“I knew you would come back! Even when I couldn’t feel you anymore, I knew you weren’t dead, and I told Spink so. Oh, that frightened me so, when I woke one morning and could not feel the magic at all. I tried to explain it to Spink, that I knew you’d said good-bye to us. Right away, he said I’d have to accept that you’d probably died. Have a little faith in him, I told him. No one kills a Burvelle that easily! Oh, Nevare, I am so glad to see you, to touch you, to know you are really back. Oh, now, put me down, put me down, you must meet your new little—what would she be, your second cousin? Oh, but that sounds silly, she is much too small to be anyone’s second cousin, and I have already been calling you Uncle Nevare to her, so that is what you shall remain. Set me down right now! I want you to hold Solina! She’s never met you yet, and listen, she’s crying!”

I think those words finally brought me to my senses. I was so joyous at seeing my cousin alive and well after all the anxious days and nights away, it seemed intolerable that anyone should be crying, let alone her own precious baby. I set her down, and she staggered a few steps dizzily, laughing wildly all the while, and then caught hold of the cart’s side and hauled herself up to take the baby from the basket. The child was so layered in blankets and wraps that Epiny looked as if she were opening a present. I held on to the edge of the cart and watched, enchanted.

Kesey spoke behind me. “Nevare?” He spoke the word incredulously.

Reflexively, I glanced back at him. Our eyes met and I had no lies or explanations to offer him. For a long moment, we stared at each other. Then his eyes brimmed with tears even as his grin showed all the teeth he did and did not have. “It is you. Oh, by the good god, Nevare, it is you. But you ain’t fat no more! Still, I shoulda knowed you, even dressed in those drapes. Nevare!”

He fell on me and hugged me hard. The warmth and relief in his voice were so genuine that I could do nothing save hug him back. “Why didn’t you say it was you?” he demanded huskily. “Why didn’t you say it was you, ’stead of coming to the door like a beggar? Did you think I wouldn’t have helped you?”

“I didn’t think you would believe me. I didn’t think that anyone would believe me.”

“Well, I probably wouldn’t have, if the Lieutenant hadn’t told me so, way last spring. Everyone said that you’d been—that you’d died. But I’d had that dream, and then the Lieutenant came to ask me about it, and I suppose I got a little teary, saying I thought that dream was your way of saying good-bye and no hard feelings. Only he asked me if your sword was on the floor when I woke up, and I said, yes, it was, and that was when he told me the truth.” He gave me a friendly shake and pounded me on the back for emphasis. “Only acourse it didn’t sound nothing like the truth, sounded like the second wildest tale I’d ever heard. But the more I thought on it, the more it made a weird sense, and when I talked to Ebrooks about it all, he broke down and blubbered about seeing you killed, and said that he hadn’t stopped them and he was so ashamed. He said he was the one who hauled your body off and buried it safe in a secret place. Only when I pushed him on it, he couldn’t remember where he’d buried you. Couldn’t remember where he’d got the shovel, couldn’t remember digging the hole. So that was when he and I put it all together, all the bits, and decided that you hadn’t done none of what you were accused of, and that you weren’t dead, either. ’Course, it was all pretty strange, thinking of you having Speck magic or whatever. Being rescued by Specks with magic.”

“Lieutenant Kester told you I was alive,” I said stupidly. This was as stunning to me as my reappearance was to him.

“I told him to!” Epiny announced proudly. She was holding her baby against her shoulder and beaming at me as she spoke. “I told him it would be cruel to leave your two friends believing that you were dead and that they’d contributed to your death. And I reminded him how angry I was, and still am, that you left me in the dark for so long. They deserved the truth. And they’ve kept your secret.”

“Well, it wasn’t a hard secret to keep,” Kesey said, finally releasing me. He dragged his cuff unashamedly across his streaming eyes. “The state you left the town in, no one wanted to even mention your name, let alone talk about how you’d died. If you wanted to shame those fellows for how they were going to do you, you sure did it. Most of them slunk around the town like whipped dogs for months. And I think it was their own guilty consciences that made them tell wild tales about seeing you come back as a Speck warrior during that sneak attack last winter! I told them I didn’t believe a word of it. And, by the good god, don’t I wish I could take you to town and parade you around now and say, ‘See, I told you so! He couldn’t a done it. He’s been off living in the woods on roots and berries and getting skinny as a rail!’ Why, you look like a kid, Nevare! That’s what taking off all that fat done for you.”