The vision of the grubs and worms she’d seen squirming seemed now the guilt Rae felt crawling over her. Wolf, girl, Mop—over and over; she could not still her spiraling thoughts. For under it all, the truth that kept these thoughts spinning, the one she could not quite bring herself to admit though she felt it in some very deep part of her, deep beneath her freckled or mud-splattered skin—was that she was the child the king sought. How she knew, she could not say… but she understood that a child given to its parents by the mountains, by the wind and the birds was… unusual. Why wouldn’t the king seek such a child?

The guilt was dizzying. Mop’s illness, Ness’s sorrow, the captured girl… Ah! Rae, pulling a lamb into her lap, buried her face in its wool.

The lamb scrambled away. Rae, drying her eyes on her sleeve, looked up, sniveling. The pale bodies of the sheep were drifting farther into the dark.

“Oh.” She still had to bring them in. Shaking her head, she stood. “Come you!”

It was this way for weeks. Rae in the fields, Ness in the house. Mop asleep but not asleep. When he did at last come back to them, it was so gradual that at first they could not believe it happening.

“I think his hand moved, Nessa. When I said I would take the sheep up the slope, I think he lifted his fingers.”

Nessa narrowed her eyes at Mop. “Wishful thinking, daughter. He is not yet returned.”

Then, later that evening, as they sat picking fleece, Mop’s eyes seemed suddenly wider. Brighter.

Nessa placed her palms against her husband’s cheeks. “Are you there, my love?” She stroked his forehead. “Have you come back to us?”

Mop was silent and unmoving.

“Not yet.” Nessa patted Rae’s shoulder.

But the next morning, as Rae chattered about taking the sheep near the mountain pass and bent to kiss Mop’s forehead, she heard a quiet murmur: “N-not the… end I might.”

Rae’s breath caught. “Mop?” She stared at her father. One half of his face seemed… illuminated. As though a light shone beneath his skin. The other… still in shadow. Only part of him seemed to see her.

“Down h-here.” One side of Mop’s mouth moved haltingly. “I wouldn’t… f-find it so.”

Behind Rae, a pot clattered to the floor. Nessa rushed to Mop’s side. “Are you there, my love? Are you there, my old airmonger?”

One eye crinkled, brightness pooling in its corner. One half lip curled around the word everywhere. “Everywhere s-so it seems it co-could be so I find.”

The words had no sense, but one cheek rose in a hesitant smile, and one hand reached to touch Nessa’s fingers and then Rae’s hair. “Su-sunlight,” said the half of Mop that seemed illuminated.

Rae, seeing her father half returned, did indeed feel the sun had risen in that small room. She clutched his hand to her heart.