Rain had the other baby slung on his back. He was scavenging through the tools near the stone hearth, which was built rather like a little house, open on one side. In some cases these metal implements were merely rims of metal whose bodies of wood had burned away. But there was a massive hammerhead with a hole for a haft, a pair of black iron spears no longer than his arm, tongs and rings, and a spray of spear points and ax and adze heads scattered on the stone floor beside heaps of slag and crumbling charcoal dust.

Seeing her, he smiled.

“This was a forge,” he said, displaying a lump of melted bronze on his palm. He set it back down and picked up three wedges in turn, each one bigger than the one before. “Look at the strength of this metal. This must be iron! My master always said iron was impossible to work, yet here it’s been done. There’s a quarry a short walk from here, and I think they were mining up in the hills. We could make an outpost here, start a mining operation of our own. There’s trees enough for charcoal. If we only had the smithing magic.” He hefted the massive hammerhead in both hands. “To be able to forge iron like this … well, they say the raiding parties in the east are looking for blacksmiths.”

She settled down crosslegged and in those ruins nursed the babies as he babbled on, showing her each tool and speculating on its purpose, and in this manner fell into a reminiscence about the man he had apprenticed to when he was very young. He’d learned a few things, enough to appreciate the craft and the sorcery, but the old smith had died too early and the knowledge had been lost. That was when Rain had turned to flintknapping and gained respect for skills honed over many years of practice.

So many had died.

But the days in exile were over, although the taste of dust was still fresh in her mouth. The suck of life is powerful. The babies were strong and sturdy, dark and fat. They were beautiful, and so was this world with its sere hills and secret winds, its changeable sky and restless sea. Even the breath of ancient burning had brought new life to this small corner, where bugs scurried in the cracks and a dusky green vine had grown in through the open window and announced its presence with a pair of perfect white flowers.

Every window is a gateway onto another place. She thought of the doorway woven by the Pale Sun Dog, and she wept a little, remembering the beauty of those glittering threads.

“It’ll be dusk soon,” he said, interrupting himself. “You’ll want to go back to the stones.” He took the sleeping babies from her and let her go.

Dawn and dusk were gateways, a passage between night and day.

So was each footstep, which brought you farther from the place you started but closer to the place you hoped to reach.