I ran until I came to the cottage Caen had been building for us. It was entirely finished, with a fenced-in vegetable garden beside it. There was no thatching on the roof, but dark tiles. Bird droppings highlighted the walls. A new walking path cut a rivet in the Earth, heading toward the village square. And the village . . . it was much too large. Far larger than it had been . . .
I stopped, staring, trying to catch my breath. With each exhale, my thoughts screamed, Seven hundred years. Seven hundred years. Seven hundred years.
This was not the Endwever I had left behind.
These were not my friends, my neighbors, my family. No, they were all long dead, and I was the only one left. The only one left.
Alone.
I sat by the fireplace, sipping yarrow tea, clasping the cup to warm my fingers. I was inside Father Aedan’s house. He had found me in my despair and, with the help of his wife, coaxed me inside. The house was centuries old, but it had not stood in Endwever during my time.
My time. I took another sip of tea, feeling the warmth drag down my throat, and peered out the window at the afternoon sky. At the Sun. Did He know what He had sent me back to?
The ring on my finger was lined amber. Would He try to find me?
A face appeared in the window and startled me. An adolescent boy, peering in, going wide-eyed at the sight of me.
Shila, my hostess, noticed as well. Clucking her tongue, she strode to the window and shut its thin curtain. “She’s not a show hen.”
“What she is is a miracle,” Father Aedan replied. He smiled at me from his seat across the room, at a short wooden table. “A miracle. They are bound to be curious.”
Frowning, Shila moved to another window and peeked outside. “There’s already a dozen of them out there.”
“I haven’t exactly been clandestine,” I managed.
Shila turned, perhaps to speak to me, but she studied me instead, her eyes glistening. She recognized me from the temple statue, too. They all did.
“There’s a scripture about you,” Father Aedan said, as though hearing my acclaim could soothe my confusion, my shock. “About how the Sun God favored you and kept you.”
I swallowed a hot mouthful of tea. “Because my body was never returned.”
He nodded.
But that answered nothing, and I neither confirmed nor denied the assumption.
Shila worried her hands and stepped into the kitchen. “I’ll make us a fine meal, and you a bed. Take the day to relax, my dear. We’ll sort it all out tomorrow, when you’re feeling yourself again.”
But a day couldn’t make me feel like myself.
Only seven hundred years would.
There was a crowd waiting for me when I departed for the cathedral in the morning.
The popularity was strange. Once upon a time, I would have enjoyed it, but my thoughts were too rattled and thin to take the attention. Villagers of all shapes, sizes, and ages had been outside the Aedans’ home since dawn. Some, I suspected, had camped out all night to get a glimpse of me. I was more than a show hen—I was a prize bull.
I thought back to how I’d likened myself to an old cow in the backyard, before becoming a star mother. The irony was not lost on me.
Father Aedan and Shila walked close to me, as though their bodies could give me some privacy. I smiled and nodded at those we passed, igniting whispers like fire in my wake.
At the cathedral, I returned to the cemetery, taking my time with the tombstones. The Aedans didn’t leave me, but they did give me some space, watching over me from a distance as though I were a bird that might flit away at any moment. But where would I go? Although I had a growing feeling the Aedans saw me more as a scriptural phenomenon than a living and breathing person, I did not know of any other who would have me. Every last human being I had known was long dead.
A comment in an unfamiliar voice marked the arrival of a third party.
“How did she survive?” the man asked, as though I could not hear him.
I glanced over my shoulder to a man of about forty, wearing worn but well-made clothes and a hearty jacket. Father Aedan gestured for him to follow, and the two came out to meet me.
“Ceris, this is Toder, the stonemason who carves all the tombstones. We thought he could help.”
I glanced at the man, then back to the weathered grave markers before me. “Did he carve them seven hundred years ago as well?” I couldn’t help the bitterness in my voice, but I did regret it instantly.
“No,” Toder replied, crouching beside me, “but my father and his father before him worked this place. I know it well.”