“I can't. I don't know it. But ... I know this'll sound crazy, but it's something to do with a rowan tree. Perhaps I am sup- posed to meet them under a rowan. Is there one near here?”

There was a sudden stir at her words and whispers ran to and fro. Then the crowd parted and from among them stepped a young girl. She was about Ruth's age, with blue eyes and tanned skin. Her red hair flowed down her back, glinting gold and copper in the firelight.

Why, I know you, thought Ruth, in sudden excitement. It

was the girl in her drawings, the girl whose memory haunted her dreams.

Now she was smiling and holding out her hand. “I am Rowan,” she said.

The Sharing

“MY NAME is Rowan. But who are you? How do you know my name?”

''There is another.” A man's voice interrupted. There was an urgency in his tone, though he spoke quietly, that made Ruth turn round. “There. In the shadow of the trees.”

''Oh, that is the Initiator. We came together.”

She waved and the Initiator walked across the glade, her hands held up and apart in a gesture of friendship. “We come in peace,” she said formally. Then, with a little laugh. “And we are very hungry. ''

It was the right thing to say. There was a bustle, and hot soup and A.at bread were produced. “This year we are growing wheat, but until it is ripe this is all we have to offer. Eat it. It is good, made from roots and pollen.”

“You are very kind.” The Initiator sat on the ground by the fire and began to cat. Ruth followed her example, though the closeness of the tall man with the knife in his belt and the other, whose folded arms were as thick and gnarled as tree trunks, made her uneasy.

As she ate, Ruth listened to the conversation of the strangers. Always close to Rowan was a young man with long brown hair and dark eyes but still beardless, called Arbor. The tall man with the knife was called Swift, and his wife, Healhand, was a woman with a calm strong face. The muscled man was Treefeller, and she guessed from the conversation that he was Arbor's father, and that Swift and Healhand were the parents of Rowan and a mischievous boy called Groundsel.

Men and women alike wore their hair long, either loose about their shoulders or plaited and tied with leather thongs; and the men had beards, some, like the old man called Stargazer, white and straggling down their chests. They wore the rough fur tunics that she had seen in her dreams, and necklaces of dried berries or the claws of small animals, and in their hair were small bundles of birds' feathers.