“How do you do,” Prim said back up to her—but again, not really up. She got lost then in the striations in the iris of Edda’s left eye. These were immensely complex, and of all colors, having about them the same balance of order and wildness as exposed tree roots, tendrils of smoke in the wind, tongues of wild flame, the swirling of water where rivers came together. Prim wondered if the striations in her own irises were anywhere near as complicated. She guessed that the answer was probably no, and then wondered how such things got shaped in the first place—were you just born with them or did they grow in complexity over time? Or was it different, when you were a giantess? Had Edda consciously worked on hers, or had they just taken form on their own?

“Weaver!” Edda said. Somehow they’d all entered the cottage and found seats around a table. A loaf of warm bread was there. They’d been tearing hunks from it and eating heartily, but there was plenty of bread remaining. Prim had got lost staring into the structure of a bread hunk, somewhat as she’d once sat for hours staring at the map of the Land. There was a lot to this bread, and biting chunks out of it only exposed more. Steam escaped from the tiny round cavities and came together in roiling cloudlets shaped like flowers, men, and monsters—until she began to notice them, whereupon they undid themselves and became invisible currents of scent.

Weaver had been lost in admiration of the tabletop, which was an enormous slab of polished stone, a hand span in thickness, supported at the ends by boulders founded in the earth—the floorboards, unable to bear such weight, had been carefully cut around them. The stone had complex patterns, and you could see some distance into it, as if it were part crystal. Hearing her name spoken, Weaver tore her gaze from this only to get distracted by Edda’s braid, which the giantess had flipped to the front so that it trailed down over her bosom. There was a lot more to it than just a simple three-strand braid.

“Yes, my lady?”

“I have not had the pleasure of your company since two hundred and thirty-seven years ago, when you sat just where you are sitting now, and I taught you the Lay of Valeskara and Blair.”

Prim remembered that vaguely: two lovers who, as a side effect of a war between a hill-giant and a troop of angels, had found themselves on opposite sides of a freshly made Shiver. Before they could find a way across, Blair had become embroiled in a fight with some Beedles, who had put him in chains and taken him away to a castle or something, where Autochthons put him in a dungeon. Valeskara still walked on the cliff top awaiting his return. So that, at least, was familiar. But Weaver’s being at least two and a half centuries old was news to her—and apparently to Brindle.