“All right,” he said. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

I knew him well enough by now to be aware I had no choice but to tell him. As he said, he did not play games. So I showed him dog—go away. Me, looking, searching—worried. I used my hand to show the passage of sun across sky, all day. Then I had to take his sleeve, and lead him indoors, where Alys had reclaimed her spot on the pallet and was nearly asleep, curled in blankets. She growled deeply as we came close, and the shivering started again.

Red looked at the mark on her back and said nothing; but the lines on his face were very clear in the lamplight, and his lips tightened. We went back outside, and he gestured to me to sit on the doorstep, while he leaned his long frame against the wall beside me. We were silent for a while.

“You weren’t going to tell me about this,” he observed eventually. “Why not?”

I shrugged. Why would I tell you? What could you do?

Red was frowning as he watched me. He did not speak for a while; by moonlight his eyes looked the clear, pale color of our first meeting, morning blue, and there were memories in their depths.

“I want to ask you something,” he said at length, and now he was studying his hands as if unwilling to meet my gaze. “That night—that time in the caves, before we came across the water. It was a strange time. I have wondered—I have thought, perhaps, that I ran a fever that night from damaging my leg. And yet, the memories are—” he broke off, scuffing his boot in the soil, failing miserably to say what he wanted. I could have found the words for him, had I not been schooled to silence. After a while, glancing at me quickly and looking away, he tried again.

“I wake at night sometimes,” he said, “from a dream so vivid it seems that dark world is real, and this one a fantasy. Of late, this has happened many times. It disturbs me, to feel I have so little control of my own mind. Have you ever felt this?” I shook my head. The Fair Folk played with your thoughts, there was no doubt of that. What about that man from our village, Fergal, who lost his wits altogether, after they took him and teased him and spat him out again? But they had never taken over my mind, though I had come close to losing it to my own fears. I signed to Red. Speak. Tell me the rest.

“That night—” he said hesitantly. “That was the most vivid of all. And afterward, I thought for a moment—but no, that could not be. I suppose those images were the product of a fever, a sickness brought on by shock and exhaustion. I am not usually so weak. But at the time, I thought—tell me, is it possible you shared something of this dream? Is it possible you know what—what was said to me? There was a candle, I still have it. But how could there be a candle? And why do I still hear their voices in my sleep? Am I losing my mind? I have heard that rumored, among other things. Yet I feel saner than ever before in my life.” He sighed. “Sorry, Jenny. But who else could I speak to of such things? Who else would listen, and not call me a fool?”