She looked down at her remaining sheets of paper, and then lifted her last bottle of ink to the light. “Oh, Leftrin, what a fool I was! I documented every little thing all along the way, and now that we are here, on the outskirts of a major intact Elderling city, I’m down to a few sheets of paper and a few drops of ink!”

He shook his head at her fondly. “Well, when we get back to Trehaug, I shall have to buy you a crate of paper and a hogs-head of ink.” He reached over and playfully twitched the abused handkerchief from her fingertips. “And perhaps a few of these, too.”

“What?” she asked him. All life, all merriment faded suddenly from her face. “Trehaug? Go back to Trehaug?”

He cocked his head at her. “Well, I think we’ll have to before winter, or we’re going to have keepers running around here in the cold in next to nothing. And while meat and fish and wild greens are fine things, I for one am starting to miss even such bread as ship’s biscuit. And a dozen other things we’ve been doing without.” He grinned at the prospect.

She just stared at him. “Go back to Trehaug?”

“Well, of course. You must have known that we’d have to go back eventually.”

“I, well, no. I hadn’t thought about it. I never want to go back, not to Trehaug, not to Bingtown.”

He looked at the distress in her face and then carefully folded her into his arms. “Alise, Alise. You don’t think I’d let you get away from me? Yes, we’ll go back to Trehaug. We’ll go back together, just as we came here. Tarman will show you what he can do, downriver in the current, when we know where we’re going, without a herd of slogging dragons setting the pace for us. We’ll go down to Cassarick and put in our order for provisions. You’ll report to the Council there, and I’ll collect my money. Yes, and you’ll report to Malta the Elderling, too.”

She was looking up at him, and the life had come back to her face. Her eyes had begun to shine. He had to continue the tale for her.