“I can see little … fruiting things … on the ends here. It might be a different kind of fungus that feeds off the larger ones.”

“Fungus,” he said, and repeated it happily. “Fungus. What a pleasant word.”

I smiled.

“Well, it is rather better than ‘saprophyte.’ That means a … they’re not quite plants … but growing things that live on dead things.”

He blinked and looked speculatively from the blood-spots to me.

“Do not all living things live on the dead?”

That made me blink.

“Well … I suppose they do,” I said slowly, and he nodded, pleased.

“Even if you were to swallow oysters—which are often alive when you eat them—they die in your stomach very quickly.”

“What a very disagreeable notion,” I said, and he laughed.

“What does it mean to be dead?” he asked.

I’d risen to my feet and crossed my arms, feeling just slightly unsettled.

“Why are you asking me?”

He’d stood up, too, but was quite relaxed. At the same time, something new had entered his eyes. They were still lively, and undoubtedly friendly—but there was something else behind them now, and my hands felt suddenly cold.

“Wolf’s Brother said to Thayendanegea that his uncle’s wife was a Wata’ènnaras. But he also said that you have walked through time and that you have walked with a Mohawk ghost. Wolf’s Brother does not lie, no more than his Quaker wife nor his virtuous mother, so I believe that he thinks this is a true thing that you have done.”

Under the circumstances, I wasn’t sure whether his belief was a good thing or not, but I managed a small nod.

“It’s true.”

He nodded back, unsurprised but still interested. “Thayendanegea told Wolf’s Brother to tell this to me, and he did. That’s why I said I would come with him when he returned here. To hear this from your own lips, and to know whatever else you can tell me.”

“Rather a tall order,” I said. I felt cold and breathless, and my inner ears rang with the aftermath of thunder. “Let’s … walk while I tell you. If you don’t mind.”

He nodded at once and offered me his arm, calico-shirted and ringed with silver bracelets, with as much style as Lord John or Hal might have done it, and I laughed, despite my unease.

“A story for a story. I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me why you went to London.”

“Oh, that’s simple enough.” He handed me carefully over one of the small gravelly rivulets that ran down this part of the mountain. “I went because Thayendanegea went. He would need a friend to talk with in a strange place, someone who could counsel him, judge men for him, guard him in case of danger, and … perhaps offer another view of the things we saw and heard.”

“And why did he go?”