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away.
    *   *   *
    They went far down the beach until Jeon found a little overhang of rock where they could sit out of the wind. He built them a fire and divided the last of his food between them. She sat in the firelight with her back to the rock cliff, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms crossed on top, and her chin on her wrist. She was thinner than he had ever seen her. Above her hollow cheeks her eyes seemed to float in her face, haunted. But when he turned to her, she burst into the broadest smile he had ever seen.
    He put one hand on her arm, and she came to him and hugged him again, muttering gibberish. He held her tight, grateful for this love, known from the womb. She settled back again, smiling at him, and he said, “Where were you, all this time? Just wandering around?”
    She made sounds; she twitched from side to side, something urgent, which she could not tell him; her hands moved in the air. Her face crinkled up, baffled, and she shrugged, and set one hand in her lap and with the other made the circling gesture he knew meant, “And you?”
    â€œBack at home, most of the time. Until I heard about you.” He shrugged. “Then looking for you. I don’t remember anything about the shipwreck. All I remember is the storm, the lightning. Then floating a long way.”
    He wiped his jaw with his hand, still burdened with the memory, like something ahead, an ambush. He was clenching his teeth. She shook her head at him, her face puckered with worry.
    He said, “I was so thirsty I drank seawater. When they found me I was raving. I still have horrible dreams.”
    She shook her head at him. Her eyes filled with tears. She made those shapes in the air again, uttering senseless noises.
    â€œIt’s all right,” he said. He did not have to know. They would go home now. Good beds, food, wine, the family around, the common life. “Casea and Mervaly will help me keep you out of Santomalo. Mother loves you; she wants you back, whatever she says. And we need help against Erdhart.”
    At that, Tirza pushed away from him and sat there straight upright, the rags of her clothes hanging around her like molting. She said something, a low growl, staring off into the woods. He gave a little shake of his head. She was angry about something, not Erdhart and not Mother. The old longing gripped him, to understand her, hear her voice. Yet she was here now, he had found her, and he had saved her, when no one else had really thought he would, and he sat smiling into the fire, enjoying that.
    *   *   *
    Just before she fell asleep, she thought, They will send me back to Santomalo.
    She fell into a fitful sleep, into a dark, obscure place, moving and shifting around her. She seemed to be standing on a shore, looking up at a hillside layered with the red roofs and awnings of a town. At the top a white ledge of a building was the monastery. The sun was rising, away to the side of her. Behind her, people were screaming. Then a roar began that turned her bones to ice.
    She burst with sweat. She could not move. A man ran by her, up the hill, and another, and then some women, looking back as they ran, but she was stuck in her place. A flickering baleful light, darker than the sunrise, shone all around her. The smoke burned her nostrils. The shrieking people ran by her and from above them the dragon struck and caught them in his teeth. She saw them sticking out between his jaws, their legs waving. He strode past her, the light glowing on his scales. He let out a blast of his breath and the houses before her burst into flame.
    People ran ahead of him and he was eating them as he climbed the hill. His long head swung from side to side, but he did not see her. He caught running people and gobbled them up, and burned their houses. When he saw her he would eat her too. The flames roared up around her, their crackle deafening. She could not run. She was so hot she could not