Willow is tougher than it looks, like most of Greyfen. You and Meg get wet to the elbows. The snag comes with a sucking sound, and the ditch remembers it is a ditch. Water slides toward the proper runnel. The winter strip stops looking like a pond with ridges.

Meg’s father nods once, which from him is a parade.

“Still goes to court,” he says. “Neighbors want it on the roll. Memory leaks. Ink doesn’t, if the clerk is sober and the day is ordinary.”

You wring your sleeves. Hew’s letter has survived in your shirt. The sack of keep-flour is dusty and accusing. The motte waits. So does a girl who knows fallow from foolishness.

Meg sits on the baulk and kicks a clod. “You could go tell the steward the land is not a song. Or you could sit a minute and we’ll trade: you tell me what a keep is for from the outside, I’ll tell you why the green strip still looks proud.”

A lark goes up. Market trestles clatter in the square, faint as another county.