Garander came up beside her, and matched her pace.
“Ishta!” he said. “Maybe we should tell them the truth.”
She glared at him. “Are you crazy?”
“He saw that cloth! He knows that’s magic. You think he’s going to believe you went into the woods in the snow for no reason, and just happened to find a mysterious stranger sitting under a magic tent?”
“It’s not a tent.”
“Well, whatever it is, that’s not the point! The point is that he won’t believe it if you say that’s what happened.”
“All right, fine, but we don’t need to tell them he’s shatra, do we? Can’t we just say he’s a magician?”
Garander hesitated.
“I mean, how would we know anything about shatra?” Ishta said.
“Because Father told us about them, silly! You think he won’t remember that?”
“Maybe he won’t!”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Well, you…you…you’re right.” She sighed. “But I’m not going to say the word until someone else does.”
Garander glanced back to see Grondar rounding the bushes. “Fair enough,” he said. “Now, come on, let’s get inside where it’s warm.”
Together, brother and sister trotted toward the house.
Chapter Eight
Once inside, there was a brief dispute over priorities.
“Ah, there you are! Get over here and try on this dress,” their mother said, looking up from a jumble of green fabric.
“There’s something I need to discuss with these two,” their father answered.
“It can wait,” the elder Shella said, raising a needle and thread. “I want to get this done, so we can eat lunch!”
“I think-”
“You can talk while we’re working. Ishta, put it on!”
Ishta threw her father a quick glance, then began taking off her coat. She didn’t hurry.
Grondar fumed while his children removed coats, scarves, gloves, and boots, and put them all neatly away; he rushed to strip off his own outerwear, and stood waiting as Ishta ducked into the room she shared with her sister and changed into the green dress.
Garander, once he had his own gear put away, looked out a window. The snow was still coming down; the overcast so thick it was hard to believe it was midday. Quite aside from delaying any discussions of Tesk, he was glad to be safely inside; this snowfall was turning into a far worse storm than any of them had anticipated, worse than it had any right to be so early in the season.
He hoped the shatra would be all right, out there in the snow-but Tesk had lived alone in the wilderness for twenty years; he must have survived worse storms than this. And he could safely retrieve that magical cloth, now that Ishta and her family had gone.
That cloth had been a surprise; Garander had never seen anything like it. His father had guessed it was wizardry, but from everything he knew, Garander thought it must be sorcery-all of Tesk’s equipment appeared to be sorcerous, not wizardly in nature.
Then Ishta emerged, the green dress hanging loosely on her. She stepped up on the stool as her mother approached with a mouthful of pins.
“Now,” Grondar demanded, “how did you meet this Kelder of Tesk?”
Ishta glanced at Garander, then said, “I met him in the forest.”
Her mother had been pinching in the fabric under Ishta’s left arm; now she held that with one hand, took the pins from her mouth with the other, and asked, “Who’s Kelder of Tesk?”
“Someone our daughter has been meeting in the woods.”
“A boy?”
“A grown man, from what I saw of him,” Grondar replied. “Not that I got a good look.”
Ishta saw the stricken look on her mother’s face and said, “It’s nothing like that! We just talked. He never touched me.”
“You’ll swear to that?” Grondar asked.
“Of course I will! He didn’t, I swear by all the gods!”
“Then why was he talking to you at all?”
“He was lonely, I guess.”
“All right, then I’ll ask again-how did you meet him?”
“I…I was wandering in the woods, and there he was, sitting on a branch.”
“What were you doing in the woods?”
“Getting out of the sun. I knew if I went in the house Mother would find something for me to do, and if I went in the barn you would, and besides, I liked being outside in the fresh air. It’s nice in the woods.”
Grondar frowned. “Out of the sun? When was this?”
“A couple of months ago.”
“Months?”
Ishta nodded.
“You’re forbidden to go into the woods!”
“I know.”
“And you went anyway.”
She nodded again.
“And you’ve…all right, so you met this Kelder of Tesk in the forest, and you talked to him?”
“Yes.”
“What did you talk to him about?”
Ishta turned up an empty palm, which tugged at the fold her mother was pinning. “How the trees grow, and what colors the leaves were, and what animals lived in the trees. Things like that.”
“Did you ask him where he was from, and what he was doing in the woods?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“You did ask?”
She nodded again.
“You didn’t think that was suspicious?”
“I like him!”
Grondar growled. “Of course. So you met him in the woods, and you talked, and then what?”
“Then I went home for supper.”
“And what did he do?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you saw him again?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
Ishta looked decidedly uncomfortable. “A few times.”
“Every day?”
“No!” She hesitated. “Maybe once or twice a sixnight.” Garander thought it had probably been more often than that, especially before they had realized he was shatra, but he didn’t say anything.
“How did you know where to find him?”
“I didn’t always; sometimes he’d find me. Sometimes he’d mark a trail for me, though.”
“But he was always out there somewhere?”
“I guess so.”
“Where does he live?” Ishta’s mother asked, as she tugged at a seam.
“In the woods, he says.”
Her mother glanced up at her. “He has a cabin somewhere?””
“I don’t think so,” Ishta said. “I think he sleeps in the trees, on the branches.”
“Blood and death, why would he do that?” Grondar asked.
Ishta turned up a palm.
Grondar frowned again, and said, “From what I saw just now, he dresses strangely.”
Ishta nodded.
“All in black.”
She nodded again.
“Does he always dress like that, or was it because of the snow?”
“He always does.”
Ishta’s mother had finished pinning one side, and transferred her attention to the other.
“It looked like he was carrying some things.”
“He has a pack, and he carries stuff on his back,” Ishta said. “He doesn’t have a home, so I guess he carries everything with him.”
“So he doesn’t have a home, but he does have belongings.”
Ishta nodded.
“Like that magical cloth.”
Ishta’s mother looked at her husband, startled. Her elder daughter said, “Magic cloth?”
“A sort of tent,” Grondar said. “It stayed warm and dry even in the snow.” He met Ishta’s eyes. “That was in his pack?”
“I guess,” Ishta said. “I never saw it before today, and he already had it hung in the tree when I got there.” She hesitated, and then added, “I didn’t know he had it. I went out there to make sure he was all right-since he doesn’t have a home to go to, I thought the snow might make things hard for him.”
“But he had his magic.”
She nodded again.
“Did you know he was a magician?”
Ishta glanced at Garander, then nodded. “I knew he has magic stuff.”