With Caramon, the job was easy. As long as you didn't let his diaper get too wet, he was fine. Loud, restless, perpetually hungry, but fine.

Raistlin was a different story. Kit had to watch him closely, be alert to his breathing and coax him to eat. The young girl found that those tasks were not nearly so exhausting as the time she spent thinking of the infant, willing Raistlin with all her might to grow stronger.

As she began making breakfast this day, Kit heard a slight noise and looked around. To her amazement, Rosamun was standing-wobbly, but standing-in the doorway of her room. If Kit hadn't looked into her eyes, she would have thought her mother was fine. But Rosamun's gray eyes were eerie, out of focus.

When Gilon returned home well before dusk, Kitiara greeted him at the door. They had agreed that upon his return Kit would be allowed an immediate escape from the confines of the cottage. Rather than sitting down to eat supper right away, the eight-year-old girl played outside until total darkness descended, usually practicing her swordplay with a furious intensity, as if cramming her childhood into a few short hours.

"Mother wandered around the cottage a lot today," Kit informed Gilon this day as she got ready to leave. "I had to tie her to the bed at one point."

Gilon raised his eyebrows in surprise, then looked into the small adjoining room. Wearing stained bedclothes, Rosamun was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, moving her hands as if she were knitting, only she had no needles or yarn.

"I don't know what the twins made of their mother, but she didn't pay any attention to them," Kit told Gilon with some satisfaction just before she shot out into the warm summer evening.

When the twins were six weeks old, Kitiara came home from her evening's play to find Rosamun seated at the kitchen table, holding Raistlin and cooing down at Caramon in his cradle. While Gilon must have helped her to bathe and dress herself, Kit's frail mother still looked like a wraith after weeks of illness. Yet her face was shining, as was that of Gilon, who stood nearby, observing the scene with proud pleasure.

Rosamun turned away from the twins when she heard Kit at the door and warmly beckoned her daughter toward her. She set Raistlin down in his cradle so that she could put her blue-veined hands on the girl's sturdy shoulders. Rosamun attempted to pull Kit toward her, but her daughter held back.

"I want to thank you for all that you have done. Gilon says you have been… indispensable," Rosamun said while gazing at the raven-haired young girl with a mixture of love and uncertain respect.

Kitiara looked down at the floor, confused by her own feelings of gratitude and resentment. As she started to pull away, Rosamun stood up and put her thin arms around her daughter in an awkward embrace. Kit held herself stiffly, then broke for the door the minute she felt her mother's grasp loosen.

Rosamun sank heavily back into her chair, while Gilon hovered nearby, not knowing what to say. Rosamun's eyes clouded with tears as she watched her daughter race back into the summer night.

"Your father would have been proud of you," Rosamun whispered after Kit's retreating figure.

Thanks to Gilon, there was always plenty of good, slow-burning oak ready to heap on the overnight fire. But the flames usually died down in the middle of the night, and especially on the worst, most forbidding nights, no one wanted to get up and tread across the cold floor to replenish the blaze.

Kitiara preferred to sleep in her own quarters, though they were farthest away from the heat. Up a ladder and divided from the rest of the cottage by a thin muslin curtain, the loft at least gave her some privacy. The price for that privacy could be a bit high. More mornings than not in the long winters, she woke up curled into a tight ball and shivering.

Gnomes had a saying about Solace winters, which were notoriously harsh: "Three layers not enough, and noses always stick out." The winters seemed never-ending, yet practically overnight, when everyone felt at the breaking point, spring would arrive, catching even the most vigilant of the Solace citizenry by surprise.

On this particular morning, twelve-year-old Kitiara was still sleeping. She wasn't curled up-a good sign of the weather to come. In fact, she was stretched out luxuriously across her straw mattress. Her feet hung over the end of it, an indication that she was outgrowing her little nook. Her face in repose was childish, almost gentle, quite unlike the cool, practiced expression she had already adopted, if not always convincingly, as part of her armor against the world.

The softness evaporated as something blunt and unwelcome poked her in the side.

Out of Kit's mouth came some rather imaginative muttering, and, without opening her eyes, she turned on her side against the wall, pulling the quilted blanket tightly over her. After a pause, the poking resumed, this time in the small of her back.

"Go away, Caramon," she murmured sullenly.

Poke, poke.

Slowly she faced the obnoxious intrusion, still more than half asleep, her eyes bleary.

Oh. Her eyes opened with mild surprise as she made out the diminutive form of, not Caramon, but Raistlin. Thin and pale, an oval face framed by wisps of light brown hair, the four-year-old was standing at the edge of the bed. He was smiling mysteriously. Smiling was out of the ordinary for Raistlin, an unusually preoccupied little boy.

"I woke up early…" he began reedily.

"Uh-huh." By now Kitiara was unfortunately wide-eyed and knew she was not going to be able to steal any more sleep. She propped herself up on one elbow and regarded her odd little brother, whom she loved enough, yet would just as soon strangle breathless some days-no, most days-particularly right now.

A glance downstairs told her that his more high-spirited brother, Caramon, was still fast asleep, lying on his back, his toes pointed in the air, snoring lightly. The twins had small beds alongside each other, but Caramon was usually sprawled at an angle over both of them. Kit knew Caramon had been up late the night before, practicing, under Gilon's tutelage, how to whittle. He was applying his newfound expertise to creating his first wooden dagger.

As was his wont, Raistlin had gone to bed shortly after supper, and Kitiara must have fallen asleep in front of the smoldering fire. Good, reliable Gilon would have lifted her up the ladder and into bed.

Kitiara sighed. How early was it anyway?

Poke, poke.

"Will you stop that, Raist?"

He still had that vague smile. What was he so smiley about today?

"I was saying," he said unnecessarily, now that he had renewed her attention, "a bird was talking to me…"

Kitiara lifted one eyebrow suspiciously. The story did not seem very likely-but with Raistlin, you never could be sure. The child had a peculiarity about him, a singularity. Since he didn't talk much to other children, he might as well talk to birds. But did birds talk back to him? What birds were there anyway, this time of year, in Solace?

"What kind of bird?" she asked in exasperation.

"Brown bird," replied Raistlin, shrugging as if this was unimportant information. "Wings got white tips," he said, almost as an afterthought. "Just passing through on its way somewhere else."

"Well. What did the brown bird say?" persisted Kitiara, beginning to roll into a sitting position.

"Said it was going to be an extra-special day."

"Oh," she said, unimpressed. "Extra-special good, or extra-special bad?"