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There was no way, even on one of her best days, that Meena could sit like that!

And lean and reach across to take the grapes!

And her face and hair!

She leaned further to snatch the grapes as Alnor withdrew them.

“Now, then, turn and turn . . . What’s up?”

“I can see,” said Alnor in a wholly different voice, soft and full of wonder. “Shapes in a mist, only, but . . . it was like this when my blindness began.”

“How’s your hip, Meena?” said Tahl.

“Not as bad as it might be. Matter of fact . . .”

She twisted herself up, stood and felt at the joint. Gingerly she lifted her foot clear of the ground, balanced and moved the leg around. She put it down and blew her breath out.

“Now, there’s something I never thought I’d do again,” she said. “What about it, you old fool? Now try and tell me these aren’t good grapes!”

Alnor actually smiled.

“I may be a fool,” he said, “but I think I am not as old as I was.”

“Nor me,” said Meena. “My, I’m sorry I didn’t get to know your Faheel a bit better. He’s a really thoughtful old gentleman— unlike some I could name. Now I’ll be walking back to the Valley, after all.”

“And I, perhaps, shall be seeing my way,” said Alnor.

“Hey! Me first,” said Meena, as he started to pull another grape from the bunch. “Turn and turn about, he told us.”

Even in the wonder of what was happening to their grandparents, Tahl couldn’t help thinking of the practical uses of it.

“It’s better than that,” he said, as Alnor grudgingly handed the grapes over. “You’ve got to eat the whole bunch, Faheel said. At the rate you’re going, you won’t be much older than us by the time you’ve finished. So you won’t need way-leaves going north.”

Meena had a grape halfway to her mouth. She paused and stared at it.

“Perhaps you’ll be younger,” said Tilja with relish. “Then I’ll be able to tell you what’s what, for a change.”

“May I live to see the day,” said Meena, and popped the grape into her mouth and gave the bunch back across to Alnor.

“They tell me you were a handsome young fellow once,” she said. “Let’s have a look at you then.”

For a while they almost gobbled in their excitement, while their grandchildren stood and watched them shed the corrupting years. The wrinkles vanished from their faces, apart from the laughter lines at the corners of Meena’s eyes. Her hair grew and thickened, losing all its gray until it was a soft, light chestnut, with a slight wave in it, reaching down to her shoulders. Her figure changed with almost ridiculous speed, swelling to serious stoutness and then shrinking again to comfortable plump curves. Alnor on the other hand stayed much the same, a slim, wiry, muscular man with almost jet black, short, curly hair and a look of fiery pride.

Meena glanced at him as she started to hand the grapes across, and jumped to her feet.

“Tell you what,” she said. “It’s frustrating watching you getting so likely looking. Let’s see if we can’t find a pool I can see myself in.”

They picked up their packs, but Alnor didn’t at once move off to explore along the edge of the marsh. Instead he closed his eyes and slowly turned his head, as if listening for a distant call. Tahl copied him. They opened their eyes at the same moment and side by side led the way slantwise up across the dry and dreary hillside, halting at last in a place as barren seeming as everywhere else. But when Meena and Tilja came up beside them they found at their feet a rocky ravine, which here widened into a steep-sided basin with a waterfall tumbling down at its upper end. Below the fall was a pool.

They scrambled down and settled on the rocks beside it for Meena and Alnor to finish the grapes. The water was creased with ripples below the fall, but smooth enough where they sat for Meena to make out her own wavering reflection as she shed the years. She finished as a plump-faced, smiling, lively girl, a year or two older than Tilja, with a mass of glossy chestnut hair that Tilja would have given her soul for. Alnor might have been a year or so older, unmistakably an Ortahlson, absurdly handsome, much more so than Tahl, though they could easily have been brothers. Unlike Meena, who had studied her reflection in the pool every time she ate another grape, he had refused even to glance at his, but from the way he stood and moved Tilja was quite sure that he knew how good he looked.

Meena ate her last grape kneeling by the water, watching her rippled image, then rose to her feet and took Tilja’s hands and drew her to her and hugged her, cheek to cheek, laughing with pleasure. It was such a natural gesture that Tilja hugged her back, laughing too. Then she stiffened and pushed away and stared at her.

“What’s up?” said Meena.

“You didn’t feel anything? No, nor did I, but I was afraid of undoing the magic, like I did with Silena’s dog. You can’t be that kind of magical.”

“I’m not magical at all, thank you very much. He may have used magic to get me here, but I’m me. Guess what day it is?”

“What day it is?”

“It’s my fourteenth birthday,” crowed Meena, laughing at Tilja’s bewilderment. “Look.”

She held out her left arm and showed Tilja an angry blistered patch on the inside of the wrist.

“I got that just yesterday,” she said. “Helping Ma with the baking for my birthday tea.”

They picked up their packs again and climbed the hill. The stream ran out of a boggy plateau that stretched away north. On its further side, two or three miles away, they could see a group of low buildings, and knew at once what they were, having seen so many on their way south.

“Where there’s a way station there’s got to be a road,” said Tahl. “This must be a side road, from another part of the Empire. Problem is, which way’s Goloroth? We’ve got to get there to reach the Grand Trunk Road.”

“The other problem is, all four of us are young now,” said Alnor. “We’re supposed to be coming away.”

“You and Meena could dress up old and hobble along,” suggested Tahl, teasing.

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Alnor. “We’ll travel at night. It can’t be that far.”

“Isn’t that a couple of kids?” said Meena. “Look. There. And they’re going that way. So the other way must be to Goloroth.”

There was a three-quarter moon, clear enough to show some distance along the empty road. Nobody in the Empire traveled by night, because who knew what other creatures might be about?

“I think we should be all right,” said Tilja. “If anything like that comes, you’ll just have to hold on to me, and then it can’t touch you.”

She felt completely confident about this. She had held Faheel’s ring in her hand and blanked out its magic. She didn’t believe that all the Watchers together could match that power. Along with that confidence came a feeling—more than a feeling, almost a certainty—that what she had seen and done in the last few days had given her strengths that she had not had on the journey south. As much as Meena and Alnor, though in very different ways, she had changed.

Despite that, none of them was quite ready for what happened almost as soon as they had set foot on the road. They were walking abreast through the silvery dark. Nothing stirred. There was barely a breath of wind, only a delicious waft of smells, dewy and earthy, drawn out by the night-cooled air. Tilja’s head was full of the knowledge that they were now going home, back to Woodbourne. She wanted to sing.

She felt nothing, but Tahl was flung against her as if he’d been buffeted from the other side. She staggered and almost fell, but caught herself and grabbed his wrist as he fought with something she couldn’t see. He steadied. On her other side Meena and Alnor were sprawled in the road. Meena had her arms braced in front of her chest as if she was trying to push something away from her neck. Alnor was on his face, bucking to rise, but pinned down.