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risking her life for a dead bird, she realized.
    No, another part of herself reasoned, you are risking your life for the chance at a live bird.  A great hunter.  A master of the winds.  
    When she thought about it like that, there was really no question.  
    She was going to get herself that bird.
     
    *                            *                            *
     
    The next few days were busy.  There were a lot of chores to do to prepare the Hall for winter and not all of them were pleasant.  While her slight size spared her from the laborious task of washing laundry in the huge kettle over a fire in the courtyard with her sister and cousins, her Aunt Anira (who had stepped into the role of her mother since the day Dara was born) always seemed to find other things for her to do.  Sure enough, Aunt Anira had a special assignment for her at the breakfast announcements.
    This time, however, the task was not too objectionable.  Anira had thoughtfully given Dara a job suitable to her size, skill and ingenuity: repairing the nutwood cottages.  
    There was a row of the tiny cottages against the far northeastern edge of the manor, up against the wood proper.  Unlike the cots near the center of the estate, where young families lived in a small hamlet behind the manor hall, these cottages were reserved for the elderly.  Pensioners who had served the estate faithfully but were too old and frail for regular work.  In other villages and manors, the old people were nearly cast aside after their productive years were behind them.  
    But not in the Westwood.  The Master took care of all.  
    The Westwoodmen worked for the estate even in their dotage.  The pensioners’ cots were close to a large stand of pecan and hazelnut trees intermixed with a few walnuts, cultivated over the decades as part of the manor’s economy.  In the autumn the pensioners did the tedious but necessary work of gathering up the fallen nuts for the estate, and in return the manor provided for them for the rest of the year.  Every month each cot was delivered a bag of flour, another of barley, and usually a little meat and some vegetables.  That was in addition to the little gardens the pensioners grew, the nuts they gleaned, and the gifts they received from the younger residents  of the manor.  A few even still hunted.
    The cottages were very small, no more than fifteen feet on a side, constructed of sturdy poles and wattle-and-daub, with a thick lining of dried mosses to keep out the chill.  The roofs were thatched with stiff ferns that kept the rain out better than the river reeds the people of the Vale used.  A tiny fireplace with a clay chimney hugged the back wall of each cottage, allowing a fire sufficient to heat the cozy room, and two small windows permitted light inside, when the wooden shutters and leather curtains were thrown open.  The cottages were large enough for a bed, a small trestle table, a cistern, and a chest or two for their belongings and stores.  Most hung herbs and dried meat from the poles in their ceilings, and a few had hung ragged tapestries or trophies from their youth on the walls.
    The cottage of one of the pensioners, Widow Ama, needed to be cleaned and repaired after the old occupant had quietly passed on in her sleep at the end of last summer.  Anira thought that the work was well within Dara’s capabilities.  It was the Master of the Wood’s duty to look after those who had spent their lives caring for the estate, and she was the Master’s daughter.
    The pensioners’ cottages were a peaceful place, Dara decided as she walked down the trail into the nutwoods, but it was also a kind of sad place.  This is where people came to await death, she realized.  Her grandmother had lived here, she recalled, until she’d passed away.  As she waved to Old Kam, the grizzled and lame forester who lived in the second cot, she realized that he, too, was awaiting