She repeated this performance until Deborah was prompted to say, ‘What are you doing? Don’t you ever sleep?’
The little Pixie went back to her bed and sat there, hugging her knees, her eyes wide. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just . . . bad tonight.’
Deborah knew from her own experience that the poison did this. Lifting her covers, she said, ‘Come here. We’ll keep each other safe.’
They spent that night and many others clinging to each other, like frightened children who know they’re in mortal danger, who try their best to comfort one another when no adult is at hand to remove the threat and dispel their fear. Not since she was a small child had Éha been comforted by another. With great heaving sighs the two girls fell asleep, clutching each other as if trying to merge the little courage and hope they had between them into one . . .
It was mid-day. Birin and Elgar stood at the south edge of the settlement near the stream, arms crossed, their individual mien stern, looking more like adversaries than people who shared the same land.
‘If the general feeling of your people is, as you say, against us, then why did you not direct I and mine to someplace more remote?’ Birin asked.