The boy pushed at the arm that held the mirror and his soft white hand slipped along her smooth brown until his fingers brushed the glass and then he froze with a little gasp, and the girl laughed like birds leaping into the sky and the stag under the trees lifted its head antlers like the high branches and the hound howled, once, like a trumpet.

The rugmaker's lips twitched of their own accord, itched to speak her mind, to ask the wise woman what right she had to come and make the rugmaker doubt herself now, while when it had mattered, no one had been surer that the rugmaker had done well to send the warrior away.