Alba had come to the yard too, but now she was nowhere in sight. One of the farm cats had produced a litter of kittens not long ago, and Cara guessed her maid was in the barn petting them; Alba loved cats. It was a good opportunity to go walking on her own – not far enough to get either Gormán or Alba in trouble, just down to the heartwood house. She could be back before anyone noticed she was gone. There was a rule about wandering off without a companion, and Aunt Della would be unhappy if she found out Cara had broken it. The rule was nonsense. Cara could find her way home from anywhere in the forest, even places where she had never been before. The trees were her friends. What harm could she possibly come to? Perhaps Aunt Della thought her stupid enough to get in the way of an axe like that giant implement Gormán was working on now. That was just as silly. Gormán had taught her to be careful in the workshop. She knew how tools should be used, how they were kept sharp, how they were protected from rust. She knew how to avoid cutting herself or someone else when she used her wood-carving knives. But she couldn’t explain that to Aunt Della. In her aunt’s opinion, a young lady should spend her time sewing, spinning, weaving, and learning how to run a household, not messing about with sharp objects and making things that were of no possible use to anyone. Most times, while Cara was still struggling to find the right words, Aunt Della would end the conversation by saying, ‘Oh, Cara, you’re such a child.’ But that wasn’t true. She had her moon-bleeding now, and her body was changing, and that meant, surely, that she was not a child but a woman.

The heartwood house was not much of a house, only an old ruin in a clearing. Each winter it crumbled away a bit more. Although it was not very far from the barn, the pattern of the trees and the rise and fall of the land meant it could barely be seen until a person was almost on top of it. Father had been building it at the time of her mother’s death. Once Suanach was gone, work on the house had ceased. It had been left as it was, hardly even a shelter for forest creatures, since it had no roof. In another year or two the last of it would fall and the forest would reclaim the clearing. Cara liked the quiet way the wild things were moving to blanket the broken structure.