At the bottom of the short message written on animal hide were a signature and a date. Shade calculated that it had been written in the fifteenth year after the priest left the island. So if he had truly returned here, he should have seen this letter.
"But this letter doesn't look like anyone has touched it."
Sivie said that, though it was possible the priest had seen the letter and put it back, Shade didn't think he would have left it behind once he had read it:
"So although he returned to the island, he most likely never came back here."
Shade looked around the dilapidated house. Though snow covered only the ground beneath the holes in the roof, every other part of the place had long since lost all traces of human habitation:
"Perhaps he was worried that the area around his home was still being watched. But the information I received says that the people of the tribe never monitored this place. And this letter..."
Shade hesitated, rubbing the ink on the animal hide with his fingertips. The ink had not faded even after nearly two hundred years. Sivie leaned closer to inspect it as well, the loose strands by her ears brushing against Shade's face:
"Something wrong with the ink?"
"Luvia has recently been trying to make a peculiar kind of ink. The ink used for this letter is very similar to the ink she's making. But that ink wasn't necessarily lost two hundred years ago."
Though the priest had never returned, the matter of the ink was still enough for them to search the house carefully. The family had taken most of their belongings when they moved away, but quite a few things had been left behind.
It seemed that the master of this household