Perhaps she thought that our mother would comfort us, or that we would comfort her. But no. Mother sat dressed only in a chemise—I had never seen her so, and she seemed to me even more beautiful that way, in that simple shift of white, than when she wore silks and velvets and jewels. Her dark hair flowed loose like mine, rippling down over her pale, naked shoulders. She sat at her chamber window and stared. Morgause ran to her and laid her head in her lap, weeping, but Mother did not move. She did not even lower her eyes from their staring. She sat like a lovely statue and let Morgause weep upon her.

There were servants in the room, but they either wept upon one another or stood behind Mother, staring eastward as she did. I studied Mother for a while. Then, as she did not move—no one moved—I turned to the door, lugged it open with my heels digging deep into the scented rushes on the floor, and went out.

No one seemed interested in keeping me from wandering. I looked over my shoulder for a moment at the door that had closed behind me, then pattered off to see what was happening elsewhere.

In the kitchen they were cooking clothes. I had never seen such a thing. A huge pot boiling, and clothes going into it and coming out drippy black, like wet crows. I saw my favorite frock, red with blue larkspur trim, go in, and I cried out and ran forward to try to save it. I would have dived into the vat after it, and been boiled black in my turn, but one of the cooks seized me. Without scolding, without even speaking, she put me out the door.

I wept for the frock as I had not wept for my father, and I ran out into the courtyard, its cobbles ever shadowed by high walls. Beyond those walls the sea crashed cold against the cliffs, and always the wind swept down raw off the moors, but although I wore no shawl, I did not feel the chill. I was a weeping stone; what did I care whether the wind blew?

Where was everyone?

The gates stood open. No guards. No one coming or going atop the walls or within them.

I stopped weeping but kept running. I ran out through the yawning gates, past the village huts huddled against the outside of the wall, and up the rugged grazing lands toward the moor.