With the first bite, she uttered a small sound of surprise. She closely examined the biscuit, and then him. She stuck a finger in her mouth to suck off the honey, and then she truly began to eat: seriously, attentively. He refilled her cup and gave her the last three biscuits, but she gave one of them back to him. When the plates were empty and wiped clean, and the woodcutter‑blacksmith clasped her third cup of tea within her big hands like an egg stolen from a bird’s nest, she said in a quiet, rasping voice, “I don’t suppose you are looking for a place to stay.”

Garland cleared his throat. He had not spoken, he realized, for several days. “It’s only biscuits.”

“Evidence enough,” she said, as though they were old friends, having an oblique but cordial argument.

“I can stay a few days,” he said cautiously.

“It will rain for three more days. You can help clean and secure the house, if you will. And then the roads will be firm enough for you to travel on, to wherever you are going. It will rain again, of course, after that.” Her tone of voice asked no questions.

He said politely, cautiously, “It seems you are not well prepared for winter.”

“Not yet. But the roof is tight, the woodshed full, the chimney sound.”

“The storeroom, though …”

“When the roads firm up, I’ll visit a market town nearby. If you come with me, I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

The silence descended again: his astonished, hers preoccupied. But she seemed less vacant now; the biscuits were doing their work, which gave him to understand that she had been terribly hungry. That drawn, shadowed face of hers suggested she also had not slept well in some time. The beans began to boil. He gave them a stir, then raked the coals away, to slow the pot. “That will be tomorrow’s supper,” he said. “For tonight, have you got eggs?”

“I did. Leeba dropped them, though.”

“Leeba is your child?” He paused. “My name is Garland.”

“Karis. They tell me that my name means ‘Lost.’” She seemed ironic and skeptical, but Garland thought she did seem, if not lost, then certainly bewildered.

“Well, but you have talent,” he said. “You’ve done all this, repaired the house and cut the wood.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Has yourtalent given you happiness?”

He said honestly, “Happiness never lasts longer than a meal.”

“It lasts so long as that?”

He looked at her, not knowing what to think or say. The plate of biscuits he had already given her was all he had to offer. But she was big, and hardworking, and probably still hungry. Another plateful of biscuits, or even two, would not be too much. He went to the table, measured flour and leavening, and once again began cutting in the lard.

Karis was heavy spirited, but not difficult to live with. Her daughter took some getting used to, though: active, loud, insistent, demanding every bit of Karis’s attention and at least once a day working herself into such a temper that Karis exiled her to a distant room. Since Karis was working outside in the rain much of the time, Garland often supervised this difficult child, who did not, at first, seem to particularly like him or to want him around. Then he made jam buns, and Leeba warmed up to him considerably.

Karis worked: steadily, restlessly, and oftentimes wearily. In the cold rain and mud, she stood out in the overgrown road and wielded her ax, mowing down the trees like grass before a scythe. Garland was content to clean the house, which had been abandoned long enough for bats to live in the attic, squirrels to inhabit the chimney, and rats tomake the cellar their kingdom. Somehow, Karis had already shooed out the squatters, but they had left a mess that took some stomach to clean up. The rest was merely dirt and dust, vast quantities of it that Garland swept up with a twig broom Karis had made the first morning, along with a dust pan she fashioned from a tin plate found rusting in the cellar.

He showered off the filth each night, standing in the cold rain with a bar of yellow soap. Then, suddenly, the rain stopped in the night, and in the morning they walked down the track Karis had cut through the trees. The road had firmed up as she predicted, though the ditches were full and Karis made Leeba ride on her shoulders to keep her out of the muck.

“There’s the ravens,” Leeba said suddenly, pointing into the distance. “Tell them to come here. I want to ask them a question.”

Karis said, “They’re looking for food. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know why are there three? There’s yours, and mine. But–” She looked sideways at Garland. “Does he have a raven?”

Karis said, in a voice like a saw cutting wood, “Zanja’s raven is with us now. Do you remember what I told you? That she is dead?”

“I don’t want her to be dead,” Leeba protested.

Garland, outside the edges of this strange, obscure conversation, did not ask for an explanation. If Karis had to start explaining herself, then so would he have to. He was thinking he might be able to manage through the winter with these two, in their stone house that every day became cozier, though it still had no furniture. He did not want to risk his comfort by telling half truths that might make him a vagabond again.

“I don’t wanther to be dead,” Leeba said again. Garland thought he saw the same pain convulse in her that Karis kept checked within herself. “I want J’han,” she added. “Is he dead too?”

“No,” Karis said, vaguely and distantly.

“Is summer over? My daddy promised to come home!” As they drew closer to the market town, the road became quite busy as people gathered for what would more than likely be the last market day of the year. These people who had seemed to Garland so distant and suspicious, greeted each other jovially, though they avoided even looking at Karis and Garland. Karis commented, “We’ve settled in an unfriendly place, but money might win them over.”

When they reached the town, she casually handed Garland a bag of coins. “I’ll hire us a wagon, so have everything you buy delivered to the livery stable, and we’ll sort it out there.” She added lightly, “Don’t be overly economical. If you run out of money, tell a raven, and I’ll bring you some more.”

Garland gave a bemused laugh. Leeba said, “If you talk to a raven, tell him I want my daddy to come home.”

“Yes, of course,” said Garland. He did not understand children particularly, and did not himself remember believing that birds could talk, but he supposed this game to be harmless.

“Get yourself some new clothes,” Karis commanded, as they parted ways. “I won’t have you shivering in your bare threads all winter. New shoes, too. Promise!”

They parted, and Garland turned to watch Karis walk towards the livery stable, with the girl trotting beside her, one arm stretched up as far as it would go, so she could clasp two of the big woman’s big fingers. Leeba was asking why the roofs were shaped with upturned edges, and then she pointed out that a woman was carrying four live chickens upside‑down by the feet, and then Garland could not hear her penetrating voice any more.

It did not seem to even have occurred to Karis that, once she gave Garland her money, he no longer needed her stone house, her grim company, or her noisy child. He could live through winter in a rented room, in some large town, developing respectability and familiarity, eventually winning a permanent position in a prosperous inn, perhaps, and so end his wandering days.

But he followed the crowds to the market, and began methodically spending the money. Soon, he was too wrapped up in calculating sensible quantities of supplies, consulting the list he had constructed in his head over the last three days, and bargaining fiercely with the unfriendly merchants to feel any particular regret. He emerged from a clothiers in the late afternoon, with a few coins still jangling in his new pockets–the first new clothing he’d had since he lost his temper with the general five years ago and made himself a wanderer–and glanced up to see the source of a dry flapping sound. There on the edge of the roof stood a great raven, black as the heart of a stormcloud, looking at him inquiringly through one eye and then the other. Garland glanced around himself. He was practically alone on the street, for it was the time that most people go home to start cooking their suppers. He said out loud, feeling foolish, “I’m not quite out of money, but I think the shopping’s done. And Leeba wants her daddy to come home.”