell him we could make something, or that I could find a new toy for him, but he won’t hear it. He wants his Bunny.”

I looked down at the tattered pelts in my hands again, turning them over and observing the damage.

A deep hum rumbled in my throat.

“You know, I think Bunny might still be salvageable.”

Raven’s brows raised, “Really?”

“Maybe.”

Her expression flattened, “Don’t say things you don’t mean, then.”

Shade looked up at me. The tears in his eyes were slowly drying out.

“Can you fix him?” he whimpered.

I frowned slightly.

“I can try,” I told him, “If I have all the pieces here, then I think Bunny’s got a pretty good shot at making it.”

“I think that’s all of him,” Raven stated as she glanced around the clearing.

A small sniff grabbed my attention. Brook scooted up to me, producing the missing ear that she’d apparently been clutching in her hands. She carefully passed it over to me, and I added it in with the rest of Bunny’s pieces.

“So, you aren’t mad?” Fern asked, her fluffy red tail swishing anxiously as she stood over me.

“No,” I chuckled as I pushed myself to my feet, “Kids play rough sometimes. Accidents happen. No hard feelings.”

Fern finally smiled as she regarded me with a nod.

“You really have been working on yourself lately…” her words drifted off as she turned to Raven, “You’re a lucky woman.”

Raven scowled at Fern, making her way to her feet before crossing her arms.

“Alright,” I said, looking down at Shade and Brook, “I think that’s enough playing for right now. I think you two should go inside and let yourselves warm up.”

The two of them nodded.

“Can I go back to the hut with you?” Shade asked.

Raven and I looked at each other. She seemed genuinely shocked that he would even ask that question.

I offered him a smile as I knelt back down to his level.

“Fixing Bunny is probably going to take me a little while,” I explained, “I think you should stay with your mother and Echo for now. I can drop Bunny back off when I’m finished.”

Shade’s shoulders slumped as he began pouting, “But you’ve been gone for so long…”

“Only a couple of days.”

“That’s a long time!”

My smile wavered.

I paused before looking back up towards Raven.

“It’s up to your mother, Son.”

Shade craned his neck up to look at Raven as one of his hands gripped onto the furs covering her legs, “Can I?”

Raven’s words caught in her throat, her eyes blinking rapidly. She glanced from him to me, then back down at him.

“We’ll talk about it…” she finally choked out.

She gathered Shade into her arms and we both turned in the direction of the main path.

Echo and Bone were standing there waiting for us, smug grins plastered onto their faces.

Raven glared at Echo the same way I found myself glaring at Bone.

“Shut it!” I growled at Bone.

“Not one word…” Raven growled at Echo.

The two of us looked at each other again.

I guess Raven also had a friend that loved to torment her as much as Bone loved to torment me.

The five of us broke off in our respective directions, with Raven carrying Shade off with Echo one way and Bone lumbering at my side the other. The foot traffic on the path had resumed, and so had the chatter.

“I didn’t realize Thorn could be so good with kids…”

“When did that happen…?”

“He didn’t yell once…!”

Bone must have picked up on it too as his smirk widened.

“So…” he droned.

It sounded way too similar to how he had sounded back at his hut.

“Don’t even start!” I growled at him.

Bone let out a chuckle, “You really think you can fix that thing?”

“I said I would try.”

“Mhm…”

I already knew that tone. It was the tone Bone used when he knew that I was determined to do something, come hell or high water.

I let out a sigh, “This toy really means a lot to Shade. Making him a new one, or replacing it with something else isn’t going to work.”

“Mhm…” Bone hummed again.

I paused.

“Who even made it anyway?”

Bone stopped in the middle of the path. “Raven did.”

I stopped a few feet ahead of him, and glanced back. Bone stood there with his arms crossed, his grin returning to his face as people moved around us.

He knew what he was doing, and I hated it.

“Sorry to drop everything in the middle of helping you,” I told him, “You understand, right?”

Bone shrugged, “I know you won’t be making it a habit.”

I finally shot him a smile, thanking him as I continued up the slope back to the hut.

The fire had burned low while I'd been out, leaving the hut dim and cool when I stepped inside. I pushed through the hide hanging in the entrance and crossed the room to place a couple more pieces of wood into the pit. The flames caught slowly, and I waited until the fire burned brightly enough for me to be able to see what I was working with.

I laid Bunny’s pieces across the table, the damage looking worse than when they’d just been gathered up in my or Raven’s hands.

One half seemed to have gotten it worse than the other. The seams had split open, one half had a large tear running down the middle of the pelt, the other had several tears slashing through it. The missing ear Brook had returned was still mostly intact, but the base of it was frayed so badly that I knew that just sewing it back on wasn’t going to work.

I turned the pieces over in my hands, trying to work out where I should begin.

I thought about Grandma.

She had fixed plenty of things for me over the years. Torn gloves. Split coat seams. Stuffed animals that had developed holes or lost limbs because they’d been left unsupervised around one goat or another for too long.

Whenever I brought something to her, certain that it’d been ruined forever, Grandma would spread the pieces over the kitchen table just like this. She never promised that she’d be able to make it look like new. Only that she would see what she could do.

I could still picture her sitting beneath the yellow light in the kitchen with her sewing tin sitting on the table beside her, glasses sitting low on her nose as she turned over whatever I had brought to her in her hands. She’d study every tear and every detail before she ever threaded her needle.

Most of the time, I would just sit across from her and watch. Apparently, though, I had been paying closer attention than I had realized.

I searched through the supplies in the baskets until I found a small bone needle tucked inside a band of leather. A few lengths of sinew rested beside it, along with several scraps of hide that were too small to be useful for much else.

One of the scraps had come from a rabbit.

That would do.

I settled on the floor beside the table and brought Bunny closer to the firelight.

I knew that the first thing Grandma always did was gather up everything that had managed to come loose – fabric, buttons, stuffing, appendages, and so on.

I looked down at Bunny’s severed ear. There wasn’t enough left at its base to attach it securely, so I cut a thin strip from the scrap of hide and folded it around the frayed end. It was longer and slightly thicker than the other, but after several careful stitches, it stayed in place after giving it a light tug.

Next, I picked up the half of the toy that had the long tear going down the middle. The torn edges didn’t meet evenly when I pinched the two sides together. Every time I lined one side up, the other side would slip and pull away.

I let out a frustrated breath.

Grandma had always made this part look easy.

Of course, her hands had spent decades learning how to do this type of work. Mine were large and clumsy by comparison. The needle looked especially small between Thorn’s fingers, and the claws at the ends of them didn’t make my work any easier.

Still, Shade was counting on me.

I tried again.

The first stitch pulled too tightly, bunching the pelt around it. Muttering under my breath, I loosened it and started over. The second attempt sat better. So did the third.

Before long, a crooked line of stitches began working its way across Bunny’s middle. It wasn’t pretty, but then again, I doubted Shade had loved him because he was perfect.

Grandma probably would have taken one look at it and told me I was strangling the poor thing.

I could almost hear her voice.

“Small stitches, Davey. Remember, you’re mending it, not tying down a load.”

A quiet laugh escaped me.

“Alright, Grandma.”

I adjusted my grip and made the next stitch smaller.

Then the next.

Much like with everything else, the work became easier once I had found a rhythm. Push the needle through. Pull the sinew after it. Keep the edges together without tugging so hard that they fold in on themselves.

Eventually I’d closed the tear. I gave the seam a gentle pull, and it held.

That was two problems down…

The tears in the other half of the toy were much more tedious. I stitched up the longer ones as best as I could, and used the leftover scrap of hide to patch up the rest. The color didn’t quite match the rest of him, but it was close enough that it wouldn’t stand out too badly.

Finally, I lined up the two halves of the toy and stitched them together, Grandma’s words echoing in my head all the while.

“Small stitches, Davey. Small stitches…”

By the time I was done, Bunny looked a little lopsided. A pale patch covered his chest on one side, a crooked scar ran across the center of the other, and one ear was longer than the other. But he was whole again.

I squeezed the body carefully, and I felt a warm sense of satisfaction spread through me as it all held.

Grandma probably would have redone half of my stitches, but in the end, I think she would have approved.

I brushed some remaining loose fur out of Bunny’s scrunchy-looking face as I lifted him into the light.

“There you are,” I murmured, “A little worse for wear, but still good for a few more seasons.”

As I sat there with the toy in my hands, Bone’s grin flashed through my mind.

Raven had made this.

I couldn’t help but run my thumb over the pelts at that, wondering how long ago she’d sat in this very hut making Bunny for Shade. Maybe she had worked on it beside the same firepit, carefully stitching the rabbit pelts together while Thorn had been somewhere else. Maybe Shade had sat waiting for her, just like he was waiting for me now.

The realization settled strangely in my chest.

I hadn’t replaced what Raven had made.

I was helping it hold together.

Carefully, I placed Bunny near the firepit so the warmth could dry the last traces of snow from his fur.

Now all that was left was to bring him back to Shade.

Gathering Bunny into my hands, I strode back out of the hut and back into the village.

It was well into the afternoon now, and the air was filled with the sounds of conversation and people hard at work. I didn’t waste any time looking around. I quickly turned off of the main path and followed one of the smaller trails leading to Echo’s hut.

I stopped short of the hide hanging in front of the door, looking down at Bunny one last time before knocking against the frame. It was silent inside of the hut for a moment. Then I heard movement from within as a set of footsteps made their way up to the front.

The hide peeled back, and Echo stepped out of the dim light from within. Her face immediately broke into a mischievous smile.

“Ah, Thorn. You’re back!”

Her tone sounded deliberate. It was a tone that I was becoming incredibly familiar with, and I instantly found myself wanting to turn around and take myself literally anywhere else.

“Come in,” Echo continued, her tone a little bit more sincere now, “I’m sure Shade will be excited to see you.”

I nodded, pushing the hide aside and stepping into the dim light of her hut.

It felt a lot more cramped inside than it had when Echo first brought me here, and I quickly understood why as I made my way further inside.

Echo, Raven, Shade, and Bone were all gathered around the firepit in the center of the hut. I stopped when I saw Bone there, already smiling up at me as he casually rested an elbow on the stone I had sat on during Echo’s interrogation of me.

I had a feeling I knew exactly why he was here.

Shade ran out from beside Raven, trotting up to me with a look of anticipation on his face.

“Father!” he called out as he looked up at me, “Did you do it? Did you fix Bunny?”

I couldn’t help but smile at his question. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about Bone and why he was there, or Raven and how she was going to react. The only thing that mattered to me was giving Shade his Bunny back.

I let the toy unfold in my hands.

Shade’s eyes lit up.

Bone immediately began laughing.

“Oh, ancestors! He actually did it!” he howled.

Shade took Bunny into his hands as Bone let himself collapse onto the floor. I only briefly acknowledged the hunter with a scowl before shifting my gaze back down to Shade.

He held his toy in his hands like he was reading from a sheet of paper, his eyes looking over the repairs that I had made and investigating them with his fingers. I found myself worrying slightly. What if he didn’t like it? What if my repairs hadn’t been good enough?

After several drawn out seconds he finally looked back up at me.

“You fixed him!”

My heart swelled, “I did my best.”

Shade ran over and hugged my leg, “Thank you, Father.”

Raven stood up and marched over to us.

“Here,” she said, kneeling down beside Shade, “Can I see?”

Shade held Bunny out to her. She took the toy into her hands like she’d just been shown something that was impossible. Her fingers investigated the patch, the stitches, and the ear, her mouth hanging open and eyes growing wider at every detail.

“ You did this?” she asked me.

“I did,” I confirmed.

“When?”

“Just this afternoon.”

“No, I mean… When did you learn how to do this?”

I frowned slightly. I didn’t know how to answer her without sounding like I was insane. Hell, after my performance last night, she probably thought I was insane already.

I let out a breath through my nose, “I learned from my grandmother.”

Raven’s eyes went blank.

Bone’s laughter grew louder.

“Your… grandmother…?” Raven echoed slowly.

I could only shrug.

“She’d fix just about everything I managed to tear apart,” I explained, “I’m not anywhere near as experienced with this as she is. Some of the stitches are a little rough, but he should hold.”

Raven stared at me for several seconds before Bone smothered another laugh with his hand, pulling her out of whatever thoughts she was having. She looked over to him then back to me. I saw concern make her way onto some of her features.

“Don’t worry,” I stated flatly, “He’s been doing that all day.”

Raven slowly handed Shade his toy as Bone sat himself back up.

Shade hugged Bunny excitedly against his chest before reaching out to her.

“Mother, does this mean we can go back to the hut now?”

My eyebrows raised at the question, and I could see Raven’s mind begin to race as she tossed glances between me and Shade.

“I-I don’t…”

Shade’s smile quickly dropped, “You said that if Father could fix Bunny, we could all go back to the hut together.”

I found myself frowning and crossing my arms, “You told him what?”

I kept my tone level, knowing that getting angry would only frighten Shade and make everything worse. Even so, I couldn’t help the tiny bit of heat that flared somewhere behind my eyes.

Raven began to panic, “I… I didn’t mean–”

Her hands reached up to cover her mouth as her eyes settled on mine.

The silence that wound up filling the space between all of us was deafening.

“I told her it was a bad idea…” Echo whispered from over my shoulder.

I could feel my face begin to twist, and not in any way that I liked.

I was angry.

Even so, I could understand how Raven had arrived at that particular test. Have the father that never did anything for his family try to repair his son’s beloved toy.

Raven had expected Thorn to fail at fixing Bunny. What she hadn’t expected was for me to succeed, failing her real test in the best way possible.

Shade slowly started backing away from us.

I must have looked absolutely pissed.

My eyes narrowed.

“What was that you’d said about saying things you don’t mean?”

The words didn’t come out loud. They didn’t need to.

Shade was already getting nervous. Bone’s eyes had narrowed into a glare that was focused squarely on both of us. Echo was already positioning herself between us and Shade.

After another long stretch of silence, I slowly drew in a breath. The whole hut felt like it’d taken one with me.

I became lightheaded.

“Please excuse me…”

With that, I turned on my heel and stepped out of the hut.

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