For a moment after waking she lay motionless with the thin sunlight on her closed eyelids, trying to remember where she was and what had happened. She felt surprisingly well—had her fever broken? But her stomach felt full, too, almost as if the dreams had been…real.

Briony sat up. If the last night’s events had been dreams, then the dreams still lingered: only a few yards away from her sleeping spot the fire was burning in its pit of stones, and something was cooking, a sweet smell that made her mouth water. Other than Briony, though, the little clearing was empty. She didn’t know what to think. She might have imagined the old woman who claimed to be a goddess, but the rest of this—the fire, the careful stack of kindling beside it, the smell of…roasting apples? In late winter?

“Ho there, child, so you’ve finally dragged yourself upright.” The voice behind her made Briony jump. “You didn’t get your sweet last night, so I put some more in the coals.”

She turned to see the tiny, black-robed figure of Lisiya limping slowly down into the dell, a pair of deer walking behind her like pet dogs. The two animals, a buck and a doe, paused when they saw Briony but did not run. After a moment’s careful consideration of her with their liquid brown eyes, they stooped and began to crop at the grass which peeked up here and there through the fallen leaves and branches.

“You’re real,” Briony said. “I mean, I didn’t dream you. Was…was everything real, then?”

“Now how would I know?” Lisiya dropped the bag she was carrying, then lifted her arms over her head and stretched. “I stay out of mortal minds as a rule—in any case, I spent the night walking. What do you recall that might or might not be a dream?”

“That you fed me and gave me a place to sleep.” Briony smiled shyly. “That you healed me. And that you are a goddess.”

“Yes, that all accords with my memory.” Lisiya finished her stretch and grunted. “Ai, such old bones! To think once I could have run from one side of my Whitewood to another and back in a single night, then still had the strength to take a handsome young woodsman or two to my bed.” She looked at Briony and frowned. “What are you waiting for, child? Aren’t you hungry? We have a long way to go today.”

“What? Go where?”

“Just eat and I will explain. Watch your fingers when you take out those apples. Ah, I almost forgot.” She reached into her sack and pulled out a small jug stoppered with wax. “Cream. A certain farmer leaves it out for me when his cow is milking well. Not everyone has forgotten me, you see.” She looked as pleased as a spinster with a suitor.

The meal was messy but glorious. Briony licked every last bit of cream and soft, sweet apple pulp off her fingers.