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was returning to their world. They knew how to warm sea-drenched folk. They knew how to save people from the ocean’s chill. They knew how to fight to survive.
    Glenna waited until each of the five waterlogged people held a mug of apple wine, and then she turned back to Sartain. “You’re wasting time, fisherman. Time that could mean those children’s lives.”
    Sartain spluttered, “Who would you send to rescue them, Goody Glenna?”
    “A soldier, a tracker, and a healer, our best.” The old woman’s eyes flickered over the crowd. “Maddock, Landon, and Jobina.”
    Alana bit back an exclamation of surprise. Certainly, Maddock was a logical choice—he was most familiar with the inland territories after his eastern journey the previous year. Landon, too, made sense; he could track a newborn lamb through spring storms. But Jobina?
    Goody Glenna answered the woodsinger’s question before Alana could speak. “The men have the skills we need, and I would think of sending them alone. But Jobina is a healer, strong in her craft. And she knows the Songs of the Dead.”
    That last admission chilled Alana, even as she recognized the logic of sending someone who could fight for the children’s souls, someone who could guide them to the Guardians’ world if the battle were lost.
    All eyes turned to Jobina, who stood on the edge of the ocean, her loose skirts flirting dangerously with the waves that crashed on the pebbly sand. She had seen to it that the councilors’ cloaks were gathered close under their chattering chins; she was topping off the apple wine in the leather mug that Teresa barely managed to grasp in her shivering hands.
    When the healer felt the People’s scrutiny, she inclined her head gracefully, her auburn hair shimmering like a curtain across her narrow features. “I am honored by your words, Goody Glenna, and by the Council’s faith in my abilities.” Her husky voice, however, did not quite capture the humility of her speech. The wind tugged at her blouse, slipping it free from one shoulder. The healer seemed oblivious to her exposed flesh, although Alana noticed that a number of the men paid closer attention to the woman.
    “Such modesty,” Goody Glenna answered, and Jobina at least had the good grace to look abashed as she plucked at her blouse. “So.” Glenna turned to the fisherman. “We should send three to follow our children. And the woodsinger should sing a bavin, so that we may track their progress.”
    “A bavin!” Alana exclaimed.
    Goody Glenna snorted in annoyance. “Of course! We have to know how our people fare on the road.”
    “But the bavins are for our boats !”
    “They’re for our need . And we’ve never had a greater need than this.”
    “But—” Alana began, thinking that she had only followed bavins out to sea, had only stretched the Tree’s awareness toward fishermen, toward the ocean and the Guardians of Water. Would the bavin even work if she cast her attention over land? Would the Guardians of Air and Earth support her questing eye?
    Alana reflexively cast her question into the pool of the Tree’s knowledge, into the shimmering circles of thought that lay just beneath her own consciousness. She could feel the earlier woodsingers, awakened by the tumult of all that had happened on the beach. Alana plunged her question into their midst and almost reeled with the force of the replies.
    “Stolen children?” whispered one ancient voice. “Like the stolen bull of Cumru?”
    “Children!” remonstrated a younger voice. “Not animals, children!”
    “Ah, like the time that madwoman Shinda took her daughter away from the People.”
    “She took her daughter from her husband, Shinda did.”
    “It wasn’t her husband, it was her father….”
    The voices chased each other, circling around their ancient stories like rings on a tree stump. Alana felt the confusion of their histories break over her like a clammy ocean wave, and she staggered toward one of the