from death, for they hear. They rise in sorrow and walk the sea bed without rest for all of eternity.'

     The Wayfinder cocked up his eyebrows in sad self-mockery. 'I never lie. And no such lost spirits walk the sea, nor ever have.' At Kala's shocked stiffness, he thumped his marred fist on the mattress in frustration. 'Your boy is not dead, only washed up on a beach, as ! was.'

    Aunt Kala turned her back, which was as near to an insult as anyone ever got from her. The Wayfinder glared fiercely, his ice-gray eyes lit to burning. Then his jaw hardened until the muscles jumped and his speech scraped out of his throat. 'Your son fetched up on the Barraken Rock, to the west. At this moment, he is gutting a fish with a knife he chipped from a mussel shell.'

    'My son is dead!' Kala snapped back. 'Now say no more, or when Ciondo comes back, you will go trussed in the wagon to the bailiff's. I'll hear your word.'

    The Wayfinder sighed as though sucked down in a chasm of weariness. 'Woman, you'll get no word from me, but neither will you hear any, either, if that is your desire.'

    'It is.' Kala stamped out through the doorway without looking back. 'Sabin,' she yelled from the threshold at the head of the stairwell. 'You'll see that yon man eats his soup, and bring down the tray when he's finished.'

    But Kala's bidding was impossible to carry out, Sabin found. On the bed, the Wayfinder had closed his eyes and fallen deeply asleep.

    The house stayed quiet for the rest of the morning, with Kala beating quilts with a ferocity that outlasted the dust. At noon Uncle Ciondo returned from the beach, swathed in dripping oilskins, his boots caked to the ankles with damp sand. The bull bellow of his voice carried up through the second storey window where Sabin kept vigil over the invalid. 'Kala! Where is that man?'

    The thwack of the broom against fabric faltered. 'Where else would he be, but in bed? The shame on you, Ciondo, for leaving him trussed like the felon he certainly isn't.' Smack! went the broom on the quilts.

    When only the cottage door hammered closed in reply, Sabin gripped her knees with sweaty hands. She all but cowered as her uncle's angry tread ascended the stairs; bits of grit and shell scattered from his boots and fell pattering against the baseboards

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