"Always," said Declan, smiling.

He ladled hot gruel into his bowl and spooned it carefully into his mouth, feeling its heat warming his body right down to his toes. The platter contained a few pieces of heavy, pleasantly spiced bread which, despite their small size, seemed to fill him to such repletion that his belly had scarcely room for the large, yellow apple with the blush of pink on it that followed.

No apple should look and taste so fresh and crisp and juicy this late in the year, he knew, when most of the autumn fruit in store was expected to be either drying up or rotten, yet this one tasted as if it had been picked that morning. He finished it slowly and without speaking a word, thinking this was another small but very real piece of magic to add to the old man's strange hand light and his seamless wooden cross. Finally he gave a contented sigh and looked up at Ma'el.

"My thanks for your hospitality," he said. "Should I take my leave of you now?"

"Yes," said Sean firmly.

Ma'el ignored the boy and his large, soft eyes rested on Declan for a moment, then he said, "Without the food I promised you, do you wish to leave us now?"

It was Declan's turn to be silent as he remembered his original plan to rob this old man and boy of their food and possessions, and the strange change of mind that had caused him to defend them instead, and the even stranger things that had happened as a result of his doing that. He shook his head violently, but it was partly in an effort to still this confusion and shake some sense into his mind. Ma'el waited silently for him to speak.

"I would be grateful for the food you promised," he replied finally, "but it is not of great importance. I think it is knowledge that I now seek. Who are you, Ma'el? What are you?"

"Declan," said Ma'el gently, "if I was to give you the knowledge you seek, which I may never do, you would first have to earn my trust over many years as my servant and protector…"