“Runa?” The man frowned slightly. “You can’t mean Runa Rasgar, the Fang of Dusk?”

“Yes. She’s our Lore Master,” Viola explained. “Come on. You can meet her.”

The group shuffled back to the beach, where the remnants of Runa’s ice Lore thawed in the chilly Spring afternoon. Runa argued with another villager on the pier, but the villager seemed to be the one doing most of the shouting. Runa spotted them and mouthed Tadg’s name.

Tadg rolled his eyes. “She can’t speak the language well. I’ll be back.”

He left the four of them lingering at the edge of town. The wreckage the Sleábeaks had left behind was dramatic—Knunx had more holes than a cheese grater. Half of the boats were sinking, and the stampeding sheep had destroyed almost all the fencing.

“You’re bleeding,” the man said to Barclay. Then he rummaged through his baggy pockets and various knapsacks, all of which looked full to bursting. “No, not the Scaromilk… Oh, there’s my good knife! I’ve been looking for that…. Hm, kritters, poison antidotes, a snorkel and… Aha! I knew I had some more left.”

Triumphantly, he whipped out a silver, slimy piece of seaweed and slapped it onto Barclay’s cheek. It smelled like sauerkraut.

Viola giggled.

“Mind if I patch it up? It’ll only take a minute,” the man said, though Barclay would’ve preferred to have been asked before having the kelp stuck to his face. The Lore Keeper held his hand over Barclay’s cheek, and a soothing, tingling feeling spread across his skin.

“Oh, um, thank you,” Barclay told him.

“No need! Us Lore Keepers need to look out for one another.”

While he waited for the man to finish healing him, Barclay watched Tadg join the argument with the villager. Unlike Runa, he had no problem yelling right back at the woman.

“How do you think it’s going?” Barclay asked.

The man chuckled. “Do you normally shout when a conversation is going smoothly?”

“But we saved Knunx from the Sleábeaks!” Viola said gruffly. “They should be thanking us.”

“Ah, I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. But… good news! Your cheek stitched up nicely. Lucky I had some leftover pickled Gunkwort. Between that and my Lore you couldn’t get better healing anywhere.”

“Thank you,” Barclay said again. “But can I… take this… off?” He tried and failed to wrench the slimy Gunkwort off his skin.

“Eh, it’ll stick there for hours. Maybe days…”

“Days?” Barclay repeated. Viola’s giggles dissolved into laughter, and even Yasha cracked a smile.

“It’ll fall off when it’s ready. Oh, better gird yourselves…”

The villager Runa and Tadg had been arguing with stomped over. She jabbed her finger three times into Barclay’s chest, and even though she wasn’t hurting him, the woman was very large and frightening. And Barclay was tiny even for an eleven-year-old.