I came back, sea-wet to my armpits. “Will it be long?”

“Long enough.”

After that I just leaned on my stick and watched her spin, trying to figure out what it was that she was turning into string and why it made the noises it did. Sometimes it seemed like there were faces in it and arms and legs coming out of it.

“You are Able of the High Heart.”

That got my attention, and I told her my old name.

Up to then, she had never looked away from her spinning. “What I say aright, do not you smite,” she told me.

I said I was sorry.

“Some loss must be, so this I decree: the lower your lady the higher your love.” She stopped spinning to smile at me. I knew she meant it to be friendly, but her teeth were terrible and looked as sharp as razors. She said, “There must be a forfeit for insolence, and since that’s how it usually is, that one shouldn’t do much harm.”

That was how I got my name changed.

She went back to spinning, but it looked like she was reading her thread.

“You shall sink before you rise, and rise before you sink.”

It scared me, and I asked if I could ask her a question.

“It had best be, since you ask one. What do you want to know, Able of the High Heart?”

There was so much I could not get it out. I said, “Who are you?” instead.

“Parka.”

“Are you a fortune-teller?”

She smiled again. “Some say so.”

“How did I get here?”

She pointed with the distaff, the thing that held the stuff she was spinning, pointing toward the back of the cave, where it was all black.

“I don’t remember being there,” I told her.

“The recollection has been taken from you.”

As soon as she said it, I knew it was right. I could remember certain things. I could remember you and the cabin and the clouds, but all that had been a long time ago, and after it there had been a lot I could not remember at all. “The Aelf carried you to me.”