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of the cottage to greet Starling and Hap as they came up the trail.
    I do not know if it was our time apart, or my newly seeded restlessness, but I suddenly saw Hap and Starling as if they were strangers. It was not just the new garb Hap wore, although that accentuated his long legs and broadening shoulders. He looked comical atop the fat old pony, a fact I am sure he appreciated. The pony was as ill-suited to the growing youth as the child’s bed in my cottage and my sedate lifestyle. I suddenly perceived that I could not rightfully ask him to stay home and watch the chickens while I went adventuring. In fact, if I did not soon send him out to seek his own fortune, the mild discontent I saw in his mismatched eyes at his homecoming would soon become bitter disappointment in his life. Hap had been a good companion for me; the foundling I had taken in had, perhaps, rescued me as much as I had rescued him. It would be far better for me to send this young man out into the world while we both still liked one another rather than wait until I was a burdensome duty to his young shoulders.
    Not just Hap had changed in my eyes. Starling was vibrant as ever, grinning as she flung a leg over her horse and slid down from him. Yet as she came toward me with her arms flung wide to hug me, I realized how little I knew of her present life. I looked down into her merry dark eyes and noted for the first time the crow’s-feet beginning at the corners. Her garb had become richer over the years, the quality of her mounts better, and her jewelry more costly. Today her thick dark hair was secured with a clasp of heavy silver. Clearly, she prospered. Three or four times a year, she would descend on me, to stay a few days and overturn my calm life with her stories and songs. For the days she was there, she would insist on spicing the food to her taste, she would scatter an overlay of her possessions upon my table and desk and floor, and my bed would no longer be a place to seek when I was exhausted. The days that immediately followed her departure would remind me of a country road with dust hanging heavy in the air in the wake of a puppeteer’s caravan. I would have the same sense of choked breath and hazed vision until I once more settled into my humdrum routine.
    I hugged her back, hard, smelling both dust and perfume in her hair. She stepped away from me, looked up into my face, and immediately demanded, “What’s wrong? Something’s different.”
    I smiled ruefully. “I’ll tell you later,” I promised, and we both knew that it would be one of our late-night conversations.
    “Go wash,” she agreed. “You smell like my horse.” She gave me a slight push, and I stepped clear of her to greet Hap.
    “So, lad, how was it? Did a Buckkeep Springfest live up to Starling’s tales?”
    “It was good,” he said neutrally. He gave me one full look, and his mismatched eyes, one brown, one blue, were full of torment.
    “Hap?” I began concernedly, but he shrugged away from me before I could touch his shoulder.
    He walked away from me, but perhaps he regretted his surly greeting, for a moment later he croaked, “I’m going to the stream to wash. I’m covered in road dust.”
    Go with him. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but he needs a friend.
    Preferably one that can’t ask questions,
Nighteyes agreed. Head low, tail straight out, he followed the boy. In his own way, he was as fond of Hap as I was, and had had as much to do with his raising.
    When they were out of eyeshot, I turned back to Starling. “Do you know what that was about?”
    She shrugged, a twisted smile on her lips. “He’s fifteen. Does a sullen mood have to be about anything at that age? Don’t bother yourself over it. It could be anything: a girl at Springfest who didn’t kiss him, or one who did. Leaving Buckkeep or coming home. A bad sausage for breakfast. Leave him alone. He’ll be fine.”
    I looked after him as he and the wolf vanished into the trees. “Perhaps I