“I fear you have read too many lurid tales, Maestressa,” he said in so kindly a manner that I began to think he must have reached the little grove of trees just in time to banish the monster, for this harmless old man could surely not have been the monster himself. “You will be safe within the house. I do not eat human flesh.”

“I heard half of your manservants have died,” Bee said rudely. “Did you eat them?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

Bee opened her mouth and then, after all, could grapple no words onto her tongue.

I pushed her behind me and swashed with my cane. “Back away slowly and we’ll make a break for it,” I muttered.

“Yes, I ate them,” he repeated, “but they were not men.”

“What were they, then?” she asked. “Trolls? And why did you try to eat Cat?”

“I did not try to eat her. I hoped she might see a memory in the tides of the Great Smoke.”

I had always respected the headmaster because his easy demeanor and impressive erudition stood in such contrast to my Uncle Jonatan’s short temper and small-mindedness. I didn’t truly know what sort of older man my father Daniel would have become, had he lived, but I had liked to believe he would have been something like the man who had patiently satisfied all factions whose children attended Adurnam’s academy college, without giving way to any one.

Only evidently he was no man.

“How can we trust you?” I asked.

“A reasonable question, Maestressa. I apologize for our unfortunate way of meeting just now. You surprised me at a vulnerable moment.”

“Are you a dragon?” I asked.

“I find I am rather weary. Will you take tea on this cold day?”

Bee said, “You choose, Cat. I’ll do as you say.”

I had seen what I had been too young to understand at the time, that I had survived because I had accidentally fallen into and out of the spirit world.

“I think it is safe to go,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Strangely, I am sure.” I could forgive a lot for having been given the chance to see the loving way my parents had smiled at me and at each other, the way I had looked at them with such wholehearted trust. The way my mother had tried to hold on to me.

The house was a stately lord’s home with two wings and three stories plus tiny attic windows. It was set near the river’s edge flanked by a second band of trees. The gravel drive led to the imposing front entry but we walked around to the side, where a man took charge of the dogs and chivvied them away to a kennel.