“Applecross, Dingwall, Suddy, Cromarty, Plockton, Garve, Kyle, Avoch, Knockbain, and Wester,” Glenna recited. Places to avoid. She led Skye not in the southern direction she believed Montrose had been taking her, but due east from Beauly, where at first she had gone through the woods in a southerly direction, then guided Skye along a stream and doubled back, twice and in two different directions, covering her tracks, and leaving false ones.

He would never know she was headed for Inverness.

For half the day she had crossed through the long, wooded grounds of the Great Glen, riding through streams of water and away from, or skirting around, villages and hamlets she and her brothers had plundered.

Her brothers’ sweet faces came flooding into her mind and she wondered what they were doing this day, and did they miss her as sorely as she missed them, as if she had left part of herself with them, an arm, a leg, a piece of her heart. She lost herself in thought for a few memories, ones that stole some of the life from her.

The silence stretched onward, until she heard nothing but the crush of Skye’s hooves on the leaves and pine needles beneath her, and then her heart beating loudly in her ears. The realization hit her that she was more alone than she was comfortable. On the island, the quiet had always felt peaceful, soft, and not empty like it did now. She had sought out time by herself. She was quickly becoming a stranger, she thought, and rode onward.

At the place where the stream turned to falls, tumbling down to a river below, she stopped to refill her flask and remounted. As she moved on, the song of a lark made her look up through the trees, but it stopped singing when a devilish black rook shrieked loudly and flapped its wings, diving like a spear and scaring the lilt and bird music before it flew away.

Overhead, a patch of blue sky stared back at her as if it had eyes.

The clear blue of his eyes.

A hare suddenly scampered out from beneath a fern and her heart caught in her throat.

Overhead a hawk circled, only to light in the high branches of one of the tallest trees and she could hear the sound of an animal thrashing through the brush, eerie and strange and a little frightening.

It was as if there was no other living human soul in the world. Urging Skye forward, she held her breath, and then finally exhaled as she rode out from under a dark stand of larch and pine and reined in, sagging slightly in the saddle, her heartbeat slowing and her hands relaxed.

Before her spread a vast and open river plain and the air was dry and warm as a fur-lined cloak, and tasted of summer, unlike the fecund and verdant dampness of the woods—a metal taste reminiscent of blood on the tongue. The high sun had cooked away the last of the night’s dew on the grass, and to her left, a marten scurried through a crackling nest of needles and larch leaves to disappear into a hole.

Skye shied slightly and she controlled her with slight pressure from her knees, which were fairly numb from her dog’s weight. Fergus lay limply in front of her, slung like a grain sack across the saddle, unmoving. But once she shifted, one of his eyes popped open and he was staring dully up at her. “You are awake. Poor dog.” She stroked his neck, feeling like the worse kind of monster. “Beer is not for hounds, you foolish thing.” A couple of breaths and his sad eyes drifted closed again. “And spiked beer is for big, brawny barons who….” Her words trailed off. She couldn’t muster up anything horrible enough to squelch her feelings of guilt.

Had he awakened by now and discovered her deceit? He would be angry enough to spit daggers, that she knew. His expression of anger was burned into her memory, so different from how he looked at her the day before.

The image of him in the stable at Beauly came flooding into her mind, Montrose laughing, his eyes the exact color of a perfect sky, crinkled at the corners and changing his whole face and demeanor, the flash of white, even teeth, his ample height and impressive breadth, looking ludicrous in the way his clothes and face were dripping water as he stood threatening to soak her to the bone.

Her mind’s eye switched to the tender, odd look in his eyes when she was singing—a look she had never seen on a man—and then the stiff tension in his muscles and the sense of panic emanating from him as he ran down the narrow abbey hallways with her shaking in his arms…the warmth of his body when she was ill, both there and on the ship’s crossing…his mouth on hers.

Such thoughts. She was twisted up inside them, these games inside her head, trapped, and tangled in even sillier dreams she dared not allow herself to think about. Montrose, Al and El, her father dying…her father lying…not her father after all. Her father, the king.

Oh, God…would the king ever let her be? If she could stay hidden for a long time would he forget about her? Would she ever be free?

Men, she thought with disgust. May St. Columba take them all! If she were violent, she would want to hit something. “Yesterday does not matter,” she said aloud stubbornly, as if by doing so she could believe it as truth.

The past was merely that: past.

She used her hand to shade her eyes against the startling bright sun, as her squinted gaze followed the bare leg of road cutting through viridian grass and a lazy scattering of chalky rock; it led through the last span of land between her and the port burgh of Inverness, which was large enough to keep her safe, with cross streets and its trade market.

Cast in the blue haze of distance and perched on a distant crag was the castle; she could make out the notched teeth of its crenelled walls. Below it, a wide silver ribbon of water, the River Ness, which curled off into Moray Firth and was trimmed in lines of the town’s staggered buildings a good league away. From here, they looked like nothing more than a game board of merels.

A startling shout, the snap of a whip and a curse to the “slowest beasts this side of Cromarty” pierced her lonely silence, and soon the slow, creaking sound of a wain came from a nearby bend in the road. Oxen, huge and horned and knotted, pulled a lumbering wagon which slowed as it grew closer. Stacked up the sides of the cart bed, burgeoning bundles of plump corn threatened to burst from their tethers.

“Good day to you, lad!” The driver wrapped the thick leather reins securely around his fist and pushed back his hood of brown wool worn above a saffron tunic of trade's linen. His face was kindly, eyes bright and cheeks red as island deer, but the right side of his face was misshapen and twice the size of his other.

He rested his reins on his knees and uncovered his head to reveal hair the color of iron, blackish flecked with gray. The oxen must have stopped, although considering how slow they had been moving, Glenna wasn’t certain. “Good day,” she said.

“What have you there?” The man sounded as if he had a mouthful of stones and she stared without thought at his swollen face. He was looking at Fergus--a large furry lump in front of her.

“My hound.”

“Is it dead?”

“Nay. Dead drunk,” she fabricated, figuring it was a half-truth. “He lapped up more ale than a brewer earlier.”

The man gave a bark of laughter then grabbed his cheek and groaned. “This blasted tooth! “ He pulled a small pot from his cloak, dipped in his fingers and rubbed them on the back of his mouth. “Wintergreen oil,” he explained and tucked the pot away. “Barely a league of road left ahead of me and I can seek out the clever hands of the town barber. Won’t be too soon enough, I say. With this fat load I should be wanting to head straight to the mill, but—“ He put his hand on his fat cheek. “I will stay in town for I cannot take another eternal night of this. You’re headed for town, laddie?”

“Aye.”

“I’d welcome the company. Will take me mind off the Devil’s own throbbing pain.” He cast a quick nod toward the wagon and winced slightly. “The hound can rest in the back of the wain.”

She looked down at Fergus, knowing he would be most comfortable in the wagon, sleeping off his stupor on a bed of corn husks rather than ribs rattling as she and Skye rode on.” And his weight was causing her limbs to go uncomfortably senseless. She eyed the man’s wain and its precarious load and wondered where Fergus could sleep safely and not fall off.

“Do not fash yourself. We’ve plenty of room for him. See? There is dip in the midsection.” He stood. “Come. Hand him up to me, laddie, and rest your animals for a while.”

So with Skye tied to the back of the wain and Fergus asleep in the middle of the load, Glenna took to posing as the lad Gordon of Suddy, the best she could invent in the spur of the moment, and she rode companionably into the town of Inverness on a sunny afternoon settled on a wain bench next to the loquacious Heckie of Drumashie. He told her tales of his past and his family, his wife who was the daughter of a sea merchant and, he, with hectares of fertile land given him as reward for saving the son of his overlord, a story he chewed her ears over with flourish and as much drama as an Angevin bard.

Heckie of Drumashie was a man of many words and even more gestures.

Soon black-faced sheep could be seen grazing contentedly on the low rises, and dairy cattle munched on fathoms of clover speckled with yellow flowers. Scattered along the outskirts of town were perimeters of low stone fences and crofts covered in thick thatch, built of solid wattle and daub that sparkled in the sunlight with newly lime-washed walls, surrounded by freshly mown fields, one with a lumbering spotted sow and gaggles of children laughing, chasing.

A woman with her blue skirts tucked up into her girdle stood hoeing rows of turnips and onions, and another tossed feed to red-brown hens with feathers all-a-flutter as they pecked heartily at the ground near her wooden clogs. Off in the distance, men tilled the grain fields and others were bailing up huge rolls of fresh golden-green hay, while large-bedded hay wagons lined up to be loaded. Wagons stacked high with faggots cut from the forest for cook fires moved past the town’s perimeter ditches and disappeared into the bowels of Inverness. Everywhere she looked was another teeming eyeful. To see so many people caused a humming deep inside her. She was not so alone, and she smiled.

“Aye, ‘tis a sight, is it not?” Heckie said with admiration. “To see a holding where the lord and the sheriff don’t bleed all the wealth out of the land and its people. Even the likes of Munro the Horrible wouldn’t dare plant his greedy feet onto charter land of the king, Himself.”

Her smile disappeared. She didn’t know which name upset her more, Munro the Horrible or her father ‘Himself.’ She paused before speaking. “When the king Himself has been living in exile for so many years past?” The words spilled like toads from her mouth. “What king does not rule his land?”

She could feel Heckie’s look without a glance.

“I would expect a laddie from Ross-shire to know more of how the winds blow,” he said quietly and pulled on the reins.

She stared at her hands in her lap, knowing she could not tell him the truth, that she knew little of kings and politics living not in Ross-shire but in the isolation of the outer islands, where rare news was more of the Norse machinations than much of their own homeland. That she was not a lad.

What would he say were she to pull off her hat, let down her hair, and declare she was the daughter of Himself?

Did that make her Herself?

If Heckie of Drumashie knew he was sitting next to the daughter of the king she suspected the news might actually render the man speechless.

She searched for a lie and settled on the truth. “I do not know much of the workings of politics and the rulings and rights of kings. I never dared ask why he is in exile, having lived with the belief that the king was so far from my place in the schemes of the world and therefore had nothing to do with me. I have only known that the king has been away for as many years as I have breathed this air.”

So Heckie explained the king’s exile, the great battle on the day she secretly knew she was born, and Heckie’s story made her understand betrayal on a grander scale than she would have ever thought she could fathom before the last few days.

“…. And later we heard that the great and lovely queen had died, with her newborn child, in a fire in the woods, while the king was taken prisoner, and none ever knew if it were the king’s enemies that got to her.”

From Heckie she heard of such tales of the treachery that for the first time she understood the thin thread of control and slim trust available to anyone with royal blood. He told her of the king’s cousin, who challenged her father’s right to rule through his mother’s line and with coffers of gold and silver from his many ransoms bought easy rebellion from some lords who swore fealty to her father, but behind his back plotted to oust him.

“He came back to Scotland once, Himself did,” Heckie said. “But a traitor was privy to the secret plans, and as the king and his men rowed ashore, the barons and their mercenaries attacked and he took an arrow deep in his side. On the ship was a man from Jerusalem who studied Eastern medicine, and he held the king together until they landed in Brittany. The French king’s chirurgeon brought him back from death throes, but his recovery was long and difficult. ‘Tis said he was betrayed by one of his closest friends…the name bandied about was Sir Ewan Robertson.

For a brief moment she wondered if she had misjudged her father. She still ached from her own experience with betrayal.

“There is fresh rumor brewing about. First heard a fortnight ago.”

“What kind of rumor?”

“That Himself is coming home.”

She knew the rumor was no rumor but the truth. Her father was coming back. Would his enemies again try to kill him? How could he ever trust anyone?

Heckie was watching her quizzically.

“I do not know what to say except it would seem to be folly for him to risk his life again. Why would he?”

“Because his blood is that of kings,” he said simply.

He spoke with honest reverence about her father and his courage, and his tone was filled with pride. She felt suddenly small, and for the first time she wondered at her blood. What did she carry beneath her skin that drove her and made up her being? So many unanswered questions.

They drove past the deep defense ditches lined with stone and into Inverness proper, where buildings huddled close together like foot soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, as if there were only bare enough plots of land for the four corners of each one. Up from the dirt street, a blanket of dust swirled around the ox team, dusting their black coats with a fine veil of red dirt.

That the thoroughfare was not muck-ridden was extremely rare.

From what Heckie said, drain gutters and cess channels were built behind the buildings, as they were in Edinburgh and London. And though there were dogs and pigs and chickens occasionally roving in the streets, there were far more people moving to and from the market crossing; it stood ahead them, where the crowds thickened and one could hear the hawking of goods, pipe and drum music, and the buzzing voices of trade.

Heckie turned the wain down a side street and stopped in front of a narrow, stone based building with blood-red painted shutters. A barber sign swung on an iron hook above the door, a thick oak timbered with red and white-lime painted trimwork. He assured her he knew of a stable where she could safely board and care for her horse and hound while she explored the temptations of the market. In exchange she would stay and watch the loaded wagon while Heckie took care of his tooth pain.

Glenna knew she could not stay in the town indefinitely—she would have to move onward—but the size and crowds of Inverness afforded her more anonymity than a village and she needed supplies. For a short time, perhaps a few days, she could lose herself here.

* * *

Lyall lost her trail again. He reined in and rubbed his brow, took a long deep breath before he glanced up through the trees at the sun to gauge how much time he’d already wasted.

Too long. For every movement of the sun across the broad blue sky, she was getting farther and farther away.

Frustrated, angry at himself for letting his guard down--and wanting to whack the little witch for being so quick-witted--he turned around for the third time and went back to the place where she had entered the stream. He dismounted and carefully tracked her on foot, walking on the rocks and stopping to examine anything, until finally he found one deep hoof print between some rounded stones, not on the east side as he had expected, but on the west side of the stream.

West? He stared into the trees. He didn’t for a heartbeat believe she would go back toward the abbey. He looked westward, then north, checked both directions for trees with broken twigs and branches, marks that proved she had ridden past, and then searched the areas for hound and horse dung, anything to give a clue of her direction. But he found nothing.

Back by the stream he kicked aside some fallen leaves, hunkered down. There, finally, he saw a trace of hoofmarks that had been brushed away. He shook his head, half admiring her.

The trail led in a wide circle back to the stream. So it was no surprise when he found she had pulled the same trick again further upstream, only this time the hoofmarks were headed north, and again she had covered her tracks back to the stream--which meandered westward before turning into a rock falls down a hillside near the eastern edge of the woods.

He followed her trail, trusting his instincts, which had yet to lead him false. Only when he let down his guard did his plans go awry, he reminded himself. Something to keep in the forefront of his mind when it came to his thoughts and plans and feelings about Glenna.

Eventually he rode out of the woods to face the road to Inverness, the sun far behind him, and he spurred his mount forward, riding hard and fast--a wolf on the scent.

* * *

As she sat on the wagon seat waiting, a familiar panting sound came from overhead, and she leaned to the side and glanced upward to see Fergus, snout resting on his large furry paws atop the piles of corn, eager eyes wide and looking down at her. She could hear his tail thumping on the husks. He whimpered and crawled forward, so she stood and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his fur then letting him freely lick her face.

“I swear I will never again spike a tankard of ale.” She gripped his wrinkled furry jowls and faced him nose to nose. “I am sorry, sweetling.”

From the barber’s open shutters, a loud, drawn-out shout of pain cracked through the air, and Fergus lifted his head, ears perked. Glenna winced, then shuddered slightly, thankful for every tooth in her head, even the crooked two on the bottom.

Time slogged by. She began to tap her feet.

The finally door opened and Heckie came out, a leather flask to his lips. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and climbed up into the wain, the overly pungent scent of usquebaugh tainting his breath.

He sat down and weaved a bit, then gave her a silly drunken grin, revealing a large bloody gap where his bad tooth had been. “Gone. There…see? I’m grateful, lad, for staying with the load.” He inhaled deeply, whistling slightly. “I see your dog is awake. Good…good. Now we’ll be off to find your stables.” He paused, shook his head and moved his mouth oddly slipping his tongue into the space where his tooth has been. “This fresh hole in my mouth is making music. I breathe and whistle.” He inhaled. “There. Did you hear that?”

Before she could agree, he was off talking about the barber and how much the usquebaugh burned his mouth and throat but lessen the pain greatly, except for when the hard grip of the barber’s tool clamped onto his deviled tooth, and he snapped the reins and continued to blather on…only twice as fast and loose.

'Twas not long before Glenna had bid a sweet farewell to Heckie, who drove off to take his load to the mill for grinding, talking avidly to the ox team and occasionally taking another sip from the flask. Skye and Fergus were fed and boarded in backstreet stables owned by the town’s well-trusted alewife, so Glenna moved without worry down the short maze of narrow alleys.

With her coins safely tucked inside her chest bindings, and a few more in her boot (no thief would be fool enough to carry a purse about a market that would no doubt be crawling with divers and pickpockets) she stood at the edges of the market cross and took it all in.

After purchasing apples and root vegetables for the road, the thought came to her that it had been a long time since she’d entered a market without being there to stake out the easiest victims. She felt easy, light of foot and mind, and she hummed a merry tune as she moved from booth to booth. The scent of warm oat and cinnamon honey cakes wafted from nearby and she bought one and ate it like a child given a treat for the first time.

Colorful flags and tent awnings were trimmed brightly to catch the eye. The unmistakable scent of fresh bread and the sweetmeat call of pieseller’s booth drew her into the thick of things, past the dancing of tumblers and the lively song of bonepipe and naker drum, on to the tented booths where huge cheeses were sold by the slice and crusty bread made with light flour were all but impossible to pass up.

Munching on her third mincemeat pie and feeling fat as that spotted sow, she paused at the mercer where silk as fine as hoarfrost hung next to stacked bolts of Flemish velvet softer than feather down, and shimmering metal threads of thin gold, copper, and silver lined the back shelves. What would that silk feel like against her skin?

“You, lad.” The mercer whacked her hand with a measuring rod.

“Ouch!” She pulled back quickly and the pie slipped from her other hand. Wincing and stunned, she rubbed her throbbing hand as tears burned the backs of her eyes.

“Little bugger!” He waved the measuring rod in her face. “Keep yer greasy fingers off the goods!

She bit back the urge to curse him to the bowels of hell and instead looked down to hide her tears. Her pie lay broken in two on the ground. A large boot of oxblood cordovan leather smashed the pie, and she slowly raised her face upward.

A tall knight with bright red hair stood but a hand’s breadth away, staring down at the pie oozing up from the edges of his boot. He looked at her and his dismayed frown faded. “Lady Caitrin!” He gaped at her with an expression that was almost comical…until he said, “We left you at the castle. How did you come here? Surely you are not alone?” He looked around swiftly. “Finn will have your head…wearing peasant clothes again. What were you thinking, woman? He whispered harshly. "You swore you would obey all his commands.” The knight grabbed her arm tightly.

Lady Caitrin? “Let me go, sir.” She pulled on her arm but he had the grip of a giant. “I am no lady. I am Gordie of Suddy.”

“Aye…and I am St Columba facing the great monster of the Ness.” His hand moved so fast she hadn’t time to stop him. He jerked her hat off her head and her braid tumbled down her back.

There was a gasp from the crowd nearby, which was growing, a sea of curious, wide-eyed faces.

She snatched her hat and crammed it back on just as he began to drag her away. “You, my lady Cait, will come with me to find Finn, and you can then tell your husband your boldface lies.”

Oh God… She dug in her feet, and bit him hard on the arm, her hand going for the knife in her boot.

He swore in a huge and loud bellow.

She kicked him first in the knee and again between the legs.

With a loud “Offffff!” he doubled over.

She snatched away her arm, cut his purse from his sword belt and ran, weaving in and out of the crowd, crawling under displays and leaping past anyone who got in her way, leaving a path of overturned carts and tables and spilt goods, screaming merchants and utter chaos. Scrambling on hands and knees, she crawled away from the center of the market, under a rack hung with tunics and braies, (she grabbed one of each and a handful of crossgarters, tucking them in her trouse) and scurried around a table stacked high with bolts of wool and linen. Over and behind the booths and carts she went, weaving like a frightened hare.

Creeping along behind a line of tailors’ displays, she managed to pull a dark woolen cape from a corner hook undetected, before she ran on and snatched a green feathered hat with two more just like it from a plumer who had turned away to watch the commotion. For protection, she sliced open a large sack of his down and sent a cloud of feathers into the air, before ducking, tucking up her hair under the hat, pulling closed the cloak, and within moments she had made her escape.

The north end of the market was already chaotic with the business of cattle and horses being bartered by raucous copers, and men racing swift and agile Arab and Barb-blooded mounts for betting stakes. Losing herself amongst the crowd, she slowed to catch her breath, staying in the thick of them, and she wove her way north, away from the main market cross.

She reached the high end of the market at the tinker’s corner and heard a horrific, angry shout.

“Cait! Caaaait!”

She swung around as a tall nobleman in a red tunic plowed through the crowd and leapt over one tinker’s booth before knocking down a stack of copper pots. His intended path was straight towards her, hands out, and he looked as if he were preparing to go straight for her throat.

“Bugger!” She took off northward, heart pounding in her ears, crossing the road and ducking down an alleyway, running for all she was worth. She took another side path then slipped into recessed doorway and pressed back against the door, holding her breath as she heard the thunder of more than one person's bootsteps running down the alleyway, coming nearer…then past.

“You men! Get your mounts and ride to the town gates. She will not escape again!” came the man’s angry shouts.

Panting in time to her beating heart, she closed her eyes. She knew the man who was coming for her. His overly handsome and striking face was memorable, although she recalled him more clearly with his bare chest…and bare arse. He was the drunken lord whose horse she had stolen, the first man she had left naked in the road.

Who was Lady Caitrin? Whoever she was Glenna pitied her, surrounded by men who bellowed at her, handsome, naked, or no.

She counted slowly and waited, listening in case it was a trick, then counted again before she stepped away from the door and edged back toward the alleyway, back pressed against the stone wall of a carpenter’s shop—she could hear the sudden pounding of a hammer, and when she felt safe, she doubled back and made her way to the alewife’s stables, sought out the woman and used some of the knight’s coin to pay for the feed and shelter.

Inside, Fergus spotted her and sat up, tail wagging, a look of adoration on his silly face. “Hullo, Fergus.” She fell onto a pile of hay, drew up her knees, slipped her arms around him and laid her head against his warm fur when she realized she felt lost and a little alone. She grabbed Fergus’s floppy jowls and shook his head a little. “But I am not truly alone. I have you, do I not?” she said to him, putting her face up to his. He still smelled like the abbey soap. Suddenly she could hear the memory of her own laughter echoing in her head, as if she were back there again.

For that one single moment, while bathing Fergus, there had been nothing on her mind but the joy of her laughter and a natural warm bond with Montrose, the kind she’d had with Al and El—a rare occasion in her life now, when she wasn’t worried about what she had to do next and how they were going to go on.

Why did that make her belly churn and her chest ache, as if she had lost everything all over again? One breath more and tears burned in her eyes and she sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She lifted her tunic and pulled the spare clothes she'd stolen from her belt then added the knight’s coin purse on the pile next to her.

Staring at her plunder, she felt nothing good. They were not hers, she thought, in a rare bout of conscience. Stealing was no lark, held no happiness for her, anymore than being alone was any kind of lark or pleasure. Being alone was just that…alone. Empty. For the first time she could ever remember, she was truly afraid to go out into the world. She was afraid to leave the hay she was sitting upon. Al and El were no longer part of her life. They did not ride at her back or laugh at her jests or hug her just because she was their little sister.

A long and quiet time passed before she looked at her situation without self-pity. She had spare clothing and more than plenty of coin. She dumped out her boot and removed the money she’d carried inside her chest bindings. But she had no supplies. Her plump bag of apples and turnips were back at the mercer’s booth, and she dared not return to the market, now being unmasked and a woman.

To stay in town was no longer safe for her. All was ruined. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, searching for some of that infamous courage in the blood of kings. Perhaps Montrose and Alastair had lied about her father, she thought, having no great surge of some magical, instinctive feeling that made her want to rush out and face warriors, naked noblemen, or her unknown future.

She got to her feet, picked up her saddle and readied Skye, cinching the belly strap, tying on her possessions, moving by rote. She left the stables, Fergus following and looking none the worse for wear after his encounter with Montrose’s spiked beer, but she did not head for the western walls where those men were looking for someone named Lady Caitrin. To the east stood the castle on its great crag, and to the south was the wide stretch of the River Ness--another ferry crossing--which she dared not chance, and that was the only way to the southern side.

Instead she moved past the alehouse and into an alleyway that circled to the northeastern edges of town, heading swiftly towards the old northern gate. Seldom used since the treaty with the Norse rendered the town no longer a target, the back gate was forgotten--a place where she and Al had crept into town once before--and where she now left Inverness and rode into the slough marshes, through the reeds and peaty black water that dirtied Fergus’ clean paws and belly hair, out over the Great Beyond, heading westward across the northern lowlands and towards all the places she was supposed to avoid, because she had no other choice.