The Ropemaker

3

The Gathering

Tilja slept almost till noon. She must have fallen asleep at the table and been carried to bed by Da. Now she stirred, feeling strange and lost until the memories of yesterday came flooding back.

“Someone’s deigning to move at last, then?” snarled Meena’s voice from the far side of the stove.

Tilja heaved herself up. She seemed to be still in her underclothes.

“Where’s Ma?” she whispered. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know about all right. She’s here and warm and breathing, that’s all I can say.”

Tilja scrambled up and staggered round past the stove. Ma was lying on her back with her mouth slightly open and her eyes closed. Even in the dim light Tilja could see that her face was not quite ashen; and there was warmth in her hand, but her fingers didn’t move to return Tilja’s grasp. Meena was sitting with her back to the wall between the bed and the stove.

“And I don’t know what that mark on her is, neither,” she said. “Only I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Tilja peered. The dark round patch on Ma’s forehead was about as large as her thumbnail, and seen close was nothing like a bruise, sharp edged and all the same blue-purple shade, without scar or swelling. It didn’t look like a hurt or wound, but more like part of one of the patterns with which the apple pickers painted their faces for the cider feast each fall.

“Do you think . . . ?”

“Not if I can help it,” snapped Meena. “You can hope if you want to. I don’t know that hoping ever did much harm.”

Tilja looked at her and realized that after yesterday her feelings about her grandmother had changed. Though Meena sounded as cross as ever—crosser—really she was worried sick about her daughter but she wasn’t going to admit it to anyone, so she covered up by snarling. Now she was glaring at Tilja, her pale blue eyes glinting with seeming rage. Tilja smiled back.

“Glad somebody’s got something to laugh about,” said Meena. “What’s so funny, then?”

“You, Meena,” said Tilja. “You were wonderful yesterday. That must all have hurt horribly, but you never said anything.”

“No point, was there? I don’t mind bearing provided nobody asks me to grin. And while we’re throwing posies around I may as well tell you you didn’t do so badly yourself.”

“Is your hip sore today?”

“Been better. Tickled it up a bit with all that banging around. But I’ll do.”

“Meena, that thing that bellowed at us when we were coming away from the lake—do you think . . . ?”

“No I don’t. I’ve told you already. And that’s enough of that.”

This time Meena’s snarl was genuine. Her glare was stony. With a gulp Tilja changed the subject.

“Where’s Da? And Anja?”

“Feeding the beasts. They’ll be starving by the time they’ve done, so you get a move on and get yourself washed and all, and then you can finish seeing to their dinner. After that you can run down to my place and get the cat fed, or I’ll never hear the last of it from him. I’ll be staying on here awhile, till I’ve some idea how your mother’s doing.”

Ma didn’t stir for the next five days. The only change in her that they could see was that the mark on her forehead faded from its dark blue-purple to a deep red and then a fiery orange and a softer yellow, until on the sixth morning it was almost gone.

Meanwhile Tilja had her hands and mind full with helping on the farm, doing all the endless things that Ma usually dealt with, while Anja did her best to take over some of Tilja’s tasks, and did them very well, provided someone kept telling her she was doing them marvelously. Tilja was glad to be kept too busy to brood. She didn’t want to think about the adventure in the forest, or to puzzle about the “little wretches” that Meena had seen by the lake, or the invisible great creature that had bellowed its challenge at them as they were leaving. The whole episode had been terrifying, but now it was over, that momentary fear was replaced by another, far deeper and more enduring. What had happened in the forest had been something new, something that had never happened before. To Tilja it seemed a sign that her world was changing, a sign, perhaps, that everything she loved—Ma, Da and Anja, Brando and the animals, Woodbourne, the whole Valley—was somehow going to be taken from her.

Tilja was by Ma’s bed, feeding the stove, when Ma woke. Tilja heard the rustle of bedclothes and looked up. Ma’s eyes were open and she had raised an arm and with her fingertips was caressing the place on her forehead where the mark had been.

“It touched me with its horn,” she murmured.

Her eyes closed, her arm fell away, and she was asleep again. When she finally woke that evening she couldn’t remember even that. She could recall riding Tiddykin out through the forest in the dawn light, reaching the lake, heaving the barley sacks out of the panniers and spilling the seed in heaps beneath the cedar branches at the top of the meadow, where the snow wouldn’t at once bury it. Then she was walking back down to the shore of the lake to start her singing. After that, nothing.

It was a long while before she had her strength back, but in a few days she was up and doing what she could around the farm. It was hard to say whether she was more silent than before, because unlike her mother and daughters she had never been much of a talker, but silent she certainly was, and sometimes Tilja would find her halfway through some task, standing stock-still, with a blank, lost look on her face. At the interruption she would sigh and shake herself and go on with what she’d been doing.

But it was all clearly an effort for her, and Tilja and Anja had to do as much as they could to make up. One day they were up in the forest inspecting and resetting traps, and collecting firewood, when Tilja needed the hand ax and found it was gone, though she was certain that last time she’d used it she’d slotted it back into its notch on the logging sled just as carefully as Ma would have done.

This was a disaster. Metal was scarce in the Valley. For small coins they used counters made from the hard, dark wood of a tree that grew only in one narrow glen in the foothills. Mostly they traded by barter and cooked in clay pots. In the old days iron had been brought in from the Empire, but when the Valley was closed off they could only use and reforge and use again the things they already had, hoarding every scrap. Iron still became increasingly scarce, and now was used almost solely for working tools. Even a small hand ax would be hard to replace.

Tilja tethered Calico to a tree and they started to work back along the way they’d come, scuffling the fallen leaves aside with their feet, but there were long stretches where the sled had left no traces on the leaf litter, and soon Tilja couldn’t be sure they were still on their track. She was already miserable and furious with herself when Anja caught her arm. Tilja shook her off.

“No, please,” said Anja. “Stop. I want to listen.”

With an angry sigh Tilja stood and stared around. No, this was wrong. They hadn’t come past this cedar. It must be over there. . . .

“This way,” said Anja, and scampered off between the trees. It was the direction Tilja had decided on anyway, so she followed more slowly, scanning the ground for runner marks. Anja had stopped and was standing by another cedar with her head tilted to one side, listening. Before Tilja came up with her she was off again.

And there were the sled marks! Tilja followed them slowly, searching beside the left-hand runner, where the ax notch was. There would need to have been a stump or a root or something to jolt the ax loose. . . . She almost bumped into Anja hurrying to meet her with the ax in her hand. Her whole body flooded with relief.

“It had hooked itself onto a holly branch,” said Anja. “The cedars told me.”

“That was nice of them,” said Tilja, humoring her. Then her heart seemed to stand still. She remembered her visit to the lake last summer. And something Anja had said that day when Ma hadn’t come back from singing to the cedars . . .

“Anja,” she asked. “Do you know where the lake is?”

“Oh yes. It’s over there. But it’s too far to go before dinner. Do you want to?”

Anja, who could barely be trusted to find her way down to Meena’s cottage, let alone know how long it would take to get there . . .

“How do you know?”

“I just know. It’s in my head. It’s always been. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Only you can hear what the cedars say. I can’t. And you know the way to the lake. Not me. And one day it’ll be you singing to the cedars, like Ma does. Not me. And Woodbourne will be your farm. Not mine.”

Anja was staring at her. Of course she’d known she could do those things, but she hadn’t known what it meant, hadn’t understood. She was too young.

“But you’re eldest,” she said.

“Aunt Grayne’s older than Ma,” said Tilja. “I’d never thought about it. Well, at least at first snowfall I’ll be able to lie snug in my bed and think of you having to get up and trudge out into the forest and sing to the cedars.”

She did her best to smile. Anja didn’t try.

“It isn’t going to be like that,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Singing to the cedars. Something’s happening. The cedars keep talking about it, only . . . oh, Til, I’m not allowed . . .”

Anja burst into tears, and wouldn’t be comforted. All Tilja could make out was that the cedars had told her something and said she mustn’t tell anyone else except Ma.

Next morning, when they were out in the freezing scullery washing themselves before getting dressed, Anja said, “It doesn’t mean anything, Til. I won’t let it. This is your home too.”

“No it isn’t!” Tilja snarled. “Not anymore! Don’t talk about it!”

She knew it was unfair. Anja was doing her best, and it wasn’t her fault, but Tilja couldn’t help it, and when Anja started to cry she just stood there, scowling.

Then Ma came in to see what the trouble was, and though Tilja, in her hurt and pride, had made Anja promise to say nothing about what had happened in the wood, she blurted it out. Ma knelt between them, hugging one in each arm, trying to comfort them both, but stiffly and awkwardly, because she wasn’t good at this sort of thing. Almost at once Tilja wrenched herself away and shoved her clothes on and went out on an empty stomach to look for a horse to groom. She chose Calico, because she was sure to be in just as bad a mood as Tilja herself, and Tilja could curse and slap her much more satisfactorily than she could have done sweet and amenable Tiddykin.

Still no true snow fell, and despite the incessant gales it was far warmer than it should have been. All winters in the Valley, since anyone could remember and long before, had begun with two weeks of steady, settling snow, followed by almost three months of clear skies and hard frosts, with just a day and a night of more snow now and again. This winter the ponds barely froze, but there was day after day of lashing rain and sleet, and if you saw the sun once a week for half a morning or so you thought you were lucky, and all the lanes were mire, and the animals stood hock deep in the paddocks and got mud fever and worse—a miserable time.

Meena had gone back to her cottage and Tilja plodded down to visit her most days, which she’d never willingly done before. She didn’t expect any kind of welcome, and didn’t get one, but she knew Meena was glad to see her, and if for some reason Tilja missed a visit she sulked like a child at the next.

Tilja told herself she went because she’d become fond of Meena, but there was another reason she didn’t want to think about. While she was at the farm, everything that she saw or felt or heard or smelled reminded her again that it would never be hers. It would be Anja’s, and she, Tilja, would have to leave it. Go away and live somewhere else, like Aunt Grayne.

Of course her parents knew how unhappy she was, and did what they could. Ma didn’t try hugging her again, but made a point of doing household chores with her instead of sending her off on her own, and Da would sometimes take her with him when there was a job she could help with, and even let her manage Dusty once or twice. But neither of them tried to talk to her about what had happened. It wasn’t their way. They weren’t talkers.

Meena was different. Tilja got no sympathy from Meena, who only said, “Well, you’ll have to make a life of your own like most people do. No point moping about it. Sooner you get used to the idea, the better you’ll be.”

Despite that, Tilja felt that Meena understood how she was feeling better than any of the others.

One afternoon late in the year, when Tilja was wrapping up to plod back to the farm, Meena said, “And by the by, you can tell that father of yours we’ll need one of the horses to take us to the winter Gathering. And not that rackety brute, Calico, tell him.”

Tilja was startled. One of her parents went to the midsummer Gathering most years, to trade and gossip, and last year Da had taken both her and Anja with him. But no one had been to the winter Gathering since she could remember, and there’d been no question of Meena going even to the midsummer one because of her hip.

“I’ll ask him, if you like,” said Tilja.

“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll tell him. From me.”

Tilja grinned at her and got a scowl back, but that evening at supper she said, “Meena wants me to go with her to the Gathering.”

“Me too,” said Anja.

Da frowned, and was starting to shake his head when Ma said, with sudden, unusual firmness, “Yes, they must go. They’ll need a horse.”

“Not Calico,” said Tilja quickly.

“I can spare Tiddykin for a day or two,” said Ma. “She’s not up to carrying the pair of you, so—”

“Three of us,” interrupted Anja, perfectly aware there wasn’t any question of her going, but characteristically not missing the chance of a bit of spoiling and petting to make up for it. This time, though, she’d misjudged the mood.

“Anja, be quiet,” said Ma. “You’ll have to walk the whole way, Tilja, but you won’t get there and back in a day, this time of year, anyway, so you can stay with Grayne, and you won’t get too tired. All right, my dear?”

Tilja glanced anxiously at Da. She’d scarcely ever heard Ma take charge like this before—that was his job. He didn’t look surprised or put out, though, but simply nodded and that was that.

Aunt Grayne looked like a plumper, jollier version of Ma. She had married a farmer’s son whose family owned a rich bit of land by the river. His father had died when Tilja was a baby, and he was the farmer now. Their house was larger and newer than Woodbourne, with glass in the kitchen windows, but they didn’t give themselves airs.

Despite what Ma had said, it had seemed a weary distance to walk, all the way from Woodbourne, and by the time Tilja led Tiddykin into the yard she was far too tired to pay much attention to what was going on, and fell asleep almost as soon as she’d finished her supper. But next morning, when they were alone in the kitchen, Grayne said, “Tilja, I’m truly sorry for you. I know what it’s like. It happened to me, too, you know, having a little sister who could hear the cedars, when I couldn’t.”

“Oh, Aunt Grayne, why didn’t they tell me long, long ago?”

“Because you don’t start hearing the cedars the moment you’re born, or even as soon as you can talk. You sort of grow into it. I wouldn’t know, of course, but that’s what your mother says. It wasn’t too late for you last summer, even. . . .”

“That’s why Ma took me to the lake!”

“Yes, but then, when she realized Anja was starting to listen to the cedars . . . As I say, I’m sorry, Tilja. I know how it feels.”

“You really minded?”

“I don’t think I stopped crying for a month. There were times when I felt I could have killed Selly.”

Yes, thought Tilja. Aunt Grayne had known how it felt.

“But you’re happy now?” she said.

“Yes, of course. Very. I often dream about Woodbourne, but . . .”

“But you don’t come there. That’s why we always have to visit you.”

“Yes, I decided if I had to stop loving it . . . I don’t know how I can help you, my dear. The best I can tell you is that you’re going to have to make a life of your own, and that’s good. If you’d been able to hear the cedars you’d have had no choice. You would have belonged to Woodbourne all your life—just as much as Woodbourne would have belonged to you—more, perhaps. You’d have had to marry somebody and have children, so that there’d be a daughter who could hear the cedars and belong to Woodbourne when her time came. Your grandmother . . . no, that’s her story, if you can ever get her to tell you. She’s very fond of you, by the way.”

Tilja was still trying to think of an answer when they heard Meena’s hoarse shout from the parlor, and she hurried off to help her into her boots.

They hadn’t far to go now, but by the time they were on their way the road was crowded. For the last few days there’d been a sharp, gusting wind with a few thin snow flurries, but at least there’d been frost enough to harden the road surface, or the throng would have turned it to a quagmire. This was not at all like the midsummer crowd, when everybody, even those with stock to drive, wore their brightest clothes, so they could be seen for miles across the fields like strings of colored beads moving steadily along. And they sang then, and as their paths gathered to the center hallooed to each other, so that the spirit of summer festival seemed to have overflowed the Bowl of Gathering and spread across the Valley.

But now everyone was in winter clothes, browns and grays, like the bare landscape, and the first thing they spoke of when they met was the weather. This was not a normal subject of conversation, as it is in some countries. What was the point, when the weather was just what you’d expect? You said, “Nice day,” or “Cold enough for you?” and went on to something else. But not this year, though all the conversations were pretty much the same, and came to the same conclusion—no one liked it.

The Gathering was held at a place where long ago the river had changed its course and a bend had silted up, leaving a natural bowl, open at one end, with the river running past. The convenors had, by custom, seen to it that good log fires were burning, round which people could settle and talk. The main trade was in the autumn’s pickles and wines and preserves and cheeses, and smoked or salted meat and fish, and also in what families had been making to pass the winter evenings, carved knickknacks and fortune spoons and small furniture, rugs and hangings and winter cloaks and so on.

Tilja settled Meena down with Aunt Grayne by one of the fires, tethered Tiddykin at a horse rail and gave her a nose bag, and started to wander round the stalls looking for a small present for Anja, to make up for her not having been with them. The river end of the arena was already crowded. She overheard at least two people saying that there were far more here than they’d have expected at a winter Gathering.

Then a drum started to beat, a heavy, throbbing note. Tilja knew what it meant, because she’d heard it before at the midsummer Gathering she’d been to. Though people came mainly for the gossip and the stalls, the real purpose of these meetings was to allow matters affecting the whole Valley to be discussed and decided. If someone managed to persuade the convenors that the subject was worth it, they would order the drum to be beaten, and those who were interested enough would gather at the inner end of the bowl and listen, and if they wanted, speak, and finally vote with a show of hands. Most people didn’t bother, but at midsummer Tilja had gone along out of curiosity. It had been pretty boring, something to do with preventing sheep scab spreading from farm to farm.

This time, though, almost everyone stopped talking as the slow, menacing thud filled the bowl. At least half the crowd left what they were doing and began to move toward the sound. Tilja went to look for Meena, but met her already hobbling along. Aunt Grayne wasn’t with her, but a young woman had taken pity on her and was helping her (and getting no thanks for it, of course). Tilja took over, and they made their way along amid the mass of people until their way was blocked by the throng.

“This is no good,” said Meena, and began to barge a path sideways until she reached the slope that surrounded the bowl. There were a lot of people already standing there for a better view, but muttering and groaning, she forced her way up between them with Tilja trailing behind and smiling with nervous apology at anyone Meena had shoved aside. They stopped at last, and turned, and Tilja found herself looking out over the heads of the crowd to the slope opposite. To her left were the fires and the stalls, with the river beyond them, and to her right the smooth curve of the hill that closed the bowl off. A section of it had been cut away to make a small platform where several people were standing, the drummer with his tall drum, the three convenors with their yellow scarves of office, and an old man leaning on a staff, with a slight, dark boy about Tilja’s age beside him. Despite the age difference, the old man and the boy were strikingly alike, with narrow, hooked noses and pointed chins.

“This’ll do,” said Meena. “Move over a bit, will you? I’ve got to rest this leg of mine.”

Without waiting for an answer she nudged the man beside her off the hummock he was standing on and groaningly lowered herself onto it. She was making far more fuss about her aches and pains than she ever did at home, but when Tilja started to sympathize she was answered with a special blank stare that told her Meena’s hip was no worse than on most days. She was just using it to get what she wanted, and why not?

The drumbeat ended with a long roll. The crowd hushed. The convenors stood aside and the old man moved forward, feeling his way with his staff and gripping the boy’s shoulder with his other hand. The boy stopped him at the edge of the platform and he leaned on his staff for a while, as if studying his audience, though Tilja guessed he must be almost blind. His body looked slight but not frail under his dark brown cloak, and strong white hair bushed out beneath his fur cap. Judging the moment when the crowd’s attention was about to break, he drew himself up and spoke.

“I am Alnor Ortahlson, from Northbeck, under the mountains. It is my task to sing to the snows each year, as my father did, and each one’s father before him, since the time of Reyel Ortahlson, who began it. I do so still, despite my age and blindness, because my son is dead, and his son is not yet old enough.”

His voice seemed not much louder than a speaking voice, but it was slow and firm, and carried clearly through the come-and-go wind.

“You all know Reyel’s story,” he went on, “though some of you do not believe it, and most of you are not aware that a man of our family still sings to the snows each year. I cannot make you believe. All I can tell you is that my own father never told me what song to sing, but when my turn came I climbed to the face of the glacier and there the song came to me and told me how I should sing it. Then I went back down to my millhouse, and by the time I was at the door the snows were falling, as they had done for my father and all our fathers before him.

“This is the forty-seventh year in which I have climbed to the glacier and sung. Not the same music always, nor the same words, but still the same song. Each of those years the snows heard me, and fell.

“But not this year. This year no song came to me. I sang what I could from memory, but the snows did not hear me. I knew as my grandson led me down the mountain that the true snows would not fall.

“They did not fall. Which of you has seen true snows these last miserable months? Without them, the glacier will begin to melt, and then what will stand between us and the horsemen of the northern plains?

“Yes, that is all I have to tell you. And yes, the convenors were uncertain whether it was cause enough to have the drum beaten, but I persuaded them. How can snow hear, or not hear, you will ask. If a family take it into their heads to go out and sing to the sun each night, before dawn, does that mean they have caused the sun to rise? Of course not.

“In return I have two questions to ask you. Why are you all here? Why so many, and from so far, at this ill season? What persuaded you to come? Was it a dream, a voice in your head, some vaguer feeling? If so, is it possible that that dream, that voice, that feeling was, without your knowing it, the same thing that I felt when I knew in my heart that the snows did not hear me?

“My second question is this. Is there a woman here from Woodbourne, in the south, a woman of the lineage of Dirna Urlasdaughter?”

“Yes, of course I’m here!” snapped Meena from the ground. “Help me up, some of you. Look sharp! Don’t hang about!”

The man she had shoved off the hummock lifted her to her feet and stood her on it, and the people just below her cleared to either side so that everyone could see her. Her head went back and her chin stuck out, as if she were facing down an assembly of unjust accusers.

“Well, here I am,” she snapped. “Take a good look at me. I’m Meena Urlasdaughter from Woodbourne, and I’m here to tell you the old gaffer’s right. Something’s up, and he knows it, and I know it, and if you’ve got any sense in your heads you know it, and that’s why you’re here, like he told you.

“I’ll tell you how I know it. First snows, one of our women goes into the forest and leaves a couple of sacks of barley under the cedars by the lake, and sings to the cedars. Dirna started it, because Faheel told her, like he told Reyel to sing to the snows, and we’ve done it ever since. It’s what keeps the forest like it is, with the sickness in it, so that men can’t go in there, and the Emperor can’t get at us like he used to, any more than the horsemen can get past the glacier at us to come murdering and looting. At least you know about the sickness. None of you men who live along by the forest will go in there, not for more than a minute or two, like my fool of a son-in-law tried the day I’m going to tell you about. Went in to look for my daughter Selva who’d gone to sing to the cedars, and came out all dizzy and sick, and stupider than he is by nature. But not so stupid he didn’t send for me, which he should have done in the first place, and me and Tilja here had to go in and get my daughter out.

“Wait. There’s more to it than that. We found my daughter lying by the lake, unconscious, and we couldn’t wake her, so we brought her home on the sled, and she didn’t stir for six whole days, and then she couldn’t remember anything of what had happened to her, nor why she had this mark on her forehead I’ve never seen the like of. Since Dirna’s day we’ve sung to the cedars, I tell you, and nothing like this has happened in all those years, only now it has, the selfsame year, what’s more, as the old gaffer went up to sing to the snows and they didn’t hear him, and we’ve got this weather no one’s ever known to happen before.

“I tell you something’s wrong with the forest, just like something’s wrong with the mountains, and if we don’t do something about it the sickness will be gone, and next thing the Emperor will be sending his tax collectors up here, with his armies to back them up, and they won’t just be after this year’s taxes either. It’ll be all the taxes we’ve not being paying these last twenty generations! And if you think what we’ve been talking about, Alnor and me, is all just chance-come things, might have happened any of these years, only now they’ve all come together, then you’re bigger fools than I took you for.”

She stopped abruptly, and the man helped her down onto the hummock. The drummer beat a short roll and a number of people put up their hands to speak. The convenors took them in turn. Most of them simply wanted to confirm that they’d had a dream, or some odd feeling telling them to come. One woman said she hadn’t meant to until the last minute, but her old dog had tugged at her cloak and pretty well led her to the Gathering. Then a burly man on the slope opposite Tilja said, “This is all very well, and something strange may be happening, if you want to believe in that sort of thing. For myself, I don’t, but supposing I did, what then? What are we supposed to do about it? Try if anyone else has better luck, singing to the snows and the trees? Bit late for that, this year, anyway. We’re half through winter already, and the time for the main snowfall is come and gone two months back, so how are we going to tell if something’s worked, or it hasn’t? That’s till next winter, anyway.

“So what I say is, let’s see how it all goes for a few months, and what sort of a spring we get, and so on, and maybe talk about it again here midsummer, if anyone’s still bothered. And then maybe next fall, after Alnor’s gone and done his stuff in the mountains and Meena’s daughter’s done hers in the forest, we’ll get our snowfall like we always have, and we’ll know this year was just some kind of freak. Or maybe we won’t, and that’ll be the time to get our heads together and sort out what to do about it.”

There was a buzz of agreement.

“Told you so,” growled Meena, though she had done no such thing. “Wait and see, wait and see—only idea in their thick heads. Dolts! This time they’re going to wait, and see they’re too late.”

“What do you think we should be doing then, ma’am?” asked the man who’d helped her.

“Go and look . . . ,” she began, but somebody else was already speaking and she was shushed into silence. There was a rule that nobody could speak twice, so she didn’t get a chance to tell the assembly what she thought before the convenors closed the discussion. Since nobody had had any other suggestions than wait and see, that was put to the vote and carried on a show of hands. The drum beat three times to signal that it was over.

Meena grabbed Tilja by the arm and dragged herself up.

“All right,” she said, “if that’s how they want it. Go and find the blind gaffer—Alnor or something. I’ve got to talk to him.”

Tilja hurried off, worming her way as best she could through the crowd as they drifted back toward the fires and the stalls. Halfway to the platform she was almost knocked off her feet by someone weaseling through in the other direction. He muttered an apology without looking, but she managed to grab his arm. It was the boy who’d been with old Alnor.

“Hey! I’m in a hurry,” he said. “Leave off, will you?”

“My grandmother—she’s Meena—wants to talk to Alnor,” she said.

“That makes two of them,” he said. “And the old boy’s raging. Can you get her across to the platform?”

“When it’s a bit clearer. Just don’t let him go away, or I’m in trouble.”

“Uh-huh—she looks a right handful.”

“No, she’s all right. She’s great.”

“If you say so. See you in a bit.”

And he was gone, leaving Tilja instantly furious. What right had he? And then not giving her a chance to show what she thought of him? Seething, she made her way back to Meena and found her on her hummock. Most of the others had gone and there was room to move.

“Didn’t take you long,” said Meena.

“I ran into the boy,” said Tilja. “Alnor wants to talk to you, too. He’s at the platform.”

“All right, then. Let’s be going.”

With Tilja’s help she picked her way down the slope and hobbled over to the platform. They found Alnor just in front of it, leaning on his staff with his blind eyes seeming to stare in fury at the retreating crowd. Everything about him, even his stillness, expressed his anger. He seemed unaware of their coming, and Meena stood and studied him in silence for a little. The boy, Tilja was glad to see, had disappeared.

“So you’re Alnor Ortahlson,” said Meena abruptly. “I’ve heard of you. It was your son died rafting, right?”

Slowly Alnor turned toward her.

“That was my son,” he said harshly.

“Hard on you, but that’s how it goes,” said Meena. “Well, I’m Meena Urlasdaughter, and we’ve one or two things to talk about. Might be warmer by the fires, but there’ll be too much chat.”

“I have asked my grandson to fetch us two horns of hot cider.”

“Just what I fancy. Run along, Tilja, and give the lad a hand. He’ll be spilling it all over the ground if I know boys. Get a couple of mugs out of the saddlebag if you want some for you two.”

Tilja didn’t want anything to do with the boy, but reluctantly she hurried off, fetched the mugs, and found him at one of the cider stalls. He’d just been served, and sure enough was trying to find a way of carrying two large horns, brimfull of steaming cider, without disaster through the crowd. She took one of the horns and they tipped some of the cider into each of the mugs and carried them all back. They found their two grandparents sitting on a sort of turf bench, with their backs against the timbers that shored up the platform.

“Just what the wise woman ordered,” said Meena. “That should put a morsel of warmth into old bones. Now we’ve got to talk, so you two can make yourselves scarce for a bit. No, first you can bring me my dinner, Tilja, and that rug. Off you go.”

Cross with the whole world by now, Tilja moved off to do as she was told, sipping the heady, sweet drink as she went. The boy strolled nonchalantly beside her, seeming to take it for granted that that was what she wanted.

“I’m Tahl,” he said. “Ortahl for long, but that’s confusing in our family. Who are you?”

“Tilja,” she said. She managed to make the syllables sound as chilly as the day.

“Tilja Urlasdaughter, of Woodbourne under the forest,” he said, making it sound like some grand title from a story about old heroes. “Go in there much?”

“A bit.”

“So what’s in there? Apart from trees. Cedars, your grandmother said. And that lake. And squirrels and birds and whatever. What else?”

Tilja paused in her stride. It was as if her body had wanted to halt and confront him, but she’d managed to force it to walk on. She did so in silence, not looking at him. More than anything that had happened since Anja had found the hand ax, this was what had been eating into her heart. Meena knew the answer to Tahl’s question, and Ma, and even Anja. She wasn’t sure if Da knew. But she, Tilja, didn’t. It made her feel as if she didn’t really belong in her own family, didn’t belong at Woodbourne, not now, not ever.

“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” he said as they reached the horse lines. “I don’t see why not. Sure, you don’t talk about it outside the family. We don’t, either, about . . . about what we’ve got. But this is different. We’re Ortahlsons and you’re Urlasdaughters. We aren’t like anyone else. We can tell each other, can’t we?”

Tilja was standing beside Tiddykin, unbuckling the strap that held the rolled rug in place behind the saddle. She stopped and stared at the hornbeam buckle, polished with wear, as if it could tell her what to do. There’d been something in Tahl’s voice, still the same teasing, unsettling tone at the surface, but underneath a kind of pleading, just as unsettling.

“All right,” she said bitterly. “I’ll tell you. The answer is, I don’t know. I haven’t been told. Because I can’t hear what the cedars say. I don’t know the way to the lake. My little sister, Anja, does. You’ll have to ask her.”

She glanced at him. He was staring at her. She couldn’t bear it and turned away before she started to weep.

“That’s rough,” he said in a totally different voice, sensible, gentle, as if he meant every word. “That’s really rough. It isn’t fair.”

She unbuckled the rug and got the dinner bag out of the saddlebag through a blur of tears, and they set off in silence for the far end of the arena. When they were about halfway there he said, “Look, we aren’t allowed to talk about it, either, but I’ve thought of a way. They won’t want us with them yet, so I’ll just get Alnor his dinner and then we’ll go over there on the slope where they can see us if they want us, and while we’re eating . . . right?”

They settled on the hummock where Meena had sat for the meeting and shared their food between them. Tahl had some little pink fish, pickled in sweet vinegar with herbs, which Tilja had never eaten before and thought delicious. Below them a group of men were setting out a ring for the kick-fighting contest. This was a popular sport in the Valley, and the best fighters were heroes in their villages.

“First,” he said, “you’d better tell me your story about Asarta and Reyel and Dirna. It sounds as if it’s different.”

She did so, between mouthfuls. It took a while. Some of the time Tahl seemed to be more interested in the kick-fighting, but she plowed on. Now and then she glanced across at the platform to check if Meena wanted her, but the two old people were still deep in talk, sitting side by side on the turf bench, sharing Meena’s rug. At the river end of the bowl the far-dwellers were beginning to start on their way home.

“That’s really interesting,” said Tahl when she finished. His eyes were sparkling with excitement.

“I thought you weren’t listening.”

“I don’t listen with my eyes, you know. But fighting’s in our blood. Alnor was Valley Champion four years running.”

“Can you do it?”

“My da died before I was old enough to start, and Alnor’s blind, so there’s no one to teach me.”

He tried to speak lightly, but Tilja could hear how much he minded.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’ll find someone. . . . But listen—I think I know what you’ve got in the forest—stuff in your story that isn’t in ours. It’s just a guess, but I’m pretty sure. Do you want me to tell you?”

“If you’re allowed to,” Tilja said sourly.

“All right, we’ll play a game. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to guess the answers, only I’m not going to tell you if you’re right or wrong. You’re going to guess that, too. Try it that way?”

The mocking note was back in his voice, but Tilja heard it differently now. It wasn’t her he was mocking, or anyone in particular. It was more like a screen, or a mask, behind which he could keep the real Tahl hidden. She’d had a glimpse of that Tahl just now, the glee of guessing the answer to the riddle, the sorrow of never being taught to kick-fight. She nodded.

“First question,” he said. “Why isn’t there any real magic in the Valley? There used to be, when it was part of the Empire. There was magic everywhere then. Where’s it gone?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, is magic like that? Isn’t it just something magicians do, like shoemakers make shoes? And there aren’t any magicians here, so we don’t get any magic.”

Tahl shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It’s a sort of stuff. It’s like the water that drives our mill. It has to be there to begin with, for the magician to do things with. If there wasn’t any leather, I suppose your magician could still make slippers and things out of something else, but they wouldn’t be as good as shoes. So people can still do silly little scraps of magic here, telling-fortunes spoons and so on, but it isn’t the real thing.”

“How do you know?”

He looked at her, but she knew the answer before he spoke.

“The same way that Anja knows the way to the lake, I suppose,” she said. And then, after a pause, “All right. Go on.”

“Same question another way round. You are a powerful magician. You want to close this whole Valley off. That’s going to take a lot of magic. Where do you get it from?”

“I don’t . . . oh. Out of the Valley? So that’s why there isn’t any left here now?”

“And where do you put it? You don’t need it in the Great Desert, of course. Nobody can cross that, anyway.”

“In the forest. In the mountains.”

“And supposing you’re right—I’m not saying you are, of course—what sort of things would you find living in a forest full of magic?”

“Oh . . . very magical things. I suppose the cedars are magic.”

“Yes, of course. But they don’t need sacks of barley fetched out to them as soon as the first snow falls, to keep them going through the winter. What else?”

Everything Tilja had been refusing to think about clicked into place.

“Unicorns,” she whispered.

“Interesting guess. What do you know about unicorns?”

“They’re supposed to be very difficult to catch. The only way you can do it is for the hunters to take a young woman with them and make her sit down somewhere while the men go and hide. Then the woman starts to sing and the unicorn comes and lays its head in her lap and the men can rush out and kill it. Oh, I see! They’re frightened of men and they don’t mind women! That’s why . . . But I think one of them did something to Ma . . . and later on Dusty wanted to fight it. . . . I didn’t see it but it sounded really big, only Meena called them ‘little wretches,’ and she said they’d been covering Ma up to stop her dying of cold. There can’t be two sorts of unicorn, can there?”

He frowned, for the moment as puzzled as she was.

“Let’s leave that,” he said. “You were just going to tell me, weren’t you, why women can go into the forest and men can’t.”

“Because the unicorns are only afraid of the men, so they make a special sort of sickness. It fills the forest, so that men can’t come there. They’re magical, so they can do that. Oh, but they like to hear the women singing! Ma’s really singing to them! Singing to the cedars is just a way of talking about it, so as not to say anything about unicorns.”

“She could be doing both—supposing you’re right,” he said dryly. “There’s not going to be only one kind of magic in a magical forest. Alnor sings to the snows, as well as . . .”

He caught himself just in time, and glanced at her.

“You can’t have unicorns in the mountains,” she said. “You must have something else.”

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Too difficult. To guess, I mean. But it wasn’t there this year. I take him most of the way up. There’s a little cave where I wait for him and he goes on alone. He says his feet know the path. I think mine do too, but I haven’t tried. Anyway, this year I knew something was different already, while I was waiting, and then I saw him coming down the path, feeling his way with his staff, which he didn’t usually do, and I went to meet him, and he said, ‘Take me home. It is not there. It is gone.’

“And there’s something else. Alnor says the magic is running out—getting weaker, or being sucked away—he isn’t sure. He says the waters have told him. We aren’t farmers. We’re right up in the hills, where it’s almost all woods. When the timber’s cut we raft it down the river. But we’ve got a small sawmill. It’s driven by one of the streams from the glacier, and since he’s been blind Alnor’s spent a lot of his time sitting out by the mill, listening to what the waters are saying. They talk all the time. I’m just beginning to hear what they say. It’s a kind of mutter, the same thing over and over, but changing a little bit each time, so if you listen long enough you’ve heard a whole word go by.”

“Why didn’t he tell the meeting that?”

“Because . . . Sorry, they want us. Who’s that talking to your grandmother?”

“That’s Aunt Grayne. . . . All right, we’re coming!”

She stood and waved to show Meena that she’d seen her signal and ran down the slope, feeling far happier than she had for days.

It rained off and on all the way back to Woodbourne. In the worst of the weather they took what shelter they could find. They were about two-thirds of the way home, standing in a wayside barn watching yet another downpour being lashed to and fro by the wind, before Tilja finally forced herself to say what she wanted.

“Meena, listen. This is important. It really matters. You’ve got to tell me. Please. I know about the unicorns, so I’m not asking you that. I know you’re not allowed to tell me. No, listen. What I want to know is why is it that kind of a secret, so that even someone like me can’t be told? Does Da know? He can’t hear the cedars either.”

Meena glared out at the rain.

“Not getting any better,” she grumbled. “Might as well be on our way.”

“No!” yelled Tilja. “No, no, no! Can’t you see what you’re doing to me, keeping me out? Treating me as if I were a baby? Or some kind of animal?”

“Stop chattering, girl, and let’s be going.”

“You didn’t tell Aunt Grayne, did you? You kept her out. She decided to stop loving Woodbourne. She told me so. Did she stop loving you, too? I love you, Meena. I don’t want that to stop. . . . Please!”

She was weeping, now more with grief than anger. Through the blur she saw Meena turn to her, but it took her a moment to realize that the glistening patches on the lined old cheeks were not rain.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked. “I shouldn’t have said that. If you can’t tell me, I suppose you can’t. I’ll get used to it, I expect.”

“Anything for peace and quiet,” said Meena, doing her best to turn her own croak into a grumble.

She paused, still staring out at the weather. Tilja could sense her grimly making up her mind to break a lifetime of silence.

“All right,” she said at last. “We don’t go talking about the little wretches because that’s something the cedars tell us. But there’s more sense in it than you might think. There’s no magic in the Valley. It’s all been taken away, and used to keep us safe. No magic in people’s minds, either—you heard ’em yesterday— they’d no idea what Alnor and me were talking about, in spite of everything that had happened to bring so many of ’em in to the Gathering.

“They don’t mind us saying we’ve been listening to the cedars, or singing to ’em, even—that’s just a bit crazy, fancying we can hear something in the noise the wind makes swishing through the branches—not that we go gossiping about that much, either. But unicorns—don’t be stupid! Supposing I’d talked about unicorns back there at the Gathering, what d’you think they’d all have done? Laughed, that’s what. Not listened to a word I’d got to say. The only place for stuff like unicorns is in stories, because stories aren’t true.

“But we know they’re true, the ones of us that can hear the cedars, and the ones up at Northbeck who can tell what the waters are saying. I can’t give you that knowledge, any more than I could give it to Grayne. There’s no way I can make you certain sure, or certain sure you’re not allowed to talk about it. Suppose I’d told Grayne about the little wretches, and she’d gone off and married that husband of hers she’s so fond of—Lord knows why—do you think she wouldn’t have told him? Have that happen a few times, and after a while it’s all over the Valley, crazy folk at Woodbourne think they’ve got unicorns, and at Northbeck they go on about their ice dragon—”

“An ice dragon! I’ve never heard of an ice dragon!”

“Seeing you know one there’s no harm you knowing about the other, I suppose. A mighty great beast, Alnor’s da told him, and he’d seen it only the once. Wraps itself all round one of the mountain peaks and just by being there it brings our winters to keep the passes closed.”

“So it’s the same as with us? The waters talk to Alnor and he sings to the snows and that brings the ice dragon? And the cedars talk to Ma, and she sings to them, and that’s what keeps the unicorns there?”

“That’s right, far as I can make out. No one’s ever told us what’s really happening, mind you. All we know is what we found out, doing it, mother and daughter, all these years. But my ma told me she thought the real magic was in the cedars. That’s why we have to go to the lake to sing to them. The unicorns only do what they do, just by being there and being so scared of men. And if the cedars weren’t there, or if they lost their magic somehow, then there wouldn’t be any unicorns anymore.”

“Alnor says the magic is running out, Tahl told me. Is it the same with us?”

“Why do you think I’m here, girl, this time of year, at my age, with my hip and all? But could I tell them? D’you think they’d have listened to a word I’d got to say?”

Meena stood for a moment, glaring out at the downpour, then sighed with exasperation and turned back to Tilja.

“No reason to load it all on you,” she said. “You’ve troubles enough of your own. But you see what I’m talking about? When your grandfather wanted to marry me I told him about the cedars, listening to them, and sowing the barley field, and singing by the lake—all that. He didn’t like it much, but he took it for my sake, I’m glad to say. And the same with your own father. There’s no way either of them would have tried to stop us from doing what we know we’ve got to do. But supposing they’d come to us knowing our heads were full of crazy nonsense about unicorns . . . Your grandfather was specially fond of Grayne. She was always his pet. For all I know your father thinks it’s more than hard on you, being cut out by Anja, but they’ve known the reason. Supposing it was for something they’d grown up not believing in, couldn’t bring themselves to believe in . . . Do you see now why it’s better like it is, in spite of what it’s doing to you? And did to Grayne? I tell you, girl, it’s a knife in my heart every time I see her, thinking of it.”

“Yes,” muttered Tilja. “Yes, I think I see. Thank you, Meena. Look, I think the rain’s stopping.”

Once back at Woodbourne, Tilja told the others what had happened at the meeting, but not about her conversations with Tahl, or with Meena in the barn. She was, in a sense, no less miserable about knowing that she must one day leave Woodbourne, but at least she knew why, and could accept it as a fact, something that she had been born with—yes, like a kind of birthmark such as her cousin Rinter had on the side of his neck, a great ugly blotch that he wore high collars to cover up, because he didn’t like anyone to know it was there.

When she’d finished, Ma sighed angrily and looked at Da, who shook his head and shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. It crossed Tilja’s mind to wonder whether, next time she was alone with him, she could ask him how much he knew, but she was afraid to. Neither of her parents talked about anything like that, private stuff. They just got on with what had to be done, and expected you to do the same. She couldn’t imagine Ma saying the sort of thing Aunt Grayne had said to her about having to leave Woodbourne, nor talking to her as Meena had, with tears streaming down her cheeks at the thought of the way she had been forced to treat her elder daughter.

Next time Tilja went down to Meena’s, the door opened as she reached it. Tahl came out, pulled the door almost shut behind him, then faced her, amused, waiting for her to show astonishment. He was too late. She’d got over that while his back was turned.

“Hello,” she said. “Run away from home, then?”

“Come to seek my fortune,” he said.

“Here? You’ll be lucky. I suppose Alnor wanted to see Meena again. Where’s your horse?”

“We walked. He’s a tough old thing, but my feet are all blister. I saw you at the gate and came to warn you. Just go in quietly. Meena’s reading her spoons.”

Tilja nodded, took off her cloak and boots in the porch and slipped through into the kitchen. Alnor was sitting by the stove, his beaky profile dark against the glow from the open fire door. Meena was opposite him, crouching forward over a low table spread with a dark blue cloth. She was always stingy with her oil, and kept the shutters open on the bitterest day until it was almost too dark to see across the room, but this afternoon she had her lamp lit, with her three spoons lying side by side in its circle of light.

Silently Tilja moved to watch. She had seen Meena reading the spoons only twice before in her life, once at the family gathering after Tilja’s grandfather, Verlad, was buried, and she was making up her mind whether the time had come to pass the farm on to Ma, and the second time after Anja was born and she had been asked, as was the custom, to choose a name for her. Both times Tilja had been too small to understand what was happening, but there was nothing specially secret about fortune spoons—reading them wasn’t much more than a game to most people—so she knew enough by now to see what Meena was trying to do.

The spoons—two dark ones with a paler one between them— lay facedown, with their elaborately carved handles pointing away from Meena so that she could study the backs of the bowls. The pale one was a true named spoon. That is to say it had been cut from the timber of the very tree that had grown from the stone of the peach that Faheel had given to Dirna. Its name—or rather her name, for these spoons had personalities and genders—was Axtrig. The other two were not named, but they were also very old, and having been kept wrapped in the same cloth with Axtrig all those centuries, had absorbed something from her. A named spoon could not be sold or stolen. Not only would the buyer or thief be unable to read it, but it would bring the worst of luck into any house where it was kept. It could only be inherited, or else given as a gift, and then only if the gift was freely made, without being expected or asked for.

To read a spoon, all that was needed was to unwrap it, wipe it lightly with fine oil to bring out the grain, lay it under a good light and study the smooth back of the bowl in silence, thinking steadily of your need, or the need of whoever was consulting you, and after a while some of the lines in the grain would seem to become more marked. You could then “read” these lines, much as a palmist reads the lines of a hand. It was as simple as that, and as difficult.

So Meena stared at the spoons, snorting slightly with each slow breath. At last she pushed herself upright and sighed.

“Well, all I can tell you is I’m going on a journey, and a long one. I can think of a lot better things to do with my time, at my age, but it’s there, and there’s no getting away from it. There’s a lot of other stuff there besides, but I can’t make it out. That you, Tilja? Just lift the lamp, so I can wrap the darn things up and put ’em safe. Snuff it out, girl! What are you thinking of? I haven’t got oil to burn. And then you can nip off home and fetch one of the horses, so Alnor and me can come and have a word with your parents. And take that boy with you before he goes and says something that’ll cause him to feel the weight of my hand.”

“Want to know what it’s all about?” said Tahl, as he hobbled up the lane beside Tilja. “Alnor’s going to go and look for Faheel to get him to renew the magic in the mountains and the forest. I’m going with him.”

“Faheel! But that was centuries ago! He can’t still be alive!”

“The millstream says so. I told you at the Gathering, didn’t I? We can hear what it’s saying, just like your sister can hear what the cedars are saying.”

“But . . . how are you going to get through the forest?”

“On a raft, at snowmelt, when the river’s in spate. You remember the story, the Emperor’s soldier who got through on a very fast horse? He’d passed out, but he made it. Alnor thinks we may pass out too. That’s why we’re here. We’ve got to have a woman to steer the raft, or it’ll run aground on a bend, or something. He tried to persuade my aunts, but none of them . . .”

“And Meena’s going on a long journey.”

“I don’t know about long. Whoever it is has only got to get us through the forest, then they can come back. Look, Alnor’s going to try it whatever happens, and I’m going with him because somebody’s got to, but it’ll be a lot less of a risk with a steers-woman. I suppose Meena would do, if we can’t find anyone else. What about your mother? Or your aunt who was at the Gathering? It’d be best if it’s someone who can hear what the trees are saying, so they can tell her the way back. . . .”

He chattered on about Alnor’s plan, but Tilja listened only enough to mutter something in the right places. Meena was going on a journey. A long journey. Much further than through the forest and back. That didn’t count as long.

And Tilja was going with her, going away, unimaginably far away. Away from Woodbourne. Not waiting through the dreary years until she could, with luck, find a man on some other farm who wanted to marry her, and go and live with him, and make that her home, and dream of Woodbourne like Aunt Grayne did. Going now.

Yes. Oh yes!

Only her parents would never let her.

Her thoughts were broken by Brando’s warning bay at the footstep of a stranger.

Ma didn’t seem surprised to see them. She looked at Tahl as if there were something unusually interesting about him, though normally she was shy of strangers and barely met their glances. Tahl gave her stare for stare.

“Your father’s up splitting logs in the spare ground,” she said. “Anja, you run up and fetch him. You can take Tiddykin down for Meena, Tilja. If Alnor wants a horse too, you’ll have to take Calico.”

“Alnor’s all right,” said Tahl. “It’s me who isn’t. Mind if I take my boots off?”

By the time Tilja had Tiddykin saddled and bridled and came in to look for Tahl he was sitting in Ma’s chair with his feet in a steaming basin of steeped herbs, and chatting away to her and actually getting answers more than two or three words long. He turned and grinned at Tilja.

“You’ll be all right on your own,” he said. “Alnor will hang on to a stirrup. That’s what he usually does. He doesn’t like riding. Horses aren’t much use round us. Too steep.”

When Tilja led Tiddykin into the yard, with Meena in the saddle and Alnor walking steadily beside her, they met Da, Anja and Dusty coming down from the spare ground with a loaded log sled.

Tilja helped Meena onto the mounting block and down, then took Alnor’s arm and guided him through the farm door, helped him and Meena off with their cloaks and led him to a chair. Then she went and took Tiddykin’s tack off, rubbed her down and gave her a feed. She turned to find Anja waiting for her at the stable door.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“You’ve got to come, Til.”

“I’m coming.”

“No, not there. Up to the forest. They want you. Please!”

“Want me? Who?”

“The cedars. They’ve got something to tell you. Please, Til! I’ll tell Ma.”

She scampered off. Watching from the kitchen door, Tilja saw her tug at Ma’s apron and start to whisper. Ma bent to listen, straightened and looked for a while almost blankly at Tilja, with her mouth slightly open—that gone-into-a-dream look she’d worn sometimes since the night of the first snows. She shook herself, sighed and looked away.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t be long.”

By now it was getting on toward dusk on a mild, sunless day, with the clouds moving all in one mass, blown by a steady wind. Anja led the way in under the trees to a place where three cedars growing together made a patch of dark green gloom. She stopped.

“Listen,” she said.

Tilja did her best. She strained to hear, to listen with her whole soul, but all she could make out was the hiss of the wind through the cedar needles and a faint, pulsing hoot where moving air swirled into a hollow trunk. Almost weeping with disappointed yearning, she shook her head.

“But they’re talking to you!” said Anja, astonished.

It was too much to bear. Tilja grabbed at her wrist.

“If they’re so clever, why don’t they know I can’t hear them?” she snarled. “All right, what are they saying? Or aren’t you allowed to tell me?”

“Let go! I can’t hear them either when you’re doing that. Please let go.”

Reluctantly Tilja loosened her grip.

“What are they saying?”

Anja drew a breath, waited, and spent it all on the first slow syllable. Another breath for the next, and the next, and the next.

“Go. Tilja, go. You go too. Find Faheel. Make us strong again.”