The sun was showing over the horizon before Enfri had a chance to sit down. Goodman Smith was resting, still in danger but resting. It would be several hours before she knew if her administrations had come in time to save him. She checked his temperature every ten minutes to see if the fever would break. There was nothing left to do but keep him comfortable and wait for the signs to show one way or the other.

Enfri doubted how much it would help, but she prayed to the spirits on the wind all the same. It couldn't hurt. The Altieri in the frozen south prayed to the waves, the Melcians on the northern frontier honored the flames, and Nadians in the western mountains revered the stones. If the people of Gaulatia in the distant east prayed to anything, it was likely to their horses. Here in Althandor, first and greatest of the Five Kingdoms, the goodfolk prayed and swore by the winds.

Haythe's sister sat on the floor of the blacksmith's bedroom beside the chair she had brought in for Enfri. She had a sewing ring in her hands, but the needle hadn't moved in an hour. The girl was near Enfri's age, perhaps a little younger, and her name was Kiffa. It was a good, simple name.

Haythe and Kiffa had two other siblings, but they were away. A younger son was working the farm for his new wife's family, and the elder daughter had gone to serve in the king's army. Kiffa had chatted absently about her sister until the speaking became too much of an effort. The sister was skilled on horseback and good with a bow. She rode as an outrider and scout. It seemed such a different life than anything Enfri had known, full of danger and adventure. The family looked forward to the day of her return with the crown's gift.

The silence pressed on for longer than Enfri could bear. "Your father was in the army?" she asked.

Kiffa nodded, staring ahead at her father resting in his bed. "He doesn't speak of it. He didn't want Teela to go, but we need the crown's gift. Teela promised she'd serve well enough to come home with a chest of gold."

Enfri looked about the room. Each member of the family had their own chamber, and they needed gold desperately enough to allow their daughter to go to war? Strange people.

Deebee lay curled in Enfri's lap. The dragon, still in the guise of a cat, purred in time with Enfri stroking her ears.

I wish that blustering fever would break already, Enfri thought. She wanted to get away from here and have a chance to speak with Deebee about what the blacksmith had said in his delirium.

Eyes of beasts.

Enfri wasn't one to dwell on omens and portents, but even she didn't like the implications. A dragon's dream and a man's fevered ravings matching up like that... It would have been a lie to say it didn't make her uneasy.

"My father served, too," Enfri said. When she spoke, Deebee's ears perked up.

"That's been said about the village," Kiffa replied. "They say that the crown's gift he received was the finest ever given to anyone from these parts."

"I suppose that's true." Enfri shifted in her chair.

Her father had been granted ownership of all the land between the hilltops and the desert's edge, nearly everything west of the village. It was a vast parcel, several miles in length. From her little house, all the land that Enfri could see had been given to her father by the king.

She supposed, with Mother gone, it all now belonged to her.

"What was he like?" Kiffa asked. "Your father? He must have been a magnificent hero."

"I don't know. I never met him."

Enfri looked down at her lap to see Deebee looking back at her with sad eyes. She nuzzled against Enfri's hand.

"My mother wasn't content with what we had," Enfri continued. "She was pregnant with me, and wanted him to build us a larger home. He left to serve in the army again, to earn another gift from the crown, but he never came back."

"I remember your mother." Kiffa stared at the wall wistfully. "It seems so long ago, but I'm starting to remember times she came to see us. She was so beautiful. I've never seen anyone so beautiful, before or since."

Deebee's purring took on a more aggressive note.

Enfri wanted to ask Kiffa why, if she thought so well of Mother, that not a one among them seemed to have noticed that she had died. Mother had healed them when they were sick. She had delivered their children. Didn't she deserve better than to be forgotten?

"There's a lot of her in you," Kiffa said with a smile, interrupting Enfri's train of thought. "You have her face."

"Oh... Thank you."

Deebee looked up at Enfri, then at Kiffa, and then back at Enfri again. If a cat could shrug, Deebee managed it.

It was plain that Deebee and Mother weren't on good terms. Grandmother and the dragon had been as thick as thieves, but with Mother, it had been more like oil and water.

When she was still alive, Mother often refused to even acknowledge Deebee's existence. She went so far as to punish Enfri for ever speaking of her, as if Deebee were nothing more than an imaginary friend that needed to be forgotten.

The reason for their mutual disdain was something no one thought Enfri needed to know. Deebee always played ignorant that there was anything at all untoward going on, and Grandmother merely said it wasn't anything a girl should be bothered with. Enfri did, however, gather that it had something to do with Father.

Upon the bed, Goodman Smith stirred. He smacked his lips and pawed at his bearded face with a big, meaty hand.

"Papa!" Kiffa shouted. She leapt to her feet and was at his side before Enfri could so much as blink.

Deebee reluctantly jumped down to allow Enfri to stand. The disguised dragon pawed at the floorboards and stretched her back.

Enfri huffed and struggled to get her feet underneath her. Curse her blustering back. It did her no favors as she hobbled to the bedside to peer into Goodman Smith's eyes.

The blacksmith flinched when Enfri used a tiny mirror to reflect morning sunlight into his eyes.

Pupils are responsive and even. Very good. No further discoloration either.

"How do you feel," she asked him.

Goodman Smith squinted at her. "Mierwyn?"

"Enfri, Goodman. My mother passed a long time ago."

"Enfri? Winds..." The blacksmith grimaced and rubbed at his head. "Mierwyn dead? That's... not possible."

"You took ill," Enfri explained. She placed a vial of herbal tincture to his lips— starling grass, bread mold, and willowbark with plenty of mint to mask the horrid taste. "Iron fever strikes quickly and deadly. You're fortunate to be alive."

Goodman Smith coughed after downing the tincture. "Winds and storms, that is vile."

"Hmm. Not enough mint, I see. A bracing tonic. Your body is still weak from the illness. This will help ease your pain and fight off any other sicknesses that might come calling while you recover. You need rest, so no thumping to your feet, you hear me? You'll fall on your face before you reach the door, and your poor wife will have to drag your carcass back to bed."

He chuckled. "You sound just like her. You were just but a mite not a fortnight past. Children become women in the blink of an eye yet again."

Enfri frowned. The way he spoke, it sounded as if he thought he knew Mother well. She had to concentrate to keep her temper under control. The goodman nearly died the night before and wasn't recovered enough to take a proper tongue lashing.

Goodman Smith dropped his head back down onto his pillow, exhausted from the effort of speaking. He was still breathing heavily, and he licked his lips to give them some moisture.

"Mierwyn dead," he muttered. "I can't believe it. How?"

"A fall," Enfri explained. She began collecting her things and put them back in her basket. "Out in the rocks by the desert's edge. She broke her leg and it turned black. Our medicines couldn't stop it from killing her."

"I'm so sorry, child. How long ago?"

"Four summers gone," Enfri said, unable to completely keep the bitterness from her voice.

The blacksmith scrunched up his face as if trying to comprehend. "That can't be. I feel as if I spoke with her just the other day. Four years..."

A sharp pain slashed across Enfri's ankle. She suppressed a cry and looked down at the floor. Deebee streaked away from her feet and went to sit in the doorway. Her eyes were demanding.

There surely are better ways to get my attention than scratching, Enfri groused inwardly. The dragon must have been getting impatient.

She turned towards Kiffa. "You should fetch your mother. She needs to know that he's out of danger."

"What of Janwyn?" Goodman Smith asked after his daughter was gone.

"Grandmother was ancient," Enfri said. She heard her tone becoming short. "She died last spring."

Winds curse the man for acting like he cared.

"You're alone then?"

"I'm fourteen and grown, Goodman. Were I born a boy, I'd be sent off to the king's army by now."

His eyes flickered to the curve in Enfri's spine, and she very nearly beaned him over the head with her basket. Very well, if she'd been born a boy, she'd still be turned away from the army and declared an invalid. That didn't give him the right to fret over her like some blustering hen.

Deebee let out a yowl for her to hurry, then was forced to scurry out of the way when Goodwife Smith came running into the bedroom.

Husband and wife embraced each other, speaking in a confused babble that Enfri didn't feel inclined to try deciphering. She took Deebee's suggestion to heart and withdrew.

"Enfri, wait," Goodman Smith said before she could escape. "It's so far back to your place. Let Haythe take you home in the cart."

That made her hesitate. The ride the night before had been swift, and Enfri doubted that she could make nearly so quick a journey by hobbling her way back home. The only drawback, as she saw it, was that it would require her to subject herself to Haythe's increasingly difficult to ignore handsomeness.

Enfri nodded her acceptance, and soon found herself outside the Smith family's home. Goodwife Smith had torn herself away from her husband's bedside to see her off, Kiffa had Enfri by the arm and burbled her thanks, and Haythe was hitching the monster horse to a single-axle cart.

"He must stay in bed at least until the day after next," Enfri instructed the goodwife. "He needs to rest. Give him as much to eat as he can stomach. Good, hearty food. Meat and potatoes. Lots of carrots. That will build his strength back up."

"Of course, Sky Woman," she replied. "Winds bless you. We can't thank you enough."

Goodwife Smith produced a small, burlap sack that clinked with the sound of coins. She pressed it into Enfri's hands while saying she wished she could give more. Enfri, however, was overcome by the wealth that was just handed to her. Even if the bag was nothing but copper pennies, it was more money than she would get from a month of distributing remedies. By the heft of the sack, a generous portion of the coins it contained were silver marks.

It was simply too much. Enfri tried to return the purse, but Goodwife Smith wouldn't hear of it. "This is nothing compared to what you've done for us, Sky Woman."

Looking back on it, after Haythe had her loaded up in the cart and they were passing the halfway point of the ride, Enfri realized that it had been the first time she was openly acknowledged as the sky woman for the village. It brought a curious mixture of emotions bubbling up within her.

Pride, certainly. Some sadness, for the ones that had to be gone for her to play this role. What she decided she felt most was gratitude. For whom, she couldn't say.

Blustering woman, Enfri thought when she chanced a peek into the coin purse. She snuck some gold marks into here. No wonder you need the king's gift, handing coin out like this.

Yes, gratitude. Enfri wouldn't go hungry for years with this much coin.

She stole a glance at Haythe. He led the monster of a horse by the reins, walking in front and humming to himself. Now and then, the song seemed to resemble The Blue-Eyed Princess, but it kept changing to Return Home, an old folk lullaby about a lost empire. Haythe's eyes wandered around the hillsides, taking in everything and nothing at once.

For some winds-cursed reason, Enfri couldn't stop staring at him. A warmth arose in her cheeks.

"I thought you'd never leave that place," a tiny voice whispered in Enfri's ear.

The sudden appearance of Deebee's voice nearly startled Enfri right out of the cart. She snapped her head in the direction it came from and was confronted with the sight of a silver sparrow perched on her shoulder.

"Where've you been?" Enfri whispered. She kept her voice low so that Haythe wouldn't overhear. If he looked back and saw her talking to a blustering bird, she thought she might die from embarrassment.

"Those people started saying things that interested me. I made myself into a spider to listen in."

A silver spider with yellow eyes. Enfri was grateful that she had never had the pleasure of seeing that particular disguise.

"It's rude to spy on folk, Deebee."

"Is it?" Deebee cocked her head to the side inquisitively. "But they were talking about you. It is only natural that I should listen in. I'm bound to look over you, after all."

Dragons had a curious way of looking at things. Bound? Of all the nonsense.

"Wait, they talked about me?"

Deebee nodded her feathered head. "They are worried. The man wants to help you, but I am wary of what he thinks to do. The woman... I am not so pleased by her motives." She hopped from Enfri's shoulder to the other with a brief fluttering of her wings. "No, I do not like their intent. It will not do."

"Why?" Enfri asked. "What do they want to do?"

"Silly," Deebee chided. "Haven't you figured it out? The bag of coins they gave you to show you their means. This cart ride so you can spend an uninterrupted moment alone with that lad there. That goodwife is a sly one. She had her husband believing it was all his idea before I left to catch up with you."

Enfri held her tongue, mostly because she didn't trust that any sound other than a nervous squeak would come of it.

"They want you and that boy to court," Deebee said, her feathers ruffling. "Ghastly idea. Fresh hatchlings like you worrying over mating."

Enfri covered her ears with her hands. Winds, but did the dragon have to be so blunt?

"Why would..." Enfri cleared her throat. "Why would they want that? I mean... he is so... and I'm..."

Deebee gave her knuckles a firm peck, chastisement for Enfri thinking ill of herself. "A sky woman who can all but bring the dead back to life? Oh my, why ever would anyone want such a thing in their family?"

Enfri blushed and masked it by feigning annoyance. "Sarcasm doesn't suit a dragon. Even a tiny one."

"I am precisely as large as I need to be," Deebee replied, affronted. "But you are correct that there is more to it. The woman mentioned your father's land twice when she spoke with her husband. If you marry that lad, the land becomes theirs as soon as you become his."

"Father's land?" Enfri stared off towards the desert, just appearing on the horizon. They now rode through what belonged to her, and had been for some time. "Would that be so bad? It's more than I've ever needed, and I haven't ever been to even a tenth of it."

"It's more than they need, as well," Deebee chirped. "Humans. Your kind has a habit of grasping for more than you warrant. I am bothered that these people wish for this not because they desire to see you protected, but for their own gain."

Enfri thought on what Deebee said for several minutes before speaking up again. "Does it really matter what Goodwife Smith wants? What about what he wants?"

Deebee regarded Haythe's back for a moment, then hopped from foot to foot. "This one? His head is full of hammers."

"Rude."

"You misunderstand me. He thinks of metal and fire and what he can do with them. He is a craftsman born. You could do far worse."

Enfri wrung her hands and smiled to herself.

"Far better as well. He would be a good mate, I think. Careful and kind. Respectful. Biddable, even. But his heart will forever be bound to his craft. Haythe the blacksmith will never love you as much as his forge." Deebee put her beak close to Enfri's ear. "That is not what you long for."

And just who did that blustering bird... dragon... think she was, telling her what she longed for? Enfri was about to get angry, but sighed instead. Winds take Deebee for knowing her so well.

Haythe was handsome. He was good, she supposed. But Enfri didn't dream of someone to simply be kind to her and look nice while doing it. She wished for someone who could make her feel...

Enfri frowned and tugged at her shawl. She hadn't the slightest idea what she wanted someone to make her feel. Just...

"Not like a cripple," Enfri muttered.

Deebee dropped the guise of a bird and became a dragon once more. She draped herself over the back of Enfri's neck and curled around her like a silver necklace.

"I will not hear such talk from your mouth," she said, but her tone was soothing and soft. "What is crippled? Your back is not so dire a thing that you have not already overcome it. Can you not fend for yourself without another sky woman? Can you not ride into the night to deliver a child or heal the sick? Is your mind not the sharpest of any within a thousand leagues, or your tongue for that matter? You aren't seeking a way to feel whole. That is not what you need. You long for someone to make you feel more than whole. Someone to drive you and inspire you. Someone who is driven and inspired by you in turn."

"And who like that could I find here?" Enfri asked. She was mortified to hear a tremor in her voice.

"Here?" Deebee said. She slinked off of Enfri's neck and became a tiny sparrow again. "Here by the village of Sandharbor in the Kingdom of Althandor, upon the edge of the great Espalla Dunes? It is a wide world, girl, and we live in but a small piece of it. Even dragons cannot know the whole of what lies out there."

She spread her wings to fly off, but Enfri spoke up to stop her. "A moment more, Deebee. I wanted to ask you. Your dream, the one that brought you here..."

"Ah, yes. Metal and things that grow. We have seen this, yes? Your herbs and the poison that lay within the iron."

"That was not all you dreamt of," Enfri pointed out. "Sand, rock, blood, and fear."

Deebee looked down and closed her tiny eyes. "Dragons dream just as humans do. Not everything has a meaning."

"Golden hair and the eyes of beasts? Goodman Smith said..."

"He was raving," Deebee said more harshly than she might have intended. She ruffled her feathers and looked ashamed. "No, you are right. Forgive me. I am only afraid for you. I promised to look after you, and I have so little to protect you with."

"Promised? Promised who? Grandmother?"

Deebee looked her in the eye. "Your father."

The disguised dragon fluttered off and into the sky. As soon as she was a distance away, she changed back into a dragon and was soon out of sight. Enfri stood and called after her.

"Deebee! Come back here and..." She clamped her mouth shut and felt her face turn beet red. Enfri looked sidelong at Haythe. He was staring over his shoulder at her with the most befuddled expression she had ever seen.

"Your cat?" he asked.

Enfri laughed nervously. "Err... yes. She ran off."

Haythe chewed at the inside of his cheek. "Cats know where to find their feeding bowls. Do you want to stop and look for her?"

Kind of him to offer, Enfri thought. She settled her skirt around her and sat back down. "Wouldn't do any good," she sighed. "Blustering creature does as she pleases."

"As you wish. We're almost to your place, anyhow."

Enfri coughed nervously into her fist. "Thank you for bringing me."

"The least I could do," he said. "You healed my pa. He hardly looks like he was sick at all, like he just had a hard night at the tavern."

Haythe laughed heartily at what he said. He must have thought it was a grand joke. Enfri made herself laugh along with him.

Deebee meant well, but Enfri thought that if she were asked, she would betroth herself to that boy in a heartbeat. It took more strength than she had to deny someone that pretty.

What more could a deformed orphan possibly hope for?

Her laughter caught in her throat when she looked ahead at her home appearing over the hill. Her little house lay ahead, just as it always had. The chickens scratched about around the coop. The old milk cow grazed along its fence, and the pigs wallowed in their muddy pen. The geese were absent, little surprise there.

What gave Enfri pause were the four black horses tied to her hitching post.

"You have visitors," Haythe observed unnecessarily.

If the Smith family's horse was a monster, than these four were demons. Their shoulders were as tall as Haythe. Each had coats as black as the night of the new moon and silver manes and feathering like starlight. They were midnight in the form of horses.

"They may need a sky woman," Enfri said. For some reason she couldn't take her eyes off those horses. The flesh on her arms prickled, and she pulled her shawl tighter over her head.

 "Hurry, Haythe. I shouldn't keep them waiting."