Keda sat upon Mrs Slagg’s bed near the wall. She sat very upright and her hands lay in her lap. For a moment or two she gazed out of the window at a cloud that had meandered lazily into view. Then she turned to the old woman.

‘When I returned with you on that first evening,’ said Keda quietly, ‘I was troubled. I was troubled and I am still unhappy because of love, I feared my future; and my past was sorrow, and in my present you had need of me and I had need of refuge, so I came.’ She paused.

‘Two men from our Mud Dwellings loved me. They loved me too much and too violently.’ Her eyes returned to Nannie Slagg, but they hardly saw her, nor noticed that her withered lips were pursed and her head tilted like a sparrow’s. She continued quietly.

‘My husband had died. He was a Bright Carver, and died struggling. I would sit down in the long shadows by our dwelling and watch a dryad’s head from day to day finding its hidden outline. To me it seemed he carved the child of leaves. He would not rest, but fight; and stare – and stare. Always he would stare, cutting the wood away to give his dryad breath. One evening when I felt my unborn moving within me my husband’s heart stopped beating and his weapons fell. I ran to him and knelt beside his body. His chisel lay in the dust. Above us his unfinished dryad gazed over the Twisted Woods, an acorn between its teeth.