I smiled, but I said nothing else for a while, the words suddenly feeling too heavy to speak. I would have been content to simply sit silently in Imonie’s presence until she looked at me with her keen eyes.

“What’s troubling you, Clementine?”

It was a relief to have someone I trusted, someone who knew me in all my shades, ask me a direct question.

“What does it feel like when you dream, Imonie? Do you dream every single night if you don’t take a remedy?”

“It’s been a long while since I dreamt,” she replied, returning her gaze to her dough. But her attention remained fixated on me. “Once, when I was younger, I dreamt vividly every single night. The good dreams were like sustenance, feeding me all throughout the following day. And the bad ones? Well, I think you know what nightmares are like, Clementine.”

I mulled over her reply, and then asked, “Is it common to wake up and forget what you dreamt the night before?”

That brought her eyes back to mine. Sharp and probing. “Why do you ask, child?”

“I’m merely curious.”

“Then yes. Sometimes.”

The stiffness in my shoulders eased. I stroked Dwindle’s calico fur and thought perhaps that had been the case for me last night. But the longer I tried to convince myself, the weaker it felt. Because both Phelan and I should have been battered by nightmares. And nightmares were not the type of dream to be forgotten come sunrise.

“There’s something I want to tell you, Clem,” Imonie said, wiping her hands on her apron. “The other week, when you came for Monday night dinner. You asked if November seventeenth held any significance.”

“And does it?” I prompted, my interest catching.

“It doesn’t in Bardyllis, but once, long ago, that date meant something in Seren. It was a night of feasting, when the people of the mountains lit fires and ate their favorite foods and danced beneath the stars. It was the last feast of autumn, because the snow comes early in the mountains.”

“Why didn’t you mention this to me when I first asked?”

Imonie glanced away. “You know speaking of the mountains grieves me, Clem.”

She was about to say something else, but the front door creaked open, and we both turned, surprised to see my father appear on the kitchen threshold.

“Papa!” I greeted him.

He stopped upright and gaped at me a moment, and I noticed that he had washed the grime of the mines away, and that his hair was brushed, and he was wearing fine clothes.

He wasn’t pleased to see me.

“Why are you here, daughter?” he asked in a brusque tone. “Shouldn’t you be with Phelan?”

I slowly rose from my stool, setting Dwindle on the floor. “And shouldn’t you be at the mines?”