She looked away from the window to find Hilia staring at her, eyes full of tears and sympathy. "You deserved better, Rosemary."

But, "I can"t run away from what I did, Hilia. I made a bad choice when I let that man into my bed. My mother warned me about him. I didn"t listen. Let"s admit the truth. There were two of us in that bed. And I"m going to have to deal with him the rest of my life. Pell will never be my husband, but he will always be Gillam"s father."

"You were scarcely more than a girl and your father had just died. Pell took advantage of you."

Rosemary shook her head at her friend. "Don"t. It took me six months to come out of wallowing in self-pity. I won"t go back to that."

Hilia sighed. "Well. I won"t argue that you"re a lot more pleasant to be around now that you"re not constantly weeping. You"re tougher than you think, girl. When that man shows up here, I think you ought to bar the door and pick up the poker. Don"t you let him under this roof!"

Rosemary looked down at Gillam in her lap. His lids were heavy; the fuss had only been because he was tired. "The boy has a right to know his father," she said. She wondered if that were true.

Hilia snorted. "The boy has the right to grow up in a peaceful home. And if Pell is here, you won"t have that." She stood with a sigh, closing her blouse and shifting her dozing baby to her shoulder. "I have to go home. There"s b.u.t.ter to churn and the house to tidy. Two of our cows are with calf and will drop any day now. I need to stay home for the next week or so. But you listen to me. If Pell is drunk or even unpleasant when he gets here, you just take Gillam and walk away. You know the way to my house."

Rosemary managed a smile. "Weren"t you telling me to stand my ground just a few minutes ago?"

Hilia pushed a straggling black curl back from her face. "I suppose I was. In truth, Rosie, I don"t know what to advise you to do, so maybe I"d better shut my mouth. Except to say that I"m always your friend. There isn"t anything I wouldn"t do for you."

"I know that," Rosemary a.s.sured her.

Hilia stood up to leave. She paused by the window and stroked the sleeping cat. He lifted his head and regarded her with cobalt eyes. "Now is not the time to be lazy, Marmalade. I"m counting on you to look after Rosemary and Gillam," she cautioned the cat aloud.

The cat sat up slowly and yawned, curling a pink tongue at her. She scratched him under the chin and he closed his eyes in pleasure. "I mean it, now! You"d have gone right into the river in a sack if I hadn"t saved you! You owe me, cat. I saved your life." He returned Hilia"s gaze with narrowed eyes.

Cats do not enjoy being reminded of debts. Cats do not incur debts. You did what you wanted to do. My being alive as a result of it is something you caused, not something I owe you.

Rosemary stood up from her chair. She deposited her sleeping boy on the bed and came to join her friend by the window. She put out a hand toward Marmalade, and the tom b.u.t.ted his head against it. "Don"t say mean things to Marmalade, Hilia. He is the best thing that anyone ever gave me. In those days before Gillam was born, when I felt I was all alone, little Marmy was always with me." She moved her fingers to tickle the white triangle at his throat. A grudging purr ground its way out of the big tom.

Hilia narrowed her eyes and spoke to him. "Well, even if you don"t owe me, cat, you owe Rosemary. You"d better take care of her."

The orange tom closed his eyes and curled his front paws toward his chest. I have no idea what you think I can do against a human male.

Hilia c.o.c.ked her head at him. You"re a cat. You"ll think of something. Or you"ll help Rosemary think of something.

She doesn"t have the Wit to listen to me. He tucked his head to his chest and apparently sank into sleep.

I"m not stupid, cat. No one needs the Wit magic to hear a cat. Cats talk to whomever they please.

Obviously true. But I didn"t say she couldn"t hear me. I said she doesn"t listen to what I tell her.

Hilia reached over to tug at one of his orange ears, demanding his attention. Then you"d better make her. Pell is not kind to beasts of any kind. If you"re used to being fed and sleeping inside, you"ll find a way to help her. Or your life will be just as miserable as hers will be. "Rotten cat," she added aloud. "I should have let Pell"s father drown you."

"Pell"s father was the man with the sack of kittens? You never told me that!" Rosemary was horrified.

"Not a pretty thing to tell at any time, and right then you didn"t need any cause to add any more people to your hate list." Hilia leaned over to kiss Rosemary on the cheek. "You take care of yourself and Gillam, now. And at the first sign of any trouble, you come running to my house."

"Oh, I don"t think there will be any trouble I need to run from."

"Um. Well, I"m not sure I agree with you about that. But just remember that my door is open."

"I will."

Rosemary watched her friend climb the little hill in front of her cottage and disappear over the rim of it. There was a cliff-top path that followed the line of the bay, but Hilia would probably take the steeper path down to the beach itself. When the tide was out and the rocky beach was bare, the quickest route back to the village was to cut across the exposed tide flat. Idly, Rosemary wished they lived closer to each other. The dell that sheltered her home from the worst of the winter storms off the water also shaded it for much of the day. The holding for Gillam"s cottage was small, a crescent strip of sloping but arable land between the sea cliffs and the salt marsh that reached around the back of it. An odd bit of land, too small to be a real farm, but enough, perhaps, for a woman and a child. "It could have been enough for all three of us, Pell. If you"d wanted us."

The shadows of evening were already reaching toward her home. She gave a small shiver and glanced over at her sleeping child. "Well. I don"t think your father will be coming to see you tonight. And I have ch.o.r.es to do." She took up her shawl before she left the house. The day had been warm, a promise of summer, but now the cool winds were sweeping in from the coast. She brought in her cow and shut her up in her rough byre. It was a rude structure, scarcely more than four poles holding up a slanted thatched roof. Perhaps this summer she"d have the time and resources to close in the sides of it. Come winter, the cow would welcome at least a break from the wet winds.

The chickens were aware of the westering sun and were already coming home to roost. She counted her precious flock and found all nine were there. Soon, as the days lengthened, they"d resume laying. Picky the rooster had been energetic about mating with his harem. She looked forward to fresh eggs again, and to the possibility of letting one hen set a batch for chicks. She"d be willing to forgo eggs for a time if it meant she could put roast chicken on the table later. She wished she had a coop for the chickens. Right now, they roosted on the wall of the cow"s byre. A coop would keep them safer from foxes and hawks and owls.

There was always more to do, always something more to build. That was good, really. What would her life have been without something more to do each day?

As was her ritual, her next stop was the garden. The rhubarb had thrust up tightly curled leaves, and the early peas had sprouted. Most of the other furrows were bare brown earth. Or were they? She crouched down low and then smiled. Tiny seedlings were breaking from the earth in two other rows. Cabbages. She didn"t much like cabbage, but it grew well for her, and the tight-leaved heads kept well in the small root cellar she had dug. She sighed and hoped that next winter would not be another endless round of cabbage and potato soups. Well, if it was, perhaps a few of them would have a little bit of chicken in them.

She was coming to her feet when she heard his voice behind her. Startled, she stumbled away from him, trampling her own seedlings. "d.a.m.n!" she cried, and then spun to face him.

"All I said was h.e.l.lo." Pell smiled at her. The expression was uneasy on his face, as if it clung to his mouth despite his eyes. He was as tall as she remembered him, and as handsome. He"d grown a beard, and it was as curly as his dark hair. His shirt was blue with embroidery on the sleeves, and his shining knee boots were black. His belt was heavy black leather, and he wore an ivory-handled knife in a fine sheath at his hip. Dressed like a merchant"s son, and as always, aware of just how good he looked. Handsome, handsome Pell, the dandy of the village. She stared at him, and his smile grew broader. He had once been hers. How amazed she had been at that, when he chose her. How grateful and how accommodating she had been, in her astonishment. She should have known she couldn"t hold him. Not even with his baby in her belly. He had left her, just as her mother had warned her he would.

And now he had come back. She found herself gripping her old anger, telling herself that she felt no attraction to him at all. She reminded herself of all the nights of weeping over how he had left her, heavy with child, to chase after lovely Meddalee Morrany and her father"s wealth. All those nights of anguish and longing for his presence in her bed, for a man to protect her and help her. She recalled all the doubts that had plagued her; she"d been too homely to hold him, too fat with her pregnancy, too undesirable. And now she looked at him, her long-strayed lover, and felt not one jot of desire for him. Beautiful Pell meant only sorrow to her. She would not be a fool for him again.

"Aren"t you going to say anything to me?" he asked her. He tilted his head, his soft brown hair dancing in the evening wind and aimed his smile at her. Once that smile had been deadly to her willpower. Had it changed, or was it weakened by the brown beard that masked it? Had she changed that much?

"Can"t think of anything to say." She stooped and carefully plucked at a cabbage seedling to coax it upright again. She gently patted earth back around it. When she looked up, he was still smiling down on her. Fondly. She gritted her teeth. "What do you want?"

"I"m home," he said simply, as if that explained everything, excused everything. "I"ve come back to you, Rosemary." He sighed and softened the smile a bit. "I know what you"re thinking, girl. But it was a boy who ran away and left you. It"s a man who has come back to you, and a wiser man, now. I"ve been out in the world and seen how things are." His voice seemed to firm. "I know what I"ve got to do now to set my life right. I"m ready to do it, no matter how hard."

That was all he offered, she noticed. That he was wiser. That coming back to her and her son was hard. No apology for what he"d done to her, how he"d humiliated her before the whole village. No thought for what she"d been through, how she"d managed the birth of his child and the raising of the boy since then. No questions on how she had survived while he was "out in the world." Nothing like that. Only that he was wiser for the experience.

"I think I"m wiser, too," she said. She dusted her hands on her skirts as she rose. Dirt clung to the rough skin of her palm and had packed under her nails. Why did she notice that now? Was it only because he was back? She circled wide of him and then was annoyed that she had to wait for him to leave the garden patch before she could shut the gate behind him. If she didn"t gate it shut, the chickens would be up at dawn to scratch and peck every seed and seedling from the earth. Even with the fence, she had to keep an eye on them. Often it was only Marmalade sleeping on the warm dry earth of the garden that kept the birds out.

"We were too young, Rosemary. We made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes trapped me. I got scared. I should have been stronger. I wasn"t. But I don"t think they should shape the rest of my life. I"m going to face up to my tasks and make things right. I"m ready to build the life I was meant to live." He looked so earnest. He never looked away from her. Once she would have fallen into that dark gaze. Once she had believed she could read his heart in that gaze. She shook her head and looked away from it.

"I"ve built my life, Pell. And there"s no room in it for you. Gillam fills it up completely."

He stiffened at that. "Gillam?" He sounded puzzled.

It took her a moment to realize the cause. "Your son," she replied crisply. "I named him Gillam."

"Gillam? But I said we"d name him Will, if the baby was a boy. After my friend, Will the tailor. Remember?"

"I remember." She dragged the stubborn gate into place. "I changed my mind when he was born. I changed my mind about a lot of things in those days." She looped the tie around the gate. "Gillam is a name from my family line. My mother"s father was named Gillam. I decided I"d give Gillam my family"s heritage."

She stood still, staring at him. The day was growing cooler. She gathered her shawl around her. She wanted to go back to the cottage, to poke up the banked embers and warm the soup and toast some bread for supper. Gillam would wake soon. He was a good little fellow, but she didn"t like to leave him alone when he was awake. Yet as much as she wanted to do those things, she didn"t move. If she went back to the cottage, she was certain he would follow her. And she didn"t want to see him go inside, didn"t want to see him look at her son. She didn"t want his praise for all she"d done, or his disdain that it was, still, a little run-down cottage on the farthest outskirts of the village. He"d never liked the place, not since the first day his grandfather had given it to him. He"d never wanted to live in it, with its smoky chimney and leaky roof. Yet now she feared that he would want it, if he saw it tidy and cozy.

Worse, she feared he would want his son. And Gillam was all she had. He belonged to her, every bit of him. It was why she had named him to anchor him to her lineage, not Pell"s. There would be no sharing of Gillam. Pell had missed his chance for that.

"Let"s go inside and talk," he said quietly. "You have to listen to what I have to say to you."

"I have nothing to say to you," she replied.

"Well, perhaps I have things to say to you. And it"s getting cold. I"m going inside. Follow me."

And he turned and walked away from her, toward the cottage, knowing that she must follow him. It galled her. It reminded her too sharply of the last time she"d had to obey him.

It had been winter, with the rain coming down in sheets as it always did along the Buck coast. They"d gone to town, to spend most of the few coins they had on a sack of potatoes and three pieces of salt cod. She"d been carrying the cod, wrapped in a piece of greased paper, and he"d had the sack of potatoes on his shoulder. A sudden rain squall had caught them just at the edge of town. Her head had been bent to the wind, and the rain had been running down into her eyes. When he spoke sharply to her, she knew that he must have said her name before. "Rosemary! Take the potatoes, I said!"

She turned back to him, wondering why he wanted her to carry them. They were not a large load, but her belly was big with the baby, and the mud sucking at her old shoes made her so tired she already wanted to cry. "Why?" she asked, blinking rain away as he put the mesh bag into her arms.

"Can"t you see I"ve got to help her? She"s trapped, poor thing!"

She had not had a hand free to wipe her eyes. She blinked her lashes quickly and saw that a child in a yellow dress was standing under a tree at the side of the road. Her arms were wrapped around her, her shoulders hunched to the rain. Her flimsy cloak of lace was no protection against the sudden storm.

Rosemary had blinked again as Pell broke into a run toward the girl. No, it wasn"t a child. It was a young woman, as slender as a child, with rippling waves of black hair blowing in the wind with the edges of her silly little cloak. Her garments made her look younger than she probably was. And more foolish. Who would go out dressed so lightly on a day at the end of autumn? Rosemary shook rain from her eyelashes and recognized her. Meddalee Morrany. The sea trader"s daughter. She lived across the bay, but sometimes came to visit her cousins. Always well dressed was she; even as a child, she had flaunted embroidery on her skirts and ribbons in her hair. Well, she wasn"t a child anymore, but her father"s wealth still wrapped her.

"She just needs to stay there until the squall pa.s.ses," she called after him. She hefted the sack in her arms. Damp had penetrated her shoes, and her toes were icy.

He"d already greeted the shivering girl. They were speaking, the girl smiling, but the rising wind swept their words away from her. He turned to call to her, "I"m going to help her get to town. You take the potatoes home. I"ll be along in a bit."

She"d stood in the rain in shocked disbelief as he opened his black cloak as if it were a raven"s wing, smiling and gesturing to Meddalee to take shelter under it. And the girl laughed and did.

"What about her?" Meddalee Morrany"s question had blown to her on the wind. She was smiling as she pointed at Rosemary.

"Oh, she"ll be fine. She can deal with the rain. I"ll see you later, Rosie!"

She"d had no choice then. She"d been cold and wet, weighted with the potatoes and fish and her unborn child and the hurt he"d loaded onto her. He hadn"t offered to put his cloak around her when the storm had blown up. No. He"d saved that for a stranger. For a pretty girl in a pretty dress, with a slender waist and rings on her fingers. Not for the girl who was pregnant with his b.a.s.t.a.r.d. She"d watched them walk away from her and could not think what to do. Then the wind blew stronger, pushing her toward home, and she"d gone.

She"d staggered home, arrived soaked to the bone and made their supper and waited for him. And waited. Waited for all that night, and the next day and night, and through the weeks and then months that followed. She"d wept and hoped and waited past the birth of the boy, waited for him to come back to his senses and come home to his new family, waited for the girl"s family to see how worthless he was and drive him off, waited even after his grandfather had come, shamefaced, to see his great-grandson.

By then, the gossip was known to all. Pell had followed Meddalee that day, right onto the boat that was to take her back across the bay to her father"s big house in Dorytown. The gossips of the village had taken great pains to see that she knew all the details. Her father had taken a liking to Pell. Everyone always took a liking to Pell, with his handsome face, his wide smile, and his easy ways. He"d given Pell a job in one of his warehouses. For a short time, she tried to believe he had done it for both of them. She pretended that he"d gone off to make a fortune for them. Soon he"d come home, his pockets full of his wages, to make things right for them. Perhaps he"d carry her and Gillam off to a cozy little house in Dorytown. Perhaps he"d stride into the cottage one night, his arms laden with toys and warm clothing for his son. Then wouldn"t the villagers have to swallow their mocking words! Then wouldn"t they see that he had loved her all along.

But Pell never came. The days pa.s.sed, she struggled on, and her boy grew, day by hard day. Her foolish dreams had turned to bitterness. She"d mourned and wept and cursed her fate. She"d hated him and longed for revenge. She"d blamed Pell, and then Meddalee, and then herself and Meddalee and finally Pell again. She had, as Hilia told her bluntly, been a bit mad. Impossible to reason with. And then, sometime in the last year or so, she"d stopped feeling anything about Pell, except to hope that he"d never come back and disturb the peace that she"d finally found.

"I"ll see you later," he"d said all those years ago. She bit back the impulse to ask him if this was "later." She watched him as he walked toward her door. His hair was as glossy and well kept as ever, his boots were new, and the coat he wore must have been tailored to display his broad shoulders so well. Had Meddalee chosen it for him? She glanced down at her mended skirt, soiled where she had knelt to inspect her plants. Her shoes were worn and stuffed inside with dry gra.s.s, not stockings. She brushed her rough hands against her skirt again and felt grubby and angry. She"d been a pretty girl once, if a poor one. Now she was only a poor woman in worn clothing with a growing child.

That was another thing he"d taken from her. There would never be a suitor knocking at her door, never be a man courting her. There would never be a partner for her, only her son sharing her life.

He didn"t even hesitate as he opened her door. Did he notice that she"d repaired the leather hinges, that it no longer sc.r.a.ped against the ground or gapped at the top and let the wind in? If he did, he made no comment. He paused only an instant on the threshold, and then stepped inside. She found herself hurrying after him. She didn"t want him to wake Gillam, didn"t want the boy"s first sight of his father to be as a frightening stranger looming over him.

She found Pell gazing around the room and felt a hot pulse of satisfaction at how surprised he looked. It wasn"t the cobwebby hovel that his grandfather had first given them, nor the shoddy cottage it had been during the few months they"d lived here together. Her gaze followed his and she found herself almost as surprised as he must have been. Not at the changes she"d made; she"d become accustomed to the blue curtains at the window, the moss and clay c.h.i.n.king in the walls and the neatly swept hearth and kindling box and Gillam"s little three-legged stool beside it. No, what surprised her was to realize that when Pell had lived there, she had accepted the hovel as it had been, thinking that surely if it could be made better, he would know how and would do it. It was only after he had left her, only after she had roused herself from the torpor of despair and become angry that she had decided that whatever she could fix, she would. She"d decided then that whatever she did to the place didn"t have to be perfect, only better than it had been. And it was.

"He"s big!"

Pell"s words brought her back to the present with a jolt. He was looking at Gillam in shock. Emotions struggled on his face-pride, guilt, and something else perhaps. Dismay?

"He"s nearly three," she pointed out briskly. "He"s not a baby anymore."

"Three," he breathed, as if the number were astonishing. He continued to stare.

"You were gone three years," she enumerated for him. "Children grow."

"He"s a little boy. It didn"t seem that long," he said, and then, as if he realized that perhaps that was a tactless thing to say, "I never meant for it to happen that way, Rosie. It was just, well, you were pregnant, and we were huddled in this place with next to nothing and my parents were furious with me. I felt so trapped. I was a young man and there was no fun left in my life. The idea of having a wife and a baby both, and I hadn"t intended to have either, not for a long time. I couldn"t stand it."

"And she was pretty and her family was wealthy and for whatever reason, they let you move in on them like a tick on a hound. And then she threw you off and here you are, back here because you can"t think of any other place to go."

She spoke flatly, in a low voice, but without anger. It surprised her. She didn"t feel angry, just impatient for him to leave. Let him look around and see how humbly they lived and then be gone. She had to wake Gillam soon and give him some supper, or he"d not want to go to sleep until late. And she had planned to work on a quilt tonight, fine meticulous work after Gillam had gone to sleep. The last quilt she"d made carefully, she"d traded for a ham. This one, if she were fortunate, might get her a piglet. She wanted to sit by the fire tonight, hunched over her work, sewing carefully, and think about how she would build a pen for the pig and feed him garden waste and take him to the beach to scavenge. She wanted Pell to be gone. Once he"d been a future full of golden dreams and promises. Now he was a past that stung whenever she thought of him. She didn"t want to look at him and wonder how it might have gone if he"d truly been the man she"d thought he was. She wanted to be alone and dreaming about her own plans, the plans that she could make real.

"All I wanted was a chance to do what I wanted to do, to do things I enjoyed doing. To make a try for the life I should have had before it was all ruined. Is that so much to ask?" He stopped talking abruptly, taking a sharp breath. Then he said, as if promising something to himself, "Things are going to be different." He clipped his words off as if she were the one who had hurt him. He added firmly, "And now, we"re done talking about it."

His words struck her dumb. He spoke as if he had authority over her. A wave of dread rose up in her, followed by a pitiful hope that sickened her. She suddenly knew that he intended to stay. Right now. From now on.

Why?

Gillam stirred on the bed and opened his eyes. For a moment, his big dark eyes, so like his father"s, were full of dreams still. Then he blinked and focused his gaze on the stranger. "Mama?" he asked with some trepidation.

"It"s all right, Gillam. I"m right here."

He crawled quickly across the bed to her, and she scooped him up in her arms. He hugged her tight around her neck, tucking his face into her shoulder.

"And I"m here, too, boy." Pell spoke with a heartiness that did not ring true to her. "Your papa. Come here and let me look at you."

In response, the boy tightened his grip on her neck. He didn"t look up at Pell. The man"s face darkened. "Give him time. He"s never seen you before. He doesn"t know you," she pointed out.

"I said we were done talking about that," he replied abruptly. He came toward her. "Let me see the boy."

She didn"t think about it but backed away toward the door. "Give him some time to get used to your being here," she countered. It wasn"t a direct refusal. Once she had adored Pell"s a.s.sertiveness and how he made decisions for them. It had seemed manly and sheltering. Now she found herself remembering how quickly he"d move to anger when his will was thwarted. Hilia"s advice to her suddenly came to mind. Run. Run to Hilia"s house. She shook her head to the stray thought. Gillam was heavy. If she tried to run, she"d be out of breath before she got to the top of the hill. And she didn"t want to give Pell any reason to run after her. She feared where that sort of confrontation might lead.

"Let me see him." He insisted as he advanced on her. His voice became contemptuous. "You"ve made him into a timid little mouse. When I was his age, I wasn"t afraid to stand and face a man and offer my hand. What sort of sniveling whelp are you raising under my name? What sort of a mama"s little t.i.tmouse is he?"

She recognized the mockery in his voice as he aimed his words at Gillam. If he hoped to rouse the boy to defy him, he failed. Gillam only clutched more tightly at her neck. She held her ground until Pell was almost an arm"s length away and then, despite her resolve, backed up. "Let me calm him. You don"t want his first memory of you to be that you frightened him."

"First memory, last memory, what does it matter? Let"s see this boy that bears my name. Can he stand up to something that frightens him? Is there anything of me in him at all? Will. Look at me. Come to me. Right now."

She had not seen the cat underfoot. He must have been right behind her. She didn"t feel her foot tread on him, but she must have, for suddenly, with a furious yowl and a spattering of hisses, the tomcat exploded from the floor. He leaped into the air between them and then clawed his way up Pell, literally running up his face and then leaping from his head into the low rafters. There he crouched, yowling and growling low as he lashed his abused tail back and forth.

Pell held his scratched face with both hands and cursed shrilly through his fingers Obtusely, Gillam had popped up his head at the cat explosion and now giggled wildly at the big man squeaking through his peekaboo fingers. Rosemary"s breath caught and she choked back a fear-strangled giggle of her own. Pell dropped his hands from his face. "It"s not funny!" he roared at them both.

Gillam turned astonished eyes on his mother. Rosemary managed to keep her expression calm. "See," she told the child. "You don"t need to be afraid of Pell."

In response to her remark, the boy gazed at his father, staring intently at the long stripe of red that crossed the top of his cheek above his beard. Fear had left him to be replaced by fascination.

"Where"d that d.a.m.ned beast come from?" Pell demanded. He dabbed at his face with his fingers, scowled at the blood, and then peered up into the dim s.p.a.ce above the rafters. Marmalade had already vanished into the shadows. He was probably outside by now, having left via the eaves.

"Hilia gave him to me. He keeps rats out of the cottage and away from the chicken yard." She tried to keep her voice calm for Gillam"s sake. The boy was now peering at his father with curiosity. There was tension in his little body, and she knew from experience that he would either dissolve into wails or decide to explore the situation, depending on what happened in the next few moments. She desperately wanted him to stay calm.

"Hilia? Hilia Borse? Everyone knows her family is Wit tainted. They do the beast magic in their home. They talk to animals. You let her put an animal into this house? Are you mad?"

She bounced Gillam a time or two, then set him down on the taller stool at the table. There were only two places to sit; she wondered if Pell had noticed that. As if Pell were any other inconvenient visitor, she decided she would simply go on with her routine. She pulled the simmering pot of soup back from the fire and crouched down to ladle a portion into Gillam"s shallow bowl. "You know who Hilia is," she said, trying not to sound confrontational. "She has been my best friend since we were girls."

"Yes, I know who she is! And I know what she is! Everyone in the village knows her family has the Wit. Her mother talks to sheep!"

She sighed, blew on Gillam"s soup to cool it a bit, and then set it on the table. Gillam grinned happily. The stranger in the house was eclipsed by the prospect of hot food. The boy was always hungry. His constant hunger both pleased her and frightened her. He would eat and grow strong, as long as she had food to feed him. From the mantel shelf, she took down half a loaf of bread wrapped in a clean cloth. She broke off a piece for him and set it beside his bowl with a spoon. "Eat nicely," she warned the boy.