And then the ship was gone, passed beyond the cliff and out of sight.

It was both disappointment and relief to me: I had anticipated glorious battle; I was also glad that horrible weight had passed. I enjoyed the way my father held my one shoulder, Thorus my other, and both told me I had played my part, even as men went running to the cliff to follow the ship’s passage.

I went running with them, still clutching my hook, for they all still held their weapons. I was suddenly possessed of a dreadful fear that the ship had gone past the village to land in the fields-the wood-beyond and disgorge the Kho’rabi knights to massacre my mother and my siblings and all the others hiding in the caves. But Thorus hauled me back and shouted at my father that the wind was wrong, and whatever magic the sorcerers of Ahn-feshang commanded, it was not enough to ground the boat to disembark the fylie.

Even so, I was not satisfied, nor my father, until we topped the path and saw the ship drifting on over the wood, disappearing into the haze of the afternoon sun, like blood drying on a wound.

Several of the younger fishermen ran to the wood then, to tell the mantis and his charges that the danger was gone by. They emerged, laughing and praising the God for his mercy. Then I basked in the admiring gaze of my friends, for they had all obeyed and hidden, and I alone, of all the children in the village, had remained. I swung my hook in vivid demonstration of how I should have fought, coming close to harming more than one innocent onlooker until my father took the tool from me, his face stern.

My mother’s, when she found me, was haggard and she raised a hand to strike me, but my father halted her, speaking softly, and she sighed, shaking her head, her expression one I did not then understand. Tonium and Delia stared at me in awe.