He had failed her. He sank onto the sitting stone beneath the overhang and stared as the red coals faded to ashes.

SHE WOKE HIM by touching his hand. As he started into awareness, she pressed an irregular oval object into his palm.

“Here, Uncle. It’s sweet.”

He studied the fruit. The morning light described its lumps and hollows, the way its smooth skin gave slightly. Delighted, he laughed. “I haven’t tasted a sunfruit for years! My favorite! Where did you find it? They don’t grow in the Barrens.”

She gestured further into the foothills. “There’s a valley with many trees, and water. Someone was hiding there, but all I saw were threads like silk blown in the wind. The fruit is good. Try it.”

The sweetness cooled his dry mouth, and an odd expression creased her face: She was trying to smile, to show she was pleased that she had pleased him.

“What is your name, lass?”

She backed away, unsaddled Seeing, and busied herself grooming. Ox-footed fool! He had shouldered in too quickly. He finished the fruit, wiped his hands and, because he had to do something lest he start jabbering again, began whittling.

After a while, still brushing the horses, she said in a low voice, “What is the twisting path? When we walked on it, I saw other places.”

He kept up his stroke with the knife. “There are a hundred and one altars spread across the land. Any Guardian, at one altar, can speak to any Guardian at another altar at the crossroads where our paths meet. You and I must beware, because the others who are like us wish to do us harm.”

She paused to look at him. “The horses have wings.”

“Yes.”

“We are demons, aren’t we?”

“No. Ghosts of a kind, perhaps. But alive in our own way.”

She resumed brushing. “When I was a human, I had a mirror. Every girl is given a mirror when she comes into her blood. A mirror is a woman’s strength. But they took mine.” She dropped the brush. Seeing sidestepped away from her as she fumbled into her sleeve and brought out the mirror and stared at her ghost face. “Why did you make me look? Why did you give me this mirror?”

He set down the knife and rose. “The mirror is your staff. Each Guardian has a staff, each according to the nature of the cloak that Guardian wears. I have a staff, as you see—” He picked up his stout, beribboned staff from the ground. “—although I admit I am the only Guardian with a staff that is actually a walking staff. You have a mirror. Death—you saw her—should carry a sword, appropriate to death, I am sure. The sun with his fiery arrow. The earth with her deadly snake. And the others, so on. There is a great deal to teach you, lass. Tell me when you are ready to hear more.”

The weary despair in those demon-blue eyes made him wish to weep for whatever misery she had endured. “Why did you make me remember?”