Something like a smile moved in his beard. It did not show teeth. "Fair."
Briarholt Market Day was a thin affair under the same unbroken cloud. Mara left Elias with Old Tannen's wife, who kept four grandchildren and a soft spot for widows, and walked the lane with a basket and a face she hoped looked ordinary. She sold two cheeses. She bought flour and salt. She listened.
The talk was of missing sheep on the north run, of a hunter who had come back from Blackthorn Reach with his hair white at the temples and no explanation, of lights seen moving in the trees after dusk—orange-gold, some said, like a forge walking. Mara kept her hands steady on the basket. She did not look toward her own pasture.
Reeve Halden stopped her by the well. He was a thick man with kindly eyes and a memory for every debt in the village.
"You all right, Mara? You look peaked."
"Elias kept me up," she said, which was true enough.
"If you need help with the lambing—"
"I'll manage."
He hesitated. "There are tracks by the south fence. Big ones. Not wolf. Not bear. If you see anything, you come straight to me. Don't be brave alone."
Mara thought of Kael in her garden, of Elias's hand on a claw, of light that had warmed instead of burned. "I won't be foolish," she said, which was not the same promise.
She took Elias home early. Kael had moved to the lee of the hayrick, out of easy sight from the road. When she set the baby on a blanket in the grass—within reach of her arm, within sight of the pitchfork leaning on the door—Elias crowed and kicked and stared at Kael with open delight.
"He isn't afraid of you," Mara said.