The roof was leaking. It was a slow but steady drip, drip, drip into the middle of the room; too gradual to leave a puddle, but enough to draw Maggie’s attention. She’d not seen nor heard anything else all night long.
Drip went the water again. The sun was somehow up; slivers of light peered through edges of the badly-hung door. She exhaled, saw her breath, and then twisted her head ‘round to confirm that yes, the fire was out. The room was cold. And yet somehow, she hadn’t noticed at all.
She wondered if that’s how you died, in the cold. Not a sudden event, but a slow and gradual descent into death, vaguely comfortable the whole way down. It seemed pleasant enough. Death by cold.
Death by snow.
She rolled onto her side, resting her hand on the spot where Rían should have been.
She wondered what Mr Aylen had discovered, what progress he’d made. She wondered if he’d remembered her at all, after he left. Maybe he’d gone striding into the night, back to his comfortable bed and his doting wife, and wiped his mind clean of all the tragedy and misery of the day. Maybe he was up, just now, sitting in his parlour or dining room, eating scones and drinking tea and thinking: there was something I was meant to do…what could it be? Oh, never mind…