It took two morEmonths to finish the journey. He was in no hurry.

Once, as he rejoined the Vinkus River, he spotted a single stag. It stood alert in the middle of a long line of mature beech trees that ran the crest of a ridge, half-lit by an effect of late afternoon sun and cloud. Knee-deep in dried grass, the stag watched him as he passed. It did not flinch or flee. Nor did it attack him.

AT LAST, something familiar: the small settlements that clung to the slopes of the Kells. Arjiki villages, some with names, some not. Fanarra, and Upper Fanarra, and Pumpernickel Rock, and Red Windmill. It was late fall, early winter; the flocks were down from the heights, noisy in their fold; the summer cording was done, and skeins of dyed skark yarn were knotted and hung out to dry on pegs. The smell of vinegar used to set the dye tightened the skin in his nostrils.

The Arjikis regarded his progress along Knobblehead Pike without comment. If some of them recognized him, they didn’t let on. It had been almost a decade since he’d left with Dorothy. Everything had changed within him-he’d broken out of his shell to find himself wanting-but the Arjikis looked stolid and eternal.

He recognized none of them, either.

As he walked the last mile, looking up, the old waterworks towered high from the strong thighs of the mountain. It loomed overhead with impossible perspective, and the clouds above it whipped by so quickly that, as he stood with his head thrown back, he became dizzy. To see it again!-the old pile, once the family home of the prince of the Arjikis, then the castle refuge of the Wicked Witch of the West. Kiamo Ko.

Its stones were streaked with the water from snow melting off the battlements. (Harsh weather sometimes hit the higher mountains as early as Summersend.) Its roofs looked to be in a serious state of disrepair. Crows shot from the eaves, and an oriel window seemed to have collapsed, leaving a gaping maw, but smoke was issuing from a chimney, so someone was in residence.

He hadn’t spoken a word since meeting the woman on the road, the crone with the four-horned cow and the child. He wasn’t sure he could still talk.

The bartizans were deserted, the ceremonial drawbridge of the central gate was up, but the gatehouse door was wide open, and snow drifted within. Security wasn’t the top concern of whoever lived here now.

He gripped the broom in his hand, and tightened the Witch’s cape around him-he’d worn it several weeks now, glad to have carted it all these seasons, as it was helpful against the chill. Mercy, mercy, he thought, I’m home from the wars, whatever that means. He climbed the steep steps to the gatehouse and went in to the primary courtyard.

At first he saw no change at all; but he was looking through the eyes of memory, and those eyes were blurred with tears. She might have come back here, he thought at last. Have I been hoping this all along, step by step-is this hope what has kept me from dying? If Nor really had survived her abduction, she might have made her way back here as I have. She might even now be slapping a meat pasty into a hot oven and turning at the sound of my foot on the cobbles.

Then he wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. The place had gone from rack to ruin, and some of the hard edges of its utilitarian design had become softened by neglect. The cobbles were covered in dried leaves, and a dozen or more saplings like party guests stood here and there, human size or even a little taller, twitching their thin limbs in excitement at a new arrival. A shutter banged overhead. Ivy clawed up the side of the chapel. Several windows were broken and more young trees leaned out.