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its will than would ever be so in reverse.
    Not that all wizardry was wicked. Oh, no! Alianora’s smile subtly changed. Her daughter Alianna wore the white, feathered swan-may’s tunic these days, and wore it wondrous well. Somewhere in the priests’ holy Book it said there was a time for everything, and there as elsewhere the Book spoke true.
    Alianora knew without—too much—resentment that her own time for the swan-may’s tunic lay behind her. Three decades and four children (one tiny body had lain in hallowed ground since before its first saint’s day, an unending sadness) had widened the hips to which that tunic once clung. She’d lost two teeth and gained wrinkles; encroaching gray streaked and dulled her red hair.
    But when she dreamt of flying, she knew whereof she dreamt! Everyone flew in dreams. Almost everyone had to imagine what it was like. Alianora knew the wind beneath her wings, knew the joy of soaring on streams of warm air gusting up from the ground, knew the wonder of freedom and speed in three dimensions.
    She glanced up into the watery sky to see if she might catch a glimpse of Alianna. No; wherever her daughter flew today, it was not near here. Just as well. Who didn’t want to fly wide when young, to streak over the fields and the meadows and the dark woods beyond? A village was for settling down, for later. When you were Alianna’s age, you thought later never came. You thought all kinds of things when you were Alianna’s age.
    Here was the green, and the stone-ringed well. Behind Alianora, Theodo’s hammer rang against the anvil. The iron he beat into shape there wouldn’t be cold, not yet. As always, she hoped he wouldn’t come home nursing a burn. He was careful, but once in a while everyone slipped.
    Four or five women stood near the well. Berthrada’s twin blond boys toddled by her feet. One of them stooped and plucked up some grass or maybe a bug and stuck it in his mouth. She hadn’t seemed to be watching, but she grabbed him, thrust a finger in there, and got rid of whatever it was. Mothers had, and needed, eyes in the back of the head. Berthrada swatted her son on the bottom, not too hard, and set him down again.
    Alianora nodded to the women as she came up. They nodded back. It wasn’t quite as if she’d been born and raised here, even if her husband had. She’d been places and done things they were just as well pleased not to know too much about. And the brief, form-fitting swan-may’s tunic that had been hers and was now mostly Alianna’s brought a whiff of scandal with it.
    Still and all, she lived here quietly enough, as she had for many years now. She made eyes at no man but her own. Her sons would be catches; no doubt of that. So Ethelind, the miller’s wife, said, “Have you heard the latest about Walacho and his poor sorry family?”
    “What now?” Alianora asked sadly, working on the crank to bring up a bucket of well water. Any sensible man drank beer instead when he could; if you drank water all the time, you pretty much begged for a flux of the bowels. Walacho wasn’t such a sensible man. He drank to get drunk, and when he got drunk he got mean. He did things he was sorry for later, which helped him as much as it did anyone else.
    Before Ethelind could come out with—or embroider upon—the juicy details of his latest rampage, Berthrada pointed out to the edge of the woods and exclaimed, “Look! A stranger’s coming!”
    Ethelind shot her a dirty look. Walacho’s ordinary folly would have to wait for another time. Strangers didn’t come to the village every day, or every week, either. This one might give folk here things to talk about till the next one showed up.
    He tramped along with determined strides, like a man who has been traveling for a long time and knows he may have to keep going longer yet. He was a big man, tall and broad through the shoulders. He wore a green plaid wool shirt with a stand-and-fall collar; sturdy, snug-fitting trousers