Two
The first person to notice was Bethan.
No one was due in his part of the world for some time, so he did not bother being discreet amongst his sheep, trying to pull blades of grass with his clumsy toes. When he looked up to find her standing there with a basket of goods to trade, open-mouthed and ashen, he realized he had no idea how to explain the miracle, and had simply shoved the burden of it aside so that he might focus on retraining his steps.
Bethan was a woman now, but he could see she was torn between running back to the village to tell everyone what she had seen, like she may have done as a child, and remaining there to ask him questions about it. So he helped her by sitting on the flat stone in the pen and beckoning her with a hand to join him.
She ventured inside, all aghast like she was approaching a mythical creature. Then she sat beside him, staring at his feet. "How?"
"I don't know," he replied, again trying to wiggle his toes. Only his big toes curled while some of the others twitched. "I woke two days past to find them returned to me."
"Ret—? But you lost your feet. When you fell."
He shook his head. "Someone stole them from me. At the top. Now he gave them back."
She stared. "Was it a witch you met at the top?"
"I don't think so."
"A deity?"
"No."
She searched him, bewildered. "There be no herb that can do this. The starfish can grow back their feet, but we people…" Perplexed, she beseeched him: "What did you do to get them back?"
He looked at her with sympathy, and said softly, "I woke up."
She wrung her hands on her basket's edge. "Why did you not come tell us?"
Einar looked out towards the grove of trees that marked the beginning of the meadow, and offered her no answer.
"No, I'm sorry. I can understand why."
"I'm going to go find her."
The sudden change in the conversation was like a strike. Bethan leaned forward, eyebrows raised. "Claire?"
"Aye."
Her mouth became a hard line. "No, Einar, you shouldn't."
There was something harrowing in her tone. Quizzical, he turned to study her. He knew that look. It was the same look Alys had given Claire when they first told their healer the girl would make the climb.
"I will not go until I'm ready, Bethan."
The fear did not abate in her eyes, however. "I need to show you something. I will return." She stood, walked a few paces, then stopped. She turned back to Einar, uncertain. "Unless...do you wish to come with me?"
He thought about walking along the village road, through the market, past all the intrusive stares. "No, I'll stay." As she walked away, he called after her, "Please don't tell them."
Bethan looked at him, serious, and nodded, short and curt. She left the basket at the gate and then she was gone.
Alone, he was given room to ponder. What was done that brought him back his gait? Death, he was certain, of the dark man who lived atop the cliff. Seven years had passed since Claire made her climb. She must have taken his offer at the top. What did he trade her for her son? How did she overcome that, and come to enact revenge on that creature? He knew without doubt that it was her who ended the trader, just like he had known not to take the offer of warmth that day half a lifetime ago.
He had barely thought about what Bethan might want to show him by the time she returned. She approached him slowly, hands clasped. He watched her curiously. The concern didn't come until he saw there were tears in her eyes.
"Alys made me promise not to show you, ever," she said, then opened her hands. "I'm sorry."
In her palm was a rock tightly wrapped in red cloth, nearly covered in dried blood.
He would wake in the morning and lift himself on his toes, then slowly sink back down to his heels. At first he reached for the wall for support, then thought on how he had tied her hands while she ran and jumped so that she might learn to rely on her feet alone.
No longer did he touch the wall for balance.
Though difficult, doing the exercises was the easy part.
He kept her stone, bloody as it was, under his skins where he slept.
He was sitting by his fire, holding the red stone like holding a baby bird. That it was covered in blood could mean anything. He did not doubt she would have injured herself somewhere along the way up; it would have been unavoidable. This blood could have been a sliced palm, a battered leg. It had made it to the bottom after all, hadn't it? She had thrown it.
Or the cliff had thrown her.
That was what others must have thought. That was why Alys had made young Bethan promise not to tell him what they had found. Claire died seven years ago on the climb to the top and they did not want him to live with that—the failure of letting the woman he loved die.
If she had fallen, they should have found her, or at least a trace of her. There were very little places where her body could have been trapped up there. Most of the cliff was a sheer incline, and what ledges did exist were narrow enough that a girl falling onto them would have bounced off on her way down. Yet there had been nothing. Of that he was sure they could not keep from him—a crumpled body on the rocky floor.
He made a pocket on the inside of his sweater and tucked her stone away inside.
For some time after his return from his failed climb, Einar had sunk into a slough of despair that kept him from tending to his strength. The muscles in his legs as well as his arms had decayed, his belly had softened, and his spirit had withered. After his father passed, something had been returned to him, like he had remembered what the world was made of, and what his role within it was. He found all the comfort and companionship he needed in his sheep, and slowly, bit by bit, he had begun to regain what strength he could.
Back then, while Claire had been training to climb the cliff, lifting her body from the floor with her trunk and her arms, Einar had been doing the same. She would lift her chin to a branch in her doorway, and so he did too in his own hut. Not long after they began her training, his upper body had been restored to its former fettle.
Now he stood at the base of the path up to the cliff, early in the morning so that no one else would find him. When he started to run, he tripped and fell, so he righted himself again and took off slower this time, being sure to lift his feet higher than what he was used to.
Halfway to the waterfall a stitch in his side doubled him over, and forced him to stop. He heaved for breath, ashamed and annoyed. When Claire first began this run, she had not needed to stop for breath. But now Einar was nearly twice the age she had been at that time.
He thought on what he had taught her. Calm yourself, think on the problem, and find the solution.
Einar waited until his breathing was deep and even, then started up on the path again, slower and steadier. He reached the waterfall then ran back, still slow. He did not need to stop for rest. He did this again, then again. The next day, he picked up his speed, and again the next, each step that much closer to her.
