They left Calmere on a grey morning, the last day of market week, the sky the low flat white of a season that had decided it was done being pleasant about things.
The wagon was lighter than it had come — the harvest sold, the crates gone to various merchants and storehouses across the town, only the family's personal goods and the modest collection of purchases remaining. His father had settled the inn bill and the stable fee and the various small transactions of a week in a larger town with the methodical thoroughness he brought to all financial matters, and he had climbed onto the wagon seat with the specific quality of a man who was ready to go home.
His mother had spent the final morning on a different kind of settlement.
Arthur had told his parents about Maren the night before — the full account, carefully given, the hollow and the cages and the five women and what he had done and what Maren had said after. His mother had listened to the whole thing without interrupting, which was not her usual practice and which meant she was holding a great deal. His father had asked three clarifying questions, all practical, all the right questions, and had then been quiet for a while.
'Bring her. We have plenty of space on the farm and we could use the help, plus she is just too adorable,' his mother had said, finally.
'Mira,' his father had said, in the tone of a man beginning a practical objection.
'Edric, after everything she endured - our son saved her so it wouldn't be right for him to abandon her immediately after? Shes nearly the same age as Clara.' She had looked at him with the specific quality she used when the conversation was already over and they were just getting there. 'Bring her.'
His father had looked at the table. He had looked at Arthur. He had said: 'The farm can use another pair of hands.'
Which was Edric Voss for yes.
◆ ◆ ◆
Maren was waiting in the inn's yard when they brought the wagon around.
She had been given clothes by the innkeeper's wife the previous evening — practical traveling clothes, well-fitted, the innkeeper's wife being the kind of person who kept a stock of such things and did not ask too many questions about why they were needed. She had her hair brushed and her chin up and the expression of someone who had made a decision and was committed to it and was also very uncertain about everything that came after the decision.
She looked at the wagon. She looked at Edric on the seat. She looked at Mira, who had climbed down and was coming toward her with the specific walk she used when she was going somewhere that mattered.
She looked at Maren the way she looked at things she was deciding about — thoroughly and without pretending she wasn't.
'What a tiny thing,' she said. 'Arthur said you were a few years older than Clara.'
'Thirteen,' Maren said. 'Yes, ma'am.'
'I'm Mira.' She paused. 'Before we go any further — do you have family? Anyone who would be looking for you, or who you should be going to instead of coming with us?'
Maren was quiet for a moment. 'No. Not anymore.'
'No one at all? Not in Calmere, not elsewhere?'
'My father's family is far east. I've never met them.' She said it without drama, the way she said most true things — directly, because there was no point in softening what was simply the shape of the situation. 'I have no one, ma'am.'
Mira received this without flinching. 'And you're sure about coming with us? You understand it's a farm, not a grand house. We're ordinary people, and there's ordinary work, and it's a long way from Calmere if you decide later it isn't what you wanted.'
'I understand.'
'It won't be forever if you don't want it to be. When you're older, when you have your feet properly under you, you can go where you like. But while you're young and while you need somewhere — ' Mira stopped. Looked at her carefully. 'You're thirteen. You've had a hard few weeks. I want to make sure you're choosing this and not just accepting it because there's nothing else in front of you.'
Maren looked at her. She thought about the hollow and the cage and the days since and the specific quality of being in the inn room with no one in the world who was looking for her. She thought about Saya on the bench beside her that morning with her tail doing its slow sweep. She thought about this woman who had bought honey cakes because she had seen a girl looking at a baker's stall and not stopping.
'I'm choosing it,' she said.
Mira held her gaze for one more moment, checking the answer against the face that gave it. Then she nodded once, with the quality of someone who had asked a real question and received a real answer and was satisfied with it.
'Good.' She looked her over once more. 'You're very thin.'
Maren blinked. 'I — yes, I suppose — '
'We'll fix that.' Mira put her hand briefly on Maren's shoulder — the same easy warmth she put on everyone, as natural as breathing. 'Come sit in the back with the girls. Do you get road-sick?'
'No, ma'am.'
'Good. We have a long day.' She guided her toward the wagon with the unhurried certainty of someone who had already decided how this was going to go and was simply executing it. 'And don't call me ma'am. Mira or mom is fine.'
Maren looked at Arthur as she passed him, the hazel eyes doing the calculation of someone trying to work out what kind of household produced this.
He gave her the slight nod of someone who had also been trying to work that out for seven years and had mostly made his peace with it.
◆ ◆ ◆
Clara had been watching from the wagon board with the expression she wore when she was assessing a new situation and had not yet decided what to make of it.
When Maren climbed into the back of the wagon and sat down across from her, Clara looked at her with the direct appraisal she applied to most things.
'How old are you?' Clara said.
'Thirteen.'
'I'm eleven.' Clara appeared to have concluded this was not a significant gap. 'What's your affinity?'
Maren looked at her. 'Im not sure, I probably don't have one. I'm not — I've never had magic.'
'That's fine. Arthur teaches it anyway. He taught all of us. But it was a lot of training on our spells.' Clara said this with the easy confidence of someone delivering a fact rather than a boast. 'I'm Clara. That's Lyra. She's nine and she reads too much.' She gestured. 'That's Saya, Arthur's age. She's a fox.'
Maren looked at Saya.
Saya's ring was off. They were on the road with no one watching and it was a long day and Saya found the disguise uncomfortable over extended periods, which was fair. The blue hair was loose and the amber eyes and the pointed ears and the tail arranged neatly on the bench beside her were all visible and entirely real.
'Hello,' Saya said, with the warmth she used for new people she had decided to like.
'Hello,' Maren said, very carefully.
'I'm from the Ao Kitsune tribe,' Saya said. 'Fox demihuman. I'm staying with the family while my tribe migrates. Arthur rescued me from some wolves.' She said this last part the way she said most things — directly, without performance. 'He does that fairly often.'
'I can tell,' Maren said. Still carefully. Then something shifted and she said it again differently: 'Ya, I can tell.'
Saya looked at her with the amber eyes that missed nothing. Something passed between them — the specific recognition of two people who had both been in a forest hollow and come out the other side of it, though from different hollows and different circumstances.
Saya moved over on the bench and patted the space beside her.
Maren sat down next to her. After a moment, Saya's tail curved in a slow sweep across the bench toward her, not touching, just present.
Maren looked at it. She looked at Saya. She let out a breath that had been in her for a while.
◆ ◆ ◆