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or sawdust. But to what purpose? What did he need ice in midsummer for? And he would have to store many snowballs to keep them from being lost to melt too quickly. It was cool in the dungeons but not cold.
    â€œStill, something to remember for next winter,” Sand said. His own voice startled him—not so much that he was talking to himself, for he did that several times a day just so he wouldn’t be so lonely.
    What startled him was the fact that he was thinking he might be here through next winter. And that next winter, he might want to think about preparing for the following summer.
    It made a dull ache in his belly, to think like that.
    So he didn’t think like that. He stopped thinking about time and people and loneliness . He might have to plan for years, for winters and summers to come, and he had to plan on relying on himself—but he didn’t have to think about it.
    Sand’s work continued. He mended tools in the smithy. He made nails. He mended some of the furniture in the great hall, haphazardly and with more nails than a good carpenter would use.
    Slowly, he learned how wood and fabric fit together. They had their own rules, less complicated than the rules governing metal, but important rules just the same. He mended privy seats and doors, cushions and pillows. Life became more comfortable as he worked his way through the castle, focusing on the rooms he used the most.
    In the evenings, he told Merlin the falcon all about his day’s works, and felt the better for having something with ears to talk to, even if he couldn’t see the ears beneath feathers, even if the ears didn’t hear him.
    His scrap piles grew, and he felt that the number of things left unrepaired seemed much larger than the number of things he managed to repair, and yet rooms began to fill back up with mended things. Anything that couldn’t be fixed could help fix something else.
    Piece by piece, room by room, Sand slowly cleaned and repaired, sorted and mended the castle.
    In the castle’s chapel, he restored the crucifix and resewed the altar cloth. He levered the two halves of the altar back into place.
    He saved the most uncomfortable task in the chapel for last, which was attending to the relics. The chapel was the home to the partial remains of two saints: Sainte Trifine, a mother and princess who had died and been brought back to life, and Saint Melor of the bronze foot and silver hand.
    The relics had not made it through the sundering intact. Spilling out of a silver, oval reliquary were the old, wizened lumps of Sainte Trifine’s heart, split into two; and mixed with the shards of a larger golden reliquary lay the broken head of Saint Melor.
    Sand could do nothing, really, that didn’t feel horribly sacrilegious, but leaving these things broken seemed worse than sacrilege. So he poured a few hot drops of beeswax between the bits of Sainte Trifine’s heart and, steeling himself, pushed the halves together with his fingertips. Then, with a small hammer, he beat back into shape the silver reliquary that housed her heart.
    For Saint Melor, he did not think candle wax would be the proper medium for putting the skull to rights, so he simply repaired the reliquary and set the pieces of the skull back inside.
    He wiped his fingers with his shirt hem for a good ten minutes after, and he never did quite get rid of the waxy feeling of Sainte Trifine’s heart that day.
    His stomach grumbled, and he turned back toward the kitchen. He’d mended the door at last, and when he opened it, a flurry of feathers flew at his head.
    Sand yelled in surprise, and ducked. A line of fire sprang into being across his face. The noise of wings passed into the courtyard, and he turned, tracking a frantic little falcon as it circled the courtyard twice, then flew up, up, up, straight into the sun.

6
    Water
    S AND STILL COULDN’T ENTIRELY BELIEVE THAT Merlin the falcon had come to life and flown away,