After that, Emer would drop in to the cottage every now and then, when her duties at the weaver’s workshop allowed it, and undertake such tasks as I had for her. She learned quickly and did not waste time in gossip, which suited me well. Indeed, sometimes she seemed a little too quiet, as if something might be preying on her mind. I did not ask what was wrong. Chances were that would lead to another request for help, and I’d had more than enough of those already.

Emer might be quiet by nature, but everyone else in these parts was the opposite. I’d never known such folk for talking. As the autumn drew on and the mornings became misty, as mushrooms sprang up under the oaks and the leaves began to fall, I could have kept Grim entertained for hours every night with what I learned about the residents of Winterfalls, though in fact I passed on only the most interesting snippets. In return he brought me his share of the local gossip, which wasn’t much, Grim being a man of few words and all of them carefully chosen. We understood each other’s need for silence. We knew that the tales we told served a purpose. They filled up the spaces in the mind that would otherwise be open to the bad things, the memories we wanted gone. But sometimes a body needed to sit quiet and simply listen to the wind and the rain and the birds.

The longer we stayed at Winterfalls, the harder it became to find those quiet times. A steady stream of folk visited the cottage for remedies or for treatment of one kind or another, and often enough I was called away, since some patients could not be brought to me. One day it was a heavily built farmer felled by a sprained ankle. Another day, a whole family afflicted by a vomiting and purging sickness. And, inevitably, I was called to bring new life into the world and see the old leave it.