dreary, ordinary kinds of the affliction, and required special treatment.
Meanwhile he observed that his hostess was starting-what else?-to cook dinner. The carcass of some small four-legged animal, pale and plump, was being adroitly skewered on a spit.
That Zoltan-he got the impression that it would be the same for anyone else in her presence, or in her house-might have the bad luck to be attacked by hunger appeared to strike the goodwife as a personal affront. The boy, with arrays of dishes growing on the table before him, was bombarded with offers of cold milk to drink-drawn up in a stone crock from some deep well-and a clean fork appeared on the table in front of him, and yet another plate, this one holding a slab of fruit pie that Zoltan, after the first bite, was prepared to swear was the most delicious thing that he had ever tasted.
'A little something to keep you going until dinner's ready.' For all the incomprehensible amount of work that she was somehow getting done, Mother Still never seemed to hurry. Now she had joined Zoltan sitting at the table, a mug of tea in her large, roughened hand; and now finally she allowed the talk to shift away from things that he might like to eat or drink. 'Is someone chasing you, child? How do you come to be here in this condition?' She was still indignant that the world had treated him so poorly.
Zoltan, who had not realized that his condition was quite so obviously bad, told her the story as best he could, beginning with the strange experience he had shared with the younger children in the cave. Mother Still made appropriate sounds of sympathy as she heard about that and about the magical events that had afflicted Zoltan later on, but he wasn't sure that she really believed him-given the nature of the story he had to tell, he was prepared to understand anyone's not doing so.
But Mother Still asked questions as if she might believe him. When he mentioned the name of Burslem, she frowned and shook her head. The two of them sat there in the kitchen talking for some time, and they were still sitting there when from outside there came the lowing of cattle, a sound that in Zoltan's experience usually accompanied the animals' being driven back to the barn.
He got to his feet, loosened his belt a notch, did his best to suppress a belch, and offered to help bring the cattle in.
Mother Still smiled at him approvingly. 'The old man'll be glad of help. Just trot out, then.'
He went out the back door and pitched in to help. Still, unsurprised, welcomed the assistance and sent Zoltan out to another field where there were more milk cows that needed prodding. All the animals were fat and healthy; by now Zoltan would have been surprised to find otherwise.
There was a well just outside the kitchen-& cool, stone-lined shaft complete with windlass and bucket- and when the cattle had been brought into the barn Zoltan hauled up two pails of water and carried them into the kitchen and set them beside the big stone sink. It was the kind of thing he hated doing when at home, but he'd plenty of experience of it for all that. There weren't always a lot of servants ready to wait on you at High Manor.
Presently dinner was announced, and Zoltan, after a thorough wash-up, reached the table right on the heels of Still. He was hungry again-it was as if all the food that he'd eaten since his arrival had already packed itself away into his bones and blood and muscles, leaving his stomach ready for more.
Dinner was roast meat, with delicious accompaniments- bread, vegetables, pickles, more pie-and conversation.
'Just the two of us here now. Children all grown and gone.'
Zoltan had seen enough farms to recognize that this place was a gem, and he said so several times. It was obvious to him that there had to be more workers around somewhere, a bunch of them, but somehow he didn't want to come right out and ask where they all were. He just wanted to get through the rest of this day without any further complications.
An oil-lamp was lighted, making the parlor almost as cheery as it had been during the day, and Mother Still- somehow, incredibly, she had managed to clean all those dirty dishes already-sat down with her knitting.
Meanwhile Still had reached up to a high shelf above the mantel and brought down some kind of a board game with pegs; he challenged Zoltan to a game and started to explain the rules even as he set up the board for play. Zoltan, trying to make sense of it, could hardly manage to stifle his yawns.
'Better sleep in late tomorrow, young one. Then, soon as you're able to get up and about, we'll set you some chores.'
'I'll do chores. I'll do them'-yawn-'for you tomorrow. But I don't see how I can stay here any longer than that.'
No one reacted to that statement. It was as if they might not have heard it. Mother Still suddenly uttered a wish that she were back on what she called the big farm; 'but then we have to do as best we can.'
Struggling to stay awake, Zoltan indulged his curiosity. 'Where's the big farm?'
A hearty laugh from Still. 'It's way out in the country, laddie. That's the best place for them. But, it's a little harder to get to than this one. And we thought there might be visitors.'
His wife shook her head, as if her husband had made an objectionable joke. Or, more like it, as if he had repeated an old one once too often. Then she smiled at Zoltan and changed the subject. 'So, your uncle Mark is Prince of Tasavalta now.'
'Yes, ma'am. He has been for the last eight years,' Zoltan acknowledged, wondering. 'Do you know him?' Zoltan thought that would not be strange. His own father had died as a low-ranking soldier, and he could remember something very like poverty in his early childhood. Uncle Mark had not always moved in royal circles, and to his nephew those earlier years of his uncle's life had always seemed the most interesting.
'Must be the same Mark that Andrew knew,' the old man commented abstractedly while taking another of Zoltan's painted game pegs off the board.
'Well, of course, Father!' Mother Still sounded patiently and mildly exasperated. 'I do wish you would try to keep up, where there's family connections and all.'
Family connections? Zoltan thought. But he was too sleepy to think about it much.
'I keep up, Mother,' Still grumbled. 'I keep up pretty well. Andrew's the one that Yoldi married. Rest her soul.'
Andrew, in Zoltan's experience, was a fairly common name. Yoldi was not, though. In fairly recent family history- things that had happened after Zoltan was born, but when he was still too young to remember them now- there had been Dame Yoldi, the almost legendary sorceress and companion of Kind Sir Andrew. Could these two simple old farm people be talking about that Yoldi and that Andrew? Zoltan didn't really believe they could, and anyway he was too tired and too confused to ask.
But now, incredibly, Mother Still was talking about her late sister, who, it seemed, had unfortunately got mixed up in being an enchantress, and all that kind of thing. And it sounded as if her sister were Yoldi. Zoltan couldn't credit it. He was half asleep and knew he was getting into some kind of hopeless muddle.
'And in the end it killed her.' Mother Still shook her gray head, knitting furiously. She looked at Zoltan as if he was the one arguing with her. 'No, laddie, that kind of a life is not for me. I'm too plain for that.'
Father Still, squinting into the yellow lamplight that fell across the gaming table, nodded patient agreement.
Then he put out a gnarled hand and deftly cleaned the last of Zoltan's pieces off the board.
There was a steep stair and a small upstairs room at the top of it; Zoltan was sure before he saw the room and bed that they would be clean and warm and comfortable. In the moment before sleep came, he had just time to ponder whether he would be better off starting for home right after chores in the morning, or resting here another day. And eating one or two more meals of Goodwife Still's cooking ...
In the morning, Zoltan slept comparatively late. On awaking, in the broad daylight of a fully-risen sun, he jumped up, feeling somewhat guilty for having stayed so long in bed, and hurried downstairs. Mother Still was in the kitchen, and he asked to be given chores.
'That's fine, laddie. There're still eggs to be picked up in the henhouse.' Mother Still added that her good man was already out in the fields.
After bringing in the eggs and polishing off a gargantuan breakfast, Zoltan got directions from Mother Still as to where to find her husband and went out to join him at his labors. Zoltan felt he could hardly refuse at least one full day's work to these people who had saved his life.
This morning, as it turned out, the job was harvesting gourds and pumpkins, which grew intermingled in the same field. A small, phlegmatic load beast pulled a cart along while Still and Zoltan cut the fruit from vines and
