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always starts before you expect it.” Keith fitted the tiny fingers around the ring. They barely closed on the other side. Asrai was so small she looked more like a baby doll than a baby. “Hmm. That was the smallest one I could find.”
    “She’ll grow,” Holl said, gruff with pride. The child immediately drew the vanilla-scented ring to her face and put her mouth to the edge. Her little pink tongue explored the bumps on the blue rubber surface, and she looked surprised.
    Holl watched her adoringly. Keith glanced up. In contrast to the flower-petal complexion of his daughter, Holl’s face seemed for the first time to be creased and tired. Keith was concerned for his friend, but he made light of it.
    “Fatherhood’s made an older man of you, Holl.”
    “And it has,” Holl said with a sigh. “For no reason at all the babe wakes in the night and cries. She isn’t hungry, and she isn’t wet, but she cries. It’s amazing to me how loud she can get. I’m glad it’s only Marm next door to us. He never minds a thing when he sleeps, and Ranna can ignore everything, but the wailing keeps us wide awake.”
    “Trouble,” Keith said, shaking his head. His eyes danced with mischief “What do your folk say when they’re fed up with their kids? ‘I wish the humans would come and take you away?’”
    Holl favored him with a sour expression. “Very funny, Keith Doyle. May I offer you a snack? You’ve come a long way.”
    Keith looked around the interior of the cottage. The floor, covered with smooth tiles of wood, was well swept. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture, except for a pair of chairs, a large table and a small one, and bookshelves built cunningly into the walls. Holl caught the sense of his gaze.
    “Oh, the food’s in the larder under a hatch in the floor. It’s not too big, just enough for a pat of butter and a drop of milk, or what have you,” Holl said, rising heavily to his feet. “There might be a heel of bread as well.”
    With concern, Keith watched him go. Holl looked genuinely tired. Keith’s mother had said that the first six months after a birth were the hardest. At least Holl and Maura were in the back stretch, now that Asrai had hit the three-month mark. He couldn’t believe that this tiny baby who just barely overlapped his hands could yell so loudly.
    “Less insulation to hold down the sound, huh, punkin?” he asked her. The baby, wisely asleep with the ring clutched to her cheek, said nothing.
    Keith knew better than to trust Holl’s assertion that there was no more food on hand than drops and heels. The Little Folk might eat less in proportion, but they liked plenty of good things to eat as much as their Big cousins. Holl returned with a handsomely carved wooden tray bearing a tall pitcher whose foaming, white contents slopped gently from side to side, and a basket of rolls with a good chunk of primrose-yellow butter on a small dish in the center.
    “Keva’s doing,” Holl explained at Keith’s question. “They all knew you were coming for a visit, and she insisted on leaving these to break our fast.”
    Keith’s own particular mug, a long-ago present from the Little Folk, was here on a framed shelf beside those belonging to Holl and Maura. He accepted milk and a handful of rolls. “What, no beer?” he asked impishly.
    “Not when I’m on nursery duty, if you please,” Holl said, grimacing. “Whew! It was a long night last night down here. A good thing we’re out as we are in the middle of the sky. Under the library, she’d have shouted the stacks down. They’d have thought there was a banshee trapped in the steam tunnels! Maura and I share duties. It’s my shift with the babe. She’s inside the big house helping prepare the lunch before class.”
    “She’s not having to cut short her education because of the baby, is she?” Keith asked.
    “Oh, no, don’t you fear it,” Holl said easily. “You don’t know the benefits of communal living. When there’s