The next morning I woke while Caiside was still asleep, and saw that she had indeed made her way to the bench by the fireplace. I had thrown a tick over it before I went to bed myself, and had then closed my bedroom door quietly. And securely.

  Now I wanted to walk over to the house of my Uncle Danzig and Aunt Lila, to speak with my cousin Freydis. They lived just a few houses away.

  I walked through my front garden and closed its gate behind me. It was a bright, beautiful morning; a promising morning, I thought. There had been some rain overnight, but the sun was warming up already and the air seemed washed and clean. I felt like the world was mine. Or at least Enkel Kanindal was. Or at least I was sharing the potential of the town in a proper way with all of my neighbors. Anyway, it was a promising morning.

  And then I noticed, to my right, the three girls who lived closest to me. They were nine, ten, and eleven years old. They stood close together, facing me, as if they had been waiting. They had adorable smiles.

  I really didn’t want to see them, this morning.

  “Mabel, Daisy, Twyla,” I said. “Here you are.”

  “And here you are!” Mabel said, while her sisters beamed. “Off to see your cousin, we imagine? As you so often do? So, so often?”

  The three of them laughed.

  “A good guess, as always, Mabel,” I said.

  “And the route there would take you past – hmm, let us think,” she said. All three of them then mock-frowned, tilted their heads, and put their respective right forefingers on their respective chins. They were quite a picture, standing there in a uniform trio. They nearly looked like triplets, what with the same dark eyes, long brown hair tied back, and matching yellow gingham dresses.

  “Well, I suppose you must walk by Alderman Winford’s,” Mabel said.

  “That’s right,” Daisy said. “And also, hmm – the Chandlers. And also – ”

  “That would leave, let me see,” said Twyla. “The white house after the Chandlers. Who is it who lives there, again?”

  “Miranda!” the three of them sang in unison.

  I had been walking all the while, but they kept after me. They sang:

  And now look at our hero as he’s gathering up his wits;

  smitten with Miranda and it’s giving him hot fits.

  Always has a reason to go wandering past her place.

  Standing straight, measuring his gait, and wiping off his face.

  Probably he has no chance with Kanindal’s favorite daughter,

  but poor Flicker is drawn to her just like a sheep to slaughter.

  If we three don’t quiet down we’ll give away his crush;

  He will choke, or get heatstroke, and just stand there and blush.

  Flicker is more fluttery than ever,

  and he hopes to tell Miranda something clever.

  He just wants her in his life forever,

  but she may tell him . . . whatever.

  By this time we were past the alderman’s house they had spoken of, and also that of the Chandler family. The next one was indeed the home of Arran and Morrya Waters, who did – indeed – have a daughter named Miranda.

  I stopped beneath a cluster of trees on the edge of their property.

  “Thank you for the serenade, girls,” I told them. “This might be a good time for you to head home?”

  But they pressed on:

  It’s not hard to see why she would have him in her thrall:

  our Miranda’s stunning, smart, and stands near six feet tall.

  Flicker probably finds her smile reminds him of mid-June:

  her voice floats around him like a summer afternoon.

  She is stately, generous, refined.

  Graceful and unfail–ingly kind.

  Flicker’s here about to lose his mind,

  staggering like he’s snowblind.

  “All right then, girls,” I said. “You should probably run along back home now.”

  “Why, do you think she’ll hear?” Mabel asked.

  “Probably everyone around hears, Mabel.”

  “There she is!” Twyla said, pointing.

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  I turned. Sure enough, Miranda stood there, outside her own front gate, looking at us.

  “Hello girls!” she said.

  “Hi Miranda!!” in three laughing voices. They then turned and ran back home.

  She walked toward me.

  Miranda.

  She was my height, so she was always looking straight in my eyes. She was wearing a brown dress today, with her hair in a long side braid. She looked . . . smart. Often when I spoke to her, I felt a step behind, as if she had done the reading and I had not.

  “It’s so lovely for you to have your own trailing chorus,” she told me. “You are very lucky.”

  “That is . . . one way to look at it.”

  She just smiled. As the girls had alluded to, seeing Miranda smile was conducive to one’s believing that all – we might say – was right with the world.

  “Going to see Freydis?” she asked.

  “Yes. We may have a . . . small journey ahead of us.”

  “Not too far or too long, I hope,” she said.

  It seemed to get hotter, all of a sudden.

  “I, perhaps, well no. Remains to be – I need to talk with Freydis about it. Would not be too far, I hope. Too.”

  I then realized that announcing a quest for treasure might not be wise, even here in town.

  “I should probably not say too much about this,” I said. “It’s not really – my story.”

  “Does it have to do with that woman with one leg who was looking for you last night?”

  “Indeed it does. So you saw her.”

  She nodded. “Flicker is a sought-after man.”

  “Yes, well,” I said. My face felt inflamed.

  It occurred to me to ask:

  “You talked to her?”

  “For a moment, yes.”

  “How did she seem, to you?”

  “Serious about finding you, certainly. But – she’s the one setting you on this journey you mention?”

  “Yes, she is. If I go.”

  “Hmm. Well, I might be cautious about getting pulled away anywhere unsafe, if I were you. But I know you know that.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, yes.”

  “I know you’re level-headed.”

  I had known Miranda my entire life, of course, and I knew this was the highest praise, coming from her.

  I mumbled something and shuffled away.

  *

  At my uncle and aunt’s house I found Danzig, Aunt Lila, my mother and father, and Freydis, all together.

  Danzig: All gray-haired, now, and usually gray-clad, also; a confident sheep rancher who had found success in that endeavor he and Lila had begun many years ago nearly as a whim because they thought there might be an untapped market for wool and mutton. They had turned out to be very correct.

  Lila: Also gray-haired, but still light on her feet; always wearing an apron as she collaborated on the sheep husbandry; an ebullient counterpart to Danzig’s reticence.

  My father, Landon: Clearly Danzig’s brother, but slimmer. Usually better-dressed, given our proximity to weddings and other events, and our greater distance from sheep; but it was a bit of a straitened decorum, because we had not done as well with our music as Danzig and Lila had done with their farm and sheep. My father had been wearing the same wedding outfit – for example – for many, many years.

  My mother, Becca: A grounded woman who managed our performances, played mandolin, and sang. She also raised flowers, tended fruit trees, and did whatever else she could to try to provide more income for us.

  Freydis: My cousin, nearly exactly my age; strong, always with her sleeves rolled up.

  (Canute, not present: Freydis’s brother, of course; Danzig and Lila’s son. He had become a blacksmith, not surprisingly, and was off at a furnace somewhere probably pounding iron ingots flat.)

  Lila was telling my parents about an invitation she had heard of for them and me to play at a wedding.

  “It’s Selwyn and Amara, you know, the millers. The ceremony is in the pavilion in the Fair Glade. They’re also bringing in the jugglers from over in Taperlandsby.”

  “The fire jugglers?” I asked. “In the pavilion?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’d better play first. I’m glad you’re all here; I have news.”

  I told them of Caiside and her visit, and her news of Uncle Slade; the amber, and the jackalope antlers, et cetera; the alkonost; and his hoard, and the map.

  “And I think it must be true,” I finished, “because she knew of something that no one else but Slade does; something he told her while they were imprisoned together. About a kobold that I hid and fed back when I was thirteen.”

  “That kobold!” Freydis said. “So I can tell people I saw it too, now.”

  “You did a pretty good job hiding it in the old barn,” Danzig added.

  “You knew?” I blurted. I was doing too much blurting.

  “We saw it,” Freydis said. “We had a sheep wander off, at the time, over toward your place, and when we tracked it there we came across you doing something with the kobold behind the barn.”

  “Maybe playing checkers,” Danzig said.

  “You played checkers with it?” my father asked.

  “Well, a few times,” I said. “It seemed bored. And I thought if I could keep it occupied, it would stay longer and let its leg heal.”

  “Why,” my father asked Danzig, “didn’t you tell me?”

  Uncle Danzig shrugged. “I thought either you knew, or else Flicker was perhaps concealing it; and if so, it looked like he had it under control.”

  “And then the night you led it away,” Freydis said, “I saw the two of you moving through the field over there.”

  “That was – late,” I said. “How did you see us?”

  “I would go out walking. After midnight. Out in the moonlight. That was just my way.”