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afraid.”
    Cally stood trembling, her breath uneven. The man made a clicking sound with his tongue, impatient, and he took her again by the shoulders and spun her round. She flinched back against his knees. The two huge figures stood facing her. In the sunlight they were like rough misshapen sculptures clumsily carved from great blocks of stone: arms without hands, legs without feet, heads without features. The slow rumbling voice came again from one of them.
    â€œDid not mean. . . .”
    Even through her fear, Cally heard an incongruous note of appeal in the voice that for a wild moment reminded her of a small child apologizing. She swallowed.
    â€œIt’s all right,” she said huskily. “I’m . . . not afraid.”
    â€œHah!” said the man shortly, releasing her. “Not afraid? You’re shaking like an aspen. And were you running like the devil because you’re not afraid?”
    Cally said, “It was —when they changed—”
    â€œAnd if you don’t understand, you fear.” He gave a brief snort of disgust, and turned to pick up his hammer. “Just like Lugan’s folk. Are you one of them?”
    Cally said blankly, “Who?”
    â€œWhere have you come from?”
    â€œI—don’t know. Another country.”
    â€œStonecutter,” said the deep creaking voice from the stone figure. “We did wrong?”
    â€œNo, no,” said the black-haired man impatiently. “She can work with Ryan. I dare say she needs a roof over her head.”
    Cally thought of the dark wood, and the malevolent face on the pillar. In relief she smiled at him. “Yes please.”
    He looked at her coldly. “Behind the house there is a door. Go through it, to the woman inside. Understand that here, life is work.”
    Cally nodded, her smile fading.
    â€œAnd understand one thing about the People, so that we’ll have no more hysterics.” He pointed to the great stone creatures standing motionless before him. “The sun wakes them. When the sun is gone, they . . . go to sleep. All of us here live by that rule; but for them it must be the touch of the sun that brings them back to life.”
    Cally remembered the beam of sunlight on the grey rock. She said, “The People?”
    â€œIt is what they call themselves.” The words were a dismissal; he turned away.
    Cally glanced at the stone figures, but there was no way of telling if the blank faceless heads were looking back. She went to the house. Behind her, the thudding of the hammer began again—and with it a much more massive crashing, crunching sound, shaking the earth. Cally shivered, and did not turn to look.
    The house was made of rough blocks of stone, set with small square windows deep in each wall, and roofed with blue slate. Cally found the heavy wooden door in the back wall, with a tall dark holly bush growing nearby. She knocked, timidly. Then she realised that the door was unlatched. Pushing, she found that it was in two halves; the top half swung open.
    â€œNo foot on the floor yet!” It was a quick, light voice, with a singing in its accent. Cally saw a broad, light-coloured floor, with heavy furniture all pushed into a cluster at oneend of the room. By the fire in the big open hearth, a little woman with wispy grey hair caught up in a knot was kneeling with a bucket and a brush. She blinked up at Cally, in the sunlight from the doorway.
    â€œWell, who is this now!” She stood up and padded across to the door; Cally saw that she had pieces of rag wrapped round each foot and tied at the ankles with string. The woman glanced down at them and laughed: an infectious, gurgling laugh, turning her small face into a maze of smiling wrinkled lines and rounding her cheeks like apples.
    â€œIt’s the day for the floor, you see—no use washing it clean and then grubbying it up with your own feet, is