daik as if one of its shadows, all bent over and hunched down
against the fire’s faint light. She was clothed in rags, layers of
them, all of which appeared to have been wrapped about her at
some time in the distant past and left there. Her head was bare,
and her rough, hard face peered out through long wisps of dense,
colorless hair. She might have been any age. Par thought; she
was so gnarled it was impossible to tell.
She edged out of the forest cautiously and stopped just beyond
the circle of the fire’s yellow light, leaning heavily on a walking
stick worn with sweat and handling. One rough arm raised as
she pointed at Par. “You the one called me?” she asked, her
voice cracking like brittle wood.
Par stared at her in spite of himself. She looked like some-
thing brought out of the earth, something that had no right to be
alive and walking about. There was dirt and debris hanging from
her as if it had settled and taken root while she slept.
“Was it?” she pressed.
He finally figured out what she was talking about. “At the
cottage? Yes, that was me.”
The woodswoman smiled, her face twisting with the effort,
her mouth neariy empty of teeth. “You ought to have come in,
not just stood out there,” she whined. “Door was open ”
“I didn’t want. ..”
“Keep it that way to be certain no one goes past without a
welcome. Fire’s always on.”
“I saw your smoke, but. . .”
‘ ‘Gathering wood, were you? Come down out of Callahom?”
Her eyes shifted as she glanced past them to where the boat sat
beached. “Come a long way, have you?” The eyes shifted back.
“Running from something, maybe?”
Par went instantly still. He exchanged a quick look with Coll.
The woman approached, the walking stick probing me ground
in front of her. “Lots run this way. All sorts. Come down out
of the outlaw country looking for something or other.” She
stopped. “That you? Oh, there’s those who’d have no part of
you, but I’m not one. No, not me!”
“We’re not running,” Coil spoke up suddenly.
“No? That why you’re so well fitted out?” She swept the air
with the walking stick. “What’s your names?”
‘ ‘What do you want?” Par asked abruptly. He was liking this
less and less.
The woodswoman edged forward another step. There was
something wrong with her, something that Par hadn’t seen be-
fore. She didn’t seem to be quite solid, shimmering a bit as if
she were walking through smoke or out of a mass of heated air.
Her body didn’t move right either, and it was more than her age.
It was as if she were fastened together like one of the marionettes
they used in shows at the fairs, pinned at the joints and pulled
by strings.
The smell of the cove and the crumbling cottage clung to the
woodswoman even here. She sniffed the air suddenly as if aware
of it. “What’s that?” She fixed her eyes on Par. “Do I smell
magic?”
Par went suddenly cold. Whoever this woman was, she was
no one they wanted anything to do with.
“Magic! Yes! Clean and pure and strong with life!” The
woodswoman’s tongue licked out at the night air experimentally.
“Sweet as blood to wolves!”
That was enough for Coll. “You had better find your way
back to wherever you came from,” he told her, not bothering
to disguise his antagonism. “You have no business here. Move
along.”
But the woodswoman stayed where she was. Her mouth curled
into a snarl and her eyes suddenly turned as red as the fire’s
coals.
“Come over here to me!” she whispered with a hiss. “You,
boy!” She pointed at Par. “Come over to me!”
She reached out with one hand. Par and Coil both moved
back guardedly, away from the fire. The woman came forward
several steps more, edging past the light, backing them further
toward the dark.
“Sweet boy?” she muttered, half to herself. “Let me taste
you, boy!”
The brothers held their ground against her now, refusing to
move any further from the light. The woodswoman saw the