“That took long enough,” she said to the peddler when at last he returned to the wagon. She already knew some things were not worth bargaining over, not when you were in a hurry, not when your future depended upon it. The air still smelled like apples, though there was not a single such tree in all of town, and Faith was aching to leave. She knew she was being called home. She thought of her mother’s clear gray eyes and the song she had sung.

The water is wide, I cannot get oe’r it

And neither have I wings to fly

Give me a boat that will carry two

And I shall row, my Love and I.

Love is handsome and love is fine

And love’s a jewel while it is new,

But when it’s old, it groweth cold

And fades away like morning dew.

“Don’t worry so much,” Finney told Faith. He supposed he had no choice but to escort her. “We’re on our way.”

They headed through the flatlands as the seabirds were circling above the dirt road, dropping their breakfasts of mussels and clams so the shells would split open. Martha had been running through town when she spied the cart in the distance, as it was about to go over a small wooden bridge. She still heard the echo of that beetle in the wall, even out here where there was nothing but marshland. The sky was a brilliant blue, and foxes in the marsh were walking through the muddy shellfish beds, the vixens calling to their kits. Martha called out for the wagon to stop. When she shrieked, the foxes grew silent.

“What on earth?” Jack Finney turned to see what he at first thought was a ghost in a white bonnet, her gray cape flying out behind her. “Good God,” he said, for she looked a terrible sight.

“Don’t stop,” Faith Owens told the peddler. She was changing the future right now, minute by minute. If she hadn’t been wearing the iron cuffs, she would have seen the fate she had made in the palm of her hand, a path that led across a deep river. Though her sight was gone, her courage was not. She thought of the tea her mother often made her. Never hide who you are. Do what you think you cannot.