Her first instinct was to tell him to pick up the trailing edge, but when he saw her his face lit up and he trotted toward her, sweeping the quilt thoughtlessly behind him. He threw his arms around her, quilt and all, and said: “Lady! I thought you weren’t coming back and I’m so hungry!”

  Carys, thrown off balance, braced herself against the door-frame and fended him off. “Get off,” she said. “I’ll get food shortly.”

  “Yes, Lady!” he said cheerfully; and, just as cheerfully, he fell over.

  Carys hauled him to his feet by the bunched-up quilt at his chest, which made him giggle, then felt his forehead once again, which made him gaze up at her with wide brown eyes and say, “Your fingers are so cold, Lady.”

  “Back to bed,” said Carys, looking into those glazed eyes. “Don’t get up again.”

  “I’m not bleeding,” objected the boy, but he didn’t resist when Carys pushed him back toward the bed. She wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t capable of resisting, or if he was simply obedient. She propped him up with the single pillow at his back so that he could sit up, and cut into the tough little loaf of brown bread that she’d been keeping in her breadbox for an easy meal or two. She took the boy his food before she got her own, and he ate it slowly, taking his time with the chewy crust as he watched her move about the room. Carys, disliking the unfamiliar feel of those brown eyes on her, had to resist the urge to hunch her shoulders. She set out her own meal with the usual second place across from her, jarred by the empty space where the chair should have been until it occurred to her that there was no reason to be jarred when the boy’s clothes were dry. Leaving her dinner on the table, Carys folded his shirt again and put it at the foot of the bed, then moved the chair back to its accustomed place. There was another that hung on the wall to keep the cottage tidy, but she never took it down and didn’t intend to take it down today, either.

  The boy watched still, chewing his crusts, but she ignored him, gazing out of the only window the cottage boasted as she ate. Carys was a creature of habit. For years she had eaten her dinner just so, her eyes on the sea and her thoughts never far distant.

  By the time she had finished eating, the boy was asleep again, the quilts bunched beneath him and one bare shoulder exposed to the cooling air. Carys nudged him to rearrange the summer quilt, and he muttered some nonsense to her hair as she tucked him in. She made uncertainly soothing noises back at him and stirred up the fire a little, then went to sleep on the rug once again.

  It was another wet morning the next day, but it was a quick run along the shore despite that. There would be a storm coming shortly, Carys knew. The wind had the right direction and scent to it. The next few days would be busier than usual, not to mention the possibility of shipwreck washing up on the rocks. Hopefully the captain of the cutter that usually came through every three months was watching the weather as well, and would decide to stay in port a few days longer rather than lose everything for a little more speed.

  Since there wasn’t as much work on the shoreline, Carys made a short firewood trip before she came back to the cottage. She could hear movement in the cottage as she piled the new, wet firewood with the rest of it, but when one of the pieces of driftwood struck the wall as she piled it, those noises ceased completely.

  Carys gave a faint, dour smile, and finished stacking the wood. The boy was beside the fireplace when she opened the door, long fingers wrapped around the haft of the poker and his brown eyes brightly watchful.

  “Good,” said Carys. “You’re up again.”

  He gave her a bright smile and let go of the poker so smoothly that Carys didn’t quite see when he did it. “My head doesn’t feel so light now, Lady!”

  “Good,” she said again. “Go out and bathe under the pump.”

  The smile vanished immediately, replaced by a grimace. “But Lady!”

  Carys glanced back at him. “What?”

  “I’m clean, Lady,” he objected, faintly hurt. “I was good: I used the pot and I emptied it myself while you were out.”

  “You’ve been sick,” Carys said remorselessly. “You’ve sweated all over my quilts. I’ll have to wash and dry them as well.”

  “But Lady!”

  “What now?”

  He hesitated, then said miserably, “But it’s so cold out there, Lady!”

  Carys looked at him for quite some time, determining, while he smiled hopefully at her. Winter was close to being over, but it was still cold outside. Of course, he was far too old to be making the boyish kind of appeal he was making—he was obviously a practiced conniver. Despite that, she left the cottage and went to the older part of the woodpile, which was stacked in concentric circles within a half-barrel that had been Carys’ bathtub before she began washing beneath the pump. Besides wood, it was full of cobwebs and spiders: Carys upended it with a hearty tug and ruthlessly bid all its occupants farewell with a few good kicks to the side. When she got back to the front of the cottage, the boy was waiting with his head anxiously poking out at the door.

  “Lady! I thought you’d gone away! I won’t be a nuisance, I’ll wash under…” his voice faded away as he belatedly took in the tub Carys was carrying. His face lit up immediately. “Lady! It’s a tub? Why is it so small? How do you fit?”

  Carys nudged him out of the way with the tub so that she could enter the cottage, leaving the question unanswered.

  He added, “Well, Lady, but you’re taller than me, I think. You couldn’t even stretch out your legs.”

  “You don’t need to stretch out your legs,” said Carys. “It’s for washing in, not relaxing in.”

  Still, she could have filled it with cold water from the pump outside, but she didn’t. Instead, Carys boiled kettle after kettle from her water barrel inside to fill the half-barrel. The boy, who had been watching in eager, bouncing anticipation when she began, by the time the half-barrel was comfortably full and steaming, had become quiet and thoughtful.

  “I’ll pay you back, Lady,” he said. “I’ll do something nice for you tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Carys, pouring the last kettleful of water and carefully testing the temperature of the water. “You’ll sleep beside the fire tonight, and tomorrow you’ll go back where you came from. Wash yourself.”

  She left a cloth with which to wash, another, larger one to dry himself, and went back outside to re-stack the firewood she’d upturned.

  Carys was halfway through stacking the upturned wood with the rest of it when there was a panicked yell from within the cottage, followed swiftly by a great deal of splashing and more yelling. She dropped the pieces she’d been stacking tumbling them to the ground as she dashed for the cottage door.

  When she slammed through the door, the boy wasn’t, as she’d half expected, drowning or injured or being attacked: he was pressed against one side of the barrel with his chin touching the water and his eyes wide, looking over his knees at the spider that was curled opposite him on velvet legs.

  “Lady, help! Make it go away!”

  Carys let out an angry pant of breath that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. “You– what are you doing, yelling like that! I thought—a boy of your age afraid of spiders!”

  “Lady, help! It keeps following me! Please!”

  Carys gave vent to another huff of breath, this one more amused than angry, and crouched beside the half-barrel to brush the spider away from the boy and onto her hand. It was a big one, its legs easily spanning her palm and dangling over the edges; and, like all the bigger spiders around the cottage, it was docile and disinclined to bite. She released it just outside the cottage, but when she turned to shut the door and return to the woodpile, the boy said: “Don’t go!”

  Carys paused, her hand on the doorknob, and frowned an inquiry at him.

  The boy ducked his head until he was making bubbles with his mouth and then popped up again to say anxiously: “What if there’s more? Don’t go.”

  She sighed, and closed the door. The boy gave her a sunny smile, his whole face lighting up, but she turned her back on it and sat in her usual place at the table, gazing out at the sea. For a little while that had the effect of keeping him quiet, the only sounds breaking the silence the faint plashing of water and the burbling of bubbles as the boy presumably ducked his head.

  Then his voice said in a friendly sort of way: “What’s your name, Lady?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  There was a slosh, suggesting the boy had heaved himself toward the front of the tub and was hanging over the edge. “Why?”

  “You’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Do I know you, Lady?”

  That surprised Carys enough to make her half-turn. The boy was hanging from the front of the tub, his arms folded and dripping on the floor. “No. Why?”

  “Well, I keep thinking I must have offended you.”

  Carys gave him a perplexed look and said, “You haven’t. Wash behind your ears.”

  “Only I’m not sure,” he said thoughtfully. “I keep thinking I must have. Maybe it would be easier if I could just remember what my name is.”

  Carys grimaced at the sea through the window. “You don’t know your name?”

  “Can’t remember,” he said blithely. “Do you know what’s really odd, Lady? I can’t remember what I look like, either. I know I’m pretty strong, though.”

  “Mmm.”

  A brief silence followed Carys’ murmur, then the boy asked, “Where do you go, anyway? In the mornings before I get up?”

  “That’s not important,” said Carys, who had been deep in thought. “If you don’t remember your name, what do you remember?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” he said. “I’ve woken up every morning when you get up. Not because you’re getting up, or because you’ve woken me. I just…wake up. Perhaps I’m a fisherman?”

  “No,” said Carys. “You don’t smell of fish.”

  “Oh,” said the boy. There was another spate of underwater burbling, then he said a damp, “Oo-ah. Lady, my head hurts.”

  Carys, half turning again, this time without looking at him, said, “It will. I sewed it up, but it’s not healed.”

  “Not there,” he protested. “Here. Come and feel, Lady.”

  Carys sighed. “Get dressed first.”

  There was a surprised silence, then the boy said: “Why? You’ve already stripped me. I don’t mind.”

  Carys sighed again, but rose from her seat nevertheless. It wasn’t the first time she’d attended to naked or half-naked youths, but those were usually dead or unconscious by the time she got to them. She found herself wishing that this particular one was unconscious—or at least talked a little less. She seized the hair at the crown of his head, tilting his head forward as if he were a dog instead of a boy, to observe the place his fingers were pressing against. A faint line of watered-down blood trickled down the back of his neck.

  “Ow!” he complained. “Lady! Why are you so angry?”

  “I’m not angry,” said Carys briefly. “But I only usually heal dogs.”

  “Oh. I’m not a dog.”

  “Stop talking,” Carys said, without releasing the handful of hair. There was certainly something there at the base of his skull, bulging and fleshy and bleeding. “This will hurt. If you struggle, it will hurt more.”

  “That’s all right,” he said cheerfully, at odds with his previous plaints. “I won’t cry.”

  Carys only half believed him, but although he gripped the sides of the tub very tightly, the only sound she heard from him over the next couple of minutes was the occasional indrawn breath. Concerned only with the visible wound on his forehead, she hadn’t realised that there was another, nearly as bad, at the back of his head. This one wasn’t salt-cleansed and pink like the other had been: something misshapen and metallic protruded from the flesh there. In response, the flesh had become red and angry.

  Carys had the brief, sinking suspicion that his injuries were much worse than she’d anticipated, and that his skull was cracked at the back. However, by the time she had carefully worked the crumpled piece of metal free from his flesh, it was clear that whatever it was, it had already been crushed within an inch of its life and hadn’t dug too deeply into his head.

  Carys dabbled it briefly in the bathwater, then brought it to eye-level to examine by the combined light of the fire and window. Sunlight and firelight gleamed across rough-brushed gold, and glanced off a pearl with a softening of light.

  The crumpled ring tinkled against the floor, dropping from Carys’ cold fingers, and she sat down rather suddenly.

  “Careful,” said the boy, reaching for the squashed lump of gold and pearl. “You’ll lose it between the boards. Lady? Lady?”

  He glanced up from the ring in his fingers, and what he saw in her eyes must have frightened him, because he made a swift, abortive motion to rise, dropping the ring. He was too late; Carys had him by the hair again in a moment, this time forcing his head back, and her other hand was around his throat.

  “Where,” she said, in a voice that was tight with fury, “did you get this?”

  The boy choked “Lady!”

  “Where did you get it!”

  “Lady, Lady! You’re killing me!”

  “Then answer me quickly,” Carys said between her teeth. She was in no mood to acknowledge his rapidly purpling face, or his now choking attempts to speak. He only coughed at her this time, however, and she reluctantly loosened her grip, curling her fingers around the edge of the barrel instead.

  “Why have you got this ring?”

  “But Lady, I didn’t have it!” he said hoarsely. “It was stuck in the back of my head!”

  Carys made a small movement forward as if to seize him again, and the boy sloshed back against the curve of the barrel.

  “I don’t remember anything! Don’t kill me, Lady! I’d remember if I could!”

  It could have been his wide eyes, or it could have been the red and purple marks from her fingers around his neck; Carys dropped back to the floor with a jolt, sick and wretched. She stared down at the ruined ring for a long time, her head bowed, and by and by the sound of gentle sloshing began again.

  The boy’s voice, cautiously, asked, “What is it?” He had moved toward the front of the barrel again, and was gazing at her over the edge of it, his fingers clinging to the rim.

  Carys reached out and took up the crumpled piece of gold again. “It’s a ring,” she said.

  The boy still watched her warily, but he said, nevertheless, “I know it’s a ring. I mean, why is it important?”

  “Finish your wash,” Carys said abruptly, and went outside again.

  * * *

  She went on an extended firewood trek, piling her shawl high with dry branches and grasping the edges of it over her shoulders. She worked until night fell, her feet sinking into the dampening grass, and until it occurred to her that the boy might possibly leave while she was gone. It hadn’t occurred to her before—he was still quite weak, after all.

  “He won’t,” she said uncertainly, to the cool night breeze. He couldn’t leave now—now that she knew—he couldn’t. But Cary remembered his eyes, wide and glazed, his fingers gripping her wrists just as hers grasped his throat. She dropped her firewood, shawl and all, and fairly ran down the hill back to the cottage.

  She saw the half-barrel outside as she passed, tipped upside down to drip on the grass, but there was no sign of movement through the window. Carys threw the door open with shaking hands for the second time that day, careless of the noise it made against the wall. There was still water on the floor and the fire still glowed gently, throwing moving shadows on the bed piled high with quilts, but there was no sign of the boy.

  Carys made a small, inarticulate sound of frustration, and kicked the door shut again. The quilts on the bed, moving more than the light and shadow play from the fire warranted, rippled and tumbled apart. A tousled head looked inquiringly out into the warmth of the room.

  “Lady? Is something wrong?”

  “You!” said Carys. “Out!”

  “Oh, but Lady!”

  “Out!”

  He climbed out of the quilts reluctantly, staggering a little from foot to foot. He said, “Lady, it’s so cold out there.”

  “I didn’t say to go outside,” said Carys. “I said out of the bed. You sleep over there.” She pointed at the hearth, where she had spent the last two nights.

  He blinked at her once, twice, then smiled blindingly. “Yes, Lady! Can I have one of the quilts, too? Just the thin one.”

  “There’s a fire,” Carys said. “What do you want with a quilt?” But she took the summer quilt off the bed in spite of that, and dropped it on the thin rug. At the same time, she said abruptly, “You can stay until you’re healed—until your memory comes back.”

  “Is it that—” he thought better of the question and asked instead, “What will you call me by?”

  “Why should I call you by anything? You have your own name. If you want someone to call it, you should remember it first.”

  “Do you have a glass?”

  Carys stared at him and he blushed almost unnoticeably. “I thought it might help if I knew what I look like.”

  “You look Eppan,” Carys said. “But your nose is straight; your mother or father could be Scandian.”

  The boy felt that nose with interest. “Goodness, it’s big! My hair looks wrong, the bits I can see around the edges.”

  “You’ve dyed it gold,” Carys told him. Later, she would have to put up some sort of a screen for dressing, but right now she had her trews on, and a woollen slip beneath her dress that was as thick as the dress. She was already dressed for the day’s work tomorrow. “It’s black at the roots.”