“Why me?” said Vae.

The other’s eyes were clouded with pain. “Because,” she said, “I need a mother who knows how to love her child.”

Vae had been fast asleep only moments before; the woman in the room with her was so fair she might have been a creature from the dreamworld, save for her eyes.

“I don’t understand,” said Vae.

“I will have to leave him,” the woman said. “Could you give your heart to another son when Finn takes the Longest Road?”

In daylight she might have struck or cursed anyone who said so flatly the thing that twisted through her like a blade. But this was night and half a dream, and the other woman was crying.

Vae was a simple woman, a worker in wool and cloth with her man. She had a son who for no reason she could understand had been called three times to the Road when the children played the prophecy game, the ta’kiena, and then a fourth time before the Mountain went up to signal war. And now there was this.

“Yes,” said Vae, simply. “I could love another child. It is a son?”

Jennifer wiped away her tears. “It is,” she said. “But there is more. He will be of andain, and I don’t know what that will mean.”

Vae felt her hands trembling. Child of a god and a mortal. It meant many things, most of them forgotten. She took a deep breath. “Very well,” she said.

“One thing more,” the golden woman said.

Vae closed her eyes. “Tell me, then.”

She kept them closed for a long time after the father’s name was spoken. Then, with more courage than she would have ever guessed she had, Vae opened her eyes and said, “He will need to be loved a great deal. I will try.” Watching the other woman weep after that, she felt pity break over her in waves.

At length Jennifer collected herself, only to be racked by a visible spasm of pain.