He returned with a wooden comb found behind an upended chest. It was gap-toothed as an old man, but it served, he found by experiment. She was sitting up again, the cloth-wrapped hot stone laid aside, another promising sign.

“Here, Spark; catch.” He tossed the comb to her, and studied her as she jerked up her hand in surprise and had it bounce off her fingers.

She looked up at him in sudden curiosity. “Why did you call Watch! when you threw the knife pouch at me?”

Quick, she is. “Old patroller training trick. For the girls—and some others—who come in claiming they can’t catch things. It’s usually because they’re trying too hard. The hand follows the eye if the mind doesn’t trip it. If I yell at them to catch the ball, or whatever, they fumble, because that’s the picture they have in their heads. If I yell at them to count the spins, it goes right to their hand while they’re not attending. And they think I’m a marvel.” He grinned, and she smiled shyly back. “I didn’t know if you had played throwing games with those brothers of yours or not, so I took the safe bet. In case it was the only one we got.”

Her smile became a grimace. “Just the throwing game where they tossed me into the pond. Which wasn’t so funny in winter.” She eyed the comb curiously, then started in on the end of one tangle.

Her hair was springy and silky and the color of midnight, and Dag couldn’t help thinking how soft it would feel to his touch. Another reason to wish for two hands. The smell of it, so close last night, returned to his memory. And perhaps he had better go check on that horse again.

In the late afternoon, Fawn complained for the first time of being hot, which Dag seemed to take as a good sign. He claimed he was sweltering, set up a padded seat out on the shaded porch floor, and permitted her up just long enough to walk out to it. She settled down with her back against the house wall, staring out into the bright summer light. The green fields, and the darker greens of the woods, seemed deceptively peaceful; the horse grazed at the far end of the pasture. The burned outbuilding had stopped smoldering. Clothing, hers and his from yesterday, lay damply over the fence rail in the sun, and Fawn wondered when Dag had laundered it. Dag lowered himself to her left, stretched out his legs, leaned his head back, and sighed as the faint breeze caressed them.