“Yes, there you are, Pa,” said Bene, half-smiling, half-frowning, seated beside their daughter at the weathered wooden table. “And where have you been?”

As always, his heart skipped when he saw his wife. Twenty-one summers had passed since the first time, at the winter fair the year he turned nineteen, but he still felt like a young lad tumbling headfirst into love. It upset her when he slipped away while she slept. His dreams upset her. It was hard for her, knotted with a man who oft could see what would be more clearly than what was. He’d long ago told her what he waited for. He and Bene had no secrets. But Tilly was a bright child, and he didn’t want to alarm her.

“Counting crickets,” he said lightly, and kissed Tilly’s cheek three times, noisy fat splutters that made her kick and squeal. “Is there egg for me?”

He and Bene shared a small, scrambled yolk, and drank hot potle tea. Tilly guzzled goat’s milk, coaxed from the hamlet’s little flock. A good thing goats were hardy. The last milkless cow had been butchered weeks ago, for its stringy meat and thin blood.

A knock on the cottage’s front door just as breakfast finished had Tilly squealing again. It was Fern, Mag’s youngest, who minded the hamlet’s little ones during the long, hot days while their parents toiled to keep everyone alive.

“Jervale?” With Tilly safely gone to play with her friends, Bene stopped pretending. She dropped their spoons in the drawer then folded her arms. “Is it happening? What you’ve been dreaming? Is that why you couldn’t sleep?”

Feeling wretched, he tipped grease-stained scouring sand out of the fry pan and into its wooden pail on the end of the kitchen bench. “I reckon so.”

Her brown eyes wide with trepidation, Bene sat on the rickety kitchen stool. “Oh, Jervale. What are you going to do?”

He’d been thinking about that. He wasn’t ready to tell anyone else what he knew. They’d never believe him… and even if they did, it wouldn’t make a difference. He was bound up in this, as a bone was bound in muscle. The dreams were his. And so was the saving of Lur.

“Well,” he said slowly, knowing Bene wouldn’t like it, “when word comes from the Black Woods that these yellow-haired folk have appeared, there’ll be a call to council. I’ll put my hand up to speak for the hamlet. It’s a long cart ride to the mountains. Merrin won’t want to go.”

“So you’ll go?” Bene twisted her fingers in her lap. “And then what? Jervale, what can you do about these folk?”

Dropping to a crouch before her, he gave her knees a comforting pinch. “I don’t know. But I have to do this, Bene. I’ll be needed there.”

Her lips trembled. “You’re needed here.”