I was well again by Sunday, and I went straight to the village.
I told Noctavia I was going for salt. She looked at me for a long moment, narrowed her eyes, and said, "We have salt."
"We might need more."
"We have four jars."
"...Whatever," she said, which means I know you're lying, and I'll allow it. I felt terrible all the way down the road.
The children were exactly where Harlan had said they'd be. The tall girl sat on the crate under the fruit stall, upright and alert, with a patched coat pulled tight around her. Beside her, a small boy with straight brown hair was drawing a very serious picture in the dust with a stick.
The girl saw me from fifty paces away. She stood up.
"Hello," I said, from a respectful distance. "I'm Elise."
"We know who you are," said the girl.
"You're the Hero!" said the boy, with total delight. "Are you going to fight us?"
"Toby," hissed the girl.
"No fighting," I promised. "I just came to say hello. And to ask if anyone here is hungry."
"We're fine," said the girl at once.
"I'm hungry," said Toby.
"Toby."
"I'm always hungry."
I held out the bag I'd been carrying, which held the last of Noctavia's cinnamon buns. The girl didn't take it. Her eyes went from the bag to my face, to my hands, to the road behind me, as if she were counting exits.
I recognized that look. I had worn it as a child.
"My name is Clara," she said finally, very stiffly. "That's my brother. We aren't beggars. We're only passing through."
"That's fine."
"We don't want help."
"Okay," I said, and sat down on the wet cobblestones, a few feet away, and put the bag between us. "Then I'll just sit here and eat one of these, because I'm hungry too. You can ignore me."
I took out a bun and bit into it. Cinnamon and sugar. A little burnt on one corner.
Toby stared. He looked at Clara, who was looking at the sky with great concentration. Then he crept over, took a bun with both hands, and ate half of it in one bite.
"This is the best thing I've ever had," he announced.
"My wife made it."
"Is your wife the Demon Lord?"
"Yes."
"Is she scary?"
"Very." I thought about it. "She also makes soup. And she's afraid of a tomato."
Toby's eyes went wide. "A tomato?"
"A very small one. It's her favorite."
Clara made a tiny, strangled sound and covered her mouth. It might have been a laugh. She turned it into a cough and glared at me.
I didn't say anything. I let the rain fall for a minute. Then I said, quietly, "We have an empty room. It has a bed, and a window. It doesn't have to be forever. You could just try a night."
Clara went very still.
"Why?" she said.
"Because it's raining."
"That's not a reason."
"It's a pretty good one."
"Why," she said again, and her voice cracked in the middle, and I understood that she wasn't asking about the rain.
I looked at her. At the too-short sleeves. At the way she'd put herself between her brother and every direction at once.
"Because somebody once did it for me," I said. "I was seven. It was cold. And I've been trying to pay it back ever since."
She stared at me for a long time.
Toby tugged at her coat. "Clara. Clara. I like her."
"You like everyone who gives you food."
Clara closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet, and furious, and exhausted.
"One night," she said.
"One night," I agreed.
"And if the Demon Lord says no..."
"She won't."
"You don't know that."
I thought about my wife in the rain, retying a knot for the fifth time.
"I do," I said.
It was dusk when we reached the garden path, a very tall, very tense girl on one side of me and a very small, very happy boy on the other, swinging my hand. I'd rehearsed what to say the whole walk home, and come up with nothing better than this.
I opened the front door.
"Tadaa!" I said.
Noctavia was standing at the stove, holding a ladle. She turned around.
She looked at me. Then at Clara. Then at Toby.
She said nothing for a very long time.
"...HUHHH?!"
The ladle fell out of her hand and rang on the floor.
"What do you mean tadaa?! What is this? Who are these? Where did you...?! Elise, are you telling me you went out for salt and came back with—with two—"
"Children."
"I can see they're children!"
"Hi!" said Toby, delighted, and waved. "Your tail is really big."
Noctavia looked down at him.
Her tail, which had gone puffed and stiff, slowly deflated.
"It's... average."
"Can I touch it?"
"No."
"Please?"
"...Gently."
Toby touched it, very gently, with one finger. Noctavia stood perfectly still and made a strange, high noise in her throat, and I have never been so happy.
Clara had not moved from the door. She stood stiffly, with one hand on her brother's shoulder, her eyes on Noctavia's face.
"We're only staying one night," she said. "We won't be any trouble. We don't want anything."
Noctavia looked at her.
The kitchen went very quiet. The soup bubbled. Rain tapped on the window.
"...I saw you," said Noctavia.
Clara blinked.
"In the square. Three days ago. You were sharing a piece of bread." She looked at the floor. "I stood there. And then I walked home."
I stared at her. "You saw them?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't tell me!"
"You didn't tell me!"
"I was going to!"
"So was I!"
We both stopped. Then we looked at each other and, at exactly the same moment, remembered that there were two strangers in our doorway.
"We were both keeping secrets," I said.
"Obviously," said Noctavia, with her ears bright red. "It's your fault. You're a bad influence."
"I'm a terrible influence."
"Idiot."
Toby giggled. Even Clara's shoulders came down a fraction of an inch.
"We have an empty room," said Noctavia, in her stiffest voice, to the wall. "Upstairs. There's a bed. I haven't made it up, because nobody was—because it wasn't being used." She turned. "I'll... I'll find more blankets."
She walked out of the kitchen very fast, and a moment later we heard her feet on the stairs, and then the creak of a cupboard, and then the unmistakable sound of someone pulling out the good quilts.
Fine. For now. That's what she says when she means Stay.
I added it to the dictionary and put my pen down.
We ate soup that night at a table with two more chairs than usual. Noctavia had set out all four bowls, with extra salt in the middle. Toby told a long and mostly invented story about a dragon who lived in a barrel. Clara didn't say much, but she ate everything and let Noctavia pour her a second cup of tea, and she didn't flinch when Noctavia's tail brushed against her chair.
Afterward, when the children were upstairs, I stepped outside to bring in the washing.
The rain had stopped. The road lay pale and silent under the first stars.
At the far end of it, just past the last bend, a tall figure in a dark coat was standing perfectly still.
He wasn't walking, and he wasn't lost. He was only standing there, with his face turned toward our lit windows, the way you'd look at something you were counting.
I stared at him.
Then he turned, calmly, and walked away into the dark.
I stood there with an armful of damp sheets and a strange, cold feeling in my chest.
Behind me, upstairs, a small boy laughed in his sleep. A floorboard creaked. Somewhere in the cabin, my wife was whispering to a tomato.
I went inside and locked the door.
It was the first time I had ever locked it.