That was settled then. She closed her eyes and slipped into sleep.

KATSA DIDN’T KNOW what was wrong with her when she woke the next morning. She couldn’t explain the fury she felt toward him. There was no explanation; and perhaps he knew that, because he asked for none. He only commented that the rain had stopped, watched her as she rolled her blanket, deliberately not looking at him, and carried his things to the horses. As they rode, still she did not look at him. And though he couldn’t have missed the force of her fury, he made no comment.

She wasn’t angry that there was a person who could provide her with help and protection. That would be arrogance, and she saw that arrogance was foolishness; she should strive for humility—and there was another way he’d helped her. He’d gotten her thinking about humility. But it wasn’t that. It was that she hadn’t asked for a person whom she trusted, whom she would do so much for, whom she would give herself over to. She hadn’t asked for a person whose absence, if she woke in the middle of the night, would distress her—not because of the protection he would then fail to give, but simply because she wished his company. She hadn’t asked for a person whose company she wished.

Katsa couldn’t bear her own inanity. She drew herself into a shell of sullenness and chased away every thought that entered her mind.

WHEN THEY STOPPED to rest the horses beside a pond swollen with rainwater, he leaned against a tree and ate a piece of bread. He watched her, calmly, silently. She didn’t look at him, but she was aware of his eyes on her, always on her. Nothing was more infuriating than the way he leaned against the tree, and ate bread, and watched her with those gleaming eyes.

“What are you staring at?” she finally demanded.

“This pond is full of fish,” he said, “and frogs. Catfish, hundreds of them. Don’t you think it’s funny I should know that with such clarity?”

She would hit him, for his calmness, and his latest ability to count frogs and catfish he couldn’t see. She clenched her fists and turned, forced herself to walk away. Off the road, into the trees, past the trees, and then she was running through the forest, startling birds into flight. She ran past streams and patches of fern, and hills covered with moss. She shot into a clearing with a waterfall that fell over rocks and plummeted into a pool. She yanked off her boots, pulled off her clothing, and leaped into the water. She screamed at the cold that surrounded her body all at once, and her nose and mouth filled with water. She surfaced, coughed and snorted, teeth chattering. She laughed at the coldness and scrambled to shore.

And now, standing in the dirt, the cold raising every hair of her body on end, she was calm.

IT WAS WHEN she returned to him, chilled and clearheaded, that it happened. He sat against the tree, his knees bent and his head in his hands. His shoulders slumped. Tired, unhappy. Something tender caught in her breath at the sight of him. And then he raised his eyes and looked at her, and she saw what she had not seen before. She gasped.