I should have known there was trouble brewing when Barliman said he had a letter for me. No one writes me letters.
Now I'm sitting here staring at it, and don't know what to do with it. Or about it.
The first thought I had was, "What am I going to tell Ivan?"
Life is so much tidier when you don't have other people around.
It's from Barnwell. I hardly know him. Just one of a hundred faces that I knew growing up. But he was close to Pa. They were good friends. I have memories of them saying hello whenever they ran into each other, the handshakes, the loud slaps on the back that made me wonder why men seemed to like hurting each other when they're friends.
I remember hearing him talk about the "trouble to the north". We children heard that all the time, day in and day out. All the children of Trestlebridge heard it. It was as ordinary to us as our folks talking about the weather. "The trouble to the north." We were never told much of what the trouble actually was, of course.
But now I have this letter. It doesn't say much. He thinks he has something I need to hear, and wants me to come visit him. I don't need to stretch my mind too far to guess at what it might be.
And I'm not ready for it. Not ready to open that door. It's been closed and locked and the key long since thrown away.
Few things frighten me. But this is one of them.
