The chrome-haired man didn’t ask about Praeda’s blindfold. Manrie saw him note it, saw a thought flicker across his open face, and saw decision settle in his asymmetrical eyes. She detected no fear in him at all. He simply bent down to the cracked bowl that he had been collecting herbs in, pinched a sprig of rosemary in his long and agile fingers, and held it under Praeda’s nose. “I will make a delicious pancake with it, so light and delicate that you will think that you’re eating the springtime.”

Praeda sniffed at it cautiously. “Why?” she asked.

He glanced at Manrie, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. “You look hungry. Like someone who has been traveling a long time, and needs a good meal.” One of his eyes wandered, and it seemed to look behind her, at the journey she’d been on.

“We have been traveling a long time,” Manrie said, “but I’ve fed her well enough.”

“Yes,” the man agreed. “*Enough*. But I am interested in more than enough. I believe that people deserve more than enough.”

“What’s more than enough?” Praeda asked.

He laughed. “Delight. Joy. People think that *enough* is safe. But I think it’s like a slow poison. Beauty is safe. Laughter is safe.” He lifted the rosemary to his nostrils and sniffed. “Delight is safe.”

Manrie shifted uncomfortably. “Are we near Zaira Lake?”

“Very near. If you step to the left and look down between those two hemlock trees, you will see it glittering in the valley.”

“And do you live there? Along the lake?”

Again the busy, chiming laugh. “We live everywhere. We are traveling there now. But we left the road to look for tantralamuhn.” He looked down into his bowl and shifted its contents carefully, extracting a stem with swollen leaves marching up it in pairs. “It is past its flowering season, or we would hear it singing. It is very, very delectable. I will cook it with lake squash in a sea of butter. It will make you weep with gladness.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Manrie said, “but we’ll be moving on.”

The expressive face fell. “To eat a lonely meal on a lonely hillside?” Then the mismatched eyes narrowed with consideration. “If you are being chased, it is more conspicuous for you to be alone. The best place to lose oneself is in a crowd.” Had his wandering eye seen the mushroom man, somewhere on the trail behind them?

“Do you have a crowd?”

He flashed a grin. “There are only four of us. But we go into the towns to find the crowds. And sometimes the crowds come to find us.”

“Why?”

He shrugged again. “Because we feed them.”

“And your food is so good that they come running out to you?”

“People respond to generosity. They will give to you if you give to them.”

Manrie thought of Libreigia. “Sometimes.”

“Well,” he smiled, “let this be one of those times.”

Praeda pulled at Manrie’s hand. “Could we, Manrie?”

Sunlight was glinting off of the hillside, and the tall grasses were bending gently over as a breeze passed along them. A chickadee was fluctuating between two high notes, and a herd of deer was moving in a line along the ridge to the north. “We’ll come if you tell us your name,” Manrie said to the man.

The smile flashed. His teeth were very clean and surprisingly straight. “Cloedeya,” he said. “And you are Manrie.”

She stiffened. “How do you know that?”

“Your friend just called you that.” He knelt beside Praeda and said, “You can keep your name to yourself, or tell me if you like.”

“I’m Praeda.”

“Yes you are,” he said. “Praeda who knows beauty through scent and touch. Come. Let me cook for you.”

He led them to the foot of the hill and around it, to a grove of sycamores that grew along a small stream. There were two wagons sitting in the shadow of the trees. They were tall and enclosed, and brightly painted. Manrie saw plants growing on their roofs, and ladders up the sides to reach these mobile gardens. There was a chicken coup at the back of one wagon, separated by a wall from the rest of the interior. The chickens were pecking at the ground beneath the trees, a rather handsome rooster strutting among them. Two goats were munching at tufts of grass beside the wooden wheels, and two horses and one cow had plodded over to the riverside to graze. A white cloth had been tacked up to provide a roof that spanned the space between the wagons, and dappled sunlight fell through it onto a pair of women who were standing at a high table. They were slicing vegetables.

Cloedeya whistled as he led his guests into camp, and the two women looked up and smiled. “I have found us some friends to share our supper,” he told them.

One of the women dried her hands on her apron and came forward. She squatted down to look at Praeda, then reached a shy hand out and touched the little girl’s shoulder. “Hello,” she said softly. She had a wide face. A line of acne stuttered across her forehead. Her lips had a strangely purplish hue, as if she had been holding her breath. Which might account for the roundness of her cheeks, Manrie thought.

“Hello,” Praeda said shyly.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked.

“Praeda.”

The bluish lips flashed into a smile. The woman ducked her head shyly, then raised it and gave Cloedeya a strangely direct look. “Me too. My name is Praeda, too.”

Cloedeya nodded judiciously, as if he approved of some decision that had just been made. “We will have to call you Big Praeda and Little Praeda,” he said. He nodded to the other woman. “And this is Melsa.”

Melsa had very square, sharp shoulders. She seemed very shy. She met Manrie’s eye, gave her a weak smile, and continued to slice a long carrot, working her knife carefully and skillfully, cutting the orange tuber into thin sticks. “I learned one of our guests’ name by accident,” Cloedeya said to the two women. “So I won’t tell it to you. She can if she likes.” He went to Melsa’s side, snatched up a stick of carrot, and chewed it thoughtfully. “Is Taeyaho still out gathering?”

“He went upstream. He said that he saw a heron snatch a bluegill from the shallows.”

Cloedeya nodded. “The bluegill in this stream are more succulent than most,” he told Manrie. “The taste of the mountain is in their flesh. A hint of iron and stone. It pairs with a sauce made of plum and honey that will make you dream of the Previous World.”

Big Praeda was leading Little Praeda, Manrie’s Praeda, over to the table. “Would you like to taste each ingredient as we prepare it?” she asked the little girl. “You will know each part of the meal, and then, when we are done cooking, you will understand how all of the different flavors come together.”

Manrie hovered uncertainly at the edge of shadow cast by the cloth roof. “What should we call you?” Melsa asked. Her voice quivered slightly, as if it had to be strained through her shyness before it could be heard.

Manrie thought for a moment. Cloedeya had disappeared into one of the wagons. “Kumynoe,” she said. It was her mother’s name.

Melsa seemed to need time to consider this. She worked in silence, but her mouth quirked slightly, as if chewing on words that she wouldn’t say out loud. Her hair was quartz colored and hung down over her eyes.

After a while a thin boy came walking along the stream, carrying a string of fish that flashed gold and blue in the dappled sunlight. He was singing in a high, chiming voice. He stopped at the edge of the camp and looked at Little Praeda and Manrie. Cloedeya had emerged from the wagon and was grating a block of cheese. He glanced up, grinned, and said, “We have visitors.”

“Hello,” the boy said. He smiled. Manrie thought that he was the most beautiful person she had ever seen. He had the beginnings of a wispy beard, and blue eyes that flashed against his dark skin. His shoulders and arms were rounded with lithe muscle, and water glinted off of his bare chest. He seemed to collect the sparkling peace of the stream into his person and refract it back into the air.

“This little girl has my name,” Big Praeda said quickly. “Praeda.” The boy looked at her and she looked back at him. “And this young woman is named Kumynoe,” she said.

Cloedeya glanced at Manrie, nodded, and then said, “You had a good catch, Taeyaho.”

The beautiful boy brought his string of fish to the table. “I feel sorry for the heron. It will find its fishing grounds empty when it flies back.”

“You couldn’t have caught every fish in the stream.”

Taeyaho laughed, and it was a surprising abrasive laugh, high and hacking and hard to bring back under control. “No, but it isn’t the only heron.”

The boy busied himself making a fire, and after a moment Manrie began to collect twigs for him. The saddlebag was still strapped to her back, and swayed and banged against her hips as she bent to the ground. If Taeyaho thought that this was strange, he gave no indication of it. They built the fire beneath an elaborate iron grill, and then the four cooks set to work with great intensity. Their movements and their quiet, murmured words were almost prayerful. Watching them, Manrie was reminded of the way that Aizdha had moved when stalking some monster. Slowly, his fat body strangely agile and concentrated. She had learned how to shift her position from him, how to make her steps light and her motions so slow and careful that they barely disturbed the air. And she had learned how to concentrate all of her being on the creature that she was observing, memorizing its shape and color so that she could draw it later, observing what it ate, how it moved its head or tail, how the marking on a hide or carapace could shift as it grazed or hunted. The four cooks had the same concentration, and Little Praeda, standing near them, was quite still and focused. Her blindfold was dirty, but her robes were a dazzling white. This surprised Manrie, who had stopped noticing how clean the girl always looked. She glanced down at her own robes, and saw that they were white as well.

They ate as the sun was setting, sitting at a table made from the unhinged wall of one of the wagons. The interior it exposed was full of pillows and blankets, quite obviously the place where the travelers slept. Cloedeya sat beside Manrie’s Praeda and had her smell the meal and then take small bites, savoring the fish and its sauce. The carrots had been braised in a tangy wine, and tasted like sunlight on the top of trees. They had made a pilaf with wild rice and cranberries. Halfway through the meal, Manrie found that she was crying. No one commented on it. They seemed to expect that their food would evoke emotion.

When her plate was clean, Manrie sat back on the little camp stool that they had given her. She glanced towards the stream, and froze. Melsa followed her gaze. She leapt up, knocking her stool over. She blinked, her fists clenched. Cloedeya glanced towards the stream, and then at her. Melsa lifted her eyes and looked at him. Then she picked up her stool and sat down again.

“There are more of them tonight,” Cloedeya said.

“More of who?” Little Praeda asked, immediately on her guard.

“They have been appearing all through the Sand Hills. But I’ve never seen them in this number.”

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“Manrie, is it the ghosts?”

“Kumynoe,” Cloedeya corrected her. Then he reached across to lay the flat of his hand against Little Praeda’s cheek. “Yes, it’s the spirits. We have seen them in every town we’ve visited. But not here in the wilderness. And never so many of them. Do you know them?”

“They are following me,” Manrie said quickly.

Cloedeya considered her. “Well,” he said, “they must love you very much.”

Taeyaho untangled himself from his stool and walked under the trees to the edge of the stream. The ghosts faced him from the other bank. Manrie looked at his straight back, the way that the moonlight shone on his pearlescent hair. After a moment he sat down in the dirt, crossing his legs and facing the dead quietly, as one might look at the stars.

“I’m scared,” Little Praeda whispered.

Big Praeda said, “May I pick you up?”

The little girl nodded. Her namesake took her into her lap and nuzzled her. “Much of the world seems frightening, but isn’t. And some of the world hides its nature, so that we don’t know to be frightened of it. But the spirits won’t hurt us.”

“How do you know?”

“Kumynoe says that they’ve been following you. Have they done anything to you?”

“No.”

“Then let’s assume that they’re gentle. That they’re like deer, that come to the river to drink.”

“Are we the river?” Manrie asked sharply, and Melsa shifted nervously on her stool.

“I think that we share the same river,” Big Praeda said. “Like different animals do.”

Manrie turned her head and looked at Aizdha’s ghost, standing in the front rank of the spirits. She had never been afraid of him in life. Cloedeya shifted and stood. “I will offer them a plate of fish,” he said. Melsa gave a little mewling sound. But Cloedeya assembled a plate with careful concentration, and then carried it to where Taeyaho was sitting. He bent and said a few words, and then he kicked off his sandals and waded into the stream. He didn’t step onto the other shore, but set the plate on the far bank, and then raised his head to look into the faces of the ghosts. But they paid him no mind. They stared across the river, at the table where Manrie and Praeda were sitting, watching them with tired, wary eyes.

It was the beginning of a stream of days that Manrie would remember in flashes. They traveled downstream and found the Ordaelauwa River and journeyed up it, stopping in towns and villages that were full of fisher folk, lean and tan and with battered, scarred hands. One village at the top of a rise was famous for its great herd of swine, and Manrie stood with Cloedeya in a smokehouse and watched great haunches of meat sway in the dusty light that came through a high window. Cloedeya shaved at a ham with a paring knife and rolled up his eyes with ecstasy when he tasted the flesh. In another village, he waded into the water beneath a little bridge and picked watercress, working somberly and quickly, commenting on its properties to Melsa, who waited on the bridge with a woven basket. They cooked for everyone, and they never paid for anything. Manrie and Little Praeda slept in the second wagon, which was loaded with food, and their sleep was soothed with the scent of onions and dried fish and pungent cheese. Some nights Big Praeda would sleep there, too, and Little Praeda would roll into her arms, and Manrie, staring at the shadows of the herb bunches hanging from the rafters, would feel both jealousy and relief.

She began to understand that the travelers were like a breeze that picks up seeds and pollens and scatters them across the countryside, helping things to grow. Each village was benefited by the labor of the other villages, because the travelers brought them herbs and vegetables and meats that had been grown and cured only twenty miles away, but seemed entirely exotic to the isolated river folk. Little Praeda began to take her blindfold off during the day, and Manrie, who had only seen her eyes on that first day in the meadow, was surprised that they were a greenish brown, and capable of showing delight instead of fear. She charmed the people in the villages, who commented on the gleaming white of her robes. Other girls wanted to plait her hair. Women wanted to pick her up. It seemed to Manrie that Little Praeda had also become a gift that the travelers carried from place to place, a necessary element in the feasts they hosted, as expected and welcome as a song or a story at the end of the meal.

As they traveled, Taeyaho’s beauty seemed to dim. Maybe it was only that Manrie grew used to it, that she learned to look at him in the face without feeling blinded. She could see the small bump on his nose, now, and that his lips were often chapped. She noticed, and then couldn’t help noticing, the cowlick that sprang up like a weed at the top of his head.

One night she passed by the sleeping wagon and looked in through a crack in the door, and saw Melsa and Cloedeya and Big Praeda all lying together, clasping and kissing each other. She stepped quickly away and a flush rose over her body, a confusing burning that made her strangely angry. The next night she sat in the shadows outside of the wagon and listened to the sounds coming from within. They weren’t unfamiliar to her. She had been a slave in Libreigia, and she knew what sex sounded like. But she had never expected to feel the swell of desire and longing within herself, and it bothered her more that she didn’t know what or who she desired.

“Do you know what they do at night?” she asked Taeyaho, as they were walking beside the wagons along a rutted river trail.

He looked away, blushing, flashing the blue of his eyes at the ground. “They don’t disturb me.”

“What does that mean?”

“They know I don’t want to be part of it. They let me be.”

“Why don’t you want to be part of it?”

He struggled to answer. His dark skin flushed with embarrassment, and he pulled his shapely shoulders inward, as if he could fold himself vertically and hide within his own body. Then he gave his strange, abrasive laugh, and began to whistle tunelessly.

She let him be. His beauty wasn’t for her. She wondered, as they traveled, if that made him any less beautiful to her. And she wondered if she wanted anyone else’s beauty, wanted to be touched and caressed by another person. Aizdha had never touched her, although she knew that other masters did what they liked to their slave’s bodies. When she had first learned of this, she had resolved to kill Aizdha, if he ever laid a hand on her. She had gone so long equating murder with touch that she didn’t think she could change.

Still, as he walked beside her, Taeyaho would sing. It was a strange song, with no set tune, although certain melodies returned again and again, and with words that were always changing but seemed to speak of the same thing. A joyous song, reflecting the land they traveled through, the bright sunlight on the sides of the seer hills, the birdsong and the sound of fish leaping in the streams and rivers. She didn’t ask about it, or try to learn it. She was content to hear Taeyaho sing it in his high tenor voice.

It was on a hot, bright day that she saw the mushroom man in Hiraherra. They had come into the lake town and gone immediately to the old, squat keep that sat on the bluffs by the river mouth. The First Families had come to greet them, and slaves had set trestle tables in the courtyard of the keep, and brought wood for the cooking fires. The town was big enough to have an inn, and the kitchen slaves were sent to help make the meal. Manrie climbed to the top of the walls to watch them. Little Praeda sat with her, her back to the courtyard as she looked out over the rippling water. Manrie could tell that the people from the inn were in a celebratory mood. They were working hard but were happy, flashing grins at each other, and Cloedeya was teaching them, laughing with them, flipping little fish off of the grill into the bowls they brought him. Big Praeda had attracted a gaggle of children, and Manrie thought that this was what had caused Little Praeda to leave her side. They were teaching her songs as she minced herbs and mixed a marinade. Melsa, ever an island of shyness, seemed looser somehow, her gangly movements less awkward as she beat the batter for a pan bread. Taeyaho was no where to be seen. A tinker has set up his cart on the road leading to the keep, and was haggling with a woman over a small, glinting object. Manrie lazily watched the cooks, half dozing, her feet dangling over the narrow wooden walkway, her back against the battlements, a feeling of contentment seeping into her from the hot stones.

Then there was the sound of a horse’s hooves on the hard pack of the road that led up to the keep, and a figure appeared at the top of the rise. Manrie’s breath caught as she looked down at a head wrapped in muslin, set on strangely immovable shoulders. He was met by the scions of the First Families, who had been sitting in the grass near the gate, passing a bottle between them. Young men, who rose to meet the stranger and block his path. They exchanged words that Manrie couldn’t hear. Then the mushroom man turned his horse and rode away.

When the feast began, Manrie led little Praeda to a table set up in the shadow of one of the wagons. The girl, still shy of the other children, seemed content to sit with her, grubbying her hands with roasted corn. Taeyaho joined them, smelling of lake water and mud. He seemed to note Manrie’s anxiety, but said nothing of it. It was only when the feast was over, and the towns people were hurrying home before night fell, that he slipped away, and Cloedeya came to sit with her soon after.

“Taeyaho says that something frightened you,” he said, handing her a cup of watered wine.

Little Praeda had fallen asleep with her head in Manrie’s lap, her body stretched along the bench. Manrie looked down at her and watched the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath her gleaming white robes. She had forgotten to tie her blindfold back on. “I thought the feast might continue late into the night,” she said.

He studied her with his mismatched eyes. “The spirits are rising here, as well. They say that the barrow is leaking their dead. They hide behind closed doors at night.”

“But not us?”

He shrugged. “We have seen the dead every night since you joined us. I’ve prepared a plate for them. Maybe someday they’ll eat one of the meals I make for them. But that’s not what frightened you.”

She sighed, and then, with a sense of wildness mingled with despair, she decided to trust him. “I’m being pursued. By a man who wears a muslin sack over his head.”

Cloedeya blinked. “The bounty hunter.”

“No, he’s a scholar. He smells like a mushroom and he poisoned my master.”

“Sip your wine. There is only one person who wears a muslin sack and travels the mountains and the Sand Hills. He takes bounties for the Lord of Yenceyan and the scholars of Libreigia, and sometimes goes as far as Hasra to deliver prisoners to Lady Daturi.”

Manrie’s breath caught in her throat. “Do you mean that someone has taken a bounty out on me?”

“It must be.”

She couldn’t meet his gaze. She stared down at the table. Praeda, sensing her tension, stirred in her sleep. “Will you sell me to him?” Manrie asked.

“Have you ever seen us buy or sell anything?”

“Will you…will you give me to him?”

He was silent, and his silence made Manrie look up. She saw wonder, mixed with affront, in his asymmetrical eyes. “I don’t own you. I can’t give or take you. Besides, he’s not looking for you, Kumynoe. He’s looking for someone else. Someone whose name I’ve forgotten.”

She felt tears rise in her throat. “Why…why are you so kind to me?”

Big Praeda was weaving her way between the tables. She came up to them, noted the tension, and sat down quietly. She reached out and took Cloedeya’s hand. Cloedeya looked at her and smiled. “We ground a special peppercorn in the meal tonight. We found it growing on a vine far to the south of here, in the misty heat of the Zahamaendas. Big Praeda ate it, and then we knew that we could eat it, too. She always tastes the new foods that we find. It’s not because she is immune to poisons or toxins. It’s not because she has an especially strong stomach. It’s because there is a sweetness in her. We think, when we eat or drink something new, that our bodies have to adjust to it, learn to digest it. But when my darling here eats something, the land agrees to adjust to her. Poisonous plants fall in love with her, and decide that they will not poison humans any more.”

Big Praeda laughed and patted his arm. “You always say that. It’s a ridiculous story.”

He sat very still for a moment, holding Manrie’s gaze. Then he laughed and shrugged. “Maybe it is.”

Manrie pondered this story as they traveled back into the hills, northeast to Tzurfaera. She and Praeda stayed hidden within the pantry wagon, but the masked bounty hunter did not meet them on the road. During the day she gazed out through a knothole in the wagon side as Little Praeda played with the meat and cheeses. Cloedeya’s story made her look at the land with new eyes. She watched the gulls that wheeled over the lake, their white wings snatching at gusts of wind to glide for a moment before the breeze abandoned them, leaving them to flap and slide at ungainly angles until the wind picked them up again. She watched for the flash of fish in the water. At dawn one morning she saw a bear shamble out from a line of trees and drink from the lake. Nearby, a doe led two fawns to the water, the early sunlight glinting off of her tan hide.

“Tell me a story,” Little Praeda said to her as the wagon juddered over the uneven road.

“What kind of story?”

“A story from the bestiary.”

“I don’t want to tell those stories anymore. And anyway, you always say that they’re too scary.”

“I’m not frightened now.”

Manrie glanced into the corner of the wagon, where her saddle bag sat under a string of dried fish. She hadn’t opened it for days. She could picture the bestiary sitting in it, nestled against the strange needle and the two odd discs, their colors sleeping in the darkness. She was frightened, but only of the man in the muslin mask. She thought of adding him to the bestiary. But then she wondered if anything should be added, if the bestiary was a true record of the world.

That night she sat with Big Praeda after the others had gone to bed, looking out at the spirits who had gathered around the wagons. The fire was burning low, and the ghosts seemed peaceful and distant, like the stars. “What’s your real name?” Manrie asked quietly as a small breeze stirred the embers.

Big Praeda gave a little laugh. “You know, I don’t really remember. I’ve taken so many names since I met Cloedeya and joined this caravan.”

“It’s hardly a caravan.”

“Well, it grows and will keep growing. I think it will become a caravan.”

“How do you always remember what people should call you?”

The older woman smiled and scratched at a broad cheek. “My friends remember for me. Changing your name is easy, as long as the people who love you agree to the change.”

“But why keep changing it, if everyone loves you?”

Big Praeda was thoughtful. “I suppose I still need to feel protected. Maybe I’m testing them. Maybe I’m afraid that someone, somewhere, is trying to create a necklace that is beaded with my names. If I ever stop, they’ll be able to close the clasp, put me around their neck, and wear me.”

“You have enemies.”

She sighed. “I did. Long ago. I don’t know if they’re still my enemies. I don’t know if they even remember me.”

“Did you…did you lose anything, when you met Cloedeya?”

“No. Or yes. Not so much loss, as seeing things become something different. I think about that when I cook. How spinach looses its crisp nature. How its taste mixes with other tastes, so that it’s both spinach but also something else, and needs a new name, the name of the dish I’ve created.”

Manrie looked down into the embers. She looked up, at Aizdha’s ghost, facing her from a hundred paces away. “I would like to lose something,” she said.

Big Praeda put a hand on her arm. “Sometimes food has to cure in dark and dry places, for the true flavor to come out. Or to pickle in brine. Maybe you can’t truly lose anything. But you can store it for a while, Kumynoe.”

So they went into the pantry wagon, and Manrie picked up the saddle bag carefully, trying not to disturb Little Praeda as she slept. They went outside, and dug a hole in the ground, and buried the saddle bag in it. Manrie worried that the earth’s moisture would creep in and destroy the bestiary. But maybe it would make it something different, the damp erasing certain words and making news sentences, new meanings, by their absence.