They got up and washed, and Tenar decided that what she felt most of all just now was hunger. “I am hollow,” she said to Therru, and set them out a substantial meal of bread and cheese, cold beans in oil and herbs, a sliced onion, and dry sausage. Therru ate a good deal, and Tenar ate a great deal.
As they cleared up, she said, “For the present, Therru, I won’t leave you at all, and you won’t leave me. Right? And we should both go now to Aunty Moss’s house. She was making a spell to find you, and she needn’t bother to go on with it, but she might not know that.”
Therm stopped moving. She glanced once at the open doorway, and shrank away from it.
“We need to bring in the laundry, too. On our way back. And when we’re back, I’ll show you the cloth I got today. For a dress. For a new dress, for you. A red dress.”
The child stood, drawing in to herself.
“If we hide, Therru, we feed him. We will eat. And we will starve him. Come with me.
The difficulty, the barrier of that doorway to the outside was tremendous to Therru. She shrank from it, she hid her face, she trembled, stumbled, it was cruel to force her to cross it, cruel to drive her out of hiding, but Tenar was without pity. “Come!” she said, and the child came.
They walked hand~in~hand acrosS the fields to Moss’s house. Once or twice Therru managed to look up.
Moss was not surprised to see them, but she had a queer, wary look about her. She told Therru to run inside her house to see the ringneck hen’s new chicks and choose which two might be hers; and Therru disappeared at once into that refuge.
“She was in the house all along,” Tenar said. “Hiding.” “Well she might,” said Moss.
“Why?” Tenar asked harshly. She was not in the hid~ ing vein. “
“There’s-there’s beings about, the witch said, not por~ tentously but uneasily.
“There’s scoundrels about!” said Tenar, and Moss looked at her and drew back a little.
“Eh, now, she said. “Eh, dearie. You have a fire around you, a shining of fire all about your head. I cast the spell to find the child, but it didn’t go right. It went its own way somehow, and I don’t know yet if it’s ended. I’m bewildered. I saw great beings. I sought the little girl but I saw them, flying in the mountains, flying in the clouds, And now you have that about you, like your hair was afire. What’s amiss, what’s wrong?”
“A man in a leather cap,” Tenar said. “A youngish man. Well enough looking. The shoulder seam of his vest’s torn. Have you seen him round?”
Moss nodded. “They took him on for the haying at the mansion house.”
“I told you that she”-Tenar glanced at the house-”was with a woman and two men? He’s one of them.”
“You mean, one of them that-”
“Yes.”
Moss stood like a wood carving of an old woman, rigid, a block. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I thought I knew enough. But I don’t. What- What would- Would he come to-to see her?”
“If he’s the father, maybe he’s come to claim her.”
“Claim her?”
“She’s his property.”
Tenar spoke evenly. She looked up at the heights of Gont Mountain as she spoke.
“But I think it’s not the father. I think this is the other one. The one that came and told my friend in the village that the child had ‘hurt herself.’ “
Moss was still bewildered, still frightened by her own conjurations and visions, by Tenar’s fierceness, by the presence of abominable evil. She shook her head, desolate. “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I knew enough. How could he come back?”
“To eat,” Tenar said. “To eat. I won’t be leaving her alone again. But tomorrow, Moss, I might ask you to keep her here an hour or so, early in the day. Would you do that, while I go up to the manor house?”
“Aye, dearie. Of course. I could put a hiding spell on her, if you like. But . . . But they’re up there, the great men from the King’s City.. . .