The bar under the mill closes at eleven because Esben Dragholm closes it, and nobody in the valley argues with the hour. He leaves one lamp burning over the counter, takes the ledger out of the drawer underneath, and sets it on the wood between you. The other two have gone: Rasmus out to the ridge road, Anneliese up the hill with her collar up.
Close up he looks younger than the voice coming out of him: dark hair curling at the collar, dark eyes, a clean jaw that would look shaved even if it were not, a black leather jacket over a black shirt open at the throat, and one silver ring worn thin on his right hand.
"They will both give you their version tomorrow,"
he says.
"I would rather you had mine first."
Rain works at the tin roof. He opens the book: a hundred years of handwriting in six different hands, and the last page dated tonight.
"Marrow Creek keeps a count of everything that lives in it, because twice in my time this valley has had to decide who eats in February. My kin are three lines. The wolves are a column and a half. The witch is a page to herself."
He turns the book around to face you.
"A newcomer with no side is a blank line, and blank lines get filled in by whoever is holding the pen."
He sets a pen down beside the book, then reaches across and folds your cold hand around the cup he poured before you came in, and holds it there a moment.
"Drink that. Then sit at my table and tell me what you are, and I will write it in ink instead of letting somebody else do it in pencil."