“But it doesn’t necessarily follow that…”

“That what?”

“I - don’t know.”

“Then I can hardly answer your general question, can I.”

Millicent fussed with her hair. “In my village what with the taking of babies so out of fashion and -”

“I’m not going to render Vercari interested in acquiring lady lovers as an adult if she weren’t already heading that way,” I said, question suddenly clicking. “It depends on the individual witch. My teacher dated men, when she dated anyone at all. I’m just, individually, fortunate that I don’t find myself a mundane expected to marry some - male, for mundane reasons.”

“…Oh,” said Millicent, sounding dissatisfied with this answer.

“I don’t even know how I’d go about doing such a thing on purpose,” I went on. “It would be much harder than changing her hair color or something.”

“I wouldn’t know either… I like her hair color. Leave it.”

“I wasn’t planning to change it.”

“Good.”

“Mm-hm.”

I made straw things. Millicent started a chicken pot pie.

“Orawne?”

“Mm?”

“Nothing.”

“All right.”

“Her name is growing on me,” Millicent said.

“I thought about it for a long time. It would have been Corlesen if she’d been a boy,” I said. I was trying Millicent’s milky potion recipe. It was like mine, but the ratios were different. Our general potionmaking seemed similar enough that I ought to be able to copy it.

“What do you think of ‘Linda’, now?”

“It’s all right for a middle name. It still isn’t very witchy. Maybe it’s witchy for the westlands.”

“And ‘Millicent’?”

“Same thing. I suppose the sound of it would be all right if mundanes didn’t use it.”

“My parents sometimes call me Lissy.”

“If they were going to call you Lissy why did they name you Millicent?”

“It’s a nickname. You’ve heard of those, haven’t you?”

“Yes. They just don’t make a lot of sense.”

“It’s for - layers of closeness. The people in town call me Miss Murk, you call me Millicent, my parents call me Lissy.”

“Are you saying you want me to call you Miss Murk?”

“No. But you could call me Lissy.”

I considered this.

“Lissy,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Just trying it out.”

“And?”

“I suppose it makes sense.”

“Can I help you make the straw things?” Lissy asked.

“I’m… not actually sure,” I said. “If we were both my kind of witch and we’d taken Vercari together you could.”

“What happens if I can’t after all?”

“Then yours won’t burn when the time comes, and the fire might not be high enough.”

“Is there a way to find out? Your fingers look like they hurt.”

“A little. I could check the stars, see if they have anything to say about it.”

“I’d like to help,” Lissy said earnestly.

“You are helping. You do the laundry, you cook, you mind Vercari while I’m making them.”

“But right now the laundry is done and there’s meatballs in the oven and Vercari’s asleep.”

“I’ll go have a look at the sky, if you’re that bored.”