[Arry]

‘Do you think they will fare well?’ Willem had gotten himself and Old Goody a cup of tea each. Hers he had laced with a little of the spirits the cook had got down from her shelf. ‘Might ease her up a bit,’ cook had confided to him, though for the life of him he could not understand what needed easing.

‘The big folk,’ he went on in explanation as she turned her face toward him. ‘They’ve gone after Miz Wenda and Miz Mara.’ He frowned for a moment, looking down into the depths of his tea as if to find answers. ‘At least I think that’s where they’ve gone.’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he said after a gulp from his steaming mug. ‘How the owl seems to be talking to them and then he listens, too, as they talk in that pretty language.’ He nodded his head as a few of the words in Quenyan that he’d caught ran through his mind. He tried them out on his tongue, smiling as he got them round to how he thought he’d heard the two tall mean speak them.

‘There are places along The Great River . . . up where it narrows, near the northern mountains, where the white barked aspen trees grow.’ He knew he was rambling now, but it was pleasant to do so and it took his mind from the looming dangers in the shadows beyond the village wall. ‘In the autumn, their leaves turn all of a golden color. And when the cold breezes blow they shimmer in the pale sun and rustle prettily. And sometimes it seems behind the touch of leaf on leaf there are the sounds of some fair voices singing one to another, in some old tongue just barely out of hearing.’ He chewed on the corner of his lip, a habit of old, as he recalled the images of those trees against the dark mountains.

‘The words the tall men used . . . they reminded me of that,’ he said. ‘Trees in their last glory before the cold of winter shook off their leaves and covered them with snow.’