The storm had passed, but talk of Lina's actions was gathering strong. After healing Adam, Lina helped carry him to the hall cellar, where she'd stayed by his side until he'd woken, several hours later. He wasn't in any pain at all, just tremendously tired and weak, so Lina held his hand and stroked his forehead and brushed his hair back from his eyes, talking to him in calm tones about nothing much at all, as much to distract herself as to soothe him. She'd stayed by his side until the evening, when despite her protests she'd been swept up by her family and taken home. That night Lina slept like she'd never slept before, and the next morning she had three helpings of porridge before running off into the village, only to find herself barred from seeing him by Mr Graft.

"Lad needs his rest," he said. "Best to leave him be for a spell."

Lina's face fell. "But I thought—"

"Just for a while," Mr Graft said. "Come back tomorrow, after ... tomorrow."

Lina could have argued. Could have pushed her way past. Those were certainly options, for a girl that was more than ordinary.

She ended up just walking back home, mindless of the strange looks she was attracting, and she busied herself with her very ordinary chores.

"So," Lina's mother said, while Lina washed up for dinner. "How's our great heroic nurse, then?"

Lina blushed, and her mother and older sisters laughed.

"Really, we're proud of you," said Ursula.

"Although I think I may know the reason you were so eager to help," Julia put in, with a sly smile.

"Just don't let it go to your head, my daughter," said her mother. "There's no room for heroes in a village, least not heroes who don't do their fair share of the work."

Dinner was lamb stew, thick with dumplings and potatoes. Lina had two enormous helpings with extra bread then went straight to bed, snoring almost before she'd properly laid down. The next morning she rose early, still feeling tired but trying to ignore that.

"Off to the village again?" Julia asked, as she watched Lina wash her face. "Goodness, I wonder what in the world could be drawing you there?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," Lina said, briskly.

The sun had only just risen but the young ones were already hard at play, climbing the big old elm near the house.

"Gerty, mind you don't climb too high!" Lina called out as she passed.

"I won't!"

The village was quiet, just Harry from the valley and Stuart from up the hill talking around the well, although they stopped when they noticed Lina.

"Good morning," she said, and they nodded to her and waited for her to pass before returning to their conversation.

Mr Graft was seated beside the door to Adam's house, hat over his face.

"Good morning, Mr Graft."

"Young Lina," he muttered through the hat, before pushing it aside and stiffly standing to greet her. "Good morning. I'd say there's only one reason you're here, aye?"

Lina blushed.

"Suppose it wouldn't hurt for you to see him," Mr Graft said. "Go on in and see if he's awake, his dad's in there too but don't mind him."

Adam's father had been sick for a long time, with weak lungs and an oddness of the head. He was generally regarded as pitiable but harmless.

"Good morning, Mr Free," Lina said, as she spotted him in the little house's main room. He was sitting in a rocking chair, wheezing gently as he stared at the wall. At the sound of Lina's voice his unfocused eyes slowly dragged over to her.

"Down," he said. "Going down. Down. Down. Going down."

"I'm just here to see Adam," Lina said, not really sure how to act around the odd old man and deciding to stick with what she knew; 'ordinary'. "Is he in his room?"

"Down, down, down, he's going, he's Adam, he's done with that, my girl, done with that, why don't you bear? Won't you bear?"

"I, um, I'll just go in to see him, then," Lina said, before fleeing into Adam's room. Once inside she hadn't so much as glanced at him before her cheeks grew warm. Alone with a boy in his room, she thought. Never mind the circumstances, that's ... that's...

Curtains, she told herself. This room could do with a bit of light. Let's open the windows too, get some air in, it's not good for a room to get stuffy especially when someone's recovering. There, see? With the light I can see his face properly...

"Um!" Lina said, stepping back as Adam stirred.

"Huh?" Adam yawned and blinked and gradually focused on Lina. "Oh ... Lina?"

"Um." Lina took a breath. "H-how are you feeling?"

"Tired," he said, smiling weakly. Lina managed to smile back. Adam squirmed in his bed and she took a little half-step forward, wanting to help but not sure what she could do.

"Do you want anything?" she blurted out, the words coming too fast and too thickly; not for the first time Lina cursed her fat tongue. Adam shook his head slowly.

"I'm ... okay," he said. He looked at Lina again. "You're the one who helped me."

"I ... I did what I could—"

"You saved my life," Adam said, Lina blushing at the earnest look in his deep brown eyes. "I was dying, I know I was, and ... thank you."

Lina turned away. "I just ... it's okay."

There was silence, then Lina glanced back at Adam, blushing deeper as she saw he was still looking at her.

"What?" she said.

"I—"

"Down. Going down, down. Adam's turn. Thick blood."

"Dad," said Adam, as he and Lina both turned to look at the old man standing in the doorway, an anguished look on his face. "Please go and sit down—Lina, could you please take him back to his chair?"

"Of course," Lina said quickly, going to Adam's father's side and gently taking his arm. He turned to frown at her, incomprehension in his eyes.

"Touched," he said.

"Yes, I'm just helping you back to your chair," Lina said, as she guided him across the room. "Do you want a blanket?"

"Touched," he repeated, nodding to himself as he sank into his chair. It wasn't a warm day, so Lina fetched a blanket and put it across his legs.

"There," she said. "Do you ... do you need anything else?"

"Thick blood," Adam's father said, still nodding away. "Down, going down to thick blood."

Lina patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "You can just stay here," she said. "It's okay, I'm looking after Adam."

"Are you now?" came a voice from the front door—Mrs Roberts, Lina saw, as she straightened and turned. "We'll see about that."

"Good morning, Mrs Roberts," Lina said, curtsying. "Are you—"

"I'm here to check on the boy. You can leave."

"I don't mind—"

"You can leave."

"But really—"

"Do I need to brew you up some hawthorn tea before you'll listen to me? Or maybe bishop's weed would be more appropriate." Mrs Roberts cackled as she strode into the main room, her piercing grey eyes on Lina.

"I—"

"You," said Mrs Roberts, jabbing a finger at Lina. "Can leave."

Lina hesitated then fled, past Mrs Roberts and outside.

"Wise choice," Mr Graft mumbled from his chair. Lina glanced back at him as he looked up at her. "Don't get between Glenda and what she's fixed on. That woman's more focused than a hawk on its prey."

"She's ... she is good, though, isn't she?"

Mr Graft chuckled. "Rather than evil?" he said, before holding up his hand as Lina went to correct him. "Just having a little fun with you. You can trust her with your boy, as far as healing goes."

"He's not my boy," Lina muttered.

"Oh?" Mr Graft chuckled again, a little unfairly Lina thought.

"Um," Lina said, with an anxious look back at the house. "Do you think she'll be long?"

"What do I think. I think you've got chores to do today."

Lina bit her lip. "I suppose I do," she said. "But—"

"Take care of the basics first," Mr Graft said, his voice gruff. "Fancy can follow. Your boy'll keep till tonight. Why don't you come back then."

Lina sighed. Mr Graft was right, she DID have chores to do, and if she was really honest with herself being here with Adam wasn't going to help him.

"All right," she said. She smiled at Mr Graft. "Thank you for looking out for Adam. It must be a hardship, sitting out here all day."

To her surprise Mr Graft went a little red.

"Ah, well, you know," he said, more than a little fluster in his voice. "We all do our part for the village. Give my regards to your parents, won't you."

"Of course. I'll see you tonight, then."

"Aye, like as not you will."

Lina made her way back home, feeling anxious but somewhat relieved—Mrs Roberts IS good, she thought, in both ways, even if she is a bit mean and bossy and weird sometimes. And Adam seems fine anyway, he's recovering quickly, it's not—

"What's going on here?" Lina said, as she ran towards the wails of pain—it was Gerty, holding her leg where she'd scraped her knee, the other children gathered around her. "Gerty! You fell out of the tree, didn't you! AGAIN!"

"She climbed too high!" Terry cried with a note of triumph in his voice. "Even though you told her not to!"

"Never mind that, let's have a look. Oh, this isn't anything more than a scratch, when I was your age this kind of piddling thing wouldn't even make me cry."

This was true. Lina had never reacted much to any kind of injury, when she'd even sustained them—she remembered falling out of a much higher tree when she was eight, landing heavily on her arm, but she'd walked away from that with just the wind knocked out of her.

"Come on, you've not even lost any skin," Lina said, making her voice jolly. "Let's just—"

There was an odd kind of flutter deep within Lina's stomach, this followed by a sensation of stillness. She looked down at Gerty's leg, at the scrape on it, then up at her sister's tearful face. Lina felt as if she and her sister were the only things that really existed in the entire world—even though they were surrounded by their other brothers and sisters, and were on the road that led to their house, and taking a wider view of things they were, of course, in the country of Targe—but somehow, in that moment, it was like all those things were simply irrelevant. The world had been reduced to nothing but Lina and her sister, or even less than that, just this scrape, this wasn't what Gerty's knee should look like, all scraped up and bloody, and this pain her sister was feeling, that wouldn't do, of course Lina didn't want any of her family to be in any kind of pain ... well maybe Julia and Ursula sometimes, but regardless of that she reached into Gerty and she pulled, and she felt an odd pricking in her fingertips which spread throughout her body, not pain exactly, just a presence of something, and soon even that was no more than a little flicker of nothing much at all way down deep in her gut, and then the stillness was gone and Lina was staring at Gerty's knee, and her brothers and sisters around her were quiet, because there wasn't a scrape there any more, not even the trace of one.

"There," said Lina, matter-of-factly. "Doesn't that feel better?"

Gerty nodded, her young eyes wide.

"How..." Hob trailed off, squinting at his big sister.

"All right, drama's over," said Lina, although she shared a lot of her little brother's confusion—she had no idea how she'd healed Gerty's knee, only that it had all seemed very clear at the time. Now that she thought back on it, she wasn't at all sure what she'd done. Lina straightened and reached out to tousle Hob's hair. "You can all get back to your wasteful playing, some of us have chores to do."