Chapter Two
Birch
Lut’s blond head popped from below the rim. “What?” Then, seeing her stricken expression, he added, “Are you all right, Poppy?”
She hurried forward until she reached the break. Her relief at the sight of him standing unhurt on a wide ledge just a few feet from the edge made her shriek crossly. “Am I all right? I thought you had fallen down the cliff, you ass!”
Lut seemed not to notice her irritation. “Good. Give me a hand, will you?” He had hold of the lamb’s back leg, as it dangled over the two hundred foot drop to the rocks below. “I’ll pass it to you. Mind you hang on to it, eh? I don’t want to have to run another race with that one. Once is enough.”
Poppy did as he instructed. She handed the wriggling lamb back to Lut once he had scrambled out of the cut and he draped it across his shoulders, holding its feet in the front. The lamb relaxed, and lay on its side. Lut trotted across the field towards home.
Poppy cried, “Wait for me! What’s your hurry?”
“Got to get this little one back to the house. It is probably dehydrated — and hungry, too. Ma’s got some special mix she makes for the foundlings. We’ll bottle feed it for a few days and it should be fine.”
She smiled at him, much impressed. “You are full of surprises, Lut.”
He blushed. “What do you mean? I am just Lut, the quiet one. Jakob gets all the attention around here.” He stared at her for a moment, and Poppy thought she saw a flicker of jealousy in his eyes. Then he looked away again.
“I just meant that you know so much — about sailing and sheep herding, and...”
He gave her a shy grin. “Just because I don’t talk doesn’t mean I don’t know things.”
The high green roof of Ikora Gwenn’s house came into view. Several goats cropped the sod on the top, crossing back and forth on the steeply sloping sides.
Gwenn was blond and rawboned, like her sons. She stood when she saw Lut approaching with the lamb, and Myrie, who had been sitting on a stool at her feet, scampered away. “Myriadne!” she called, exasperatedly, but the girl had already left the yard, running towards Gwillam’s house. She threw the comb and scissors down in disgust.
“Shall I catch her, Ikora?” Although Gwenn was, in one sense, her adoptive sister, Poppy felt uncomfortable with the idea that the huge, ex-warrior before her could be as closely related as that. Ikora, for the fact that Gwenn had married Patre’s brother, seemed so muchsafer.
“No, thank you,” said Gwenn in resignation. “I was almost done. She doesn’t care what her hair looks like, anyway.” She took the lamb from Lut. “What happened here?”
Poppy explained about the dead ewe. Gwenn burst into a torrent of col
