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and dozens of layers of thin dough.
    Sometimes Chais was there, too, trading goat’s milk and cheese for some of the apothecary’s syrups and simples. One afternoon he gave a fine soft scarf of lamb’s wool to Taene in exchange for a smile, carefully choosing a time when her father was out. Taene’s mother suggested, with a sidelong look at Chais, that Taene might go for her to the miller’s for flour, and perhaps Chais might go with her to carry it back, if he wasn’t in too much of a hurry. “It’s heavy to carry so far, and I’m afraid I can’t spare the cart,” she said with a wink for Timou, who had been helping her thin early peas and tie twine for them to climb up. “Timou can help me here, can’t you, love?”
    Timou was happy to help with the peas, but she did not know what she thought about Taene and Chais. She was happy for Taene, of course, but still she did not know what she thought. Or more, perhaps, how she
felt.
It seemed that everyone she knew, each of the girls with whom she’d grown up, was moving confidently into a new part of life from which Timou was somehow excluded. Ness and Jenne and Sime, and then Manet and now even Taene . . . Timou told herself she would rather follow the voices of trees and stars than that of any young man. Even though this was true, sometimes it rang a little hollow.
    The next day, Taene seemed distracted, quieter than usual, with a tendency to smile at odd moments. Timou hardly knew how to talk to her.
    Jonas also came that afternoon, to help the apothecary sort the powders left after the long winter and determine which would most urgently need to be replenished.
    “Moisture got into this hyssop—look.” The apothecary waved a box at Jonas. “It’s a pity; everybody’s got a cough in the spring. I could use twice as much as I have here, and now this is ruined.”
    Jonas took the box and gazed gravely into it. Then he dumped the powdered herb out onto a sheet of vellum and used the handle of one of the apothecary’s brushes to gently sweep some of the powder aside. “I think mostly the top was ruined,” he said. “Might this part still be good?”
    Timou looked over his shoulder. He was right: some of the hyssop still seemed good. She said to the apothecary, “My father probably has some hyssop. If there’s not enough, then I know he has some horehound.”
    “Thank you, dear, that’s good to know,” the apothecary said absently, leaning over from the other side of the table to stir the hyssop with one blunt-nailed finger. “You’re right, Jonas, some of this is salvageable. I don’t have another box—”
    “I’ll make you one tonight.” In the meantime, Jonas swept the remaining hyssop into a small bowl and set a plate over it.
    “Good,” the apothecary said approvingly to this offer, glancing at Taene to see if she’d noticed this evidence of industry and good nature. She hadn’t. She was across the kitchen at the other table, making Chais’s favorite butter candy and smiling to herself.
    “Fathers are sometimes blind,” Jonas said to Timou later. He was walking her part of the way back to her house. The furniture maker’s house, where he would collect some seasoned wood suitable for the apothecary’s box, was on the way. He gave her a sidelong look. “Kapoen wouldn’t for a moment miss the direction of his daughter’s glance.”
    Timou said, “You’re afraid of my father.” She meant this as an observation, not an accusation, and Jonas took it that way.
    He said equably, “He sees too much.”
    “It’s the nature of magecraft, to see into a thing’s heart. Or a man’s.”
    Jonas gave a little nod. “I don’t care for that in Kapoen. But somehow it doesn’t trouble me in you, Timou.”
    Timou didn’t know what to say to this.
    “You probably know that I’m starting to see your face in the raindrops,” said Jonas. He waved a hand at the sky, where a heavy overcast promised more spring rain on the way. “There’ve