Moss could carry the wooden chest or his drinking water. By noon, he could no longer carry both.
He set the chest on a flat stone. Blue paint stopped halfway across the bird carved on its lid. Moss’s father, Jory, had begun to shake before he finished painting it.
His daughter had never seen the unfinished bird. She lived beyond the salt hills, three days from the town where Jory had died.
Moss had promised to bring it. He’d been a courier once. Three days had seemed easy when he made the promise.
Now he sat with one hand pressed against his knee.
“There’s a shorter road,” said the woman behind him.
He had seen her at the last water stop. She was about his age, with a narrow face and a pack that looked almost empty.
“Everyone says that before a climb,” he said.
“This road goes to a spring.”
“I have water.”
“This water makes you younger.”
He turned his head. “Then why haven’t you drunk it?”
She took a creased envelope from her pocket. Its front was blank.
“I have.”
Her name was Em. She wouldn’t say more until he had rested. Then she helped him tie the chest across a short carrying pole. They could take one end each.
The path she chose ran between two white hills. At the far end, a round basin stood under a low shelf of rock. Four figures were carved above it. An old man drank and became a young man. Beside him, a young woman poured water back and became old.
Where the faces of their companions should have been, the stone was smooth.
Moss put the chest down in the shade.
“What happens to the faces?”
“You forget one person for each cup,” Em said. “Ten years younger. One person gone from your memory.”
He looked at her envelope.
“Who did you forget?”
“My brother. I know I had one because I found this letter in my own writing. I was going to visit him. Now I can’t remember his face or name.”
“You came here to get it back?”
“Yes.”
She showed him a small stoppered bottle. It held the cup of spring water she’d kept from her first visit.
“Last year, I thought I could pour it back anytime. I took enough home to do that. But the path only opens one day a year. I couldn’t find the basin again until today.”
“If you pour it back?”
“I get my years back. And my brother.”
Moss frowned at the smooth stone faces.
“How do you know?”
Em pointed at the figures. “I met the keeper last year. She told me. I didn’t listen to the part about the road.”
A little lizard sat on the basin’s edge. It turned its head and opened its mouth.
“Listen this time,” it said.
Moss stepped back.
Em did not. “That’s her.”
The lizard blinked. “A full cup out. Any full cup of this water back. What you borrowed goes home. You may return it here before the path closes. When the moon rises, the spring keeps the bargain until next year.”
Moss heard the rules. He even repeated them aloud.
Then he looked at the chest. His hands had been strong ten years ago. He could have reached his daughter before dark, carrying water as well.
He took the wooden cup from the rim.
“You don’t choose the person?” he asked.
“No,” said the keeper.
“It could be someone I’ve barely known.”
“It could.”
Em stood beside him with her bottle in her hand.
“It could be the one you came here for,” she said.
He drank.
For a moment, the water was only cold. Then his stiff knee loosened. He straightened it and laughed. He stood without putting a hand on the stone.
His coat felt lighter. His feet wanted the road.
He bent to take up the chest.
“Whose is this?” he asked.
Em shut her eyes.
Moss stared at the blue bird. He knew he was carrying a chest to his daughter for her new workshop. He could remember her name and her house. But the man who had carved and painted this box was missing.
A small mark was cut into one corner: two leaves and a J.
He ran a thumb over it. It meant nothing to him.
“You told me about his hands,” Em said. “Before you drank.”
“Did I?”
“He was painting the bird on the lid. His hands shook.”
He searched for those hands. A workshop came back to him. A saw. A blue pot on a bench. The bench was empty.
“Jory,” Em said.
He heard the name as if someone had introduced a stranger.
The keeper climbed down to the lowest carved figure.
“The moon hasn’t risen.”
Moss looked at the hills. The light had begun to turn gold. His younger legs could take him a long way before evening.
He tried to picture an old pair of hands holding a paintbrush. He knew what hands looked like. He could invent them.
He couldn’t remember his father’s.
He filled the cup again.
“My knee will hurt?”
“As it did,” the keeper said.
“The road will still be long.”
“As it was.”
He poured the full cup back into the basin.
Jory’s face came to him before the water stopped falling. His father was laughing because he’d put a door hinge on upside down. His hands came next, with the old scar across one thumb.
His knee bent under him. Em caught his elbow.
He sat hard on the flat stone, resting a hand on the chest’s lid.
“There you are,” he said.
Em uncorked her bottle.
She had kept her ten younger years through twelve months of weather and work. She’d been able to walk faster, sleep better, carry more. Giving them up would hurt more than giving up a few minutes of hope.
She poured anyway.
When she straightened, she leaned on the carrying pole. Her hair had gained a white streak above her ear.
“Jon,” she whispered.
She said it again. Then she sat beside Moss and wrote the name on the envelope with a piece of charcoal.
They waited for their hands to stop shaking.
Em and Moss picked up the pole before the moon rose over the hill. The chest hung between them, clear of the ground. The keeper waited by the rim until they were back between the white hills. Then pale light covered the basin, and the path behind them narrowed to a crack.
They reached Moss’s daughter the next afternoon. She saw them from the doorway of her workshop and ran down the path.
“You’re late,” she said, taking his end of the pole.
“I am.”
She looked at the lid. Her fingers found the unfinished bird before he said anything more.
Em stood back, holding her envelope.
“Do you know the road to Marrow Hill?” she asked.
Moss and his daughter set the chest on her workbench. She took Em to the wall map. Moss sat beside the chest and listened as they found Marrow Hill.
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