‘Oh. Yes. Thank you, Mistress Blackthorn.’ She smiled, and her face lit up again. Only a child, really; at least, not much more than one. What had her father been thinking of, sending her to Winterfalls on her own and expecting her to fit in?

‘We’d best not keep Donagan waiting too long,’ I said. ‘I have one question for you, and you need not answer it if you don’t want to. Also, remember what I said about wise women keeping secrets.’

‘You want to know why I was running away.’ She addressed this to the tabletop.

‘Something like that. I might also mention that even though I think of Prince Oran and Lady Flidais as friends, I hated staying in their house. Grim and I were there for a while after our cottage burned down. A long story which I won’t bore you with now. I felt so out of place I wanted to scream. And Grim found it as hard as I did, only he’s better at making friends and talking to folk. You’ll have your own reasons for not wanting to be there. I do know, because Lady Flidais told me, that your father wants you to stay at Winterfalls awhile, and not to go home until he’s ready to have you back there.’

‘About the wood carving. Father didn’t show me how to do it, Gormán did. My father’s chief forester. Father thinks carving isn’t a suitable occupation for a young lady.’

I busied myself stirring more honey into my tea.

‘He doesn’t understand,’ Cara said. ‘He doesn’t know how much it hurts. I can’t be away. I should be there.’

I sipped my tea. Waited.

‘I’m not –’ Cara said. ‘I just –’ She set the little hedgehog down on the table and put her head in her hands. ‘I can’t explain. It’s too hard. You’ll think I’m mad.’

‘Mad, no. But there is something about you that doesn’t add up.’

Silence for a few breaths, then, ‘What?’ she asked.

‘You’re like two different girls, the one who stood quiet in the pool, so quiet that wild birds were unafraid to perch on her, and the girl wound up as tight as a bowstring, ready to run the moment she knew I was there.’

Cara gazed at me, big-eyed.

‘They are the same girl, of course,’ I said. ‘And that intrigues me, Cara. I like a mystery.’

She smiled. A watery, sad sort of smile it was this time.