Free Ambergate by Patricia Elliott

soap sitting in a glass bowl; a tortoiseshell comb. He held
     the box out to me. “Borrow it, if you like.”
    “Are you sure?” I said, touched.
    “She’d like to think of it being used.”
    I took out the glass bowl and sniffed at the soap: it still contained the faint, pleasurable fragrance of lavender. When I
     tried to fit the bowl back in, something was stuck in the lining, something that pricked me: a sharp point sticking out. When
     I pulled it, more and more came out. It was a single feather, long and white, the barbs crushed. A shiver went through me.
     I laid the feather quickly down on the grass and touched the amber stone at my neck.
    Erland picked the feather up, holding it to the sun. “A swan’s feather.”
    “You dare touch it?” I saw he wore no amulet himself.
    He smiled. “My grandmother always watched the swans at Murkmere.”
    “Murkmere? But that’s where I came from!” It slipped out carelessly. I hadn’t meant to tell him where I’d lived—Erland or
     his father.
    “I know,” said Erland. He was still looking at the feather, smoothing the barbs with his careful fingers.
    “How do you know?” I demanded, bewildered and suddenly apprehensive.
    “I know because that’s where we met, you and I.”
    I shook my head. “We’ve never met before.”
    He laid the feather down and turned to me, his eyes on mine: eyes, deep-set. For the first time I noticed their color: dark
     gray, almost black. “Don’t you recognize me, Scuff?”
    I shook my head again, fiercely; I was frightened now.
    “I lived at Murkmere too,” he said softly, “when I was alittle boy. One day by the mere you rescued me. You took me home. Don’t you remember?”
    I did remember.
    “The little lost boy was you?” I said in disbelief. I stared at the youth beside me: long limbs and fair, stubbled beard,
     the little child long gone. And yet there was an ageless quality about his face.
    He nodded and gave a small smile. “The other girl wanted me to live with the swans, I believe!”
    “That was Leah. She was a strange girl.” I hesitated; I stared at him still. “But you are older than I am. The child I rescued
     then was young, younger than I was by a good deal.”
    “Haven’t we told you that time passes differently in the Wasteland?”
    “How can it?” I said. “It must obey the same laws, surely?”
    “This is not a place for formal measurements, for mechanical clocks or even sand timers,” he said curtly. I thought I’d irritated
     him. “I feel I’ve spent many different lifetimes here.”
    “But that can’t be so,” I said, half smiling.
    “You know nothing,” he said, suddenly angry. “You think I’d lie to you?”
    “No, no,” I stammered, taken aback. “Of course not.”
    “Well, then. Believe it.”
    After a while, I said timidly, for I could see he was brooding on it, “But if you lived at Murkmere, why did you leave?”
    There was a long silence. I thought he was still angry but then saw he was mulling over his words. “My father has told me
     that after my grandmother died, I wandered off—perhaps to look for her, he thinks. I don’t remember. He searched the estate, begged Silas the steward to order the keepers
     to drag the mere, but Silas refused. I don’t know what brought my father here to search for me in the Wasteland.”
    “You were here?”
    He nodded.
    “And you never went back?”
    “We never went back. My father wouldn’t work for Silas anymore. He’s always been good with his hands. Somehow he managed to
     make a life for both of us here.”
    “But—weren’t you ever lonely?” I couldn’t imagine it. I thought of the bustle and chatter of Murkmere in the days of the Master,
     all the servants rushing in and out of the steamy kitchen quarters.
    He grimaced. “I never missed the company of other children, but my father made me go to the village school. Each day I’d have
     to leave the reeds and water to go and study books.”
    “Then we must