"I was told there's a murrain among the cattle here." Now that he wasn't all locked up with cold his voice was beautiful. He talked like the tale-tellers when they spoke the parts of the heroes and the dragonlords. Maybe he was a teller or a singer? But no; the murrain, he had said.

"There is."

"I may be able to help the beasts."

"You're a curer?"

He nodded.

"Then you'll be more than welcome. The plague is terrible among the cattle. And getting worse."

He said nothing. She could see the warmth coming into him, untying him.

"Put your feet up to the fire," she said abruptly. "I have some old shoes of my husbands." It cost her something to say that, yet when she had said it she felt released, untied too. What was she keeping Bren's shoes for, anyhow? They were too small for Berry and too big for her. She'd given away his clothes, but kept the shoes, she didn't know what for. For this fellow, it would seem. Things came round if you could wait for them, she thought. "I'll set em out for you," she said. "Yours are perished."

He glanced at her. His dark eyes were large, deep, opaque like a horse's eyes, unreadable.

"He's dead," she said, "two years. The marsh fever. You have to watch out for that, here. The water. I live with my brother. He's in the village, at the tavern. We keep a dairy. I make cheese. Our herd's been all right," and she made the sign to avert evil. "I keep em close in. Out on the ranges, the murrain's very bad. Maybe the cold weather'll put an end to it."

"More likely to kill the beasts that sicken with it," the man said. He sounded a bit sleepy.

"I'm called Gift," she said. "My brother's Berry."

"Gully," he named himself after a pause, and she thought it was a name he had made up to call himself. It did not fit him. Nothing about him fit together, made a whole. Yet she felt no distrust of him. She was easy with him. He meant no harm to her. She thought there was kindness in him, the way he spoke of the animals. He would have a way with them, she thought. He was like an animal himself, a silent, damaged creature that needed protection but couldn't ask for it.

"Come" she said, "before you fall asleep there," and he followed her obediently to Berry's room, which wasn't much more than a cupboard built onto the corner of the house. Her room was behind the chimney. Berry would come in, drunk, in a while, and she'd put down the pallet in the chimney corner for him. Let the traveler have a good bed for a night. Maybe he'd leave a copper or two with her when he went on. There was a terrible shortage of coppers in her household these days.

He woke, as he always did, in his room in the Great House. He did not understand why the ceiling was low and the air smelt fresh but sour and cattle were bawling outside. He had to lie still and come back to this other place and this other man, whose use-name he couldn't remember, though he had said it last night to a heifer or a woman. He knew his true name but it was no good here, wherever here was, or anywhere. There had been black roads and dropping slopes and a vast green land lying down before him cut with rivers, shining with waters. A cold wind blowing. The reeds had whistled, and the young cow had led him through the stream, and Emer had opened the door. He had known her name as soon as he saw her. But he must use some other name. He must not call her by her name. He must remember what name he had told her to call him. He must not be Irioth, though he was Irioth. Maybe in time he would be another man. No; that was wrong; he must be this man. This man's legs ached and his feet hurt. But it was a good bed, a feather bed, warm, and he need not get out of it yet. He drowsed a while, drifting away from Irioth.

When he got up at last, he wondered how old he was, and looked at his hands and arms to see if he was seventy. He still looked forty, though he felt seventy and moved like it, wincing. He got his clothes on, foul as they were from days and days of travel. There was a pair of shoes under the chair, worn but good, strong shoes, and a pair of knit wool stockings to go with them. He put the stockings on his battered feet and limped into the kitchen. Emer stood at the big sink, straining something heavy in a cloth.

"Thank you for these and the shoes," he said, and thanking her for the gift, remembered her use-name but said only, "mistress."

"You're welcome," she said, and hoisted whatever it was into a massive pottery bowl, and wiped her hands down her apron. He knew nothing at all about women. He had not lived where women were since he was ten years old. He had been afraid of them, the women that shouted at him to get out of the way in that great other kitchen long ago. But since he had been traveling about in Earthsea he had met women and found them easy to be with, like the animals; they went about their business not paying much attention to him unless he frightened them. He tried not to do that. He had no wish or reason to frighten them. They were not men.

"Would you like some fresh curds? It makes a good breakfast." She was eyeing him, but not for long, and not meeting his eyes. Like an animal, like a cat, she was, sizing him up but not challenging. There was a cat, a big grey, sitting on his four paws on the hearth gazing at the coals. Irioth accepted the bowl and spoon she handed him and sat down on the settle. The cat jumped up beside him and purred.

"Look at that," said the woman. "He's not friendly with most folk."

"It's the curds."

"He knows a curer, maybe."

It was peaceful here with the woman and the cat. He had come to a good house.

"It's cold out," she said. "Ice on the trough this morning. Will you be going on, this day?"

There was a pause. He forgot that he had to answer in words. "I'd stay if I might," he said. "I'd stay here."

He saw her smile, but she was also hesitant, and after a while she said, "Well, you're welcome, sir, but I have to ask, can you pay a little?"

"Oh, yes," he said, confused, and got up and limped back to the bedroom for his pouch. He brought her a piece of money, a little Enladian crownpiece of gold.

"Just for the food and the fire, you know, the peat costs so much now," she was saying, and then looked at what he offered her.

"Oh, sir," she said, and he knew he had done wrong.

"There's nobody in the village could change that," she said. She looked up into his face for a moment. "The whole village together couldn't change that!" she said, and laughed. It was all right, then, though the word «change» rang and rang in his head.

"It hasn't been changed," he said, but he knew that was not what she meant. "I'm sorry," he said. "If I stayed a month, if I stayed the winter, would that use it up? I should have a place to stay, while I work with the beasts."

"Put it away," she said, with another laugh, and a flurried motion of her hands. "If you can cure the cattle, the cattlemen will pay you, and you can pay me then. Call that surety, if you like. But put it away, sir! It makes me dizzy to look at it. — Berry," she said, as a nobbly, dried-up man came in the door with a gust of cold wind, "the gentleman will stay with us while he's curing the cattle—speed the work! He's given us surety of payment. So you'll sleep in the chimney corner, and him in the room. This is my brother Berry, sir."

Berry ducked his head and muttered. His eyes were dull. It seemed to Irioth that the man had been poisoned. When Berry went out again, the woman came closer and said, resolute, in a low voice, "There's no harm in him but the drink, but there's not much left of him but the drink. It's eaten up most of his mind, and most of what we have. So, do you see, put up your money where he won't see it, if you don't mind, sir. He won't come looking for it. But if he saw it, he'd take it. He often doesn't know what he's doing, do you see."