Orr carried the window through the forest in a crate strapped across his back. By the time he reached Seli’s clearing he had collected six branches, a beetle and a small green caterpillar. She removed the caterpillar first.
“You brought the window,” she said.
“You asked about it.”
“I asked how it worked.”
He sat on the crate. “You can inspect it before you decide to be delighted.”
Seli knelt beside him and opened the lid. The glass was curved, a shallow dome, with a stone rim carved so fine that he had broken two before finishing this one. An elf could have carried it in one hand. Orr had spent the season imagining her sleeping below it, watching rain strike glass instead of her blanket. In his rooms the same dome would catch the sky through a shaft and carry blue light down to the bed they had shared in winter.
She touched the edge with one long finger.
“It’s beautiful.”
He had prepared for objections about the weight, the cost, the exact shade of the stone. He had not prepared for her saying it was beautiful and remaining in the forest.
Beyond her bed, rows of seedlings stood in shallow bark trays. Some were hardly more than hooks. She had lost a whole planting the previous year to a warm spell followed by frost. Now she slept beside them, moving blankets over the smallest trays when the nights were cold. Orr had helped her carry water that morning in winter when she first said she would not be returning underground in spring.
“There’s room by my south entrance,” he said.
“For the trays?”
“For you to plant them outside.”
“The soil there is mostly crushed stone.”
“I could bring soil.”
“And you could carry water. And I could spend summer trying to make your entrance into this clearing.”
He looked at the crate instead of at her. Its strap had worn through his collar.
“You didn’t have to bring it,” she said more quietly.
“I wanted to.”
They ate the food he had brought from the mountain: dark bread and the little hard pears Seli loved. She had made a bitter green soup he liked only when very hungry, and he was. When she saw him take another bowl, she smiled without mentioning their homes.
In the afternoon they balanced the dome above her bed on three forked branches. Orr made careful wedges to settle its rim. Seli lay beneath it and watched an insect crawl over the curve.
“Come and see.”
He squeezed onto the pallet beside her. He could feel the forest floor through it, all roots and small knobs. In winter she had complained that his mattress was too soft; when he lay down, she rolled toward the hollow he made. Here, he rolled away from a root into her elbow.
The first drops of rain spread bright circles overhead. The dome covered the middle of the pallet, but its rim ended above Orr’s pillow. Water ran off it and spilled onto his ear.
Seli laughed. She tried not to, which made it worse.
Orr got up and moved the pallet backward. The bed legs caught in roots. The last wedge tipped, and he caught the rim with both hands before it slid off the branches.
“Don’t lift it alone,” she said.
She took the other side. Together they lowered it onto the empty crate. Rain darkened the back of Orr’s shirt. Beneath the trees the seedlings remained dry.
That evening Seli showed him her idea: a bed suspended from a low branch, with a woven cover above it. She had rigged one side while he was carving the window. When he climbed in, it shifted under him. He gripped the ropes and lay rigid, eyes shut, until she helped him down.
“You live with a moving ceiling,” he said.
“Only when there’s wind.”
“And now a moving floor.”
She loosened the knot without looking at him. “I thought you could sleep here.”
“I could sleep here.”
“Not like that.”
It was almost night. Orr had planned to ask her to marry him after supper, with the sky framed above them and both of them already pleased. The ring was in the deepest pocket of his coat, where its small stone box knocked against his ribs. He could not bear to take it out while she was dismantling a bed she had made for him.
“My sister wants the west room back,” he said.
“Then give it back.”
“I told her I needed it for you.”
Seli pulled the rope free. The bed fell softly onto the earth.
“Did you tell me?”
He had not. Brek wanted the room for storing stone samples. Orr wanted to leave Seli’s things there between visits: her spare boots, the blue cup, the book whose leaves she pressed flat with a piece of quartz. He had believed keeping space for her would help her find a reason to return.
Seli sat on the fallen bed. “I still want to come in winter.”
“And I want to come here.”
“Then we have somewhere to go. Two places.”
“We’d always be visiting.”
“Stay here until the seedlings are planted,” she said. “We can put a proper bed on the ledge. Then I’ll come to the mountain after the first frost.”
“And next spring?”
“Back here. With you, if you can bear it.”
“I can bear a bed that stays on the ground.”
She rested her hand on his. “I can bear putting my boots away each winter. You don’t have to leave a whole room empty all year.”
He looked at the dismantled ropes. He had wanted one home to settle everything. Two homes would mean packing, journeys, and asking each other again. But she was asking him now.
She looked toward the clearing’s edge, where he had set the crate down before she called him. A flat ledge rose beside the path. It was broad enough for a bench, and clear of roots. He had often rested there on the climb back.
The next morning they moved the window to the ledge. Orr cut joints in four short stone posts while Seli stripped long branches for a frame. They did not try to roof the bed. They made a narrow shelter over the bench, then carried two cups to it. Rain ran from the glass onto the ground well beyond their feet.
Through the dome, a patch of sky grew green where leaves overlapped it. Orr had wanted a clean blue view. Seli liked the leaves. He found he liked being able to see which one was moving.
He took out the box.
She opened it and sat very still. The ring was carved from the same pale stone as the window, with a dark vein crossing its face. Her finger was slender; he had measured it with a thread while she slept, then added room because he did not trust his own secrecy to be precise.
“Here?” she asked.
“If you want. In the autumn.”
“The bench isn’t big enough for both families.”
“The ledge is.”
She put the ring on. He waited while she turned it, keeping the vein toward her palm.
Brek came the following week to help carry the empty crate home. She stood under the window and inspected the joints.
“You’re getting married outside?”
“Yes,” Orr said.
“In weather.”
“There might be weather.”
Brek touched one post. “You’ll need another bench.”
She did not offer to make it. Orr asked whether she would bring the oak one from his west room. It was taking up space she wanted. She considered that, then nodded.
In autumn Seli’s trays would be full. The mountain pears would be ripe. They had begun making a list of who could travel and where people would sleep. The list took longer than either of their roofs, and sometimes they put it aside for the afternoon and went out beneath the unfinished sky.
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