Aunt Cord had looked up then, her close-set, rather beady eyes sharp and inquisitive above her narrow blade of a nose. Some things hadn’t changed since Susan had set out for the Cöos; she had still been able to feel her aunt’s eyes brushing across her face and down her body, like little whisk-brooms with sharp bristles.

“What took ye so long?” Aunt Cord had asked. “Was there trouble?”

“No trouble,” Susan had replied, but for a moment she thought of how the witch had stood beside her in the doorway, pulling her braid through the gnarled tube of one loosely clenched fist. She remembered wanting to go, and she remembered asking Rhea if their business was done.

Mayhap there’s one more little thing, the old woman had said... or so Susan thought. But what had that one more little thing been? She couldn’t remember. And, really, what did it matter? She was shut of Rhea until her belly began to rise with Thorin’s child... and if there could be no baby-making until Reap-Night, she’d not be returning to the Cöos until late winter at the soonest. An age! And it would be longer than that, were she slow to kindle...

“I walked slowly coming home, Aunt. That’s all.”

“Then why look ye so?” Aunt Cord had asked, scant brows knitting toward the vertical line which creased her brow.

“How so?” Susan had asked, taking off her apron and knotting the strings and hanging it on the hook just inside the kitchen door.

“Flushy. Frothy. Like milk fresh out of the cow.”

She’d almost laughed. Aunt Cord, who knew as little about men as Susan did about the stars and planets, had struck it directly. Flushy and frothy was exactly how she felt. “Only the night air, I suppose,” she had said. “I saw a meteor, Aunt. And heard the thinny. The sound’s strong tonight.”

“Aye?” her aunt asked without interest, then returned to the subject which did interest her. “Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Did ye cry?”

Susan shook her head.

“Good. Better not. Always better. She likes it when they cry, I’ve heard. Now, Sue—did she give you something? Did the old pussy give you something?”

“Aye.” She reached into her pocket and brought out the paper with

written upon it. She held it out and her aunt snatched it away with a greedy look. Cordelia had been quite the sugarplum over the last month or so, but now that she had what she wanted (and now that Susan had come too far and promised too much to have a change of heart), she’d reverted to the sour, supercilious, often suspicious woman Susan had grown up with; the one who’d been driven into almost weekly bouts of rage by her phlegmatic, life-goes-as-’twill brother. In a way, it was a relief. It had been nervewracking to have Aunt Cord playing Cybilla Good-Sprite day after day.