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other dreams he had had that had come true. The dream of the flame-breasted bird. The dream of the whistling black-coated man. And now, most horribly specific, this.
    He did not know if his dreams were wishes so powerful they came true, though he had certainly never wanted the fire that had destroyed his life. He did not know if he had the ability to see slantwise into the future. Either—or both. He did not know and was afraid to know.
    The dog kept on howling, an eerie sound, awful and final.
    And tears, unwanted, uncalled-for, fell from Hawk's eyes. He could not seem to stop crying.

5. THE TOWN
    " WHY?" HAWK ASKED ALOUD. BY THAT HE MEANT : Why was he crying at the death of the awful Fowler, a man who had beaten him and tied him up and would have sold him? Why was he crying now when he had not cried—not really—at the death of those he loved? Master Robin, Mag, Nell, the dogs, the hawks. "Why?"
    Still crying, he got up onto Goodie's back, for she was once again the stolid plowhorse, and they started down the road, with Chum right after.
    Hawk wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve, thinking that he had not been able to touch the man nor bring himself to bury him. He only wanted to be gone away, from the man, the stone, the blood, the howls. He was almost a mile along before he could no longer hear the dog.
    Without wanting to, Hawk fell into a reverie on Goodie's back and began to daydream. It was a very odd dream this time—of a wizard and a green castle. There was a bird in the dream as well, eating an apple, then spitting out a green worm. When the worm touched the ground, it grew to dragon size, then took to the air, its great wings whipping up a wind. Hawk woke sweating, though the day was cool. Was it another dream of the future? And what future, he wondered, could include all those things?
    As suddenly as the dream ended, so did the path. It opened instead onto a real road that was rutted with use. For the first time there were other travelers: farmers with carts piled high with vegetables—carrots and neeps and green onions. Whole families in wagons, the children packed in with the caged fowl. Here and there single riders trotted on fine horses, not plowmares like Goodie. Hawk felt entirely awkward and dirty, ragged and alone. But at least he saw nothing like a wizard, a castle, an apple, or a worm.
    He was hungry, but there was little he could do about it until they came upon a town. Besides, hunger was not new to him. Before he had found his family, he lived alone in the woods for a year, foraging for berries and nuts. He had not starved. One or two days without a proper meal would not kill him. Fire killed. Men killed. His own belly would not do him in.
    He guessed he should have turned out Fowler's pockets. A dead man spends no coins. But that would have made him a thief indeed, and despite what Fowler had called him, he was none of that.
    The road quite suddenly widened and ahead was the town. He recognized its gate. It seemed even grander than he remembered, made grander perhaps by his hunger and his fears. He let Goodie go her own pace, following after the wagons and carts, in through the stone gate marked with the town's seal. Gwethern.
    Clearly it was a market day. Stalls lined the high street. There was more food—and more people—than Hawk had seen in a year. His stomach proclaimed his hunger loudly. But it proclaimed something else as well, a kind of ache that food would not take away. To buy food, he had to sell either Churn or Goodie, and they were his last ties to the farm. He got off the horse's back and led both horse and cow carefully through the crowded street.
    Noise surrounded him: sellers calling out their wares, children whining for a sweet, women arguing over the price of a bit of cloth, a tinker bargaining with a man for a wild-eyed mare, a troubadour tuning his lute, two farmers arguing over stall space, and a general low hubbub.
    For a boy used to living on a