“Still, the men who remained with me were vigorous, and helped me with the labor, their women and their sons and daughters, too, clearing the ground and planting. With our portion of the herd we did well, for goats are earnest in love. Their numbers soon doubled, and doubled again. Later, other men and their tents joined us, and the village was built. Today there are seven fields beyond the great pasture, fields of beans and grain, and a wood farther on of berries and apples. It is easy to barter for seed from the wandering tribes, who have little use for it. As for the fruit trees, some kindly wind must have foretold our coming. Then, too, we have learned to make boats. The ocean is massed with sea wrack, which we gather, a weed that is useful to us in many ways, not least to eat.”

My mind had begun to run on the subject of their boats but I said, “And your woman, Hwenit’s mother?”

“She died,” he said simply. “She was in the autumn woods, gathering windfalls, when she put her hand on a little snake. Hadlin was with her; she said there was no pain. My wife seemed not to notice she had been bitten, laughing it off, and in the middle of the laugh, she shut her eyes and sank down, and when Hadlin went to her, she was dead. Hwenit was not a year old on that day; it is an odd thing, for Hwenit has grown to be clever in cure-craft, with snakebite particularly.”

His calm disturbed me. His woman died, he loved her but did not mourn, dismissing grief as superfluous. Perhaps it had been different at the hour, but I did not believe so.

He glanced at me and appeared to note my thoughts. He went on, “Hwenit was twelve the summer the krarl of Qwenex returned to the tower with a priest in their midst, journeying to the Golden Book. Always my krarl would meet with Qwenex’s people, and when he set eyes on my girl, the priest came straight to her. He asked questions. He said she had the healer’s gift and must be trained. He stayed here three seasons, the priest. He seemed no different from any of our people, save that he could set a bone, and the bone would heal straight and swift, or mix herbs for a sick child and the child would grow well again, and it seemed as much from the touch of his hands as from the draft. And these arts he taught Hwenit, and she became Uasti. I recall he showed her, too, the Mysteries of the Book, which the priests will not always show a woman, the things very few master—the wound that closed at the word of the priest, the power to raise the body from the earth as if it were winged. These magics were not in my daughter, though she was envious of them. Some nights she crouches by her fire and summons demons, and they never come, for which I am very grateful.”