We were afraid of what might happe. Under Békas dire, we roamed the woods, never camping in the same plaore than three nights in a row. Waiting for some decision from Béka brewed a disease among us. We fought over food, water, the best resting places. Ragno and Zanzara ed the most basiing; their hair tangled in vinelike riots, and their skin darkened beh a film of dirt. Chavisory, Blomma, and Kivi suffered an angry silence, sometimes not speaking for days on end. Desperate without his smokes and distras, Luchóg snapped over the ti provocation and would have e to blows with Smaolach if not for his friends gentle disposition. I would often find Smaolach after their arguments, staring at the ground, pulling handfuls of grass from the earth. Speck grew more distant, withdrawn into her own imagination, and when she suggested a moment aloogether, I gladly joined her away from the others.
In that Indian summer, the days stayed warm despite the waning of the light, and a sed spring brought not only a renewed blossoming of wild roses and other flowers but another crop of berries. With suexpected bounty, the bees and other is exteheir lives and mad pursuit of sweets. The birds put off their southern migration. Everees slowed down their leaving, going from dark saturated hues to paler shades of green.
"Aniday," she said, "listehey e."
We were sitting at the edge of a clearing, doing nothing, soaking in the manual sunshine. Speck lifted her head skyward to gather in the shadow of wings beating through the air. When they had all lahe blackbirds fanned out their tails as they paraded to the wild raspberries, hopping to a tangle of shoots te themselves. The glen echoed with their chatter. She reached ground my bad put her hand on my far shoulder, theed her head against me. The sunlight danced in patterns on the ground thrown by leaves blowing in the breeze.
"Look at that one." She spoke softly, pointing her fi a lone blackbird, struggling to reach a plump red berry at the end of a flexing e. It persisted, pihe e to the ground, impaling the stalk with its sharp hooked feet, then attacked the berry in three quick bites. After its meal, the bird began to sing, then flew away, wings flashing in the dappled light, and then the flock took off and followed into the early October afternoon.
"When I first came here," I fessed to her, "I was afraid of the crows that returned eaight to the trees around our home."
"You used to cry like a baby." Her voice softened and slowed. "I wonder what it is like to hold a baby in my arms, feel like a grown-up woman instead of sticks and bones. I remember my mother, so soft in ued places— rounder, fuller, deeper. Strohan youd expect by looking."
"Tell me what they were like, my family. What happeo me?"
"When you were a boy," she began, "I watched over you. You were my charge. I knew your mother; she loved to le you on her lap as she read to you old Irish tales and called you her little man. But you were a selfish boy, stantly wanting more and desperate over any attention shown to your little sisters."
"Sisters?" I asked, not remembering.
"Twins. Baby girls."
I was grateful that she could firm there were two.
"You resented helping with them, angry that your time was not yours to do with what you pleased. Oh, such a brat. Your mother was taking care of the twins, w over your father, with no oo help her. She was worn out by it all, and that made you aill