He started the following morning. Not because he had slept well, and not because he felt any particular strength. Simply because waiting any longer was not possible.
Tom rose before it was fully dark, when the house was only beginning to stir in its sleep. In the quiet he could hear someone turn on a bench beyond the wall, the faint moan of wind in the chimney, the old board at the threshold answering every step. He stood still for a moment, listening, then carefully pulled on his clothes and went out into the yard.
The sky was grey and low. No rain, no light. The best sort of morning for work that nobody should see.
He took nothing extra with him: a stick, a knife, a length of rope and an old rag to wrap his palms if the skin began to tear again. That was enough for now.
He had chosen the spot the day before, coming back from the crossroads. A strip of ground beyond the far pen, where bushes cut off the view from the house, and underfoot there was not only the muddy post-rain earth but an old trodden patch by a fallen tree.
If you couldn't have a training yard, you could at least have a corner.
Tom stopped at the fallen trunk, dropped the rag and the rope onto it, and stood still for a moment, working his fingers loose.
Cold nipped at the skin.
His shoulder still ached from the scratch, though only dully now.
His legs felt both too light and too weak — not the legs of a man accustomed to roads, snow, running and fighting, but a boy's legs with all of that still ahead of them.
He breathed out and started with the simplest thing: step forward, turn, shift stance. Again. Then faster.
The first few minutes he only felt irritated. Too much was happening, but not as it ought.
His mind remembered everything ahead of his body. It already knew when to shift the weight, how to step aside, at what angle to hold the stick, when not to lunge for a strike but to wait out half a pace. But his legs were slow, his shoulders were tight, and twice his arm with the stick swung too wide, as if he were still stronger than he was.
On the third attempt he caught a toe on a root and nearly pitched into the mud. He caught himself, swore under his breath, stood still, and began again.
This time more slowly.
He worked almost in silence. Now and then his lips moved, without his noticing. He was not explaining the movements to himself — simply cutting away the wrong ones. When the stick swung too high, he repeated the sequence. When his body opened more than it should, he repeated it again. When his shoulder reminded him of the scratch, he adjusted his grip.
After a quarter-hour, his shirt was sticking to his back.
After half an hour, there was a noticeable tremor in his legs.
After forty minutes he realised he was breathing too loudly.
Then he stopped.
The stick had felt light at the beginning. Now his palm ached from the wood, and his fingers were starting to go numb. Tom sat on the fallen trunk, bent forward with his elbows on his knees, and for some time simply listened to his own breathing.
That was actually clearer this way: no false encouragement, but no lies either.
He unwrapped the rag and wound it tightly around his right palm, then stood again.
The second part of the session was worse than the first.
Now the body was already tired.
He began to run a short circuit from the tree to the bushes and back, choosing not a straight line but a broken one: burst, turn, drop, burst again. First right, then left, then with a pivot. The way he would have had to move if in front of him had stood not an empty strip of earth but something with teeth.
After the fifth circuit his side began to ache.
After the seventh he felt a heaviness in his chest.
After the ninth he had to slow to a walk.
Tom stopped, gripping the tree's bark with his fingers, and stood there until the burning in his lungs was bearable.
He was not weak.
He was simply twelve again.
That knowledge made him want to drive his fist into the trunk harder than any failure had.
He did drive it.
The bark scraped away under his knuckles. The pain was short and clean.
Tom looked at the graze. Barely any blood, barely a mark — but he caught the smell at once: not just iron or the dampness of skin, but something thin and sharp, too distinct for something so small.
He went still, brought his hand closer, and the smell sharpened.
Tom drew air in slowly again. There it was. That same strange heightening he had known in his previous life, but which had come to him later then, along with a greater knowledge of himself. Now it had woken early: not fully, not as something he could use at will, only as an extra thread of perception pulled taut inside the body.
He wiped his knuckles on the grass.
The smell did not go at once.
It held for a few more heartbeats, then began to fade.
Tom did not try to bring it back immediately.
Instead he took the knife, moved to an old stump and began to throw: short, from close range, only to test his arm and his eye.
The first throw went wide. The second hit with the handle. The third went in, but too low. The fourth was better.
On the fifth the knife struck exactly where it should, and Tom felt an almost dangerous satisfaction.
Almost.
Because when he went to pull the knife out again, his foot slipped on the wet grass.
He didn't fall.
But it was enough to cool his head.
There was no easy road back, no return to old form within a week. But there were his hands, his legs, his memory, and some time — for now.
By midday he had moved closer to the old barn, where few people walked during the day, and turned to different work — not the body, but a system.
Tom found a dry niche beneath a broken board, cleaned out the damp leaves, and began to store things there that might be useful later: a better length of rope, a stub of candle, an old nail, a tinderbox, a strip of sacking. Not treasures. Just a reserve.
Then he took a small piece of charcoal from his pocket and drew three short marks on the inside of the board — not letters, not words, just a count.
If he couldn't keep proper notes yet, at least there would be this.
When he finished, his hands were already shaking with tiredness. Tom sat down on the ground by the barn, leaned his back against the boards, and closed his eyes.
That was when the backlash came — not terrible, but ill-tempered. His body suddenly felt heavy as wet clothing. His shoulder ached more sharply, his legs trembled, and his temples beat with a dull thud.
Tom sat there until his breathing evened, and only then understood he had overestimated the morning. Not catastrophically — but enough that it would catch up with him by evening if he didn't stop now.
He got to his feet slowly, without anger this time, with only a clear understanding of measure.
During the day he had to return to ordinary work and pretend nothing had changed. Carry water. Hand his father a tool. Help Ellie with a bag of flour. Not wince when his shoulder reminded him of itself. Not rub his palm too often.
The worst part was pretending to think more slowly than he did.
Towards evening he slipped out briefly again — only for one thing.
He stood at the edge of the field, closed his eyes, and listened — not with his ears but inwardly, to the blood in his own hand, to the air, to the earth.
Nothing happened.
Then, at the very boundary of attention, a faint, barely perceptible sense of direction came — not a voice and not a smell but more a slight tension, as though the world were pulling a little more strongly in one direction, toward the wood and the old road.
Tom opened his eyes.
When he came back, the house was alive with the noise of the evening. His father was telling Jack something. The younger ones were getting in each other's way at the table. His mother glanced at Tom when he entered, and he could see at once that neither his pale face nor the tiredness in his walk had escaped her.
She said nothing in front of the others. Only later, as he passed, she said quietly:
— Don't wear yourself to rags.
Tom stopped.
— What?
She did not raise her head from the dough.
— You heard me.
That was all. Tom waited another second, then walked on without a word.
That night he took the tinderbox and the bit of sacking from the hiding place by the barn, just to check that no one had noticed the things were missing and that they were all lying conveniently. Then he put them back and closed the board carefully.
When he straightened up, his back ached, his palms burned, and his chest still held a dull tiredness from the morning's run.
Tom lay on his back and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Tomorrow he would go out before dawn again, but differently: slower, more precise, and further.